[Review] Vaults of Volokarnos

D&D B/X

Orcs have been spotted near an ancient burial complex housing the resting places of old patrician families, and a famous warlord. The masters of the nearby town want the orcs gone... and are willing to overlook a bit of discrete grave-robbing on the side.

A B/X dungeon for 1st level characters.

Author: Gabor Lux

Link

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Other reviews: Narrative Report - Big Amulet, Bryce Lynch

I’m still playing Arden Vul - don’t worry! My table TPK’d in a big battle against the Set cult in the Set temple on Level 3. Hold person is a wild spell.

The low-hanging fruit has already been picked, and Arden Vul comes with no restocking guidance, so rather than try to shoe-horn in enough XP to get the characters at a power level where they could continue exploring, we elected to run the Vaults of Volokarnos as their introduction. More Arden Vul reviews soon 🤞.

Text and Formatting

We get background, designer notes, and overview of the dungeon, random encounters, a well-keyed map, and 52 keyed locations in 18 digest-sized pages. That’s great!

The module is written in lightly formatted (bullet points, numbered lists, bold and italics) single-column. It flows well and is easy to use.

The room keys are written in natural language and use bullet points to elaborate (following unclear-to-me patterns). Inhabitants get their own paragraph with abbreviated stat blocks:

Note the mixture of GM-facing information, initial-description information, and interaction-required information in both the main paragraphs and bullet points. I’ll mark initial description in yellow, GM-facing in green, and interaction-required information in blue.

Room 16 is easier than 15 (since all of the initial description stuff is first, followed by all of the GM info). I maintain that something like…

16 | Passage of the judgement: Richly painted passage with ochre and teal ceramic floor, burnt smell. In the middle of the passage, two judges sit enthroned in their marble seats, holding bronze sceptres. Between the two are the remnants of burnt items. Above the northern door is a painted inscription.

Passage: Those who pass between the thrones or molest the statues must save vs wands or take 3d6 HP from the fire rays shot from the sceptres.
Bronze Sceptres: Lose their power once removed from their place.
Painted Inscription: “FAVSTVS VORENIVS MAXIMIANVS, IVDEX” (no translation provided).

Is way easier to run.

The stack blocks for monsters are incomplete. For example

Green slime: HD 2*; AC –; Atk touch; Spec surprise 4:6, slime; ML 12; N.

Leaves out a lot of details

• Surprise: Drops down on surprised characters from above.

• Acid: When in contact with a victim, sticks on and exudes acid. The acid destroys wood or metal (including armour) in 6 rounds, but cannot affect stone.

• Consume flesh: Once in contact with flesh for 6 rounds, the victim is turned into green slime in a further 1d4 rounds.

• Removing: Once stuck on a victim, can only be removed by fire. This inflicts half damage to the victim and half to the slime.

• Immunity: Unharmed by all attacks except cold or fire.

or

Giant shrews (4): HD 1; AC 4; Atk 2*bite 1d6; Spec win initiative on first attack, +1 on second, 3 HD or lower must save vs. death or flee in panic; ML 10; AL N.

leaves out the climbing note, territorial note, and echolocation note:

• Climbing: Skilled climbers; can jump up to 5’.

• Territorial: Ferociously defend their hunting area from all intruders.

• Echolocation: Perceive their surroundings up to 60’. Unaffected by lack of light. If unable to hear (e.g. silence, 15’ radius): AC reduced to 8 [11], -4 penalty to attacks.

All of the stat blocks leave out the THACO/Attack Bonus as well as the movement speed. I do greatly appreciate the pre-rolled HP (and that it’s in a random order).

The Map

Here’s the Melan diagram (applied to a module written by Melan!)

This is excellent. 9 loops in 52 rooms. Everywhere you’d want to go, you can get there multiple ways. Secret doors galore. I can’t find the exact post right now, but I remember reading some dungeon-graph-theory that talks about how you can categorize rooms by the number of exits.

1-exit rooms are dead ends. Often these are closets, vaults, etc.

2-exit rooms are effectively hallways with content. There’s no choice except to continue or go back.

3-exit rooms present a choice, and are the main building block for well-connected dungeons.

4-or-more-exit rooms become a hub - this is a lot of (potentially overwhelming) choice, and these rooms often serve as a sort of nexus to different “parts” of the dungeon.

When we look at the map for Vaults like this, we have

1-exit (15 total): 4, 7, 12, 19, 22, 25, 29, 32, 35, 41, 43, 45, 49, 51, 52

2-exit (14 total): 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 23, 27, 28, 31, 34, 36, 39, 46, 47

3-exit (18 total): 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 20, 21, 24, 30, 33, 37, 38, 40, 42

4-or-more-exit (5 total): 6, 26, 44, 48, 50

Which I think is cool data. I think Melan’s maps tend to play very well.

I do wish that the maps had a little more data on them; some indication of where the main NPCs are (that respond to some sort of order-of-battle) and which rooms are already lit would be very helpful. For (a quick and dirty) example:

Content

Background

This is good! It sets up some plausible reason why the dungeon exists and is un-plundered, gives us a natural hook:

the town’s uneasy patricians, the Councilmen, have immediately announced that those who would smoke the orcs out will have free disposal over their treasures. And if the antique coinage of the old tombs is mixed into this plunder? This time, no one will be asking inconvenient questions about these minor details…

This is the bread and butter of low-level D&D in my opinion, and you don’t need much else. Ya’ll are treasure hunters; here’s some treasure to hunt!

Preparations

I wish this was more detailed:

In this adventure designed for beginning characters, the company’s goal shall be the explorations of an ancient tomb-complex, and driving out the orcs who have set up a base therein. The orcs have made camp in the south-eastern quadrant of the vaults (rooms 46–51), where they have set up a smuggling base in a cavern with good sea access. Their leader, Brutus the Orc-Blooded, is a wily and cruel chief, and he has set up multiple advance outposts throughout multiple points of the catacomb (8–9, 38–39) while setting out to methodically open and plunder the burial sites.

I would have loved an order of battle (if assaulted, how do the orcs respond? Where do they hole up? At what rate do they replace losses?) and a timeline for their plunder (how quickly are they able to loot the dungeon? What do they do with the loot?).

Then, we get this note:

The adventure begins in the small town of Arak Brannia, where a multiple-week festival has been recently announced to celebrate the fact that the curse of the gods shall soon destroy the republic’s hated rival, the western city-state of Thisium. It is here that the company shall be informed of the adventure background, and set out to organise the expedition.

The festival is never described (and is a total red-herring); I cut it entirely. Running festivals is not a trivial thing IMO; especially since there’s no guidance for it in the B/X books.

Usefully, we are given (vague) guidance for handing out rumors:

One rumour is available to the company on start; this number can be increased via paid informants and other means.

How much do paid informants cost? What sort of other means does Gabor imagine? One of my favorite bits from Original Edition Delta is the inclusion of the Rumor in the equipment table. One might wonder why a rumor costs the equivalent of chain mail or ~3.5 swords, but D&D economies are wild.

Rumors

My general take is that rumors are part of making informed, impactful choices. The info you give players at the outset shapes their early decision-making. In that context, I think that true, useful rumors are preferred, partially true rumors can be okay (so long as they drive interesting choices), and that false rumors should be scrutinized. I don’t know why we bother making duds (rumors that are false and don’t create any interesting gameplay).

• #1 is okay (there are many such dwarves), but I don’t think it really does anything useful.

• #2 is a waste of space IMO - it’s redundant with the hook/premise.

• #3 is good!

• #4 is helpful, though I think it’s a bit of a red herring and misleads players into thinking that the tomb in #20 is Volokarnos when it isn’t.

• #5 is weirdly worded; it’s a single level dungeon (unless the GM ads more levels at Gabor’s suggestion). Maybe Gabor means that there’s a lot of twists and turns?

• #6 is a pet peeve of mine. “There is no way the orcs are really behind this. Who knows… could the orcs be controlled from within the town? (Who knows indeed?)” nah man, if that’s your intent probably write that down and flesh it out. Don’t hit me with a GM booby trap in the middle of the rumor table. I’m okay with a Hole-in-the-Oak style appendix where the author suggests way to modify/extend the text, but I want the text to work as written.

• In #7, what unsolved mysteries? Room 33 has mirages with no loot, and Room 35 is the home of a mad hermit. Who is Septillo?

• #8 is what I was talking about with duds. Hah Hah! We lied to the players and got them to bring silver weapons! Got ‘em!

• #9 is a waste of space IMO.

• #10 is again a waste of space. There’s no lake; are the players supposed to search the whole place looking for a lake? What are we doing here?

• #11 is interesting; could convince players to try to chat with the chaos cultists, and then have a slow reveal that they’re not just philosophers.

• #12 is weird - there is no second level. This is the only time “Throbus” comes up.

I recommend cutting 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and 12 (leaving us with 1, 3, and 11). It’s okay to not have a huge rumor chart; remember that we’re only giving the players 1 rumor.

The Vaults

This is another overview, so this information is split into two sections (it shares purpose with the Preparations chapter). Here, we actually do get the Order of Battle information I was asking for earlier:

Noise, clashes, and the wholesale plundering of tombs have consequences for the orcs’ behaviour and strategy. A few lost scouts or looted sepulchres shall be ignored, but if the company defeats the orcs’ advance outposts (8–9) or the survivors of a defeated orc patrol successfully return to base, Brutus the Orc-Blooded shall double the guard at key locations, and the advantages of surprise shall be greatly diminished or outright eliminated. Naturally, orcish forces are not inexhaustible, and if their numbers are reduced below 20%, or they believe they are facing overwhelming odds, they will make a strategic withdrawal from the vaults.

I still want to see the aforementioned timeline for the Orcs looting the Vaults and what they do afterward.

Random Encounters

I have the same complaint I did about the stat blocks - there’s some missing info and we’re missing the attack bonus and move speed. I also notice that halflings have “Atk dagger 1d4 or 2*sling 1d4” - I think that’s how 1e and 0e works, but in B/X, slings attack once per round like everything else.

The other thing I’d want is “supply” - how many bandits, dwarves, halfings, etc are roaming around here? Do the random encounters eventually exhaust?

For an example of this, Necropolis of Nuromen has

Room by Room

2 | Room of the Obelisk

A little observation will detect grooves on the floor indicating its prior use

How do we game out “a little observation”? I know I say this over and over, but the structure for dungeon exploration is that we give the players an initial reading of the room, and then they ask about details and then go interact with stuff.

Is the intent that we them about the grooves…

1. as long as they’re moving at exploration speed (ie, it’s part of the initial description)?

2. if they specifically say they’re inspecting the ground?

3. if they spend 10 minutes searching the area with the obelisk (and potentially pass the search roll)?

I (as is typically the case with these weird weasel words) just give them the info for free.

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My bigger issue is that I don’t think how the obelisk actually works is clear.

The key makes the door unlocked without difficulty (otherwise it requires open locks or brute force). The arm makes the doors able to be forced open (otherwise it requires much effort).

So if the arm is pointing at the door, it’s still locked right (because we aren’t pointing the key at it)? Or if the key is pointing at it, it still requires brute force right (because it’s not the arm). So regardless of orientation, all doors are hard to open and some are less hard (open locks for 1st level thieves is 15%).

Also, does this just apply to doors in the room? It says “In the direction of the KEY, doors can be unlocked without difficulty” emphasis mine. Doors, not the door. Do all of the doors in the dungeon in the relative direction get adjusted?

3 | The false and true gate

Damp walls decorated with faded, barely discernible frescoes.

Barely discernible means they’re discernible. When I tell the players that the walls are decorated with barely discernible frescoes, the players ask me “What’s on the frescoes” (because they’ve been trained to look at paintings for clues). The module doesn’t say what’s on the frescoes. Tell me! Use it as a way to add a clue to something!

7 | Storeroom

Formerly a storeroom for bath staff, it now serves as the jail of 1d8 merchants held by the orcs for ransom.

Rather than having the GM roll to see how many merchants there are, I think it makes more sense for the module author to pick (perhaps by rolling) a number. “4 merchants” is more useful than “1d8 merchants”. Better if you name them (which you can do now that you know how many merchants there are).

8 | Guard room

A vault with burial niches, hastily converted into an outpost with 5 orcs. They are filling an enormous coffer on a cart with 8000 cp looted from the niches (so heavy that four strong men can barely pull it).

I think there’s a big inclination in big portions of the community to prioritize the fiction/simulation over the ‘game’ part. ACKs, for example, is filled with people of a highly simulative mindset, and there’s also manifestos like New Simulationism - Sam Sorensen.

I think these sort of frameworks have such a hard time dealing with dungeons or dungeon keys that have any sort of motion to them. If we’re properly simulating this sort of dungeon, do we really believe that it just so happens that the Orcs are looting this room right when the players enter it? Wouldn’t it be more likely that they are either finished looting, or haven’t started yet?

Say it takes them 30 minutes to finish the described looting. Say that the PCs enter the dungeon at 1:00pm, and arrive to this Guard room at 1:20pm. The orcs started at 1:10pm, and will finish by 1:40pm, so it just so happens that the PCs catch them looting. But say the PCs didn’t explore this way first, and instead spent an hour exploring the southern area, so they made it to the guard room at 2:30pm. Are we supposed to have the orcs loot the whole room (and toss the really cool room key) or do we rehypothecate events so that the orcs just so happen to start looting just before the players enter the room the whole time?

The second option is great for the Game and great for the narrative, but isn’t accurate.

11 | Burial Vault

11. Burial vault: Human remains in niches and plundered sarcophagi. The secret door is operated by a lever in one of the niches (elves have 1:6 to notice).

How does this work at the table? Do the players say stuff like “I feel around in all of the niches” The above is the whole room key; the number of niches is undefined; how does searching for such a lever work?

13 | Secret Passage

At a) stands the statue of a minstrel, who will place an arrow on the string of his lyre, and fire with a musical chord at those approaching down the passage (two attacks per round as 4th level Fighter, 1d6 Hp).

The statue doesn’t have a stat block; no AC or HP. Is the minstrel’s lyre made of the same material as the minstrel (presumably some kind of stone) or is it made of wood? Does the minstrel have a limited supply of real arrows, or is it conjuring arrows somehow? If we want casters to be able to cast Dispel Magic, we need to know the level of the enchanter (since there’s 5% chance of failure per level the enchanter is above the dispeller).

14 | Room of the other obelisk

In the secret niche, a large, dark grey brazier before the face of a bearded deity is laden with 500 sp and 50 gp. The brazier itself is old silver worth 500 gp.

If you include a non-standard item (like a brazier) as treasure by giving it a gold value, it’s very helpful to also give it a coin-weight so all of the folks following the encumbrance rules can smoothly play.

15 | Passage of the judgement

From behind the northern bronze door come sounds of hushed deliberation. Above this portal, a painted inscription declares: „FAVSTVS VORENIVS MAXIMIANVS, IVDEX”.

Please when you write your module in english and write inscriptions/puzzles/etc in not english, translate the text for me. 1st level characters have access to Read Languages, so they can definitely read this.

17 | Hidden passage

Partially collapsed passage with numerous cracks in the wall. Soil has spilled from the cracks, and the tight burrows are inhabited by 4 giant shrews. The haunts of these aggressive beasts are so small that only a halfling could squeeze inside (and even so, has 1:3 to cause a collapse and become trapped forever). Further in the network, the shrew nest contains gnawed-on bones and a gemstone hairpin (100 gp).

Two notes here.

1. When Gabor gives probabilities, he likes to reduce them; so rather than saying 2-in-6 or 2:6, he’ll say 1:3. Rather than 4:6 he says 2:3. I much prefer to keep the denominator as a 6 that way I don’t have to do math to figure out what I need to roll; though perhaps Gabor keeps a d3 at his table. This plays in to Cognitive Overload - we want to do everything we can to reduce GM overload, and making them convert 1-in-3 to 2-in-6 is just one more thing.

2. The only way for the shrews to leave this room is through their tiny tunnels. Do those tunnels lead to the outside? If not, they’d suffocate or starve right? If so, we should make the tiny tunnel discoverable from the outside.

18 | Plundered Vault

Even the flagstones have been lifted by erstwhile grave robbers, and a grand royal grave lies despoiled of its riches. On the wall, someone has left a charcoal message:

“HERE CAME BURLAGON THE HALFWAY-ORC /
FROM THIS GRAVE DID HE RETRIEVE A KINGLY HOARD /
YOU COULD HAVE THE SAME BRAVELY DONE /
BUT BURLAGON WAS FASTER, SO GET YE GONE.”

I love the message from the Burlagon. So fun and flavorful 😍

In one corner lies an intact helmet that has rolled into a dark place.

Which corner? What dark place? This is a total red herring.

20 | The Legate’s mausoleum

In the middle, a stone slab sunk into the floor, inscribed “LEGATVS”, bears a bas-relief depicting a man wearing military garb and laurels. Around the walls are scattered life-sized clay statues of soldiers, toppled and broken in heaps of shards. Frescoes decorate the walls, and the exits are double bronze gates (open doors roll required for every time it is opened).

• The frescoes depict the Legate’s military deeds; in all cases, he is seen in the middle of the battlefield, surrounded by the faithful soldiers of Imperial Legion IV.

• The clay statues are broken, but an hour’s work is sufficient to put them together again (don’t forget random encounters). If the intact figures are set around the stone slab, it opens, and a VERY loud gong strikes. Immediately roll three random encounter checks!

I think the bullet points are out of order (not in the same order as they appear in the initial description, not in alphabetical order, etc). More importantly, no one at my table (including me) understood how they could have known that putting together the clay statues was remotely an option. The text says “scattered life-sized clay statues of soldiers, topped and broken in heaps of shards”. Is this something that people would normally read and think is repairable with no equipment (like glue) in a remotely reasonable amount of time? They’re heaps of shards! Why does it only take an hour to put all of the clay statues back together? It takes me an hour to put IKEA furniture together!

Related, giving task time in raw hours rather than man-hours is another pet peeve. I would prefer to say “but four man-hours of work is sufficient..”, and then I know if there’s 4 PCs it takes an hour, or 30m for a party of 8 (which is my table).

29 | The vault of Veturia Lentula

White marble columns, interior grave with the marble likeness of a female patrician. […]

• The interior grave is undisturbed; VETURIA LENTULA’s name can be read from a stone plaque. The beautiful dame’s carved hand reaches out slightly, and has a small hole drilled into it. Placing a mirror therein so she can behold her own likeness opens a recess with 2000 sp and 600 gp.

I love this! I explicitly described how her gaze was directed toward her hand. The players tried putting a bunch of stuff into the palm-hole before eventually having the spark-of-insight to use a hand mirror (which is exactly the sort of moment a puzzle-maker is trying to create).

32 | The treasury of Volokarnos

The pool contains no water, but a gelatinous cylinder! It only attacks if disturbed, or if the insect swarms animate. Fortunately, its treasures are at least plentiful: 4000 gp, wand of frost (13 charges), cursed scroll (reader must save vs. death or, like Volokarnos, be devoured by creeping things in 3 turns), potion of healing.

A cursed scroll with save vs death or die is one (interesting?) way to lose a character (and we did).

Wand of Frost isn’t an item in BX, though there is one in 1e.

The mirror contains an imprisoned medusa: those who look inside must save vs. stone or turn into a statue. A mirror automatically petrifies the medusa. The mirror is worth 12,000 gp intact, but it is large, bulky, and its save vs. breakage is only 2…

How much does it weigh? Also, save vs breakage isn’t a concept in BX, and even using the 1e concept, that would be a very good save (you’d only fail on a nat 1).

36 | The column

A green stone column, 4’ wide, stands in the middle of the room carved with three bearded stone faces looking in three directions. An inscription reads: “YOV WHO PASS HERE, MVST SATE MY HVNGER”. The mouths shall swallow food and other objects deposited therein, but there is no adverse effect even if this act is not performed.

This is fantastic, and really easy to import into other dungeons if you haven’t/won’t play Volokarnos.

42 | The shrine of Chaos

The altar has a secret niche with a potion of polymorph and elixir of youth.

How does one find the secret niche in the altar? There’s no tell - is this just leaning on B/X’s 1:6 roll? OSE has a Potion of Polymorph Self, but not Potion of Polymorph. There is no Elixir of Youth either (or anything similar), though such a potion does show up in 1e’s Unearthed Arcana.

46 | Old storeroom

Rotting piles of barrels and crates stand by the walls with bales of shoddy sailcloth. There is nothing of value, but behind a crate stack, someone has written a chalk inscription: “THE SECRET OF GUELTIERI CALDERA” (c.f. 26/g).

Here’s 26G:

GUALTIERI CALDERARA: „VANISHED IN THE BATTLE AGAINST THISIUM”. The grave, cracked open, still contains the splendidly dressed, unmolested body of

Gualtieri Calderra with his rich jewellery – more accurately, it is an illusion. Characters rummaging in the sarcophagus have 1:6 to be ambushed by the ghouls in room 28, also behind an illusionary wall.

Neither me nor my players understand what ‘the secret of gueltieri caldera’ is supposed to mean, or why it might be written in chalk behind some barrels in the old storeroom.

50 | Barracks

This room is the prison of Jacopo, the orcs’ accountant. Jacopo has excellent memory, and knows the exact location, quantity and value of every smuggled good in storage, data he also records in his enormous ledger.

The trouble is that while you say Jacopo knows this, I don’t know the quantity and value of every smuggled good in storage, and the author didn’t write it down, so when the players ask him, all I can do is panic.

This room is locked, and Brutus has the key; but it only says that in Brutus’ writeup, not in this room. It should be in both places.

51 | The chamber of Brutus the Orc-Blooded

here is the unlucky Jacopo’s spellbook as well (1: burning hands, identify, mending, read magic, ventriloquism; 2: knockspell, wizard lock).

Burning Hands is not a spell in BX (though it is in 1e). Knockspell is called Knock.

Treasure and XP

Treasure:

• #2: 30g 900s (120g)

• #3: 30g 100s (40g)

• #4: ~4 bronze cups (20g)

• #7: merchant reward (~540g)

• #8: 8000c (80g)

• #9: 3000g

• #10: 900g

• #14: 50g 500s, brazier (600g)

• #16: 600g 600s medallion (1660g)

• #17: gemstone hairpin (100g)

• #19: splendid spider silk (1600g)

• #20: 9000g, 23 gemstones (13970g)

• #22: 400g 1200s (520g)

• #26: 1100g, 1700s, 2000g diamond ring (3270g)

• #28: 6000s, 5 gemstones (2720g)

• #29: 650g, 2014s (851g)

• #31: crystal shards (973g)

• #32: 1000g sword, 4000g, 12000g mirror (17000g)

• #35: 600g

• #41: 1000g, gem pouch (3500g)

• #42: candelabra, symbol, tetrad, rings (3500g)

• #44: censers (150g)

• #45: golden belt (400g)

• #48: smuggled merch (1750g)

• #51: 600g 300s (630g)

• #52: 4000g, 3000s, 7 gems, tiara (8610g)

Magic Items

• #3: spellbook (ventriloquism)

• #10: shield+1

• #26: 7x magnetic arrow (+2 vs metal)

• #32: plate+1, shield+1, wand of frost, potion of healing

• #42: potion of polymorph, elixir of youth

• #51: spellbook (burning hands, identify, mending, read magic, ventriloquism, knock, wizard lock)

• #52: sword+1/+3 vs dragons, potion of green dragon control

Defenders

• #4: Green Slime (25xp)

• #8: 5 orcs (50xp)

• #10: giant crab spider (25xp)

• #9: 8 orcs, 5 wolves (205xp)

• #19: 2 giant crab spider (50xp)

• #16: 6 dwarves (60xp)

• #17: 4 giant shrews (40xp)

• #25: 7 fire beetles (105xp)

• #27: 17 skeletons (170xp)

• #28: 4 ghouls (100xp)

• #31: crystal statues (85xp)

• #32: 2 insect swarms, gelatinous cylinder (275xp)

• #35: man w/ sack, ~10 skeletons (125xp)

• #38: 4 orcs (40xp)

• #39: 2 orcs (20xp)

• #42: 8 acolytes, cleric 4 (205xp)

• #45: 5 mad hermits (100xp)

• #47: 2 orcs (20xp)

• #48: 20 orcs, brutus, 2/6 chance of 4 brigands, ogre (490xp)

Total

67104g of treasure defended by 1375 xp of monsters, for a ratio of ~49x, which is way, way, way too high. This works out to ~14000xp per party member in a party with 5 shares (like 4 PCs and 2 henchmen), which is enough to bring the PCs to almost level 5.

Most pacing advice that I’ve seen suggests that PCs should level up after ~4 sessions. If most tables finish ~10 dungeon rooms in a session (which is historically accurate for my table), they’re earning about a level per session. I think you could cut all of the treasure by either 5-10x and it would still be a worthwhile expedition.

Conclusion

Skip it.

I think this is pretty good Vanilla Dungeons and Dragons. There’s a bunch of technical errors (my impression is that Gabor play-tested this in a different system and then ported it to BX). The treasure is way too high. The writing is pleasant to read and has a distinct cleverness to it, but sometimes it feels like the brevity is getting in the way of facilitating the GM to run an adventure.

On the actual content side, I enjoyed it! The math cult was funny (and very tongue-in-cheek), breaking the orc stronghold is a fun mission, and the traps have a funhouse-vibe that I enjoyed.

For modifications:

• Trim down the rumor list.

• Think hard about whether or not the cursed scrolls (save or die and save or have your whole party teleported to an alient planet) are appropriate for your table.

• Adjust the treasure (probably divide by at least 5).

• Figure out how you want the obelisk rooms to work.

• Figure out what you want all of the (latin?) inscriptions to translate to.

• Assign weight to the bespoke treasures.