Kra'adumek is a preview of Venger's
upcoming Cha'alt kickstarter. He offered it as a free download a
couple of weeks ago and I grabbed it off DriveThru.
A small dungeon, consisting of 17
separate encounter areas, it's full of unique monsters and Venger's
trademark weirdness – with hardly any sleaze.
He provides a quick overview of the
Cha'alt background and Kra'dumek in particular, including Magical
Mishap tables, details the PC's will know, rules for advantage and
recommended charcater numbers and levels. The Noteworthy Details
section could use some logical organization – it's an ordered list
of all of the above. Not a big impact in this product, as it's only
one page, but would be difficult to follow if it went on for two or
more pages.
The adventure hook is straight
forward, the characters and other citizens have all been mind
controlled – in super HypnoToad style – for years. That control
has been interrupted, so it's time for some payback. This works well
for a one shot and may be the recommended intro to Cha'alt (I don't
know). I could see, in an episodic campaign, having the characters
come to their senses there with no idea how they arrived. But
overall, I would treat it as a one shot if you don't have Cha'alt.
The encounters are well written,
giving the DM plenty of info to extemporize role play when
applicable. There are a couple of encounters that will wipe the
party out if they go into the wrong place – there's warning of
trouble ahead, but hack and slash parties will bull ahead into deadly
trouble. Because that's my kind of group, I think I'd modify the
hook a bit and have the characters trying to rescue the sacrifices or
prisoners in the more 'civilized' area of the dungeon.
New spells and weapons are well
detailed and he has a nifty new (well different from The Isles of
Purple Haunted Putrescence) stat block format. But I have to assume
he's using an ascending AC system as it's never called out. Of
course, I don't really care what the numbers are there, it's been
years since I last ran an adventure using the game it was written
for. I just convert them to suit.
Overall, a solid little dungeon. But
I'm deducting a skull because it won't be easy to drop into another
campaign and the information organization issues.
