Pyramid Review
The Sunless Citadel (for D&D)
Published by Wizards of the Coast
Written by Bruce R. Cordell
32 pages, $9.95
The first adventure for D&D 3rd Edition, The Sunless Citadel is designed to challenge four 1st level characters. Unlike some adventures, this one encourages the GM to award the players experience to advance levels during game play so that they are powerful enough to handle latter encounters. Briefly touching on preparation, Bruce Cordell advises which parts of the DMG and Player's Handbook to look over; this is very useful for new players and GMs. The adventure background may not be immediately learned by players, but is there for eventual discovery.
More important, though, are the character hooks. While the standard one is there -- e.g. "The Sunless Citadel is a local legend . . . " -- there are two other options. While being contracted is another standard adventuring motive, the last one, solving a mystery (in this case the players are looking to discover where goblins get a special type of fruit, and how they manage, year after year to successfully steal the growing trees of that fruit) is often under-used.
The action takes place in the small town of Oakhurst. Using the same format as found in the D&D Gazetteer, the town is broken down to rows that are easy to read in a glance. You can see the population, authority figures, important characters, and notes. The introduction of NPC classes is first used here, with warriors . . .
This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.
Article publication date: September 29, 2000
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