Dire: Tomb of the Fallen is a generic OSR adventure. It appears to be compatible with OSRIC and 1st Edition Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. The adventure is thirty two pages long including cover and maps.
The adventure is written for characters of 3rd to 5th level of experience. It is a combination of wilderness adventure and dungeon crawl. The authors are Rodrigo Flores and Randy Musseau. It is published by Roan Studio.
A desperate ghost makes a plea for help from the adventurers. Time is of the essence. The ghost is a long dead warrior whose tomb is now being invaded by evil creatures. The ghost needs someone to rid the tomb of these invaders.
Long ago a necromancer learned of this tomb and tried to locate the Warrior’s crypt. But he could not find it. He used a magical skull (minor artifact) to enslave a clan of gnolls into serving him. They dig and excavate this tomb in search of this elusive crypt. The necromancer has long gone. But this clan of gnolls are still engaged in this quest to find the crypt. They are closer than they realize to finding it. And the warrior himself is terrified that they may soon do so.
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What I like about Dire: Tomb of the Fallen
There is a lot of original art in the adventure and the maps are unlike any that you see in most other adventures. The adventure is colorful and well presented.
There are new magical items and minor artifacts. None of these is likely to throw your campaign out of whack if you include them.
There are convenient little side bars in places to aid the dungeon master in running the adventure. Each is boxed in a little graphic which makes it stand out from the rest of the adventure.
The adventure combines a wilderness with a dungeon to make two distinct adventure areas to explore.
While the adventure is thirty pages long there is a lot of graphics and white space. It plays much shorter than thirty pages I suspect. More like about fifteen.
The statistic blocks are similar to 1st Edition statistic blocks which makes it easy to play.
There are one or two new monsters. This is usually a plus for me.
What I do not like about this adventure
I do not like adventures that read like a story. While I understand the desire to make adventures into a story I feel that modules that set specific events in a specific order for the adventures are really just a railroad. The players have no choices. Therefore they are just going through the motions of the adventure rather than exploring and making decisions on their own. Unfortunately this adventure does much the same. This seems to be a trend now in adventure writing. Most of the Fifth Edition Modules produced by Wizards of the Coast are exactly like this. As an old school player and dungeon master I like my players to decide the direction that they are going to take and the decisions that they going to make. I can understand having a few events set up an adventure and then let it play out. But this does not seem to be the pattern these days.
I do not really like the three dimensional maps. While they are colorful and probably took a lot of work I do not fully understand them when I look at them. I prefer the simple two dimensional maps used by adventures from the early days on.
Treasures do not come with specific values in this adventure. It leaves this up to the dungeon master. While I do like keeping the Monty Haul aspects of many adventures out of this one I do not especially like leaving work for the dungeon master to complete. An adventure should be ready to play immediately in my opinion. Technically this adventure does have some treasures defined and placed in an appendix for the dungeon master to find but I do not see why they were not just listed with each encounter. The author also includes tables for rolling up random treasures in the dungeon. Again…. I do not understand the need. Just place the treasures and be done with it.
Would I recommend Dire: Tomb of the Fallen to others?
Maybe. As mentioned I do not like story book adventures. I like my players to decide their own path. But a new dungeon master might find this adventure easy to run.
I also do not especially like the maps as mentioned.
Would I run Dire: Tomb of the Fallen with my own players?
No. I would not. I do not like the 3D maps and that alone would prevent my use of it. I also do not like the treasures not being placed. I do not want to do extra work when I play someone else’s adventure.
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