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Treasure Most Magical | ||
Author: Timothy Brown
Category: Dungeon Company/Publisher: Pulp Dungeons Cost: $4.95 Page count: 32 Playtest Review by Jeb Boyt on 01/09/98. Genre tags: none |
The Pulp Dungeons take you back to the early days of gaming. Pulp
Dungeons are generic adventures that are adaptable to any game
systems. Treasure Most Magical is Adventure 1 in Pulp Dungeons Series
4: Two Sides of the Coin. The dungeon is presented in a single
digest-sized 32-page book.
In a Treasure Most Magical, a party of player characters is sent in pursuit of a band of tomb plundering trolls. The first five encounters take place on the road to the dungeon and serve to create a foreboding atmosphere sense of what lies ahead for the party in the dungeon. The players are then presented with several challenging encounters before they can even enter the dungeon. Once inside the players are presented with challenging and above-average encounters before they encounter the troll-chief and his monstrous allies. The mechanics of the Pulp Dungeons are presented in a straightforward fashion using common monsters that are described in terms of hits of damage inflicted and hits of damage sustained, with one hit being the equivalent of an average sword hit. Random events are presented as checks on a d6. Magic is presented with an emphasis on the effects rather than spell mechanics. The mechanics of the Pulp Dungeons work easily enough. The only limitation is that no value is given for an attack ability. Apparently, it is assumed that gamemasters are using a system that bases attack ability on number of hit dice (e.g. AD&D). If anything, the monsters used are a bit anemic - a pack of timber wolves comes across more like feral poodles. Alternatively, because the monsters used are standard fantasy creatures (elves, goblins, skeletons, etc.), a gamemaster may easily substitute the monsters and mechanics of his favorite game system. A GM will also want to adjust the numbers of opponents encountered to suit the numbers and abilities of the player characters. Treasure Most Magical is the first Pulp Dungeon in the new 32-page format and includes other stylistic changes that are an improvement over the earlier series. The overland journey to the dungeon provides a GM with some context for the dungeon. Each encounter is also introduced with a brief fictional description of the encounter that aids in the presenting the encounter. Overall the longer format serves the Pulp Dungeons well in that they are able to offer much more content and context for only a dollar price increase. Treasure Most Magical is a fun dungeon that can be readily adapted to most fantasy roleplaying campaigns and is well worth the minimal price.
Style: 4 (Classy and well done)
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