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It is often noted that D&D is a game themed after the mythology of the American Old West wearing the trappings of a late medieval fantasy pho-European landscape. Tomb Robbers of the Crystal Frontier shrugs off the fantasy medieval trappings and dons a holo-cloak of laser beams and rides out toward adventure to the sounds of frosty synthwave.
The Crystal Frontier is still very much a low-fantasy setting, but it's hard not to hear the soundtrack to any number of John Carpenter films playing in the back of one's head as you read through this book.
TRotCF (Trot-Kiff???) gives a GM everything they need to run a weird and interesting sandbox with pleanty of hooks, factions, competing interests, and NPCs for your players to get involved with. TRotCF is written in the "classic" adventure module style, placing a strong emphasis on creative puzzle solving, exploration, and open-ended questions intended to be answered with player shenanigans.
The book is clear in explaining this and would serve well as an introduction for a GM interested in exploring a more open style of play. Perhaps beyond the scope of the author's intent, a brief explaination of how Wandering Monsters and Reaction Rolls -and why the are fun!- would be nice to include for GMs new to the Dungeon Crawl style of play. However, TRotCF is intented to be run using Old School Essentials (or a roughly compatible system), which does contain this information. For GMs who already run old-school games this is a must have for any collection.
The highest praise I can give Tomb Robbers of the Crystal Frontier (or any RPG content) is that not only is it an engaging book, but via it's organization and authorial commentary it shows a GM how they could construct their own exciting content for their gaming table.
After playing a few campaings on the Crystal Frontier, of course :)
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