The Craft Dungeon of Reynaldo Lazendry is the first installment of a trilogy of related adventures. So far two of these installments have been published and the third is, presumably, on the way.
This adventure is produced by Old School Rules. It is written by Jeremey Reaban. The Craft Dungeon of Reynaldo Lazendry is thirty pages long including the covers and maps. It is designed for use with characters of 1st to 3rd level of experience and is compatible with Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 1st Edition as well as other old school revival and retro-clone games.
A couple of hundred years ago a wizard retired and built a tower. He was deeply interested in the performing arts and decided to do magical research in an effort to improve such arts. One day the tower exploded. The wizard is now presumed dead. Massive storms have recently uncovered an entrance into the cellars beneath the tower.
What I like about The Craft Dungeon of Reynaldo Lazendry
The background is short. Very short. I like short backgrounds. There is nothing that I hate more when I read an adventure for the first time and find six pages of irrelevant history that adds nothing at all to the story and bores me to tears. I won’t bother reading all of the crap to my players. So why not boil it down to a paragraph or two so that I might consider doing so? Anyway…..I digress. This adventure is kind enough to limit that background info to a couple of paragraphs.
The room entries are also fairly short. That is another pet peeve of mine when reading adventures. No one wants to read two pages per room encounter. It is hard to digest such a room during play at the gaming table. It is harder still for the dungeon master to find everything that he needs to disclose about the room to a group during a gaming session. Keep it brief when possible That does not mean that the dungeon itself has to be brief to be enjoyable. Mega dungeons are cool. Mega room descriptions are not so cool. At least not to me.
This adventure has a theme. So far all of the adventures that I have read from this author have had an underlying theme. In some ways that is good. In other ways it is not. I like the fact that the author sticks to that theme all through out the module. This theme is the performing arts. There have been few published adventures involving the arts.
There are lots of new magical items and new monsters. Some of these are pretty clever and novel. Others not so much. But new items and monsters are always welcome among players and dungeon masters alike.
This adventure is pay what you want. Meaning it is basically free until, or unless, you decide to pay something for it. I recommend that you do contribute to authors that provide adventures that you actually enjoy reading and intend to play. I write some of these myself. All I can say is give generously when you find a nugget that is worth holding on to.
What I do not like about The Craft Dungeon of Reynaldo Lazendry
The theme about the performing arts would bore my own players to tears. A story about a bard or something would be interesting to them. A story involving a bunch of actors and such would probably not be.
I do not fully understand the inclusion of some of the creatures in this adventure. A few of them do not seem to fit.
A couple of the encounters do not appear to be level appropriate for this adventure. While these encounters are not intended to be combat encounters any dungeon master that has ever run their own home brewed games can tell you that players do not always do what the designer of the dungeon expect that they will do during a game. Combat can easily come in any encounter. And these encounters would almost certainly prove fatal to the adventurers. They might easily turn into a total party kill. There are two or three encounters of this sort. Any one of these could easily go sideways if the players do not react as the designer intends them to. There is a Faux-Vampire (author creation), a Succubus (which has no stats as the designer clearly does not anticipate anyone would attack her) and an animated statue (players can animate it with magic in the dungeon) which may attack and has 8 hit dice. All of these are potential disaster encounters.
Quite a few pages are devoted to the local village with map and key. I am not really sure from reading this first installment whether this really aids the dungeon master at all. Perhaps the other installments will tie it a little more to the adventure. I think that these pages could have been cut and a generic “the village of xyz is located nearby” would have been enough.
Would I recommend The Craft Dungeon of Reynaldo Lazendry to others?
If you enjoyed the performing arts theme then you might well enjoy this adventure. If you do not. Then probably not. But I enjoy reading adventures regardless of my intent to play them. I often pick up an idea or two to use in my own games and this adventure was no exception to that. I probably will steal more than a couple of ideas from this one.
Would I run this adventure with my own group?
No. My players characters are far beyond the levels of this adventure. And I am not too sure that they would enjoy it anyway. My group is filled with bloodthirsty killers. They would have little interest in the theme of this one if they even noticed the theme at all. A dungeon master has to know their own players if they are going to keep them interested. So far my current group is about three years old. So whatever I am doing seems to be working for the moment.
If you enjoyed this review then you might enjoy these:
- Warren of the Withered Worm
- Inferno
- The HIdden Tomb of Nephabti
- Tricks, Empty Rooms & Basic Trap Design
- Operation Ogre
