Dungeon Dive 1 – Thieves’ Guild Hideout
By David Garrett
Published by Amalara
Pages: 18 + Cover + OGL
Fully bookmarked
Disclaimer: This is not a playtest review. I did not buy Dungeon Dive 1 – Thieves’ Guild Hideout, it was sent to me for review as part of
Crothian’s Review Project.
At some point in any DM’s campaign, the players will invariably turn left where the DM expects them to turn right, forcing him or her to think fast in order to seamlessly fill in the gap between player decisions and a spontaneous, enjoyable gaming session. Some DMs love this aspect of the game, and for others it’s an absolute nightmare. Dungeon Dive 1 – Thieves’ Guild Hideout is a product that is able to alleviate some of that stress by providing a moderately detailed dungeon that can be dropped into the game as needed, and run with little preparation.
What you get is an eighteen page PDF, not including the cover and the OGL. The cover is the only source of artwork in the product, and really it’s just a spruced up picture of a portion of the first dungeon map itself, layered on top of a parchment-like effect. It is also something of a spoiler, showing the location of multiple secret doors and a number of hazards. Inside, the text is in standard two-column portrait format, and there are no borders to eat up inordinate amounts of toner or ink should one desire to print it out. The occasional piece of “boxed” text is shaded a light grey. Dungeon Dive 1 – Thieves’ Guild Hideout includes a short introduction explaining some of the peculiarities of the product, and how to make the best use of it, one full-page and one half-page map, three sections of dungeon; the “outer tunnels”, the “hideout”, and the “inner sanctum”, and it finishes off with an appendix containing statistics for sample human rogues of each level, 1 through 5.
The two full-colour maps are fairly easy to read, but unfortunately, neither of them contains a legend. The items placed on the maps are for the most part obvious, although some reading of the room’s text may be required to alleviate the occasional head-scratching. (Is that supposed to be lava or is it just some fancy red carpeting?) The layout of the dungeon itself is of that semi-random style that kind of boggles the mind but at the same time makes adventuring “interesting”. Many rooms are rectangular, but some are just odd, and it definitely lends to the adventure a beer-and-pretzels vibe. (“Why would anyone shape a room like that and put it here?” “Dude, you need another beer.”)
The provided bookmarks go so far as to link to each individual room, in addition to the aforementioned dungeon “sections”, which is particularly useful feature if the DM is using the product on a computer or laptop and is constantly forced to flip back and forth between the map and the individual room entries. Perhaps in the future it would be possible to link the room numbers on the maps themselves to each room’s particular entry, thereby shortening the process even further.
As its name would seem to indicate, the dungeon is ostensibly there to provide a safe haven for a local thieves’ guild, but really it is just a fairly general two-level dungeon with twenty-six keyed locations, populated by the odd guardian monster, plenty of traps, a few incumbent rogues, and some loot. Notes are included allowing one to scale the difficulty of many of the encounters on the fly, depending on the level of the players’ characters. For low power groups, the Encounter Level of the various pre-placed traps and opponents seems to be in the 1-to-3 ballpark range, while for medium power groups it hovers around 5-to-8, and for high power groups ELs tend to fall between 7-to-12. What is left to the DM is the reason for the characters being there in the first place, and any campaign specific adversaries that the DM might wish to provide. With very little work, it could be used to provide a secret hideaway for just about any kind of villain, and is simple and general enough to find use in any campaign that features dungeons or underground basements, which is to say, pretty much all of them.
The dungeon locations themselves are fairly simple and straightforward. Where appropriate, trap and creature stats are included inline, or the location entry refers you to the appendix. As written, at no point is there a mix of creature and NPC opponents, meaning that the DM shouldn’t have to flip like mad between two or more sections of the adventure while running a combat. Sample treasures are also included for some of the areas, and while the treasure placement itself makes sense, not all of the individual items do the same. For example, running through the dungeon using the medium difficulty suggests placing in one particular chest a ring of invisibility. Isn’t that something that normally the original owner should be wearing and using against the party? The notes for the treasure also indicate that a special key is required to access its container, and while presumably the key would be found on the body of one of the rogue guards, it is not mentioned anywhere else in the adventure, not even in the sample gear for the various rogues in the appendix entries, leaving it up to the DM to remember to put it somewhere. In general, I would recommend eyeballing the treasure placements, as they won’t work for everyone. (
Three rings of invisibility
and a crystal ball?!?)
Dungeon Dive 1 – Thieves’ Guild Hideout is a handy little PDF to have kicking about, and I can definitely see myself finding a use for it, whether it be because my players have decided to go raid the local thieves’ guild to get their precious magic items back, or because I’m too tired or lazy to otherwise organize something of my own for the next session. Most of it is already prepared, all that’s left to do is provide some hooks and stat up a villain or two, place some loot, and away you go. In many ways it reminds me of those meals you can get at the grocery store that are mostly done for you, all you need to do is to provide a side-dish or two. The adventure material itself isn’t going to be winning any awards for intrigue or near life-like NPCs, at least not on its own, as it’s strictly a short and straightforward dungeon romp. But it does certainly fills a niche. I like short and sweet, and Dungeon Dive 1 – Thieves’ Guild Hideout doesn’t bite off more than it can chew.
Reviewed by Scott Benoit
