Dungeons (AEG)
Alderac Entertainment Group (AEG) is one of the established game publishers that have entered the D20 marketplace. Their first entry in the D20 marketplace was their Adventure Boosters mini-adventure products. With Dungeons, AEG puts out its first non-adventure product for the D20 System. The product came largely unannounced, with the first reports of its existence on the internet being sightings on the store shelves. Given the secrecy of the impending release of this product, I can't help but wonder if they were trying to sneak in such a book before Atlas Games and Fantasy Flight games were to put out there upcoming supplement type books. Like AEG, Atlas Games and FFG are established gaming companies that have been putting out D20 adventures. To contrast, Sword & Sorcery Studios started out with supplement style material and has yet to publish an adventure, discounting Necromancer Games (which bears their logo.)
Dungeons is the first supplement by AEG targeted at the Dungeons & Dragons market. The book is intended to provide advice and new rules material for the labyrinths and catacomb like settings that are collectively called dungeons within the RPG community. Future books AEG plans to release in this category are Evil (which deals with evil characters and campaigns) and Dragons (whose subject matter should be obvious.)
Graphical Presentation and Format
Dungeons is a 120 page softbound book with a black & white interior. The format is similar to that of the Wizards of the Coast softbound supplements such as Sword and Fist and Defenders of the Faith. The obvious exception to this is the cover, which has graphics to make it appear like a tome, much like the Dungeons & Dragons core rulebooks.
The book is priced at $19.95 US, which is the same as the 96 page softbound D&D supplements. At first glance, this may make the book seem like a much better value than the WotC books. However, a glance at them side-by-side reveals that the text density of products like Defenders of the Faith is a bit denser than that of Dungeons, so it may not give you quite the additional value that you hoped for.
The interior is illustrated with appropriate, attractive, and evocative art depicting the foibles of some dungeon dwelling characters immersed in standard dungeon dwelling activities such dodging traps and not dodging traps.
Contents
In addition to a brief introduction, the book has four chapters: Tips & Tricks, Dungeon Types, Player, and Dungeon Masters.
Chapter 1 -- Tips & Tricks: The first chapter is a healthy 39 pages long and seems to have its focus split between players and DMs. The material has little in the way of rules related material and is more or less an extended essay (or looking at the credits page, collection of essays) on dealing with a dungeon environment.
The first 8 ½ pages are advice for how players should proceed when entering a dungeon, ranging from what you should carry when entering a dungoen to how you can make educated guesses as to the residents of the dungeon.
The chapter then picks up with techniques and level-headed advice on dungeons design. It starts with questions about reasons for the dungeons existence and logical placement of threats within the dungeon. In the section entitled Designing Dungeons That Work, the writer poses and then provides insight into possible answers for the four questions:
- Why does the dungeon exist?
- What are the perils of the dungeon?
- What do the PCs have to gain by exploring the dungeon?
- What do the PCs really know about the dungeon?
The remaining sections of chapter focus on various details of dungeon design. The section entitled Giving Your Dungeon a Past gives advice on the history of the dungeon and how it affects the design of the dungeon. Dungeon Ecologies and Cultures describes how residents of a dungeon might live and how you can answer those nagging questions about how creatures can eke out an existence in such a dismal place. Dumb Animals discusses the use of the most basic of creatures to add an element of reality to a campaign. Smart Monsters gives some good insight into how evil societies might work and how societies of the 3 D&D evil alignments differ. Hazards and Traps discusses how different dungeons might use - or not use - traps and other hazards, and gives some examples. The final section of the chapter is All That Glitters..., which describes what types of rewards might be given for a foray into a dungeon, including treasures that aren't on the resident "munchkin" PC's Christmas list, but are interesting despite this, or perhaps because of it.
A lot of this is common sense advice that many DMs will nod and agree with, but already know. The most thoughtful and useful bits here are the sections Smart Monsters and All that Glitters..., though depending on your skills and background as a player or a DM you may find other sections useful.
Chapter 2 – Equipment: The second chapter continues with insights into dungeon designs by looking at specific "types" of dungeons and discusses what elements each might have. The types discussed here are Fortresses, The Madman's Lair, Mines, Natural Caverns, Sewers, Subterranean Communities, Temples, and Tombs. A good deal of attention is paid to the likely contents of each type of dungeon, with a total of 24 pages being devoted to the chapter.
The highlight of this section to me was the section on temples. A great degree of thought was given not only to what elements a temple would have, but how they would vary according to the religion of the temple. Further, a line is drawn between still active temples and temples that have been defiled or corrupted. Finally, a sample temple type dungeon is described that I found very evocative: the temple was a temple of a god of courage that fell when a paladin made a misjudgement that brought a lich into the complex. The lich laid waste to the temple, but the paladin's dying prayer trapped the undead monstrosity there. The result is a moody lair of undeath much to the tune of Rappan Athuk, but more evocative and compelling.
Chapter 3 – Player: The player chapter contains rules related material aimed at the character creation: skills, feats, mundane items, spells, and prestige classes.
The new skills include Contortionist, Intuit Depth, Intuit Distance, Intuit Language, Knowledge (Dungeon Lore, Monster Lore, Riddles), Mimic, Sapper, and Trap Design. This is the section of the chapter I am most critical for the same reasons that I am critical of the new skills in Dragonlords of Melnibone. It doesn't seem to follow the design philosophy of skills in the D&D core rules: skills should be broad. new skills should be avoided and tucked under knowledge, craft, and profession skills wherever possible.
Of the listed skills, the knowledge skills look fine. I would tuck Trap Design under craft (and such a skill is listed as an example in the craft desorption in the PHB) and Sapper under profession. Contortionist is too specific and seems as if it would be a specific use of escape artist. I would be tempted to tuck Intuit Depth under Intuit Direction, as both skills seem too specialized contrasted with other D&D skills. The only skill of this batch I could see actually adding as its own separate skill in my campaign is Mimic. In short, I feel this section would be better off presented as a "new uses for old skills" treatise as was done in Sword & Fist.
The new feats, in contrast, are great. The include Blind Casting, Controlled Breathing, Eidetic Memory, Golden Tongue (which works like alertness, except with diplomacy and non-combat bluff checks), Improved Alertness, Improved Endurance, Increased Carrying Capacity, Knowledgeable (can use knowledge skills untrained), Light Sleeper, Thick Skinned, and Tinker. Some of these may be of questionable value to PCs, but can be used to fill out feat lists for NPCs or players who are after a specific concept with a PC.
The new mundane items are quite interesting as well, and include a Globe of Trap Springing, Instant Rope, Instant Glue, and a Tool Staff.
New Spells are an highly functional batch, including:
- Cloaked Sphere of Radiance (Brd 3, Clr 4, Sor/Wiz 3) - creates a sphere of light that cannot be seen from outside its radius.
- Detect Precious Metals (Brd 0, Sor/Wiz 0)
- Distant Light (Brd 3, Clr 4, Sor/Wiz 3)
- Forceful Footfalls (Brd 2, Sor/Wiz 2) - sort of a "Bigby's feet" spell to trigger traps.
- Sphere of Pure Air (Drd2, Rgr3, Sor/Wiz3) - protects against gas attacks.
- Stonetell (Drd 2, Rgr 3)
- Tennit's Temporal Fold (Sor/Wiz 9, Trickery 9) - once cast, the next five minutes occur, everything "unhappens", and the caster retains knowledge of this time period and can plan accordingly to redo that time period.
Finally is prestige classes. They include:
- Crusader - a divine spellcaster sworn to take the fight to a particular creature type in the name of their deity.
- Demolitionist - a spellcaster/alchemist type who specializes in make explosive devices.
- Shock Trooper - dwarf or gnome specialized in fighting larger folk.
- Treasure Hunter - sort of a rogue specialized in dungeon forays and overcoming traps.
The classes are straightforward and functional, and are bound to be a hit with players. The only thing that might be considered a rules problem is that the Uncanny Dodge ability of the Treasure Hunter doesn't behave like the stated ability does for all of the other classes that use this ability in the core rulebooks. To avoid confusion, the ability probably should have been renamed to something like Avoid Traps.
Chapter 4 - Dungeon Master: The last chapter contains material for use by the DM, including new monsters, magic items, traps, and a few sample dungeons. Overall the idea content here is pretty good, but there are a few places that they drop the ball on following the D20 System rules in the implementations.
The new monsters include:
- Floor Trapper - A rehash of the trapper from previous editions of the game, a creature that disguises itself as the floor.
- Giant Hellgrammite - A giant insect larve with powerful jaws.
- Hoard Raider - A bat / man hybrid with the ability to sense treasure and the desire to hoard it.
- Hungry Waters - An undead spirit that animates the water to drown victims.
- The Lost - A template to create a morlock type underground dwelling creature out of any humanoid creature.
- Rock Borers - Small burrowing creatures that don't harm adventurers directly, but make underground structures unstable.
- Skittiblin - A feral goblin variant.
- Underworld oracle - An aberration that trades in rumors and news about the underground environment.
There are some rules problems with the Whoever penned the Giant Hellgrammite, Hoard Raider, Hungry Waters, and Rock Borers clearly does not have a grasp on the D20/D&D 3e creature conventions. All the creatures have their HD type and bonuses assigned arbitrarily instead of based on the creature type and constitution scores. Magical beasts should have a d10 HD type and undead should have a d12 HD type, and HP bonuses outside of those dice are derived from constitution scores or specific qualities such as being an ooze or having the toughness feat, not assigned arbitrarily. Further the advancement ranges of these creatures are expressed incorrectly. Further, the Giant Hellgrammite, Hungry Waters, and Rock Borers have special attack modes that should have been clearly spelled out as such vice just enumerated or alluded to under the "combat" heading.
New magic items seem interesting and functional as well and include Gloves of Tunneling, Kanegor's Instant Wall, Lightstep Boots, and Myrr's Magic Marbles, Ravenwing's Extensible Rope, Scroll of Mapping, and Stone of Muting. Most of these should have obvious functions except for Myrr's Magical Marbles, which are a variety of small marble spheres with a variety of magical qualities, include low light vision, tripping opponents, retracing your steps, and protecting you from a single attack.
The new traps are brief and familiar - familiar enough that some seem like they are straight out of Grimtooths traps if not from a DMs classic campaign of old. The Button merely suggests you label a button do not press and attach consequences of your own devising. The author purports that one person in a party of five will press the button. Perhaps.
Other traps are the Gravity Maze (a chessboard like room where a given square may or may not have a reverse gravity effect on it), the Chess Game (a puzzle wherein you have to place 8 queens that cannot take each other in one move), and the infinite plunge (a trap that includes the classic "teleport to the ceiling - fall - repeat" cycle.)
Finally are a few sample dungeons, a Tomb, a dilapidated fortress taken over by orcs, and a dwarven community taken over by humanoids of the DMs choice. All are fairly simple and should be able to be used as a brief one-shot or dropped into a larger adventure or adapted with minimal problems. Though overall of good value, again some rules inconsistencies creep in. A vampire starts in one of the adventure, but the vampire seems to be missing all of the feats attack bonuses that would be granted from his fighter levels.
Summary and Conclusions
Dungeons provides a variety of material for players and DMs in a campaign where site-based and/or underground adventures are an element.
The first two chapters have some good ideas, and a lot of level headed, logical advice on constructing and running dungeons. Though the text is deep and thoughtful, it is also well written and an easy enough read. The primary complaints I see with these chapters are along the same lines as the complaints that were leveled against WotC's Hero Builder's Guidebook: many veteran DMs and players will find the advice old news.
However, I will give it the same caveat that I gave in defense of the Hero Builder's Guidebook: this "common knowledge" isn't so common. I can think of many DMs, and even published authors (even among AEG's Adventure Boosters' authors) who could have used the advice in these chapters. So if you think you might use the material in these chapters, you may give it a try. At the very least, they can serve as a set of basic guidelines of would be DMs and authors.
The third chapter detailing player oriented material is the real gem of the book, with some highly adaptable and usable feats, mundane items, spells, and prestige classes. The treatment of the skills could have been better.
The fourth and final chapter had some good ideas as well, but was marred by substandard execution by people who apparently are less than fully proficient with the D20 System rules. The value of rules material is diminished if it has to be corrected.
This may be a somewhat controversial statement, but after having seen this malady a few times I think that people who are not fully proficient with the rules to a system should not be writing material for it, and editors of D20 material should be screening for it. It is not enough to have good ideas. There are a lot of D20 vendors with good ideas - the ones who are going to win out in the D20 rat race are those that give you good ideas and present it to you in a format that you don't have to screen and correct before use in your game.
Overall, the book brings you some good material and some good advice, though some of the latter may be of questionable value to experienced DMs and players.
-Alan D. Kohler
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