This product is the first in a line designed to populate selected rooms in the mammoth 'Dungeon Under the Mountain' series (or any suitable room in your own dungeon, of course), but more importantly it marks a new height of technological innovation in its presentation.

This advance is in concept simple but in implementation fascinating: you can choose the level of encounter that you require (low, medium or high) and the monsters, trap DCs and even the behaviour of the bad guys will be amended to suit your needs. You can even play around at a lower level, setting the chosen challenge not for the whole room but for each monster, trap, etc. If that was not enough, there is a space to type in your own notes, which can be saved for later. Ingenious in the extreme, and very useful when you need that encounter in a hurry!

Maps, too, are customizable. There's a small one for the DM and a larger one that could be used with miniatures. You can open or close doors, choose whether the place is furnished or empty and so on.

Situated on the first level of the Dungeon Under the Mountain, this crypt holds the mortal remains of the servants of a long-gone deity who attempted to destroy life on the world by sending out plague-carriers. Their task done, or so the deity thought, they were laid to rest, bound by the usual curses of coming back when needed, along with all their worldly goods. And so, perhaps, your adventurers may find them...

The descriptions of what you'll find there are straightforward, detailed enough to enable you to set your challenge level and run the game, but with plenty of scope for you to add and amend as necessary to make the whole thing fit in with what you want to do. It's basically descriptions of the 10 Plague-Bringers who were resting peacefully until your players lumbered in, and what may be found around them, but overall it's an innovative and interesting product which makes extreme use of technology to enable you to customize, well, just about everything!

Return to The Crypt of the Plague-Bringers page.

Reviewed: 7 December 2005