Necropolis Book Club - Chapter 3
I didn't end up writing a blog about Chapters 1-2, but I'm taking part in the megadungeon book club on the purple/rainbow/wombat OSR Discord.
The following is some barely edited thoughts on Chapter 3 of Gary Gygax's Necropolis.
The read-aloud is absolutely out of control. Chapter 3 is the beginning of the adventure according to the book, but this is after paragraphs and paragraphs of more boxed text in the previous chapter setting up the adventure before the PCs even get to the starting town and finally being able to play the dang game.
Hell yeah, Demoncroc. No notes.
There's a nice section about how the villagers of Aartuat will respond more positively after the PCs start doing more heroic deeds, slaying the demoncroc, etc. The alternate section talks about how the locals respond to criminal behavior:
Too bad, buckos! You done failed the whole adventure by being a dickhead int the village. Campaign over!
Multiple NPCs hanging around are stuck in dead end jobs and are desperate to make a name for themselves. Gary is definitely trying to give the referee plenty of bits of ammunition to play with in the game. In general, NPCs have noted motivations and the occasional relationship. They're not always super proactive in the module, but the details are there if the DM needs them.
The local merchant family is all wholly dedicated to chaotic evil, uh oh! Aaaand they all wear magic amulets that block Detect Evil. Boo! This is a decent setup with no clear right answer. The PCs can't just slaughter them for being evil. That would turn the entire village against them, and they need the merchants for supplies! I'd have a lot more fun knowing they were evil bastards and gritting my teeth and haggling with them. Other than that, the family is full of huge assholes that hate each other, and could easily be played against one another for the party's benefit. Except for their poor youngest son, born neutral good and out of place. Rough!
All this set up is also undercut a bit by multiple scripted encounters laid out for the trade-house. There's a lack of faith in the DM to expand on the bones of the encounter, which I think are mostly pretty good, and instead have boxed text about the poor kid being beaten and warning the PCs. The whole thing just feels overly scripted, only to script events that could easily be inferred from the description.
Why is the menu of the tavern a box of read-aloud text. Somebody stop this man.
There is yet more alignment shielding in the tavern. I feel like a whole area being under some spell to muddle alignment detection is more believable than everyone just wearing magical amulets. I would be up front that the spell doesn't work in here, rather than just lying about everyone detecting as good. After all, the PCs could make use of it, or it could lead to bad assumptions about the alignment of people the PCs get suspicious of.
A mysterious merchant buys and sells religious figurines, and will sell but one to each PC. He will sell one of the PCs choice, or a random one based off of some tables, with the promise that this is important for later in the module. This seems cool! I hope it does actually matter in an interesting way, it's a neat way to inject flavor and history into the adventure.
The head evil guy hangs out with the fisherman, and likes to invite a nosy PC to come fish at the Demoncroc pond. Hell yeah.
There's also a chaotic evil child (really) who will try to pick-pocket the PCs. After some false crying and promising to change his ways, he starts spying on the PCs. That's pretty fun. Most of my groups would absolutely try to adopt this evil child after hearing his sob story, and reveal all their plans immediately to the evil priest of Set.
One of the party's main goals is to find a contact, Khonsu-Khaibet, who will give information and guide the PCs to the next part of the adventure. Interstingly, he will join Good PCs, and the DM is basically encouraged to "play this person with all the cleverness and expertise at his command!" Almost sounds like a DMPC to me.
Overal Chapter 3 gives a thorough rundown of the village. The location is well fleshed out, with multiple NPCs with cross purposes and motivations, some of them spying and plotting against the PCs. The main goal is really just to make allies and get information. Put a ticking clock on a demoncroc attack and you have a pretty interesting chapter, bogged down horribly with the driest boxed text ever written.
This module is kind of a mess so far, but it's got something to it that a lot of Gygax stuff does. Fingers crossed it picks up more going forward.