Castle Dunmere
by Michael J. Ekert
D20 Adventure (32 pages)
Product Code: CIT002, ISBN 1-929474-26-1
Publisher: Citizen Games, $8.95
The second module in the Return of the Dragon series, Castle Dunmere has the players searching for the missing Count Carlisle. Adventurers of levels 5-7 will start out in the City of Dunmere, and slowly work their way to the castle for the final battle to free the Count.
The first thing that I noted paging through this module, is that the maps are all too dark. They are hard to read and would be impossible to photo copy. This may have been intentional, but it still makes them difficult to read.
The module starts out with a small background on the lands of Myrra, in which the game takes place. Without a map for this section though, it leaves you wondering, literally. There is also a small bit of info on the Carlisle family, which is somewhat interesting but not really needed for the adventure. The supplied map of the City of Dunmere is rather small, and due to the darkness of the map, the scale cannot be read clearly.
The main bulk of this booklet describes the adventure background, which starts out in the City of Dunmere. After a small bit of searching for clues in town, the adventure quickly switches to the Castle, were the main focus of this module is.
While the artwork for Castle Dunmere is of decent quality, the module itself leaves something to be desired. I found that it lacked quite a bit of substance, and felt more like a bunch of filler than a well thought out module. Most of the rooms in the Castle are of no importance to the adventure, and the few that are, including the one for the so-called ‘final battle’, could have been condensed into a nice mini-module instead. This module just left me wondering, “Where’s the adventure.”
For the price, you may want to glance through this adventure before making a purchase. It’s an okay module, but not a really good one.
(review (c) January 2002 / David Flemming)