Dungeon Crawl Classics #1: Idylls of the Rat King [Paperback]

Jeff Quinn (Author), Brad McDevitt (Author), Jeff Doten (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1, 2003

An Adventure for Character Levels 1-3 Remember the golden days of role playing, when adventures were underground, NPCs were there to be killed, and the finale of every dungeon was the dragon on the 20th level? Well, those days are back. Dungeon Crawl Classics feature bloody combat, intriguing dungeons, and no NPCs who aren't meant to be killed. Each adventure is 100% good, solid dungeon crawl, with the monsters you know, the traps you fear, and the secret doors you know must be there somewhere.

This is a 3.5-edition update of the ENnie-recognized best-seller that started the Dungeon Crawl Classics line! In Idylls of the Rat King, goblin bandits are once again attacking the silver caravans, killing innocent miners and stealing cargo. The goblins have taken up residence in an abandoned mine northwest of Silverton. Someone must get rid of them. But this is no ordinary abandoned mine. It was deliberately barricaded generations ago when the Gannu family, founders of Silverton, discovered an unspeakable evil on its lowest levels. And these are no ordinary goblins, for the curse of the Gannu family courses through their veins...

This world-neutral, stand-alone adventure is completely new, not a reprint. It uses the 3.5 edition of the d20 rules set, and is fully compatible with the world’s most popular role playing game.

Product Details

• Paperback: 32 pages
• Publisher: Goodman Games (February 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 097127679X
• ISBN-13: 978-0971276796
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,046,397 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars 'Idle' is the word for these rats, March 14, 2008

By 

Aaron Nuttall (BOISE, ID United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Dungeon Crawl Classics #1: Idylls of the Rat King (Paperback)

In hindsight you can see you're in for trouble from the very first word: Idyll. There's nothing the least bit idyllic in this module; the word they wanted was "Idol." There are lots of idols to rat gods.

My pithy summary of the module: Very little would be lost by replacing the room-by-room descriptions with "40 rooms full of goblins with a wererat here and there. There's a vampire sorceress down there, but don't worry, the Search DC for the door to her room is too high for characters of this level to find."

But until you've read the module you don't have the benefit of hindsight. I hope to save you the trouble. The failing of this adventure is that it's mostly filler: room after room of "dungeon dressing" waiting patiently for the "heroes" to come in and butcher them.

Apart from the dull design of the encounters, there's the repition of the stat blocks --nearly every encounter is with the same monster, but the stat blocks are repeated every time. This problem is compounded by the presence of lycanthropes, which, because of the dumb way the d20 3.5 rules for these monster work, require three separate stat blocks. So, every wererat in the module is presented in three (nearly identical) blocks for its different forms. Surely they could have found a better way to use the column inches.

Another serious flaw is the presence of ogre zombies on the wandering monster tables. These fatties do a MINIMUM of 9 damage with a successful hit. That will drop most 1st-level PCs. With ONE hit. Ogre zombies are a serious threat to any party in this module's level range (1-3) and a GM who let's them show up randomly is asking for his session to be ruined. What's worse, on level 4 of the dungeon the wander monster tabel actually calls for encounters with SIX ogre zombies. That must be a mistake.

I recommend you spend your money on something else --Wicked Fantasy Factory's (also from Goodman Games) modules are more fun, if you have a taste for the ridiculous; or even Dungeon Crawl Classics #2, also for 1st-level parties. Just glancing over it, it looks superior to #1. Stay tuned for my review.