Cairn of the Skeleton King

[Scott]

Rob sent me the playtest copy a few days ago. This looks very good. Lots of material too. The playtest copy is 60 pages before maps and illos. It contains two related adventures. I don't know if the released version will be the same. Since it was done with the CU stats, it's a play as is, no wading through D20 mega-stat blocks for the info that really matters for conversion.

Scott

[GRWelsh]

So, tell us about it. How about a review?

[Scott]

Gave the whole thing a once over, and now I'm doing a complete read. So far, it's got a good mix of challanges, and requires a wide range of resources and thinking.

[grodog]

Sounds good, Scott. Keep us posted

[Scott]

I'll be starting this adventure next session. Last week I got the party to Greyhawk from Fax. After settling in they took one trip to the dungeons. Next week we'll get Cairn rolling.

[grodog]

Nice! I still like Cairn and Tower quite a bit

Allan.

[Scott]

I like CotSK. The monsters are pretty staple and it’s very linear, but it plays well; it’s a good mixture of combat, traps, and thinking.

[Scott]

We had some cancellations Saturday, so we had to put this off another session.

[Scott]

We started this Saturday night. The first battle with 24 skeletons was brutal. It just dragged on and on. All of the skeletons were enhanced, basically +2 to their HD, and there was one blunt weapon in the party. The combat took up half the night.
Some of Rob’s puzzles are way too out there. The party had to deal with two of them. The succubus and cherubs question, and the 6 chests. The way they are set up, I just don’t say a party figuring them out with any kind of enjoyable flow.

[Scott]

It’s not that hard riddles don’t have a place, it’s just the specific usage. The Sphinx riddle in White Plume Mountain works. You answe the riddle you get the reward, the easy pass, but if you don’t you still get the hard way around. Rob’s ink puzzle in Dark Druids, if you don’t figure that out, you just stop. And this two part riddle with the cherubs and the chests, the payoff doesn’t seem worth the headache.

[Scott]

Last night was the one year anniversary of the campaign I am running. The party spent a good amount of time trying to figure out puzzles, but for the most part failed. Part of it was there own fault, they came up with some crazy theories and wasted a lot of time trying to prove them. The large hall with the cenotaphs also ate up a lot of their time. After springing the trap in the Weapons and Regalia room the party had a pretty epic battle trying to fight off the Teeth of Thanatos while destroying the fire bolt slingers before they ignited the oil. The party thief slipped away from the melee and found the levers to deactivate the trap. There was quite a haul of magical goodies here, and they unlocked the doors in the Cenotaph hall allowing them to proceed south.

[Scott]

Spoiler Warning!!!
We're just finishing this up, and Rob's adventures have a tendency to read better than they play, they are too fiddly and anti-climactic. CotSK suffers especially suffers of the latter. The Fake Heckazar is a pushover in combat, he was a 2 round kill. The party knew something was up, so they continued their hunt for the evil wizard behind this nefarious plot. And the payoff: the real Heckazar is in a magical sleep, and easily offed by a coup de grace.
And the skeleton king, he's a cool character, but he's no challenge for a party of 4th - 7th level adventurers.
It's a cool plot, and there's a lot of potential, but the DM needs to put in more effort than you expect in a purchased adventure to really make it work.