Barrow of the Forgotten King (Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Books) [Paperback]

Publisher Wizards of the Coast has been keeping up their trend of releasing new products for the Dungeons and Dragons game every month, and interspersed between all the source books and campaign expansions have been a few new official adventures. Barrow of the Forgotten King is one of those adventures, designed to seriously challenge a group of second level characters and take them all the way to fifth level by the time the entire adventure is concluded. This is also the first in a set of three adventures that all follow the same background story, each of which will be released several months apart to coincide with the release of a source book that the dungeon master may find useful in running the adventures.

The story arc presented in Barrow of the Forgotten King is interesting both to dungeon master and player alike, and can very easily be modified to mesh with an already existing campaign. The basic plot revolves around a group of grave robbers, working for an unseen evil organization, who have come to the sleepy town of Kingsholm to plunder an ancient tomb under a giant statue of a long forgotten king. Besides the obvious lure of riches buried with a deceased monarch, the tomb raiders are also motivated by an age old prophecy which the characters will become embroiled in. A dungeon master wanting to run the adventure in the middle of a campaign could easily swap out the organization behind the robbery with whatever evil group dominates his campaign world. Likewise, the section regarding the prophecy of the forgotten king, which ties into the next adventure in the series, could easily be dropped out or changed to better fit a game that has already been running.

The art in this module is the same high quality that has come to be expected of Dungeons and Dragons products. The cover art alone is outstanding, perfectly capturing the feel of one of the combat encounters towards the end of the adventure. The interior art is equally good, showcasing some of the more fearsome creatures that the characters will be pitted against. The jacket around the actual book pulls off and doubles as a map of the entire dungeon, minus any details the players shouldn't know such as locations of secret doors or monsters, which means the dungeon master doesn't have to take the time to re-draw a player friendly version of the map.

At its core, Barrow of the Forgotten King is a dungeon crawl, and a very well thought out one. The mausoleum and it's hidden under levels, where most of the action takes place, isn't so large as to cause the players to tire of searching room after room, nor is it small enough to hamper the illusion that this is an actual complex people built long ago to honor their dead king. The dungeon has a good mix of straightforward combat, traps and puzzles, and opportunities for role-playing. One of the shining moments of this module is a puzzle that the actual players will have to decode by puzzling out a riddle sequence, rather than their characters overcoming the obstacle by making a couple of dice rolls, which is a very nice change of pace. Being set in a mausoleum also allows for several creepy moments that will remind the players that they are very much in a dark and scary place where less adventurous souls wouldn't dare to tread.

Barrow of the Forgotten King is presented in a new format that Wizard's of the Coast has been toying with recently. The first quarter of the book is a straightforward synopsis of the overall plot, and then each area of the adventure is presented in chronological order with flavor text to read to the players as they progress through the dungeon. The last three quarters of the book explain in detail each encounter or tactical situation in much greater detail, including all the statistics for the monsters or non-player characters in the area. The reasoning behind the change in format is that it theoretically reduces page flipping and the amount of time the dungeon master has to search through the back to find a particular creature's statistics during the course of a battle or role playing exchange. In practice it doesn't actually reduce the amount of page flipping, it just changes the circumstances under which the dungeon master is forced to search around in the book for a particular piece of information. Rather than trying to find statistics, the dungeon master will now be searching for room descriptions and notes on what's going on in the next areas. The only real problems with this adventure are a couple of glaring typographical errors that never should have been missed, and the time it will take the dungeon master to get used to the new format.

Barrow of the Forgotten king is a great dungeon crawl that will challenge players and allow characters of all classes to use their special abilities. It's excellent art, ease of transition into existing campaigns, and well fleshed out setting make it a highly recommended module.

The Barrow of the Forgotten King is a D&D adventure for four to six 2nd level characters that should advance to the 4th or 5th level upon completion. It can be easily modified if the characters are somewhat higher in level. The adventure is set in the village of Kingsholm whose most notable feature is its ancient cemetery that is said to have existed even before the village. The most prominent landmark in the cemetery is the statue of an unknown, ancient king. The hook for the characters is that a family of mourners has vanished from the cemetery, as has the guards who went in search of them.

Enter the PC's who can be hooked into the adventure by being hired to investigate the disappearances or perhaps by the legend of the unknown king. Beyond the village' Inn where the players will learn of the cemetery and the disappearances, there are no other aspects of the village that are explored. It's pretty much just head right to the cemetery and into the great mausoleum. The players will descend into the tombs and catacombs beneath the cemetery to begin their exploration.

The Adventure locations will key several different encounters that the PC's will face. For some reason, rather than present the encounter information to the DM as you get to them, the adventure keys instruct the DM to turn to a particular page to set-up and complete the encounter. Each area also has its own mini map. To me this is a little awkward and unnecessary but doesn't hinder the game play too much. The adventure is fairly linear but a solid dungeon crawl anyway. I'd say that 2nd level characters may be a little weak and I'd at least allow 3rd level characters to start things off. It should take a few sessions to complete. I do like the detail presented by writer Ed Stark. It's a dungeon crawl but at least its not a featureless one. It's not all hack-n-slash either, as there are also a fair amount of puzzles and other obstacles the players will have to face.

The art is the usual high quality work that fans have come to expect from Wizards of the Coast with a solid cover by Steve Prescott and interior art by Wayne England and Joel Thomas. The book's cover is actually the players version of the map should the DM not want to take the time to have the whole thing mapped out by hand (although it's really not all that big).

This is actually the first installment of what will eventually be a trilogy set within the same landscape. The second adventure, The Sinister Spire, will continue things and will eventually make for one large, epic campaign.

All in all, a fairly solid low level adventure. A good drop in and go module that can be utilized with any D&D setting. They recommend the use of miniatures but it's hardly a necessity.

Reviewed by Tim Janson

Barrow of the Forgotten King sounded like a great adventure to use to get characters high enough in level and skill to go to more interesting adventures such as "The Red Hand of Doom" and "Expedition to Castle Ravenloft" and for that it works great. My main problem with the adventure is the fact that the city of Kingsholm isnt very fleshed out and it recommends that you can use some of the Npc's to help in the adventure and it doesnt flesh them out hardly at all. The puzzles or "roleplaying encounters" are not very challenging and a party of 3 2nd level characters had no problem with most of the regular encounters. So i'm guessing a full party shouldnt have any trouble with most of the encounters before the regular levelling up point that it recommends in the book. Most the adventure didnt seem very challenging and i had to "fix" a lot of things in order to make it so as well as adding in my own dungeon rooms and traps to make it a more thought out process than travelling room to room and killing whatever is there. A pc with track is also a must as i had to introduce another character later on because with no track the magical maze is nowhere near as fun as it could be. Also, if you want to run the module exactly as it reads then be prepared to pick up the 2nd and 3rd modules in the series when they come out.In conclusion, this is not a 5 star module, there are better modules out there...even for low levels, however if you are looking for a standard dungeon crawl with a low level puzzle or two (easy stuff with an experienced group of players) then this module is for you. It wasnt bad but then again it wasnt that good either.

One last thing i would like to talk about is weapons of legacy which WoTC seem to be pushing with each product. Legacy items are a cool idea but the way i understood them were that they were few and far between and very rare. It seems like every adventure they publish now...even the low level ones have weapons of legacy in them. I bought the "weapons of legacy" book off of amazon used and overall the book gave some decent quest ideas as well as the weapons but its extremely annoying when every module i buy gives a sword of legacy out at the end or in the middle thats used to defeat the main boss...this is part 1 of a 3 parter and it will add more legacy items each time i am sure and i am sure that the legacy sword in this one (which is an awesome weapon for paladin/fighter types)will be replaced by the sunsword in the expedition to castle ravenloft when my party goes through it. Artifacts were good enough...legacy items are just being overused and with a limit on using them they will soon be thrown away and upgraded with other ones.