The third in the 'Rooms & Encounters' series designed to populate the Dungeon Under the Mountain, but equally usable in a setting of your own devising, this product follows the same pattern of presentation. Throughout, you can select a High, Middle or Low level of challenge, and this alters not just the obvious things like monster stat blocks and trap difficulties, but even the opening description - as you ramp the challenge level up it gets harder to even get in there safely, never mind cope with what you find there!

Anyway, to enter this particular location you need to climb down through a trapdoor. It doesn't smell very nice and any sensible person would close the trapdoor and move on... but these are adventurers of which we speak! Once into what is obviously a tomb, even hardened adventurers should find it a bit disconcerting when the corpse starts speaking to them...

The corpse is described in quite horrific detail (I'm not sure it was a good idea doing this review just before bedtime!), and this gives you a good chance to introduce a real bit of terror into your game if you are so inclined... an opportunity to scare the characters rather than present them with merely another opponent to engage in combat. There's plenty more for those willing to brave this encounter: a fine bit of trickery to figure out, things to find and a well-detailed area to explore.

As well as the technical accomplishment of the presentation, this product stands out for the well-developed and detailed presentation of a single room - potential for plenty of adventure before you move on elsewhere.

Return to Rooms & Encounters: The Living Tomb page.

Reviewed: 1 February 2006