Sons of Gruumsh

This is an adventure for Dungeons and Dragons Third Edition . For the uninitiated, a module is a prepackaged adventure for a role playing game. It give the Dungeon Master a leg up on running the game because everything is laid out, mapped, and the treasure and experience is commiserate with the player's characters relative power level. The module is designed for four fourth level characters and will provide them enough challenge to possibly raise them two levels by the adventures end.

The adventure is set in the Moonsea area of Faerun and points north into the lawless region known as the Thaar. Deep in the Thaar, a orcish fanatic prepares the way for a foretold Warlord who will unite the Orcs of the Thaar. Several young scions of the noble houses of Melvaunt with delusions of competency have gone and gotten themselves captured, and are being held to be sacrifices. The heroes have to make their way across the moors to the ruined orcish fortress of Xul Jarak. There they must infiltrate the foreboding fortress, locate the would be heroes, and free them. If they are discovered they will have to face Warlord Thrull and all his minions, including the formidable orogs, or deep orcs.

The Module is divided into six parts; the introduction provides the background and adventure synopsis, Part one sets the heroes in Melvaunt, and sets up the meeting for the job, offering the possibility of political maneuverings if any of your players enjoy that sort of intrigue. I have one who does, and I considerably expanded this section for him to have a chance to shine.

Part 2 covers the eight day journey crossing the Thaar. This can be as simple or easy as you want, and allows you to pad the experience the characters earn if you want to make sure they reach sixth level by the end of the adventure. If your party has more than four players, it is easier to double up the random monsters here, than to raise the levels of the Orcs in Xul-Jarak.

Part 3 is Xul-Jarak, and is the heart of the story. Here is a multilevel dungeon for your characters to creep or sweep through, depending on their style of play. Xul-Jarak is well designed. It provided detailed information on who might hear the heroes making a ruckus, and what will happen if the heroes try this tactic, or that one. This can be very helpful to novice Dungeon Masters.

There are good maps of the keep in the inside covers, and deeper levels are depicted on detailed maps inside. These are so well designed, I have used this module several times. Once it was a fortress carved out of the underdark and populated by grimlocks. Another time, I needed a temple to be raided, so I added a fist full of priests, and changed everyone to big bruiser human warriors hired for their muscle. Still another time, I needed a site wiped out by a plague of undead. This worked perfectly, all the orcs became zombies, any thing bigger became a ghoul or a ghast, and I dropped in a Necromancer's lab in the bottom level. So you see, with a little creativity you can really maximize the usefulness. One of the bigger complaints I have heard, "Its just so generic!" is in my opinion one of its greater strengths.

Part 4 is Flight or Fight. This covers the heroes return to Melvaunt. A little clue here, you might see about upping the reward treasure at the end; if you don't want to increase the monetary value, have a feast in the hero's honor, thrown by House Bruil or House Marsk. My fellows thought they were a bit stingy.

The last portion of the module is the Appendix. It is very helpful. It list the complete stats for all the heroes, and for all the major villains. If I need a few extra mooks to throw at the party in another game, I sometimes use these few pages to give me ready made cannon fodder.

At $9.95 for 32 pages, this module is absolutely par for the course. However, this one module is more useful than most, and I really got my money out of it.