Barrow of the Forgotten King (Dungeons & Dragons d20 3.5 Fantasy Roleplaying)
Barrow of the Forgotten King (Dungeons & Dragons d20 3.5 Fantasy Roleplaying)
User Ratings and Reviews
5 Stars Hot Pursuit
“Barrow of the Forgotten King” is a 64 page 2nd level module (the first in a series of three, continuing with “The Sinister Spire” and “Fortress of the Yuan-ti”). It’s a classic dungeon crawl with a twist. Something strange happens at the graveyard of the sleepy town of Kingsholm. Enter the player characters… An ancient mausoleum has been breached by a group of ne’erdowells and soon the module turns into a heated pursuit, with the players characters fighting both against the intruders amb the tomb defenders. A well developed plot and memorable villains make for an excellent adventure. Kudos to Ed Stark for a work well done. Also attractive interior illustrations by Joel Thomas.
To sum it up: a must. After reading the adventure I changed my planned campaign to include it. Hope the next module keeps up the good level. From the name of the third and final module “Fortress of the Yuan-ti”, you can guess who will be the cold-blooded villains behind the intricate conspiracy…
5 Stars A nice diversion for when our own creativity becomes stale.
Great for when I get too busy to write a respectable campaign, or am feeling lazy. Well organized with exceptional illustration.
4 Stars Solid and well laid out
Solid overall. Story line is good and the new layout for encounters is growing on me. Nice mix of encounters.
3 Stars Quick, hire an editor
Well, after finally finishing it, it was actually a fun adventure, but getting there was no walk in the park. First off, for $20, I really expect more, and a lot better. The first thing you’ll notice is that behind the shiny cover, you have something that looks like it was photocopied on paper barely better than news paper quality. C’mon, I paid $20! Oh well… beyond that, the most annoying thing is the layout, which is something that WOTC started doing with their adventures… the main ’story’ is in the first part of the book, the ‘encounters’ are in the second half of the book. I don’t like this format. It’s supposed to make encounters easier to run, but the fact is it divides the information in a bad way. It ended up creating more work for me as the DM, which sucks.
Another thing that created a lot of work for me is that this adventure was obviously rushed out the door without anyone reading over it, which is a real shame. There are gaping omissions, incorrect references, and you’ll even see references to page ‘XX’, where they didn’t even fill in the info at all. The bad thing is that a lot of this is at the beginning of the adventure (or maybe I just got used to it by the end). I was very close to just calling it quits on this one and moving on to a different adventure, but after spending a good amount of time revamping the adventure a bit, giving it a more fitting background story for my campaign (which is set in Eberron), and changing some of the encounters and the ending, it actually ended up being a lot of fun. There are some really fun encounters in here, but be aware that a lot of them are kinda dangerous, and I had a few characters die. Again, a lot of that came in the beginning of the adventure. Had WOTC spent more time refining this one, I think it could’ve been great. It’s still pretty good, just be prepared to spend a LOT of time prepping.
3 Stars best suited for variant race classes.
I am now playing this adventure,and after three 8 hour gaming sessions it has become apparant this module is better suited for experinced and higher level characters.It is hard to judge if my assessment is correct being as I am a player as oppossed to a DM,but the creatures,puzzles and
encounter backdrops are difficult to overcome with standard character types-which in our case includes a gnome rogue,dwarf monk,dwarf fighter,human cleric and human illusionist.If your campaign is a stickler for in game knowledge only, your encounters will be overwhelming.
Our Dm says in the forward that the module specifies that it is designed for experienced players(I’m a 25 year playing veteran),I can’t understand the premise of “experienced” 1st level characters/players.I have played/Dm several new WOTC modules including castle ravenloft,demon web pits and temple of elemental evil,and outside of the demonweb pit module the recommended character levels seemed appropiate for those campaigns.
If your group tends to play warforged,dragon born or other monster races in your group then this moduleis just for you,it’s encounters will be more suited for your varied additional abilities-a Dm should be prepared to downplay encounters for standard group makeups.
Filed under: Dungeons and Dragons Book Reviews
