Tabletop Tales: ‘What Lurks Beyond’

As I like to bring up near constantly, I love OGL (Open Game License) content. I play a third party character in every game that I play in, and utilize plenty of OGL content in my own games that I start. However, it’s not all made equal in any way shape or form and I make no claims otherwise; sometimes it falls flat and descends into obscurity where it can’t hurt anyone. What Lurks Beyond is a published 3.5 adventure that helps support the argument of why if you don’t specialize in writing DnD products you should not write one. This is also going to be your one warning, since this review covers a specific adventure it, by nature, is chock full of spoilers. If for some reason you plan on playing this adventure (you poor sadistic bastard!) then this review may hurt any enjoyment you would receive in doing so. Unless of course you are insane, then rock on!

Supposedly, What Lurks Beyond is built for 4-6 level 7-10 characters and it warns not to admit anyone of a higher level than that. A core concept to designing adventures, or at least this is Wizards of the Coasts method, is to build it around a group of four characters and test it with various builds and parties of characters. On the first page this book has already filled me with a sense of dread, as you can’t help but wonder how the adventure accounts for the mere possibility of two extra party members. Another warning flag is the adventure’s size. The softcover book is easily over a hundred pages due to the two dungeons contained within.

The adventure is split up into a series of chapters, each covering a particular area of the adventure. This clean organization makes the adventure quite easy to run as there is no question as to where various areas are located, while past adventures I have seen lacked such a neat arrangement. The first of these chapters covers the overall area of the adventure and contains the entrances to the various dungeons as well as major points of interest while each more defined location has its own chapter.

The back of the book also contains a series of “handouts” meant to be copied and passed out to players, though only a handful of them are not maps but actually puzzles. What Lurks Beyond prides itself in mentioning how well written and cerebral it is for having developed puzzles, but don’t get too amazed; these are mostly boring crosswords, hangman, and other such activities designed to pad out the sessions and punish any players that could care less about the adventure’s plot. The book also claims at the beginning that it is acceptable to swap out the names of some of the gods for whatever is relevant in your campaign, without telling you that one of these gods is the answer to some of these handout puzzles. Along with these puzzles are a series of small, barely detailed maps, but I have no idea why these maps would be passed out in favor of using a traditional mapping method since there is no reason whatsoever the players should have access to a personal map (A useless one at that; this is not exactly the most complicated adventure.)

We begin this adventure in the middle of the woods moving East. The party very quickly runs into a wrecked coach for a chance at a little looting before starting the adventure proper at a fork in the road, presenting the first choice since the book makes no claim that the party can deny to loot the wrecked carriage. The passage in the book swears up and down that it does not matter if you go left or right, and that is simply a damn right lie. No matter which path you take the party is thrown into its first combat encounter. Ever wondered what would happen if a Headcrab from Half-Life rampantly bred with rabbits? That’s more or less what a Blood Bunny is. On either side the party is faced with a large amount of the creatures and there is no written way to dodge this first encounter (it’s forced). That’s a shame because the adventure throws no less than TWENTY FIVE monsters at you, each with ten hit points and a +7 initiative, all of the little bastards do up to five damage per turn as the horde leaps around like the little hell-beasts that they are. Though this encounter is heavily overpowered there are ways of dealing with it using standard classes; if the party has spellcasters specializing in area of effect spells or stocked up on alchemists fire  then it should not be too hard to roast that army of head humpers.

No doubt spending eight hours to rest or using a good amount of healing magic, the party then continues to see what happens on the left side. Earlier the adventure claimed that it was fine no matter what side you took. By “it does not matter” they of course meant “Pick left and die.” As not even a page later the book mentions that the players are absolutely not supposed to go left, and “discourages” the players by putting yet another fight in their path in the form of tainted Grizzly Beasts, all the while showing the party signs to turn back now. The beasts are dispatched easily enough, they may hit like freight trains but at least they have a normal array of hit points and AC. Wasting even more healing, the party can then walk 30 feet down the road to a broken bridge, where once again the book begs the GM constantly to try and get the players to go right but by then it is too late since the party is then faced with a SWAMP DRAGON, on it’s own this is easily a CR 15+ monster waiting to penetrate you with four bladed tentacles a turn that do 4D6 damage EACH. Seeing a pattern here yet? Guess what’s directly after the dragon? Surprise, ANOTHER COMBAT ENCOUNTER!

By then if your party has not strangled you and impaled your skull on a pike for trying to run this adventure they will likely immediately plead to just let them go right. Unlike the left road, this option lacks the three encounters put there to ensure that the choice is one in name alone (Cutters guild, you are aware that a choice with one correct answer is not actually a choice right?).  Keep in mind that the party has no goals at the moment yet can already be faced with complete destruction. On the plot railroad the party finds the first handout, a cypher that leaves the party with a cryptic phrase that is the secret to finding hidden loot later in the adventure. Loot of course, the party would not know existed if they had gone left. Afterwards the party is introduced to the Tower of Bladesedge, the first dungeon (Likely designed by whoever built Sauron’s tower.)

The tower is the hellhole you would think it is, filled with arbitrary traps and strong use of the word “Immune”. I held back on this detail but most (if not all) monsters are outright immune to *something* as opposed to using the vulnerability and resistance system in D20. For instance, if you are a spellcaster that uses anything but Earth magic, a cleric or a rogue with points in Open Lock or Disable Device you are going to very quickly find that the book seems to be under the impression that everything only has one answer and will happily declare everything you do to be either ineffective or outright not allowed. As you could also tell the damage values of everything in the adventure are also very arbitrary, to the point where instead of having an enchantment rating like it’s supposed to, there is a sword laying around that is magical and does a whopping 3d8 damage per swing. I really want to know where all these high damage numbers came from and what game the writer thinks he is writing an adventure for, because it sure as hell is not standard 3.5.

The tower serves as another slog of secret doors, riddles, and tasks that all have one single way of being completed. The top of the tower is another deathtrap, with three riddles, ever descending spikes, and a conveniently impossible to dispel Wall of Force to contend with. Completing this riddle opens a secret door in the dungeon that contains the lock for the McGuffin you grabbed from the Well outside. “What key?” you ask? Obviously the key that was never hinted at before yet conveniently is the only way to work the lock that because the plot demands it opens the door to Ezreal’s tomb. Who’s Ezreal? The book seemed to forget to explain that part too. Hidden in *another* dungeon below the dungeon you already are in is a scrap of exposition explaining that Ezreal is a foul witch, though it’s never explained why all magic around Bladesedge is completely bullshit and incapable of being dispersed and why no locks in this land can actually be picked.

After wading out of that HELLHOLE the party can finally walk down the road to yet another fork, presenting the group with two possibilities. By now the party is aware that they have opened Ezreal’s tomb in the Cemetery so there is little reason to go anywhere else really. The Generic Hellish Cemetery houses the Tomb of Ezreal and serves as the last real area of the adventure and its oh so varied locations of ruined cities, abandoned towers, and dank dungeons all the while raining and storming. The Tomb is unlocked in the tower, or at least that remains an option since you could…. you know… just climb over the gate and enter the tomb anyway. And yes, that is a viable option capable of saving the party a large amount of time. You would think so at least, despite the ability to get into the tomb it’s still impossible to complete the adventure without opening it with the key in the tower (damned impossible to dispel enchantments!). Though you better hope that you have already done everything you need to do before going to confront Ezreal because halfway to the tomb the dead begin to rise in mass. You thought 25 rabbits was bad, try taking on 200 lesser zombies!

FINALLY! It’s time for the final battle! The party, tired from their battles stumbles into the main tomb of Ezreal to find his eternal prison, the stained glass statue of Ezreal and the four key shaped ho- No… NO… NO NO NO…. Ezreal’s tomb is surrounded by four towers, each with its own key and trial (and of course are protected by bullshit magic) that conveniently are required before the final confrontation. If the party were to start at level 7, by now they would measure around level 13-15 (Its hard to tell because the monster entries lack CR’s and thus make it difficult to award experience) from the sheer amount of puzzles, riddles, bullshit magic locks, monsters with bullshit immunities, and McGuffins the adventure puts them through, so what’s a few more towers? Just like every other dungeon in the adventure this is a linear trek to the top to solve a puzzle, slay some critters and repeat.

Four towers later….

Ok. NOW it’s time for the final battle. Ezreal’s dark soul encased in Stained Glass animates once the final key is inserted and turned and he gives the generic “Rule by my side” speech one would expect. In both forms he acts as a level 15 Sorcerer and is one of the easiest fights in the adventure, since Ezreal fights completely alone and as a Sorcerer will provoke attack of opportunities if he tries to cast any powerful spells; there is really no way you can fail to beat him… Upon destroying his larger Stained Glass form Ezreal rises in his medium sized mortal form ready to continue the battle, which actually makes him even easier to circle and puddle stomp. Suddenly, before you strike the final blow, Ezreal launches bolts of energy that instantly without any save needed knock you all out, he then turns you into his Nazgu- I mean Shades that have been hounding you this entire adventure. That’s right, Ezreal (like everything else in this adventure) has plot armor and cannot die thus winning by default. The party has failed and Ezreal goes on to rule the world because he is invincible for no established (or possible) reason.

What the adventure fails to alert the players of in any real concrete way until they actually bump into the McGuffin required is that Ezreal can ONLY be slain with the powers of the dead paladin Seth, whom every now and then is referred to in scriptures found in the adventure. Due to how the adventure’s maps are structured and because the book itself makes it fucking impossible to go left (Which is where Seth is buried as well as the exposition needed to signify that Seth is even needed to slay Ezreal.) You actually are encouraged to metagame and be aware that Cutters Guild fucking hates you, has never played DnD in their life, and of course would never make it as simple as just slaying the end boss and bringing happiness to the world.

If the players instead chose to continue down the road before confronting Ezreal, and braved the lair of the growlings beneath the tower in order to get Seth’s amulet then the party can journey past the ruined city and travel to Seth’s burial ground where the party can then revive the dead Paladin, who promises to help you in the final battle against Ezreal. From then forward if you bring the Amulet to Ezreal and destroy his stained glass form the character wearing his amulet will poke’morph into Seth and thus be able to lay a divine asskicking on that damned defenseless Sorcerer that could not fight his way out of a paper bag. After the two to three rounds needed to encircle and destroy Ezreal, Seth will behead the blighter and forever doom his eternal soul to hell (Heaven and Hell of course is called something different in DnD and behaves completely different, but I don’t expect the authors to know the first thing about the game at this point)

The birds sing, the sun shines, and your party is now victorious holding the various overpowered weapons and artifacts found from the adventure and the knowledge that pulling their own teeth would’ve been less painful than trying to win this adventure. What Lurks Beyond is a strange animal, as the book itself is actually well written and diverse with plenty of adventuring to be had; yet it falls completely flat with its arbitrary judgement of monster and loot strength and the obvious fact that the authors probably never played a real adventure beforehand or have any knowledge pertaining to the balance of a written adventure. A core rule to playing GameMaster is that there should never be such a painfully linear path to victory, and I count the possibility of losing for just not exploring enough to be too much of a “videogamey” cop-out. Unlike a videogame, a RPG party rarely gets the option to continue from where they lost and often will not want to sit through fights or sections multiple times. There are too many overpowered enemies, arbitrary traps, and the ever present impossible to dispel magic that seems to litter these godforsaken woods.

Gary Gygax has often been accused of writing the worst modules in DnD’s history, and to that I call bullshit. Mr. Gygax’s infamous modules were written for the express purpose of thinning out crowds of gamers at tournaments and as a test of a party’s ability to min-max and create a balanced group while What Lurks Beyond was written as a serious, cerebral adventure of high (as a kite) fantasy. Though honestly the adventure itself is not too hard to fix, the main issues lay in the sheer amount of magically locked doors, unbalanced encounters, incomplete monster entries, and joke of a final battle that leaves you feeling like you wasted more than a months worth of sessions for the weakest payoff possible. Copies of this adventure are rare as the book was not very widely circulated. Like the rest of Cutters Guilds titles you can get What Lurks Beyond from their shop, while it may be the weakest of their titles I will one day visit their stronger ones, as their better works can be considered somewhat legendary.

It turns out the reason the balancing is off is because the module is technically not for D20 at all but their own 3.5 setting book Deathstalkers 2 that uses a very different ruleset, behaving like a completely different animal. Many of the monsters in this adventure are from Deathstalkers 2 as well (Including their re-used bestiary pictures, tsk tsk)

-Necroscourge 2/15/13