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Deathtrap Dungeon puts the spotlight on the city of Fang, fief of sinister Baron Sukumvit, where it’s located. Every year the Baron open the door of his creation, the Deathtrap Dungeon, to all would be Champions, looking for the glory of winning the Trial of Champions for the first time ever and the 25,000 golden pieces purse.
Deathtrap Dungeon was one of the most popular gamebooks (in the UK at least) of all time, at the best of my knowledge,, so it’s very understandable that Myriador is offering its conversion di D&D (sorry, I meant d20 system) very quickly. I don’t know how big are overseas markets for Myriador (USA are a top one), but I suppose that pleasing British fans is top priority for the company and rightly so.
The dungeon itself is of course an old school one: it’s funny, but not particularly coherent and we see creatures that should bash each other living very close (for example the Neanderthal and the Orcs). This is not a defect per se, but please be warned that if you are looking for a dungeon with its own ‘ecosystem’, this is not one of them. Anyway, judging by Goodman Games’ Dungeon Crawl series (did you ever see The Haunted Lighthouse?) and Munchkin card game successes, this approach (“Let’s bash things out and hell with all that boring roleplaying stuff!”) has enough fans to support itself economically.
This said, back to the module. The cover says (in small print...) that it has been designed for one 8th level character or a group of 6th level character. Albeit the Deathtrap Dungeon is a challenge, I doubt it’s a hard enough challenge for a group of 6th level characters (especially with somebody doing the combat, some other doing the magic and somebody else doing the healing and the trap-finding...). I strongly suggest being used with just one character or a party of lower level adventurers (perhaps around 4th level), albeit there are notes on adjusting the level of difficulty. If you chose to run it as a group adventure, however, please be warned that the last encounter may be a real party crusher. Some ‘upgrading’ may be needed, unless you wish to erase most of your player characters, listen to the players’ furious complains and start again.
Dungeon description apart, the module offers new monsters (the leprechaun and the fungus seem to me the most interesting ones), new magic items and the description of the city of Fang. Considering that the description of the city is five pages long (one for a map) and Fang has 150,000 inhabitants, this is sketchy at best and not very original (but let’s wait to see the Titan setting...). Lastly, there are four 8th level characters ready to use and this strenghtens my idea that Deathtrap Dungeon should be used as designed – one DM and one player.
One to one modules are a rare breed. I can recall just two modules for Classic D&D designed for such kind of play, The Gem and The Staff (for an 8th level Thief) and Blade of Vengeance (for a 7th level Elf), the last written by an excellent British author, Jim Bambra. For AD&D the Challenge series was designed (four modules for Fighter, Cleric, Thief and Wizard characters repectively), with at the best of my knowledge a very limited commercial success. Nonetheless, there are situations where such an adventure comes handy: for example when you need some kind of Test for a character.
I wonder however about FF d20 modules’ chances of success considering the price tag. In the UK £ 9.99 may not be such a big price, if compared with the relative purchasing power (one pound is 1,6 euros and 1,8 dollars after all!) and the price of imported gaming products from the USA. But in the US and Canada things may be different, if we consider all the competition (strong and not so strong) from the many d20 companies here. It’s true that Fighting Fantasy has a strong name recognition and, with some Luck, a built-in base of fans in North America too, but 16 bucks for a 40 pages module (yes, there is a big online support with 50 pages more, but this could not be very effective with a customer looking for a module in a store) seems to me a lot to pay.
To sum things up, I can recommend this module to people looking for a good, old fashioned one to one module and to Fighting Fantasy fans. Others may find the same quality level products, for a lower price, elsewhere.
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