Review: Temple of Greed

 

 "Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures, the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge..."

 The quote above is from the movie Wall Street, these words spoken by Gordon Gekko (not the little salamander dude).  Read those words and you'll know what kind of attitude your party needs to have before setting foot into the TEMPLE OF GREED.  Temple of Greed was created by Daniel "+Thaumiel Nerub" Neffling.  Daniel had a great supporting cast helping him such as +Tim Snider, +Dyson Logos, +Edward Lockhart, +Jeff Russell and +Shane Ward.

This review is on the paperback version.  It's 23 pages long.  It has a mix of hand drawn illustration (I believe these were done by Daniel), public domain pictures, both drawn and photos and the map was done by Dyson. 

I like the introduction.  How to get your players involved?  One word: TREASURE!  Do you need anything more than to tell player characters the story of this greedy, now dead-and-forgotten god and all the treasures left behind when the temple was sealed?  If that is not enough, maybe this adventure is not for your players.

This is a trick and trap and puzzle dungeon crawl.  I will not go into details about them as not to spoil them for anyone.  The only helpful advice I will give is the pious and humble will not do well in this.  Thieves and brigands should have the perfect mindset.

The dungeon has 13 rooms and I think could be completed in a single evening.  And like I mentioned about it is a thinking adventure, not a hack and slash...at all.  The puzzles and traps presented are tough enough to be challenging.  Daniel deftly avoids the problem with most of these types of adventures, where the puzzles are too difficult or the answers too abstract that the players get frustrated.  All the puzzles are very manageable if the party does a little problem solving.  It makes it fun.

I really like what Daniel has done with this adventure.  It is something I struggle with, so I respect when I see others develop a dungeon around puzzles and traps.  Plus, the background of the place makes sense to the adventure.  Adds some depth to it.  And I haven't checked, but I think Daniel's god of greed would make a perfect Petty God.

In addition to the adventure +Edward Lockhart created a class that is dedicated to the God of Greed.  It fits perfectly with the adventure and I think could be a fun add-on to someone's campaign.  It would be easy to put into a campaign.  Unless you have one of those worlds where people hold hands and get along all the time...that would so suck.

A huge thumbs up from me.  My only complaint would be that some of the public domain art pieces did not fit.  Daniel did illustrations for the book that were fantastic, I would have liked to see his interpretation of the pictures.  But that is a minor point.

You can grab a copy of The Temple of Greed at RPGNow.  The PDF is only a $1.70 and the print version is a mere $4.47 and you get the PDF with it.  Well worth the price of admission.