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This is an adventure of the older school of dungeon-design: inventive - and occasionally lethal - tricks, traps and other encounters. It is presented in a somewhat restrictive format as if for a tournament, which may make it difficult to adapt for your own campaign, though an inventive referee should not have too much trouble with that. The d20 rules are inconsistently followed, as many of the monster & pre-generated character stat blocks are incorrect. Despite this, there are many redeeming features about this adventure.

This adventure is set in a single dungeon level, into which the characters have been transported after a failed assassination attempt on the king of the land. Their goal is to escape the Maze and complete their assassination. Despite how this sounds, as the king is evil and corrupt, the characters should be of Lawful Good and Lawful Neutral alignments - it is strongly recommended that if the players use their own characters, they be all human and of these alignments, but there is no reason why a DM cannot adapt this adventure to their own purposes and ignore these restrictions.

This module only details the escape from the maze; the completion of the assassination attempt is detailed in later modules in the series.

Because the characters had not planned for being transported here, they're assumed to be lacking much of their normal adventuring gear, and this makes the adventure much more challenging than it might at first appear. The level is a maze, and without the ability to make a map, the players will most likely find themselves disorientated and confused very quickly, even more so because of various tricks designed to disorientate them further.

The individual encounters in the maze vary as to their difficulty. In general, most are relatively easy - if convoluted - for an adventuring party of the levels recommended, but the cumulative effect of not being able to return to a home base is likely to wear the characters down. The best feature about this adventure is how many of these encounters will make the characters think! This adventure is likely to be lethal for those who do not think before they act. There are several encounters where roleplaying is required.

This adventure should entertain both the DM and the players, and should allow for much interest to be maintained throughout, as the encounters are certainly of a level above "another orc guarding a chest". It should be emphasised that the maze is one designed by an evil wizard, intended to confuse and dismay his enemies as well as provide him with amusement from seeing their fumblings, which explains some of the apparent oddities of the layout.

That said, there are several flaws with the presentation of the module. Although the artwork is generally good, much of it is too dark in reproduction. The font used for the headings is particularly ugly and often suffers from the Necromancer Games' flaw of being RunTogetherWithNotEnoughSpacing. The stat blocks are often wrong, primarily in the skills and feats, but occasionally elsewhere as well. This probably won't affect the play of the adventure too much, but it is disturbing.

More problematical is the lack of any consideration for a party with the teleport spell or similar magics. What then? Why can't the party just then return to the main section of the castle? Perhaps the author thought the solution was too obvious to be spelled out, but it would have been nice, regardless, for such matters to have been covered in the text.

There are three appendices: the first details five new monsters and one new magical trap, of varying usefulness. Several names do not inspire confidence (Drench, Grotin, Speckle), and the pictures illustrating them are uniformly poor. Often the new monster stat blocks differ from d20 standards, and I feel the challenge ratings are too high.

The second appendix contains six new spells, again of varying quality. The final appendix contains the four pre-generated characters. All contain major problems with their statistics - for instance, the Sorcerer has the Quicken Spell feat, and the Fighter only has seven feats instead of thirteen. Their skill ranks are arbitrary. One nice feature about the pre-generated characters is that each has a special ability that have been granted by the gods.

The maps for this adventure are somewhat unclear and inaccurate, but revised versions may be downloaded from the the Necromancer Games website, along with other supplemental materials.

The adventure leads into the second and third parts of the Maze of Zayene series, but is quite playable without them, and could be easily adapted to be used in another campaign.

In summary, the overall design of this adventure is solid and definitely worth playing, although it likely that a moderate amount of work will need to be done by the referee to fit this adventure into his or her campaign. The rules problems are generally not such that they will be noticed by the players or adversely affect the adventure, but it would have been better if they had not been there at all, for most are relatively trivial errors. The actual encounters are exceptional, making this a good, if flawed, adventure.

This adventure is recommended for 4 characters of 12th level.

Prisoners of the Maze
Prisoners of the Maze Capsule Review by Merric Blackman on 03/09/02 Style: 2 (Needs Work) Substance: 3 (Average) An excellent thinking-man's dungeon, marred by a few inconsistencies and rule flaws Product: Prisoners of the Maze Author: Robert J. Kuntz Category: RPG Company/Publisher: Necromancer Games Line: d20 System Cost: $10.95 Page count: 48 Year published: 2001 ISBN: 1-58846-157-2 SKU: Comp copy?: no Capsule Review by Merric Blackman on 03/09/02 Genre tags: Fantasy	This is an adventure of the older school of dungeon-design: inventive - and occasionally lethal - tricks, traps and other encounters. It is presented in a somewhat restrictive format as if for a tournament, which may make it difficult to adapt for your own campaign, though an inventive referee should not have too much trouble with that. The d20 rules are inconsistently followed, as many of the monster & pre-generated character stat blocks are incorrect. Despite this, there are many redeeming features about this adventure. This adventure is set in a single dungeon level, into which the characters have been transported after a failed assassination attempt on the king of the land. Their goal is to escape the Maze and complete their assassination. Despite how this sounds, as the king is evil and corrupt, the characters should be of Lawful Good and Lawful Neutral alignments - it is strongly recommended that if the players use their own characters, they be all human and of these alignments, but there is no reason why a DM cannot adapt this adventure to their own purposes and ignore these restrictions. This module only details the escape from the maze; the completion of the assassination attempt is detailed in later modules in the series. Because the characters had not planned for being transported here, they're assumed to be lacking much of their normal adventuring gear, and this makes the adventure much more challenging than it might at first appear. The level is a maze, and without the ability to make a map, the players will most likely find themselves disorientated and confused very quickly, even more so because of various tricks designed to disorientate them further. The individual encounters in the maze vary as to their difficulty. In general, most are relatively easy - if convoluted - for an adventuring party of the levels recommended, but the cumulative effect of not being able to return to a home base is likely to wear the characters down. The best feature about this adventure is how many of these encounters will make the characters think! This adventure is likely to be lethal for those who do not think before they act. There are several encounters where roleplaying is required. This adventure should entertain both the DM and the players, and should allow for much interest to be maintained throughout, as the encounters are certainly of a level above "another orc guarding a chest". It should be emphasised that the maze is one designed by an evil wizard, intended to confuse and dismay his enemies as well as provide him with amusement from seeing their fumblings, which explains some of the apparent oddities of the layout. That said, there are several flaws with the presentation of the module. Although the artwork is generally good, much of it is too dark in reproduction. The font used for the headings is particularly ugly and often suffers from the Necromancer Games' flaw of being RunTogetherWithNotEnoughSpacing. The stat blocks are often wrong, primarily in the skills and feats, but occasionally elsewhere as well. This probably won't affect the play of the adventure too much, but it is disturbing. More problematical is the lack of any consideration for a party with the teleport spell or similar magics. What then? Why can't the party just then return to the main section of the castle? Perhaps the author thought the solution was too obvious to be spelled out, but it would have been nice, regardless, for such matters to have been covered in the text. There are three appendices: the first details five new monsters and one new magical trap, of varying usefulness. Several names do not inspire confidence (Drench, Grotin, Speckle), and the pictures illustrating them are uniformly poor. Often the new monster stat blocks differ from d20 standards, and I feel the challenge ratings are too high. The second appendix contains six new spells, again of varying quality. The final appendix contains the four pre-generated characters. All contain major problems with their statistics - for instance, the Sorcerer has the Quicken Spell feat, and the Fighter only has seven feats instead of thirteen. Their skill ranks are arbitrary. One nice feature about the pre-generated characters is that each has a special ability that have been granted by the gods. The maps for this adventure are somewhat unclear and inaccurate, but revised versions may be downloaded from the the Necromancer Games website, along with other supplemental materials. The adventure leads into the second and third parts of the Maze of Zayene series, but is quite playable without them, and could be easily adapted to be used in another campaign. In summary, the overall design of this adventure is solid and definitely worth playing, although it likely that a moderate amount of work will need to be done by the referee to fit this adventure into his or her campaign. The rules problems are generally not such that they will be noticed by the players or adversely affect the adventure, but it would have been better if they had not been there at all, for most are relatively trivial errors. The actual encounters are exceptional, making this a good, if flawed, adventure. This adventure is recommended for 4 characters of 12th level.

Prisoners of the Maze