One of the secrets behind Dungeons & Dragons‘ recent success was the rather good introductory adventure, The Lost Mines of Phandelver. This adventure was just enough to encourage novice Dungeon Masters to build their own worlds based on the setting material whilst providing a decent framework for an ongoing game of D&D.
Lost Mines is out of print in its original form (though the adventure can be found online via the official D&D website). Phandelver and Below: The Shattered Obelisk rewrites and rebuilds this starting story into a complete campaign. This means that the raw energy of the original has been softened slightly, and trickier encounters and elements have been modified to suit a longer sort of game.
The story starts with the adventures of having to deal with some rather nasty goblins before getting to the town and making some new friends. This book is very much a toolkit for a campaign; it assumes the DM is new to running tabletop games, and so gives you just enough to encourage your players to explore the world. As the adventurers find themselves exploring the mines and going deeper, things get even stranger. And we mean very strange.
It’s packed to the brim with weird ideas, well-thought-out maps and some solid villains to throw at your players. There are some very interesting encounters that you could easily lift out and insert into other games. It also feels a bit like two entirely different stories smashed into each other, but this is a very good thing because it shakes the story up during the later levels. The early stages of the adventure allow the party to get to know the charming town of Phandalin, with plenty of foreshadowing for future weirdness.
The book has some excellent creepy monsters, and if you’re looking to throw together a campaign inspired by the recent video game smash Baldur’s Gate 3, then you’ll be delighted to learn that there are similar ideas in this book you can use. This is primarily a campaign book; we get some neat magic items at the back and some rules for mutation. It’s one for the DM’s and completists.
As always, it’s a well-put-together book with a solid binding that will survive multiple flip-throughs. A campaign of this length can take a year or so to complete (depending on how you run a game), so you want a sturdy book. Both the limited edition cover and the regular version turned up at STARBURST Towers, and both were of solid quality. The map is attached to the back, but there are ways to get those maps separately if you’re squeamish about cutting a map out of a book. The limited edition cover is very green and shiny if you like that sort of thing.
Overall, it is an excellent re-imagining of a great adventure.
