Rappan Athuk: The dungeon of graves. Published by Frog God Games and formerly Necromancer games in its original incarnation. I'm currently running my play group through this big beast of a module...err....megadungeon using the 5E ruleset. Rappan Athuk was originally released for the 3.5 ruleset as three separate volumes detailing the multiple levels of this expansive dungeon and surrounding area. It has since seen compilation volumes with the newer editions of the game: Pathfinder, 5E, along with a Swords & Wizardry (Basic) version. Much of this review will be in regards to the 5E version of the module, but much there is little difference in the different releases outside of the mechanical elements presented within.
For starters lets touch on some legend surrounding this module, it is deadly and it is big. Deadly in 5E is not something typically associated, and for the most part I would agree, the 5E version of Rappan Athuk is not nearly as deadly as the other iterations, but there are some definite "oh shit" moments throughout, I'll touch on this a bit more later. And yes it is big, like, there is so much in here from the wilderness region and small town, to the different bandit groups plaguing the region, and that is all before you get to the literal 50+ dungeon levels presented within. This is a pricey book, but you are getting years worth of content and I imagine no two campaigns run would be the same given the very sandbox area to play in.
The setting centers around a small hamlet deep in what is apparently BFE (very remote) of the Frog Gods Lost Land setting. The backstory presents that several hundred years ago the fleeing army of an evil city named Tsar, known worshippers of the demon god Orcus, had been driven to the area around Rappan Athuk called the Forest of Hope. The alliance of good had defeated them at the city and were in pursuit to drive out the last vestiges of evil, though neither army was ever heard from or seen again. Now hundreds of year later, rumors have begun to abound of the lost levels of Rappan Athuk deep under this region, only the hamlet of Zelkor's Ferry providing any bit of civilization in the region persists, but adventurers and treasure seekers flock to the area for riches or more likely...a quick death.
The dungeon levels themselves are not thematically connected....there is a goblin city, a vampire level, a lava level, a forgotten chamber of the elder beast level....there is a lot going on here, but it kind of works. The inter-connectivity to this place is insane, there are a number of entrances to various levels throughout the wilderness region and each level has multiple means of egress which lead to varied levels. Take the underground river to this level, drop down this random hole to another, really awesome and not linear at all for multi-level dungeon. If your players aren't careful they could easily stumble into something well beyond their level, but I really love it. In my home game, my players virtually terrified to venture into the dungeon levels, let alone get lost in there. The tricks, traps and puzzles are really great and varied, you can tell the FGG staff are big fans of the Grimtooth series as some of these are pretty diabolical...oh you want an example...ok, how about the sloping passage that fills with water and pushes the party into a massive spinning fan! There is also a TPK trap located close the main entrance of the dungeon itself, the players could vary well die before they even set foot in.
The over-arching theme of Rappan Athuk is dealing with the coming and goings of Orcus and his minions. If your players are lucky enough to survive, there is enough content to push them to max level and possible encounter with the big guy himself. Many of the set piece encounters are epic and extremely challenging, character should be expected at any given time, but that sense of danger and escalation should really push your players into engagement. There is also an included full bestiary of all of the named and custom monster encounters, really glad to see this included and stated out.
So, what could be better? Like many of the other FGG volumes it is verbose, like holy hell there is a lot in here to read and dig through. Certainly not an easy tome to run. It is not just the backstory and narrative add-ons for the levels, but just the exposition within rooms themselves is a lot to dig through in the heat of running the game. The editing, dear god the editing, I really didn't realize how bad it was until I began to manually load my game into Roll20 for my players, but references to connecting levels are wrong throughout, whole panels are missing on certain levels, room descriptions are crossed up or mislabeled. There were times I had to put the book down and just draw out the connections or room descriptions myself, this shouldn't occur in a $100 book.
Many of the generic and random encounters are just hordes of enemies of lower CR value, I guess the intent was to overwhelm the PC's, but this doesn't work as great in 5E as it did in earlier editions, plus it tends to bog down the game a bit with unnecessary combat that is not advancing the plot or player agenda. I still have not figured out why they placed the hub location, Zelkor's Ferry, so freaking far away from the main entrance to the dungeon also. It really discourages the typical adventure jaunt, as written, it is over 20 miles away and across a river....there is a lot to do in the wilderness areas, but the heart and soul of this module is set within the dungeon proper, it should have been situated a bit better in my opinion. One of the key aspect of any megadungeon are factions, you won't really find these here unfortunately. Another minor gripe is getting going with the module from level 1. This somewhat fixed with a satellite dungeon located near Zelkor's Ferry, but this turned the first several sessions of my campaign into a more homebrew wilderness adventure. It has been fun, but I'm running off the cuff more than I would like as I really want my players to cut their teeth in the dungeon levels...just DM problems here, ignore me.
Lastly, let me quickly touch on the art. The 5th edition conversion for this book upgraded all of the art to full-color with several new full page art pieces. It's good, but there are some odd choices like using random map snippets to conclude chapter levels. I mean, it serves no purpose unless they were trying to drive up the page count. I much prefer the black and white art found in the previous editions (Pathfinder and S&W) it was really fantastic and set the mood for this module perfectly.
Allright, so is it really worth it? I mean, this is a pricey tome...yes, gripes aside which are somewhat common with many 3rd party publishers, there is some really amazing stuff presented here. If your group is open to running games using a non-5th edition system, find a copy of the S&W version and run it using B/X or the fabulous Old-school essentials version of the game. Some of the encounters, creatures and levels to be explored are really incredible, looking at you poop monster. Is it the best megadungeon, no, but it is really good and follows the lineage of the 3rd edition tough as nails era of the game. My group has been having a really good time with it so far, with the added elements I introduced for my game, but there have already been several notable memories had and I'm looking forward to many more!
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