Designed to work equally well as a location stumbled upon when exploring or somewhere sought out on purpose, the book begins by giving the background to how the place came to be (an intriguing tale starting with chaos-worshipping cultists and continuing with a meddling mage...), provides a few hints that could be developed into plot hooks if you want to have the characters hear about it before they arrive, and then launches into a room-by-room description.

The whole flavour of a Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG game is well-maintained, with traps a-plenty and some interesting stuff to find (even if you have to figure out how to use it). It appears quite generous in magic items, albeit most are 'one-shot' devices, but that makes logical sense once you figure out what's been happening there... and there are some novel (quite scary) monsters, too.

The adventure is well-resourced, with a blank players' map as well as the regular one, both provided in the book and as separate JPG images that you can download. The actual descriptions are clear, with relevant monster stats and notes on how they will behave in combat just where you need them.

This is very much a 'dungeon crawl' and a very good one in the classic form... (oops, typed that, then read it back!). It provides challenge in combat, resource management and figuring out what's happening, but characters who like talking will have to talk to each other! An enjoyable session should result.

Return to Bone Hoard of the Dancing Horror page.

Reviewed: 15 August 2012