Marauders of the Dune Sea: A 4th Edition D&d Adventure ("Dungeons & Dragons") [Paperback]

Unlike the amazing Dark Sun Campaign Guide, which is the new high water mark for 4e books, this adventure is absolutely abysmal.

It's surprising, really - WotC has been on such an up-swing with adventures and adventure locales of late that I've started to regain faith in their module-writing ability. Slaying Stone was pretty incredible, and Vor Rukoth is one of the best site-based sandboxes I've seen in quite some time. Well, this one just ruins their good run.

Alright. So how bad is it? As a warning, spoilers may follow.

The module has no encounter to draw the PCs into it. Instead, there is a (very) brief section for adventure hooks, the main one of which assumes the PCs are literate. The quest is for a magical macguffin, which is one part of a three-part magical macguffin. That's immediately followed by an encounter of Level+5, which is really just to beat down the characters and set up some stuff that (1) you, the DM, may not care about; (2) isn't referenced again in this adventure; and (3) is kind of lame, even in the conclusions box.

After this, much like P3, it's a "Hey, let's fight a bunch of encounters in a straight line" adventure. Seriously - if you were to make a flowchart, it'd be like 15 encounters, one right after the other, without any deviation from the railroad. Even the dungeon area - which is quite large - *doesn't have a single branch*. Yes, each room follows each other room, in a single, straight path. (It may look curved around on paper, but really - it's a straight line, with no forks.)

About the only clever part is a single encounter with another group of adventurers looking for the same thing. Ho-hum.

On top of all this, everything seems very squished - like the author needed to fit in a certain XP budget, and the arbitrary and unnecessary encounters required to fill that budget just squeezed out everything of actual interest.

And finally, there's nothing particularly unique to Dark Sun in the adventure, apart from a few random setting trappings like a templar and some hej-kin. What do the monsters look like? Why in the world is there a stream of running water here? What is the Face in the Rock? If it's here, it's not really addressed. There are two pictures for the players, and a brief sidebar about concluding the adventure. Other than that, it's a boring fighty-fight adventure.

I guess if you're a DM desperate for ideas, or you secretly wanted to run a plotless series of encounters at home, you could grab some use from this. I don't think I will. I will use the poster map, and that's it.

Added 8/20: If you're looking for a much better starting adventure, Dungeon 181 (it's on WotC's website; you'll need a DDI subscription to get it) has "The Vault of Darom Madar." It's thematically somewhat similar, but much better executed, compared to this one. It's what I'll end up running. The Free RPG Day adventure, Bloodsand Arena, is also excellent if you can manage to get your hands on a copy.

**Update a year later, 8/17/11**
I still have no desire to run this adventure, but the poster map has proved to be worth the $10 I paid for it! It's generic enough that it's been pulled out probably 15-20 times over the course of our campaign. I use it when I need a quick desert map (or bazaar map on the other side), and it's now an inside joke that there's apparently an abandoned wagon in every stretch of desert. So, I'm now happy with my purchase! I'm tempted to upgrade my review by a star, but I think I'll pass; the adventure itself is still pretty awful.

Like other reviewers, I find it shameful that this adventure was ever deemed worthy of carrying the "Dark Sun" name, let alone the D&D name. In fact, it's just a shame to have carried any name whatsoever, short of "Todd," which I hate anyway. So let's start with that: this adventure should have been named "Todd."

"Todd" was obviously conceived as a generic (or at least non-Dark Sun) adventure. This is not necessarily a bad thing, I've done it myself, and haha let me tell you, there's nothing like the look on a D&D player's face when you put him face to face with Captain Mal and River Tam. I digress.

Minor spoilers ahoy, matey!

As I said, nothing wrong with porting an adventure to a new setting. But when converting an adventure from one setting to another, you actually have to know and understand your destination setting--especially something so radically different as Dark Sun--which Bruce Cordell (no relation to Bruce Campbell, I am told) clearly did not. For example, we know that for most Athasian city-dwellers, literacy is a crime. We know this because the EFFING DARK SUN BOOK TELLS US THIS ON PAGE 14!!!!! Yet the first hook in the adventure is to have House Shom pass out scrolls to everyone carrying a sword. Because House Shom are, apparently, idiots. Literate idiots, I'll give you that. But when the long-dead Athasian Gods were handing out brains, House Shom thought they said "Never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down, never gonna run around and desert you!" (that's right, gentle reader, you've just been textually rick-rolled. You're welcome.)

Then there's the dungeon with the underground river (like, with water and giant sea creatures and stuff) with absolutely no explanation as to how this came to pass on a completely arid world. (How do we know Dark Sun takes place on an arid world? Because the EFFING DARK SUN BOOK TELLS US THIS ON PAGE 4!!!!! AND THE FIRST 3 PAGES ARE THE GORRAM TABLE OF CONTENTS!!!) Seriously, access to the stream would be worth more than all the treasure combined in this module and the next 10 Dark Sun adventures combined. In fact, your players could be excused for just stopping at the river room, and pretty much setting up shop to be the richest bastards on the planet.

Finally we have a mysterious dungeon which nobody on the planet seems to be able to locate. Which is understandable considering that the entrance only has a 100 foot gigantic frowny face made of rock, or that it's within a 6 day walk of Tyr, surrounded by a giant sand vortex that should be viewable for miles and miles, populated by some creatures with no visible means of sustaining themselves. Oh, except the river. I forgot about the river. Which the cave denizens presumably use for snorkeling, water skiing, and playing water polo with Team Kuo Toa when they're not using it for raising their gigantic and completely inexplicable water-breathing lobster creature. On Athas. The desert planet. Which we know is a desert planet because of page 4 of the goddamned Dark Sun book.

As somebody else pointed out, the table maps are kinda handy, but obviously produced from a non-Dark Sun source as it shows horses and oxen, two creatures that don't even exist on Athas. (maybe they are metal sculptures of these mythical-to-Athas beasts? Yeah, I'm gonna go with "metal sculptures" because hell why not, rivers and metal statues of horses for everyone!) The other side of the map is--bizarrely--dedicated to a relatively minor encounter that has nothing to do with the main focus of the adventure other than to wear the players down a bit. (side trek: the author missed a golden opportunity here, and instead of spiders that spin glass webs should have placed a magic fairy forest where the PCs have to fight Clerics and Paladins.)

And it's not just the world inconsistencies that make this such a dog. I paid $12 for this thing. TWELVE bucks! And for that I get a lame setup ("hey how about some dude sticks a scroll in your hands saying to wander out into the desert with no idea where you're going, and find this, you know, face dungeon place"), a yawn-worthy and pretty short dungeon crawl (except for the river, holy crap your PCs are going to be rich beyond their wildest dreams!!!!), and a conclusion that basically amounts to, "um...you know...whatever works for you is how you should end it because hey we already have your twelve goddam dollars so you know, there's that."

This adventure is a real insult to Dark Sun fans, and the fact that it's the first 4e adventure out of the gate makes the insult even more insulty. The only positive thing I can say about it is that the adventure (such as it is) is well organized, typos are relatively few, and the encounters are presented in an easy to DM manner, if you were to actually run this disaster. Which you will not. Oh no, no, no. You will not buy this steaming pile, you will not incorporate it into your Dark Sun campaign, and you will most definitely not subject your poor players to it. Not if you don't want that game night to be know forever as "the night [insert your name here] sucked the soul out of the universe and destroyed all love and double rainbows forever and ever oh my god I hate [insert your name here] SO MUCH!!!!!"

Another reviewer recommended "The Vault of Darom Madar" from Dungeon 181 instead of this 32 page hate on paper. I heartily concur. In fact, if it came down to running this adventure or running the editorial section of the Wall Street Journal, I'd say you should bone up on how to read a PNL statement before embarking on your journey to "Temple of the Fiscally Irresponsible Elves."

In summary: One star because hey, nice font.

Let me start by saying that I LOVE Dark Sun. Athas is my favorite setting of all time and I own nearly everything ever published for it from 2e. I'm fairly happy with the Dark Sun 4e campaign guide and monster book.

With that said, this is the worst adventure ever written for Dark Sun bar none. Do not buy it. Send a message to WotC that fans will not tolerate this kind of garbage.

My beefs are many:

-The weak hooks assume the party can read. Most Athasians are illiterate so it's silly for a merchant house to assume any would-be adventurers for hire can read the summons.

-The first combat encounter has Thri-kreen and Elves working together! These two races absolutely despise each other. This is like a dwarf marrying an orc, never happen! To make matters worse a templar from Urik is part of the ambush openly displaying his templar-ness in Tyr. He would be killed on sight there. It's like the author knows nothing about the race, culture or world flavor.

-There is a stream with a 15' deep pool of water in the "dungeon". A 15' deep pool of water on Athas would be finding a pot of gold anywhere else.

-Most the encounters give out loads of money and magic items. Again it's like the author has never read anything on Dark sun before. It's a low magic setting! There shouldn't have been any magic treasure other than the Crown they are seeking. An easy fix but still super annoying.

-The poster map (the best thing about the adventure) has horses and oxen in the market area. These creatures simply don't exist on Athas!

I could go on but what's the point? Worst adventure ever. It can only be salvaged as a nice quick rail road desert adventure on some other setting like Forgotten Realms or Eberron. Even it that capacity it is seriously lacking anything worth remembering.

This adventure was so insulting to a true Dark Sun fan. If you consider yourself one, do not buy or even look at.