In common with other products in the 'Rooms & Encounters' series, this book provides full details on a single room within The Dungeon Under the Mountain setting, including scaleable monsters, traps and other challenges for the characters to overcome, delivered complete with customisable statistics, space for your own notes and a 'battlemap' style plan for those who like to fight out their encounters using miniatures. This time, it is Room 11 on Level 1 that is under the spotlight.

"In this encounter, nothing the party sees is truly what it seems" just about sums it up. What is really going on, however, is logically constructed and makes sense. Sounds and smells, and even tactile impressions, are included to aid the DM in making this encounter really come alive for the characters, while even the likely responses to character actions - in particularly battle tactics should it come to combat - are well explained and easy to follow.

Overall, it is a good addition to this series, although by the very nature of the beast, each encounter is completely isolated from everything else and running the Dungeon using them could turn into a very fragmentary exercise. Some thought is needed if you do intend to use the encounters in the Dungeon itself as to what is going on - the most likely being somewhere long abandoned where assorted stray creatures have wandered in and settled down, which does of course beg the question as to how they manage to get on with each other when there are no passing adventurers to molest!

Return to Rooms & Encounters: Shrine of the Sisterhood page.

Reviewed: 18 April 2006