Review of Artifacts II: Lawn of the Dead

This is a review of the 21-page PDF, Artifacts II: Lawn of the Dead, which is part of The Le Games Pocket GM Series. Written by the titanic trio of Brad McDevitt, Nathan Hill, and Adam Briggs; Lawn of the Dead is currently available through RPGnow for $2.00.

Target Audience: Game Masters using D20 fantasy games. Should also integrate into most OGL fantasy games and D&D.

Rating: Good as an article, perhaps even worthy of appearing in Dragon, but as a stand-alone supplement this is a mild disappointment. Not enough artifacts. Also, too many artifacts just do not have powers specific enough to warrant being in a suypplement about the dead (or undead). However Zombies and Vampires, the staple of any good undead encounter, are covered. Alas nothing here is really innovative or new. I am thus forced to rate this at 4 out of 10 golden apples. That makes me sad.

Initial Impressions

Lawn of the Dead comes packaged as a ZIP file. So, after clicking the link to retrieve my complimentary copy, I unzip the ZIP (as unzipping an ARJ would be difficult) and find three, count them THREE files! In total that’s 2 PDFs and 1 RTF. One file for screen viewing, one for printing, and apparently one file for ease of editing. I’ll let you guess which the latter might have been. Sadly the print version comes sans illustrations. Now color me old fashioned but, when dealing with undead, I like that gritty feel of a tome about the dark arts and shambling revenants that only black and white illustrations can deliver. (Especially like the one on page 4!) Sure, there are some who would unreasonably disagree; of course we all know they’d be wrong. And, as you’ve probably guessed from my tone by now, I am slightly biased. So, for the sake of full disclosure, I was the DM who haunted, harried, and harassed the group with undead gleaned from all manner of sources. Many official, like Dragon magazine, but not all. Even as I sit, typing these words, I can still recall my players first encounter with an Undead Colossus. They knew they were in trouble when the thief got off a triple backstab maneuver as the mage unleashed a series of magic missiles, which the “giant” they just encounter seemed to not notice had ripped through it’s flesh spattering fetid gore all over the place. Of course they should have known something was afoot when they encountered those Skleros that sprouted out of the ground like bean sprouts. Ah, memories! So, you can imagine, I really wanted to like this supplement more than anything I‘ve reviewed thus far. Why didn‘t I? Let’s find out together, shall we. . .

Appraisal

I know, it has “artifacts” in the title, but I was hoping that maybe something more would have been slipped in. It wasn’t. As a general rule of thumb products that are mere collections of treasure items, spells, or lists of feats intended to supplement a role-playing game are difficult to assess because every game is unique and subject to the foibles of the Game Master. Keeping in mind that it is the GM who ultimately will decide what “useful” means and whether or not they will need to make alterations (or ignore) certain items because they do not fit with their campaign world I would say that the items presented in Lawn of the Dead are probably best suited for use by GMs running stock off-the-shelf campaigns. There is a lot of flavor text included in the artifact entries. What that means is, to use them as is will introduce new background story elements to long standing campaigns that may be at odds with what history individual GMs have established. However, for those running stock adventures, meaning gaming groups who get together regularly to run store bought modules, this material should integrate into most games with little difficulty.

Rant: Ok, I’ve been mulling over this review for a bit now and I’ve come to a singular conclusion. I need to rant. That said, I have to admit, there were a few items that just defy all logic as to why they should be in a collection of artifacts connected with the dead or undead. Like the Haven Seeds! This aforementioned item, as presented, is almost a critical fumble. Damn good idea though. Just implemented off beam, in my opinion. The write-up for this should have had it creating a protective barrier of Hawthorne- look it up in relation to Vampires if you don’t know why I am suggesting this- and perhaps have it radiating a protection from evil spell affect. Also it doesn‘t make sense to have undead higher than 5 HD affected the way written, at least force a check of some kind on them, preferably by type! Otherwise not bad, though the weaker undead should also be afforded some form of save. If this was for 1^st ed AD&D I’d say vs. Death Magic. As presented this is a borderline unbalanced Monty Haul artifact. (Ok, maybe not all that useless, given my obvious need to rant about it!) Too, the Rae-Tik Hut also springs to mind. Why? These two artifacts, in my opinion, just do not seem to fully fit the theme. In fact reading them I can’t help but wonder if perhaps they weren’t rescued from a stack of pre-generated artifacts, tweaked bit, and included as an afterthought. Too, the Grey Club, fitting to its name, is sort of in a gray area as it is an item intended to be wielded against evil creatures. Evil creatures! Problem is most undead that aren’t intelligent (at least as I ran them) were usually chaotic neutral beings. Now there are a few gems, like the Bone Sword and Grieg’s Violin, but otherwise I felt rather disappointed by the artifacts. Also there are only eleven of them. Eleven! That makes me want to ask the authors how they could NOT have managed to come up with more than eleven simple artifacts dealing with the dead or undead. I know, you are all probably shaking your heads at my ranting about how bad these artifacts are one minute then demanding more the next. Well, why not? It should not have been all that difficult for Vecna‘s sake! Seriously, it’s not, all you have to do is take existing spells designed to work against undead or that deal with death in some way and combine them with standard items, tweak them a bit, write up a background with a nice history and voila! Heck I can come up with a dozen items that at least sound right while just sitting here, viz.: Staff of the Dead, Orb of Necromantic Seeing, Coffin of Transmutation, Onyx Ring of Corpse Control (artifact to Animate Corpses), Diadem of Undeath, Fetch Ring (for summoning and controlling Wraiths), Chalice of Kakamora (cursed item that, when used, will make flesh eating ghouls zero in on the character that attempted to use the chalice), Rod of Corpse Detection, Hel’s Shade Cloak, Planchette of Summoning, Bone Poppet of Doom, Gold Shield of the Tengu Masters, and how about a pair of Earrings of Lycanthropy to make it a full baker’s dozen. *breathes* Ah, I feel much better now.

Negatives: Though the “history” segments of each entry are an entertaining read they are, in truth, totally irrelevant and superfluous. As this is an independent supplement neither providing, or connected to, a specific campaign setting these bits of fluff do me, as a DM, no real good. I would rather have seen the history segments either edited out altogether or to have provided potential ideas for how to introduce and integrate the magic items into my unique campaign. This was a problem I had with all the “Vecna” artifacts; they came burdened with an albatross of very specific campaign history behind them. When I was a green DM I though they were great. However, as I started to run my own personal setting I was never able to use such artifacts, as they would have conflicted with the world history and background I had established.

Positives: Game Master’s who run a lot of one-shot adventures or who have a campaign milieu without a rigidly established background will find this tome of treasures to be chock full of ideas. Each artifact has a very detailed write up, including a history, which means you wont have to worry about writing up something on the fly to explain why this artifact exists. That is not to saw you may not have to tweak the write up a bit to better fit with your campaign, but it is nice to have. Despite my harsh comments above there is great promise here. What would I like to see done with this material? Glad you asked! I would like to see The Le Games put out a larger tome dedicated to using Undead in campaigns. Give us a tome full of undead beasties; necromantic spells, sample adventures, magic items, artifacts and gamers will be happy campers?