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The World's Largest Dungeon
Introduction:
While dungeon crawling is not an integral part of role-playing,
it has largely gone hand in hand with it since the beginning, as
the name of the game that started it all was "Dungeons and
Dragons", which is also still the most popular RPG to this
day.
For whatever reason, dungeon crawls can be a lot of fun both to
play and to design. I know when I got into D&D as a kid, I
spent a lot of spare time dreaming up gigantic dungeons for my
friends to run through. (Though in practice, everyone died pretty
early on.) And to a certain extent, they are easy to run, since
the DM mostly just has to run combat a lot or describe rooms. So
I think for all those reasons, the dungeon crawl is still a
popular sort of adventure to this day, even with all the
innovations (like angst!) to role-playing.
The World's Largest Dungeon is a really, really large d20 dungeon
crawl from Alderac. While it might not be the largest dungeon
ever (I think Castle Zygyg will be 8 128 page books;
Undermountain is at least 2 boxed sets and 3 modules plus a
computer game Dungeon World was an entire plane and I think 3-4
books); there's also those randomly generated Mammoth dungeons
from someone or another), it's definitely the largest dungeon in
one book. 840 pages, with little to no artwork and a very small
font, 810 or so of which is for the dungeon (the rest is a small
intro and appendix).
It's priced at a cool $100, but can be had cheaper online (I got
mine on eBay new, for $30). That's a lot of money (in either
case, at least for me), but it is more or less the equivalent of
15 64 page dungeon crawls, which generally go for $15 each or so.
So it is actually a pretty good deal, even at full price, in
terms of what you get. At least in pure "stuff"
This is a strange book to review. Like I said, it really is the
equivalent of 15 or so 64 page adventures, which I normally write
about 6-8kb of words for. So the Worlds Largest Dungeon probably
deserves the world's largest review. But that ain't gonna happen,
at least not from me. But I will try to cover it as best as
possible.
The Dungeon Backstory:
The history of the dungeon is perhaps not the most original in
the world. It seems that the powers of good (aka the Celestials)
decided to imprison a bunch of evil types and built a giant
prison to hold it. Like always, instead of building the prison in
someplace nice and safe like say, in some obscure outer plane or
out in space on a moon or an asteroid, they built it in a fairly
hospitable place on an inhabited planet. Because as Lord Helmet
says, "Good is stupid."
In this case, good was even stupider than normal, because they
apparently built this prison in a tectonically active region (ie,
somewhere that has earthquakes, presumably near a fault line) and
even better, built it underneath a lake.
So anyway, as you can probably guess, the prison worked fine
until one day an earthquake happened and boom, it fell apart and
the prisoners started running amok. At which point it sort of
turned into "Escape from New York", basically they
stopped trying to guard it from the inside (sorta, there are
still guards remaining inside), but have the entrance and exit
guarded.
The Dungeon Itself
Unlike a lot of dungeons, this is essentially just one big flat
thing (except for one small area below the map), with no vertical
component/variation. This makes mapping much easier, but I think
loses a lot of flavor.
It's basically a 4x4 sectional map, with each section being one
"sheet" (for lack of a better word), except for one
which is actually two "sheets". So there are a total of
15 sections. Each sheet is really about the size of a 4x4 regular
sheet of graph paper, though, so it is a big dungeon. (I think
the biggest one I ever made was 8x8, this is 16x16)
There is one really big complication to it: It's like a roach
motel - PCs go in, they don't come out. Because it was meant to
be a prison for extraplanar types, there is some sort of magical
field blocking teleportation out. And once you go in the
entrance, it closes and you can't go out. So as written, if you
are going to run or play this, you are in for the long haul and
will need a lot of dedication both from the GM & players. The
book estimates that it will take 2 years of gaming to finish.
Another thing worth noting is that it contains every monster that
is in the SRD. (The SRD being the online version of the
D&D/d20 rules that 3rd party publishers can use in lieu of
the PHB/DMG/MM). They got a bit cute here, it doesn't contain
every specific sort of monster, ie, not every sort of dragon, or
every type of sphinx. But each base type. (Which is actually odd,
since I think they did have room for everything).
Just a note on encounters - pretty much every one has information
on how to scale the encounter to make it harder or easier. Which
is really really helpful. Because while each section has a
suggested level range, the PCs don't go through the dungeon
linearly. In many cases, there are two sections a party of the
same level range can do. But once they do that section, they'll
be out of that range (since they will likely pick up 2 levels per
section), so if they backtrack and do the other section, it would
be too easy.
Besides the encounters, rooms can often have an environmental
factor which can affect the PCs. Like some are holy or evil, some
are foggy or have poor footing and so on. A fairly big list.
Standardizing these things helps a lot.
Section A "Longtail's Destiny" by Michael
Hammes
This is the section just after the entrance
Basically, a group of humanoids, led by a wererat named Longtail,
came to the dungeon for adventure and loot (same reasons as the
PCs). However, they soon found that there wasn't all that much
treasure in this section, and so they sort of broke up.
This is a fairly straight forward section. Maybe not go from room
to room and kill everything, but close to it. Mostly humanoids,
since they do tend to be the most common fodder for low level
groups. Some other fairly wimpy monsters, like owl bears and
darkmantles. A few possibly friendly NPC lizard men (in fact,
throughout the dungeon, the PCs can collect quite a number of
lizard men allies/NPCs)
From section A PCs can go to section B or E
Section B "A Goblin Empire?" by Chris Burns
and Jim Pinto
Sort of like Section A, a group of humanoids migrated to this
section. In this case, goblins, hobgoblins and bugbears.
At first the 3 groups fought for power, but eventually the
goblins and the hobgoblins made an alliance, which resulted in
them more or less taking over the region.
However, this goblin empire ran into a problem. A new religion
started, and not all of the goblins wanted to follow it. So there
is something of a civil war.
Add to this mix a whole bunch of blink dogs who just showed up
one day (which happens, that's how I got my 2 dogs. And a bunch
of cats) and a dastardly Halfling named Bartleby (which
thankfully hasn't happened to me).
Here things start getting more complicated. While presumably the
PCs could simply kill all the goblins, they would probably be
better off siding with one faction or another.
It's connected to both section C and F, but PCs need to get a key
from section C to open the door to section F.
Section C "The Final Option" by Jeff Stolt
and Richard Farrese
This section was meant to house just one fairly powerful demon.
It's got a fairly complicated backstory. It seems that the last
followers of some goddess were directed here to help garrison the
dungeon (this part, anyway). Her name is either Myruun or
Merunda, depending which half of the section you're reading. The
demon imprisoned here broke free, but the last followers of the
goddess managed to destroy him, but all perished doing so.
It's now inhabited by some gnolls, a black dragon, and some hill
giants. There's also a whole bunch of traps and tests left over
from the days when it was a prison.
This is interesting to read, because you learn of the fate of the
followers. But I'm not sure that translates into fun for the
players, as it's heavy on the puzzles and traps and magical
effects (mostly negative). Your Rogue player might have fun here,
but most the others could get bored or annoyed if they fail some
of the 'tests', whose answers may or may not be obvious.
This section connects to section G.
Section D "The Tartarean Depths of the Xill
Master" by Robert J. Schwalb
Although this is the 4th section in the book, it's one of the
tougher regions in the dungeon, and is the lower right corner,
only accessible after you've done most of the dungeon (at least
gotten to the middle). It's meant for levels 14-18
Xills are one of the creepier monsters in d20, I think. They are
sort of a combination of the alien from Alien and the predator
from Predator. Intelligent and a hunter like a Predator, but can
implant eggs in people which then come bursting out like the
Alien.
The background of this level is somewhat convoluted. It's a level
holding a fairly powerful fiend, a Pit Fiend. Now for reasons
that are too lengthy to go into, this xill wants to get a wish
spell cast for him. Presumably being a xill, he can't just go buy
one from a wizard someplace. So he heard about this Pit Fiend
being trapped and thought "Hey, if I rescue him, I can get a
wish out of him".
This section is good, but could have had more variety in the
inhabitants. Basically it's either Xill, Derros, Duegar, or Deep
Dwarves. Not even any Crab People.
The players are also under a deadline (this is one of two
sections that are like that). If they don't hurry up and kill
everything, a demonic horde will be let loose in the dungeon.
Presumably killing off everything else. (Though if the players
have gotten this far, most everything else is already dead). Or
possibly if they aren't careful, a tarrasque. This is a really
thorny situation for them.
Section E "The Last Stand" by Lee Hammock
This is another prison section. But this section still has some
celestial guards trying to guard (they aren't normal guards, but
largely celestial constructs called "Inevitables",
which I think was new in 3.5). But they've split into two
factions, half-crazy and half sane.
The crazy guards have decided to start drafting or pressing
passersby into a group of guards called the "Redeemed".
This is one of the earlier sections of the dungeon (possibly the
2nd ones the PCs explore), so it's for low levels. As such, the
PCs are probably outclassed by the remaining guards, so if they
were evil, they would get stomped on by the guards. So this is a
pretty clever solution, I think, they just get drafted instead of
killed. (Though really evil PCs probably shouldn't be playing
this adventure, since a lot of people won't like them.)
The sane guards do their best to ignore the crazy guards.
Basically the PCs need to patch things up between the two, which
involves finding a hidden charter, which apparently will
magically convince the crazy guards that they are crazy. This
involves finding a magical door which has to be used to access
various hidden rooms.
Besides the guards, there's a couple different groups of
barghests which are feuding. The PCs might help one or wipe out
both of them.
It's a pretty good section, but seems a bit short, because many
of the rooms are simply the rooms of the various inhabitants
(each guard and each one of the redeemed). But on the plus side,
each one of those also gets at least something of a personality
described.
PCs can go to section I or F from here
Section F "The Maze" by Richard Farrese
Somewhat ironically, given the original maze was meant to
imprison the legendary Minotaur, in D&D, Minotaurs seem to
like to live in them. And thus since this is named "The
Maze" and basically is a maze, of course, it's teeming with
minotaurs.
Actually, it's got a Greek mythology thing going on, there's also
harpies and manticores and a hydra and a sphinx (which is
Egyptian, but the Greeks borrowed it) and a medusa.
Besides all the Greek beasties, they have to deal with the maze
itself, which is not just a maze, but has all sorts of magical
warp gates to confuse the players. Reminds me a lot of the old
Bard's Tale games which required very careful mapping and trial
and error to get through.
This section isn't bad, but didn't do much for me. Personally, I
find dungeons where players have to draw painstakingly accurate
maps to get through it to be frustrating for them and annoying
for me
Section G "Hell on Earth" by Richard Farrese
This is another prison section, and it also has some guards left.
These are all pretty sane, though.
However, their leader is dying, because he uses himself to
recharge the power of the section, not the magical charging gizmo
(which is lost). The PCs need to find this gizmo and give it to
the guards so the leader can recover.
But as mentioned, this is a prison. It holds a powerful Demon
Lord, Krasveshk. And lots of lesser demons are trying to spring
him. Somewhat ironically, though, for a Demon Lord, he ain't that
tough. He's actually "just" a Nalfeshnee, which are
generally 3rd from the top. (Marilith and Balor are generally
tougher. And ironically, they need to fight a Marilith to get to
this guy).
Still, this level is aimed at 9th to 11th level characters,
presumably if they take these demons on, they get help from the
remaining celestial guards. Having lots of fairly high powered
extraplanar critters fighting in one combat can be tricky, since
all of them have lots of magic powers.
Besides that bunch, there's also some other evil critters that
don't really care one way or the other.
Section H "Protectors of the Tree" by
Jennifer Baughman
This is my favorite section of the dungeon. Unlike the rest of
the book, it's not really a dungeon crawl. For one, it's got more
role-playing and character interaction (other than just combat).
For another, it's almost a forest adventure, as opposed to a
dungeon.
As mentioned earlier, the dungeon was apparently built on a fault
line. And underneath a lake and forest. An earthquake happened,
and the top came crumbling down. The lake fell elsewhere,
flooding the region, but this got the forest. Including a very
very old treant which was venerated by a group of wood elves.
Being a tree, the treant survived (I guess they don't really have
internal organs to get squished), but apparently haven't fallen,
can't get up. (Actually it was immobile before it fell, not
having seen one of those scooter for the elderly commercials).
And the elves being elves, decided they would go down into the
dungeon and protect him.
Even though it landed fairly deep in the earth, they transformed
the area around it into a woodland via the clever use of mirrors
and duct tape. (Apparently they had no Keebler elves with them,
so the tree itself wasn't turned into a treehouse). They had to
have a region like this in order to use all the woodland critters
in the SRD, I guess.
Anyway, the wood elves garrison this place, but there has been
trouble lately. It's ruled by a council of various things, and
some of them have started going a bit nuts. And to top it off,
lots of the elf warriors have gone missing while on patrol. Have
they deserted, have they been eaten by something (more like
appetizers than dessert) or something nefarious?
Presumably the PCs will get to the bottom of it.
There's a number of woodland related NPCs, with fairly detailed
personalities and such. However, most of them are either the
leaders or other important NPCs, I think it glosses over the
regular folks too much. (This probably couldn't be helped, as
presumably there was a space limitation). And one of the NPC's
names is a glaring allusion. The last name of Dante (author of
the Divine Comedy), and it works in a purgatory reference. While
clever, that sort of stuff does sort of destroy the suspension of
disbelief. But it's easy to rename NPCs, so no biggie.
Section I "The Halls of Flesh" by Mark
Carroll and Jim Pinto
This is pretty icky. The whole region has been infused by living
energy, making the place fleshy, so the name "Halls of
Flesh" is literal. The halls are flesh. Also lots and lots
of mutants and aberrations.
See, basically a long time ago, a group of Drow and Driders
entered the prison. But there was a revolt, and the Driders took
over. But in order to reproduce themselves, they had to do icky
experiments. Some of these experiments went awry, including one
particularly nasty experiment involving a bronze dragon egg and a
ham sandwich. The results of the latter created two Lovecraftian
style monstrosities dubbed "Madness" and
"Anguish". (In fact, this section even quotes a line
from Lovecraft. And there's also an allusion to Michael
Moorcock's lord of chaos, Arioch).
Anyway, the Drow and Driders still inhabit this area. Presumably
the PCs will kill them. But they also can possibly make friends
with the Drow, because some of them are rebels.
I almost liked this section. I liked the idea, but the whole
drow/drider thing just isn't my cup of tea. Would have been
better with more icky stuff and fewer drow/driders.
Section J "The Pyrefaust" by Jeff Dohm
As you might guess from the name, this is full of fire critters.
This section was meant to house a big 'ole red dragon. The red
dragon in question clocks in at a cool CR of 23, so the PCs
probably want to run when they meet him. (If they do so, they can
go to section N).
The section is loosely laid out in a series of "rings",
which each ring having different themed (or related) critters,
mostly but not completely fire-related.
Also as a bonus, there is a vampire lady here, underneath. She's
pissed off at someone else in the Dungeon and wants him killed,
so tries to enlist the PCs to do so.
For the most part, this section felt more like just a jumble of
stuff than anything really coherent.
Section K "The Shallows" by Patrick Kapera
This is one of two sections where the water from the lake that
fell into the dungeon settled. So there is standing water here,
though it's not that deep (thus the name).
This section is inhabited by several different factions. An evil
group of hags, a green dragon, a tribe of tritons and a tribe of
merfolk.
I think this is where the David Hasselhoff reference is. There's
a lizardman with the name of "Hassslessh", which seems
to me to be a lot like Hasslehoff, spoken in lizardman-ish. And
the portrait kinda looks like him, too (you don't usually see
chest hair on a lizardman. Joke.).
Anyway, presumably the PCs will want to help get rid of the evil
factions here. This is pretty well done. The group of hags is
quite villainous.
Section L "The Deeps" by Dana DeVries
This is the other section where the water from the lake fell, but
in this case, it's deep water (again, thus the name)
This is one of the sections where the PCs are up against the
deadline. Unless they kill everything (or almost everything) in
the region quickly, a big bad evil guy will invade section K and
kill everything in it (or almost everything).
This section has a vertical component to it of sorts. Everything
is sort of flat, but various rooms/keyed locations are at various
depths.
This is also the home of a magical artifact. It's actually a
pretty nice weapon, +5 icy burst, acquatic bane and wounding (and
some other perks), but might not be too useful for players
initially, as it's a magical trident (it actually has 4 blades,
which would make it a quadent? quadrent? quadrant?), which is a
weapon few fighters specialize in. They have to find and put
together all the blades.
This is a fairly interesting section, but in my experience,
players need to be roped into aquatic adventures, in part because
they don't want to get wet, but also because they tend to be far
less effective under water.
Section M "The Chasm" (or possibly
"Darkness & Light") by Mark Carroll, Richard
Farrese and Patrick Kapera
This is sort of a great big cave, actually. Full of Drow &
Driders. As mentioned, I think, the Driders in this Dungeon have
reversed the traditional master/slave relationship, and rule over
the Drow as slaves. (Actually, I thought Driders used to get
exiled, but I guess that was before 3e). Anyway, the Driders are
led by 4 "Spider-Kings".
Since as I mentioned earlier, I don't like driders or drow much,
I pretty much found this section to be painfully dull and
although I read it all, this is about as much as I could bring
myself to write about it. But if you do like 'em, then you could
very well like this section - there's certainly enough of them.
Section N "Tomb of the Unliving" by
Richard Farrese
This is the double section. It's about 265 keyed locations,
pretty much a great big Necropolis, full of crypts and such,
crammed with pretty much every type of undead (so don't forget to
bring a cleric or 10). It culminates with one heck of a showdown
with a god of death. (Who is actually not really a god per se,
but has the form of a 50 HD, 500 hp Nightcrawler).
While a lot of the undead is not intelligent or proactive, there
are 3 factions that are. A mummy lady, a lich dude, and a very
unfriendly ghost of a Blackguard. Each of these factions wants to
wake this god of death, but they want to be the ones who do it in
order to get rewarded for it, or somehow gain from it. (The ghost
actually just wants to escape the dungeon)
This section I really liked. It's pretty much the most
"epic" section of the book, if not in the power level
of the monsters, but in the scope of what the PCs do and
experience. The power level is probably the same as
"D", but this section is far more interesting. While
there is a fair amount of repetition of monsters, most of the
rooms are unique, if not in layout, in theme. The PCs really do a
lot of exploring, that is, examining what each room is.
Section O "Halls of Ice and Stone" (aka The
Exit) by Ari Marmell and Jeff Ibach
Unless I'm missing something, this last section, which is the
exit area, is something of a let down compared to section D or N.
Chances are very good that if the PCs have done all the previous
sections, they are all at least level 20, if not higher
(presumably using the Epic Level rules).
The last major battle is pretty tough, CR 23, but is against a
pretty pedestrian frost giant cleric. I mean, after you've
battled lich lords and world eaters; tarrasques and demon hordes;
and enough drow to make R.A. Salvatore cry, a frost giant is
somewhat anti-climatic, even if he is a high level cleric.
Still, like everywhere else, they provide help to scale up (or
down) the encounter. But a Frost Giant? Maybe if he killed the
PCs parents, or something, it would be more climatic, plot wise.
Really, I think N should have been the final section, with the
bad guy from there being the last boss. At least in terms of
"plot". But that said, since most of the challenge here
is not obvious ( most of the monsters are tough because they
either have high class levels or large numbers (or both)), the
players could run into trouble by acting too rashly. So this was
a pretty devious decision to end the dungeon on something
seemingly easy, but not.
But anyway, the exit part of the dungeon was more of an
accidental exit than an official one. An exit opened up in some
icy caves. Fairly recently, a large tribe of frost giants decided
to set up shop around it, as part of a toll booth sort of
operation, getting money and such from people leaving.
Other Stuff/Appendix
Among the other stuff is the amazing revelation that you can do
percentiles that are multiples of five (ie, 5%, 20%, 35%) by
using a d20 instead of a d100. My goodness! Who'd have thought?
They even helpfully provide a chart. This really made me go WTF?,
I mean, is there anyone who plays RPGs that doesn't know you can
do that on a d20?
But besides that there is a list of various encounter conditions and a new way of representing a horde of weak monsters with a template (oddly enough, the "Horde" template).
Looks & Layout
If you love lavishly illustrated books, then this is not for you.
Personally, I don't really care one way or the other, but at
least in section H, I would have liked to have seen illustrations
of the major NPCs. The other sections have fewer personalities,
more things just to kill, but they do have some notables as well
that could have been illustrated.
Beyond a fair amount of typos, there are some editing glitches.
Maybe not glitches. But things are rarely explained as well as
they could or should be.
I actually have to wonder if most of these problems weren't
caused by (somewhat ironically) space limitations. Several
sections have the feel of being cut down. I usually trim my
reviews and I often cut stuff out without properly connecting the
remaining parts together. While I can't cite specifics, I get the
same sort of vibe.
There are also some glaring but not really important editing
gaffs. For instance, there are two section "N"s, at
least according to the section header at the top of the page. But
it has the names right, mostly, except the 2nd (and real) section
N is called "Tomb of the Living" instead of "Tomb
of the Unliving".
Part of me says that it's a big book, and mistakes happen.
Another part of me says that it's also a very expensive book, and
some of the problems are so bloody obvious, that they should have
been spotted right away (like the 2 section Ns). In any event, it
does feel like a rather sloppy effort, almost as if it were a Mongoose book.
Final Thoughts
It's actually pretty decent, but it falls well short of being a
legendary dungeon in anything other than size. That is, for the
most part there's really nothing remarkable or all that memorable
about it. Only section N is really legendary in feel, and that is
pretty much completely sealed off from the rest of the Dungeon.
Sections I and H are also pretty good, but the rest is just,
well, "eh".
I mean, I started off this review with the intention of writing
at least about 3 kb or so for each section at least, which would
be about half the size of the review I write for the average 64
page module (which is what this would be the equivalent to). But
I couldn't. Not because of lack of time, just I couldn't really
find anything to say about most of them. Mediocrity is the bane
of the reviewer, because it's easy to praise something or
criticize something, you just sort of roll along, but describing
something average is exceedingly difficult.
I also think it's got some logic problems (er, beyond the normal
logic problems with dungeons). Like it's supposed to be a secret
prison no one really knows about. Except there are these elves
that regularly fly in and out to protect a really famous tree.
How can the tree be famous, but not the location where he is? At
least the general location.
And besides being based on the premise that "good is
stupid", it also seems to be based on the premise that good
is lazy. Apparently having spent tons of effort making and
staffing this prison, the various celestials now ignore it, once
it gets damaged and the prisoners riot? Pffft.
I also think having it like a roach motel really hurts it. I
mean, very few people will want to do nothing but a dungeon crawl
for 2 years. And I would have to think many of those who do would
want to do more than just the same dungeon. I know I wouldn't
want to be in the same building for 2 years, even the world's
largest brothel (even with pizza delivery).
Personally, I think it would have been a better, and more
importantly, a far more useable, product if this had been
dropped, and the dungeon could be entered/exited in various
locations. True, PCs can leave about halfway through, thanks to
the hole in the middle. But that's not easy, and that's still
quite a long ways in.
I also think it suffers from too much repetition (not my using
"I also think", but the dungeon itself). I mean, in too
many cases, the PCs have to stop the evil lesser creatures from
freeing the big bad evil creature. And a fallen angel who became
an Eryinyes is the villainess in two different sections. (Another
became a vampire, and is the villainess in another).
Similarly, some sections are basically just 1-3 monsters, over
and over and over and over again. And in many cases, I don't
think they are all that great, as monsters go. Driders! Ugh. 1-2
Driders is fine. Sections full of them are not. Players get tired
of killing the same thing over and over, except maybe smurfs.
Lastly, they seem to have had some differences on how the d20
system (or roleplaying as a whole) should work. For instance,
they don't like the Take 10/Take 20 rules, so they tell you do
not use them and have designed the dungeon so you don't. They
change the experience system (in part to keep characters from
leveling up so much, but some of the logic they try to use to
justify it is a bit silly). And in giving advice on how to make
goblins tougher, they tell you to cheat. While probably every DM
fudges from time to time, if you blatantly cheat, that can really
piss off players. If they wanted that section tougher, why not
give the Goblins class levels or something?
Writing a huge dungeon according to AEG's house rules is fine,
since they made the book, but it reduces the ease of which people
playing normal D&D can use it. They'll have to change back
the changes AEG made. Which in part largely defeats the purpose
of buying a premade dungeon to begin with.
Really, really final thoughts:
Anyway, I'm not sure if I'll be actually ever use most of it.
I certainly don't have the attention span of running a game in
one dungeon for 2 years. And taken separately, each section
really doesn't compare well to the various Dungeon Crawl Classic
modules from Goodman or most of Necromancer's stuff. The section
I really like, H, doesn't really seem possible to use as a stand
alone. And in fact, taken alone, many sections simply stop making
sense. Since many of them are prisons, where the critters have
escaped. But since they couldn't get out (because the exit was so
far away and guarded by some really tough things) they stayed and
took it over. But if used separately, there is no reason they
couldn't get out and get on with their lives. But some are usable
stand alone. N, probably the best "dungeon crawl" seems
to work just fine that way, since it was sealed off from the rest
of the dungeon.
All in all, though, it's really hard to beat the price for what
you get. Since there isn't an 800 page compilation of all the
Dungeon Crawl Classics or Necromancer Games adventures. Even if
you are an ebayer like myself, it can be hard to find DCCs or
NG's stuff at low prices (or at all), not to mention getting them
in one package (if you win 10 different auctions from different
people, you could pay $40-100 just for shipping), while there
usually seem to be a half dozen or so copies of this on there for
around what I paid ($32, total).
(Though of course, if you can afford it, you should buy it
through the store here to help support the site)
Wait!, One Last Rant
Oh yeah, and one last thing. While this really only bugs me and
few others, AEG managed to screw up the OGL. Basically, when you
do an OGL product, you have to include the OGL and update section
15 with everything you used (the SRD and the license itself at
minimum), then add an entry for your product. AEG didn't bother
to do the latter. Now, it's unlikely that anyone really cares,
since it doesn't involve infringement (especially WOTC, the only
ones in position to take legal action in this case). But it
amazes me that someone will put out a $100 book that probably
costs $1000s to do a print run of, but not spend 2 minutes
getting the OGL right.
Not a huge deal, but it does contribute to the overall sloppy
feel of the book.