The Fifth Sepulcher
The Fifth Sepulcher is the third in the Legends & Lairs Instant Adventures by FantasyFlight Games. The Fifth Sepulcher is designed for 4-6 characters of levels 12-15.
The Fifth Sepulcher: A Look Inside
(Warning: this section contains spoilers regarding the adventure.)
The hook of the Fifth Sepulcher is that the king asks the PCs to investigate the troublingoccurrences going on in the halls of the royal palace. Recently a number of people hadbeen killed within the castle wall. Two days ago, the kings own daughter disappeared.The king's forces are mostly away at war (or otherwise occupied), and the local forceshave been unable to solve the problem. They know that undead are involved but littleelse.
It turns out that the problem originates from the basements of the royal palace itself. It sohappens that the members of the royal family are entombed in the royal sepulchersbeneath the royal palace when they die. One of the king's ancestors, Vanal, struck a pactwith a dark goddess for eternal life as one of the undead. In exchange, he would sleep forone thousand years linked to a magical stone. In so doing, the stone will become anartifact, the necromancer's stone. Now to complete the ritual that will create the artifact,he has kidnapped a suitable sacrifice.
The players must discover (or be told... it is left up to the DM) the origin of the undeadcausing the problems. Once they investigate the Royal Sepulchers, they can begin touncover the truth about Vanal and hopefully rescue the princess before it is too late.
The adventure is a fairly straightforward dungeon crawl from this point, but a wellwritten one. Some attention is paid to mood and pacing. The adventure is sprinkled withsome dreadful and epic tones, including some paths that the players might take - such asreviving seven sisters of legend who are said to return one day and deliver the kingdomfrom evil. The PCs can invoke this legend if they think of doing so, but if not, nothing islost.
In the end, the PCs will have to confront several undead nasties, including the lich Vanalhimself.
The adventure is written with an eye towards expansion into future adventures. Whetheror not the PCs save the princess and defeat Vanal, a variety of options exist that couldlead to future adventures of epic scope.
Summary and Conclusions
Usually I am pretty harsh on the FFG adventures for their price / page ratio. However,this adventure seems pretty stuffed. If you have a party of high level characters andnothing for them to do, you cannot make a better investment for a short adventure thatcould even lead to a campaign. The adventure is moody and expandable, and cast in theepic high fantasy mold.
The nature of the encounters and flow of the adventure are fairly straightforward. But theunderlying epic concepts provide good idea content.
The cartography is good, as is the norm for FFG instant adventures. The adventuredoesn't have much interior artwork, but fills in the space with more encounter text, whichyou can't knock.
The Fifth Sepulcher Ratings:
Idea content: 5. Epic underpinnings, moody setting, and good ideas for further play.
Ready to use game content: 4. No new creatures, but good map and solid encounterwriteups.
Value for money: 3. Still has that FFG high price / page count ratio, but fills it well.
RPGnet Substance rating: 4
RPGnet Style rating: 5
General Comments: Fantasy Flight's Legends & Lairs InstantAdventures
(standard blurb)
The Legends & Lairs adventures are similar in format to AEG's Adventure Boosters.They are small, cheap adventures for the D20 System, primarily targeted at D&D 3eplayers. The format is a single booklet, 4.25" x 11" (the size of standard US 8.5x11 paperfolded in half lengthwise.) There are 16 interior pages (i.e., four 8.5x11 sheets), staplebound to the cover. Legends & Lairs adventures are a bit pricier than AEG AdventureBoosters, at $3.95 US each.
The covers of the Legends & Lairs adventures are attractive, with a "metal bound book"motif and a handsome illustration, doubtlessly from the Diskwars game. As with AEGAdventure Boosters, the back cover contains a bit of exposition, which is often theintroduction to the adventure. The inside front cover has an introductory "how to usethis" note and an ad for other Legends & Lairs adventures. The last page contains a blurbabout who Fantasy Flight Games is and legalistic stuff. The inside back cover contains acopy of the Open Game License, obligatory for D20 System products.
Internally, the product is arranged similar to the AEG Adventure Boosters. Theadventures are set in the world of the Diskwars game but by changing names it can fit thetypical D&D campaign. The maps are of much higher quality than AEG's maps, or forthat matter, than most D20 System adventures: they are clearly illustrated with aprofessional look and an easily readable simple key. The adventures also typicallyinclude a new creature and a new magic item, but some deviate from this formula.
Contrasted with the Adventure Boosters, it appears that the adventures are generallymore flexible and original, in addition to having nicer maps and covers. This may not bea good value, though, if you consider that you are paying nearly $1 US per sheet.Considering that for a few dollars more you could pick up an issue of Dungeon and havemany times the material, perhaps Fantasy Flight Games' pricing/quality approach issomewhat ill considered. Overall, they aren't quite the value that AEG's AdventureBoosters are, you should probably spend a little more time seeing how good theadventure within rates before you buy than you would with the AEG Adventure Boosters.However, some of these adventures are very good and worth picking up.
How I Rate D20 System Adventures
(standard blurb)
As far as I am concerned, canned adventures provide two primary points of value: ideas(adventure premises, interesting challenges, etc.) and ready to run game material (maps,useful and properly done encounter statistics, new creatures and items). The obviousthird criteria is overall value for money, which includes page count for a given cost anduse of space.
I use these three factors to holistically determine what "substance" rating I'll give theitem on RPGnet. This is separate from the style consideration, which I use as stated onRPGnet.
-Alan D. Kohler
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