** WARNING ** A player reading the description of this module will
spoil the game for himself if he or she ever intends to play it. Doing so
requires you to save versus Paralyzation, Poison or Death Magic… no wait…
it's that old first edition feel again!
"Prisoners of the Maze" is a dungeon crawl offered to us by Necromancer
Games. It is the first part of a four or optionally five part series.
In a sense, this series is like a mini campaign beginning with the characters
already between 9th to 12th level. Four pregenerated characters are provided,
and the author strongly suggests using those. A brief introduction is given
explaining how and why the characters get trapped in the maze. The short
version is that they tried to assassinate the tyrant king Ovar, failed,
and the court wizard teleported them into his maze as a punishment. The
chances of meeting one's death in this maze are substantial.
Most of the maze is covered with a carpet that slowly absorbs foreign material,
i.e. the PC's shoes and eventually their feet. Anything left untended will
eventually get absorbed by the carpet. Since the PCs were not equipped for
a dungeon adventure, they have no provisions or exploring equipment with
them, and are subject to eventual dehydration and starvation. Some resources
can be found in the dungeon, but they are rare. The PCs will have to be
quick or be dead. Since the place is a maze and the characters have no mapping
equipment and no reference point to use Intuit Direction, they might walk
in circles quite a bit. Directions and means of mapping can be found in
the dungeon, as well as a map, although heavily guarded with deadly traps.
One of the first locations the PCs are likely to enter is a court led by
an insane judge and an undead jury where the PCs will be found guilty of
high treason against king Ovar. Knights of Chaos jailers will try (and most
likely succeed) to imprison them. It is not too hard to escape from the
prison room.
Throughout the maze, the PCs will face deadly traps, invisible teleporting
devices, king Ovar's harem consisting of a vampiress and a weretigress,
a banished court jester, and all sorts of monsters, demons and character
class enemies. A lot of treasure and magic items can be found. You know,
a dungeon crawl.
The apotheosis comes if and when the PCs enter the art gallery of the "boss
monster", the resident sorcerer artist. Most of the thirty-nine paintings
and ten carvings found in the art gallery are magical and can be entered
or interacted with.
Four teleporting dimensional annexes take the PCs to locations that will
be available when the next product of this series is published. In those
sections will be found the items that will let the PCs out of the maze.
This line of products seems like it is going to be pretty much self-contained
and looks like it will be best used on its own rather than integrated in
any campaign.
All in all this is a good dungeon crawl, one of those places you send characters
off to be killed. It is really intended for roll playing rather than role
playing. If you like that kind of play, this one's for you. The descriptions
are very detailed, all the information is handy. The maps are clear, everything
is where it should be.
As with other Necromancer Games products, on-line support and supplements
are accessed thanks to a password in the module. This one will flesh out
the pregenerated PCs. At the time of writing though, their web site (http://
www.necromancergames.com ) is in need of being tidied up, and the supplements
are not there yet. Supplements for other products have always been installed
on their site a short while after publication, so a little patience will
surely be rewarded.
Weaknesses: All the new magic items have permanency in their prerequisites.
With that little detail we might regress a little more into the "first
edition feel" than necessary. Magic items in the DM's guide don't have
permanency as a prerequisite; that's what the item creation feats are for.
A lot of the PC class enemies don't have the right amount of feats (all
those I have checked don't have enough feats). There are major incongruities
with regards to the skill points of at least one NPC. Mar, the Jester, has
way too many skill points for an 8th level sorcerer, and has ranks in cross-class
skills as if they were class skills. I see no reason for that kind of mistreatment
of the rules.
New Rules: New Monsters: Drench, Grotin, Knight of Chaos, Spleckle and
Symbuus.
New magic Items: Fur Armor of Envelopment, Amulet of Animation, Rug of Suffocation,
Shackles of Imprisonment, Whistle of Animal Control, Whip of Pain, Bag of
Tricks (Vermilion), Potion Crystals, Cursed Ring of Spell Turning.
New Arcane Spells: Chide, Disappear, Dust of Uncontrollable Laughter, Joke,
Juggling Lights, Stink Bomb
