The Curse of the Dwarven Tomb can be found on DTRPG for $3.
~ 1600 words. 8 minutes to read.

This was a requested review on the Arcane Library discord server.

What is it?

A SD adventure for 4th-level trespassers of a dwarven tomb. There is no meadery or forge involved. I was saddened.

Unique Features?

Alternative resolution mechanic in the form of “lifting the curse.” It rewards 3XP.

What’s the story?

A site of dwarven pilgrimage, the tomb of Uldrakk-Mor, is sealed & strange creatures have been spotted at night. In reality some rival crawlers entered, stole something, got cursed, and the doors closed, trapping some inside.

So… Adventure?

Setup

There aren’t really any hooks or rumors spelled out. In fact, the overview explains the dwarven pilgrimage & shut doors and ends with:

The player characters have made the arduous journey to the tomb, and as they take the last few heavy steps through the snow, they find the massive dwarven-crafted doors looming above them.
Will they find a way into the tomb, or are they doomed to return home in shame?

So to that end, I set up some hooks & rumors that you may want to consider as part of why your players would head towards this tomb.

Hooks

1. ALTRUISM. Purify the curse at the tomb so dwarves can return to their pilgrimage & improve the local economy.
2. RESCUE. The doors recently closed, screams can be heard from inside. Please save those inside.
3. MONEY. Hired by a local dwarf to exorcism the curse.

Rumors

1. Deformed creatures surround the exterior of the tomb, possibly former guards or the cursed victims.
2. Dwarves love axes more than hammers, because hammers don’t exist.
3. Treasure in the tomb will not awaken the curse now since the cursed items are already taken.

The random encounters feature a swarm of rats (lv 6), spider (lv 0), ooze (lv 2), and ghost (lv 6). Given the 1:1 monster guidance on page 193 (core book), a group of four 4th-level adventurers should be expected to handle 12 levels of monster. None of these exceeds 6. I recommend using more than 1 on each of these entries.

Room Keys

While the dramatic question asks “will they find a way into the tomb”, there is only one way in – the front door. And, if the party doesn’t speak Dwarvish, they aren’t getting in. Which I always find curious about dwarven adventures, they seem to always presume a dwarf is present. Or maybe it’s just the ones I read? There might be some sympathetic humans or elves to dwarven plight, assuming we ignore the Tolkien-animosity between the two people. Or just some attracted to enough coin.

So Area 1 features a cool dwarven faced door that will speak a dwarven riddle to the players that they may or may not understand. If they do understand it, there’s a singular answer, that can be solved by a DC 10 INT check (ugh, non-standard DCs). For me, this is a solid impression of flavor mixed with a bad impression of mechanics.

Any riddle that can be solved by making a check is lackluster design to me because there is no risk for failure beyond can’t get in. Which is already the case. Instead, the check or each failed guess should force some penalty while providing more information to solve the riddle. Such as, the dwarven face spits forge waste at the guesser for 1d6 damage and then says, I can clear a forest better than any other weapon. After 3 wrong guesses, it stays locked for 24 hours. Then, the players have to camp out and contend with the threats that leaked out of the tomb before the doors closed.

A side-tangent about riddles

Riddles are one of those divisive elements of gameplay in dungeons because some people consider them a tax on player intelligence rather than character intelligence. I think that is a nothing argument, because the entire game & dungeon is a challenge to player intelligence role-played through their character. The more creative the player is, the more intelligent the player is, the more likely they are to overcome the obstacles set before them, including riddles. That’s the nature of gameplay that encourages you to go beyond the four corners of the character sheet.

The issue for riddles as I see it is that they aren’t fun the way most people build & run them. First, they are rarely given proper setup for easy resolution. It seems most people believe the riddle itself is the setup. Frequently, it’s not. Riddles are generally answerable by asking questions if the riddle isn’t pitch perfect. This is why I prefer open-ended riddles to single answer riddles. OR, riddles set up with clear hints (through paintings, statuary, etc.) prior to bumbling into the riddle that needs to be solved. The latter is more of a puzzle setup for the riddle, but it rewards players for paying attention to their environment so we’re hitting that exploration element of gameplay rather than “how clever are you?”

The other issue is that if you can solve a riddle with a skill check, why write the riddle? You’ve provided a problem that doesn’t need to be engaged with in order to resolve it. That’s not really an interactive part of your adventure/dungeon at that point. It applies no resource pressure to make choices consequential. It’s because of these limitations that most riddles struggle to be engaging.

And now back to the room keys…

So while I love the talking dwarven face door, I dislike the riddle as setup as the only means of entering the dungeon. It leaves me with a mixed impression one room in. Which leads me to a question about Area 2, if the stone golems (lv 5) only come to life and attack anyone who tries to take any of the stolen items out of Uldrakk-Mor, shouldn’t they have come to life and attacked the people who activated this curse by stealing the items of Uldrakk-Mor? Why are they still in their niches?

This is an excellent opportunity to have a patrol, giving this dungeon some life by having them search for the items in the tomb, but they are sitting in their niches and following video game logic of only activating if the players do something. While prepping, I converted them to patrols moving towards the guard quarters (area 10). I also feel like this is something that breaks some of the suspension of disbelief for me. If the players arrive 3 months after the doors shut, shouldn’t these golems have ransacked the entire place looking for the items? Or at least killed all the Ur-Dwarves in here? The setup really should be this happened within the last few days for it to work. Don’t really think too hard about it.

Intermission: The Map

Then, we get the map. It has a key. It places monsters on the map for easy reference. This is one of my favorite maps thus far. It is informative and relatively clear even when things aren’t labelled, such as the statues. I do wish it came before the room keys started. A simple flip of pages 4 and 5 makes more organizational sense to me and primes the brain to understand what follows by showing the layout before actually seeing the keys.

And now back to the room keys…

Area 4 has a call out that the monsters will investigate combat in area 6, but not 2 or 10 or 7 or 8. I’d include those. I don’t really see why they wouldn’t investigate noise from any adjacent chamber. To which, there’s a lot of fun ideas here, but they sort of operate on a video game logic basis. When you strip that logic away, there is a lot here to work with and it is quite fun to use. The organization is solid. It clearly calls out traps, monsters, & treasure. The descriptions are sparse and the overarching story, thin, but adaptable.

So who is this for?

It’s for everyone. This adventure isn’t really trying to oversell you on anything. It gives you the notes, you build the story from those notes. It’s emergent gameplay facilitating in all the best ways. What it lacks in conceptual density, it makes up for in adaptability. The only real issue I see is that it is written as a passive dungeon you need to breathe life into. In other words, the video game logic underlying it. This probably comes down to differences in the style of written/played game from a Dragonbane expectation (the creator’s main focus) and the OSR playstyle.

Which, this could be run as a starting adventure. Most of the monsters are weaker than anything you’ll find in Lost Citadel of the Scarlet Minotaur. If you’re looking at this for a level 4 party, you probably should double or triple the monstrous threat and maybe substitute some monsters.

This is just a good dungeon with a few weak links that can be easily fixed or added.

If you made it this far, thank you. I’m not going to nerd out or nitpick the design because it’s mostly clean. Go enjoy the adventure.

Oh, and also, there’s a great HP tracker sheet for all the monsters. I’ve not seen this in any SD adventures yet. It’s a useful tool.