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TLDR: Yes, get the book. It's worth the time and the money. It overcomes its flaws, which only exist because the creators did this in their spare time and not as a profession. And watch 3d6 Down the Line to get a better look at this campaign in action.
This review contains no spoilers.
The difficult part of writing a review for Arden Vul is that in order to do so, I'd have to write an entire essay that nobody really has time for (EDIT: lol, looks like I did anyway). I'll do my best to keep this as short as possible (EDIT: didn't happen) and will also include a TLDR at the bottom (my review is so long, you'll find the TLDR at the top instead). I'd also like to recommend the podcast 3D6 Down the Line, you can find them on spotify and YouTube. There is no better way to demo this book than to listen/watch 3D6-DTL play this megadungeon. They've been running Arden Vul for over a year, which is plenty of material to help you make a judgement call. Listening to 3D6-DTL will give you a better understanding of this module than I ever can.
Arden Vul is advertised as a megadungeon, but it's much more than that. It includes a fairly detailed setting, a beastiary, several magic items, random generation tables for side adventures, a list of quest/campagin/quest objectives, a massive list of books the players will find in the dungeon (including the contents of the books, what language they're in, their dimensions... hell he even includes how these books look!), lore for the world, lore about the gods of this module, a detailed time line of events that got the dungeon to the state it's in now, callbacks to very famous DnD adventures, and suggestions for further expansion. It was developed as a passion project. This is both a good and bad thing: the good is that this module was created with love and includes everything you might want for a setting/dungeon in an old school revival adventure; the bad is that the authors are human and had their own lives while creating this work, so a few minor gripes and issues flew uner the radar that make this module difficult to run. The takeaway however is that this is one incredibly fun megadungeon, a campaign setting, and eco-system supporting it.
This dungeon, and I cannot stress this enough, is massive. If you are a completionist who needs to analyze every room, every possibility, every item... you will never finish. It's BIG. One of the hardest decisions a group will face is whether or not to progress down to a new level of a dungeon, enter a newly found entrance, or bypass entire sections of the floor you know exist because you want to find out what's further and further down. The creators strived to create an experience so vast that no two campaigns will ever be the same. I believe they truly succeeded in this.
Outside the dungeon, you have a couple of safe havens that are accessible to players. The main outpost, Gosterwick, has a lot of potential information for referees/GMs/DMs to use for their tables but are not obligated to do so. An example of this: one of the inns harbors a spy from a far-off city that wants information about Gosterwick. This spy is from the capital of the region, Archontos, with its own politics and culture. There are surface level details about who his employer is, what Archontos is like, and the goals of its leaders, but because the module mainly focuses on the mega-dungeon it will be up to the referee to nurture this into something usable. This 1000+ page module is filled to the brim with potential ideas like this.
The dungeon itself is hazardous, which is extremely so for a party of first level adventurers. Traps and monsters are outright deadly. It may even be of some benefit to get the average party level to 2 or 3 before starting this, but you definitely can do it with a party of level 1 adventurers. My own personal group went from level 1 all the way to level 10 with no shortage of things to do or explore. Even at level 10, my party got into a situation that nearly wiped them out. One of the PCs lost an arm and the player decided to retire the character. This player was also excited to begin a new level 1 adventurer, even though they were in a group of level 10s, because Arden Vul provides so many chances to earn XP and treasure for quick leveling after a certain point. Death is not the end in this module, it's only an obstacle to be overcome. However, this also means that it becomes crucial to break out of conventional playing styles; sometimes it's just not smart to hit something with your sword until it falls down. You really need to be the type of player that considers potential combat as a puzzle. Referees will need to give the players opportunities to employ strategies/ideas outside of combat for them to be successful.
The dungeon is meant to be explored with the rules of supply management in mind. The number of torches you bring, the time it takes to go down the hallway, your food and water supply, and what other equipment you bring all add to the tension of the adventure. You can certainly ignore these rules if you desire, but the threat of always needing a secure way out diminishes. This is part of the fun of OSR, so I'd highly recommend including the exploration rules for your table.
The system was designed for OSRIC, which makes it compatible with many OSR systems. I decided to use Old School Essentials and it by-and-large worked well. There were a few glitches along the way that became a pain to work through, however. When enemies are encountered, stat blocks are given in the text and include everything you need to run the battle on the fly (you can also refer to the bestiary in the back of the book for more info if needed). Since I was running OSE, I needed to have the Referee's tome constantly open to the back page that had HD to THAC0 and saving throw conversions. It became tough to manage fights using multiple sources and, in some cases I believe, trivialized a few fights. OSRIC I believe uses higher values for combat than OSE. If my party ran into, say, a gargoyle, and I decided to use the OSE statblock for the fight, the PCs tended to have an easier time. This became more apparent as PCs found magic items to equip. Which actually leads me into my next point:
Arden Vul sometimes makes a reference to items and spells that are difficult to find. A simple example is the first time the spell "Strength" was mentioned in my game. It's a standard spell in OSRIC but not in OSE. I quickly noticed that the OSRIC ruleset has required casting times (called segments) but OSE largely does not. As mentioned above, OSRIC tends to use higher numbers in its system, so in my game, if a player used "Strength" as a spell they got huge bonuses instantly. This was also true for enemies however, and it made the lives of my players more difficult than needed. I often had to decide whether or not to play this scenario out as intended by the module creators or follow an OSE rule with an OSRIC spell. More often than not, I wasn't sure if I was making the right call. This is also applicable for items, magic items, and equipment. As a referee, you'll need to make several decisions like this on the fly because it's impossible to fully predict what path your group is going to take. This in turn will make preparing fights for the session more difficult. The important thing however is that none of these calls ever broke my game; it just meant I needed an energy drink after hour 2 or 3 in a session.
The module is easier to use as PDFs and not as physical books. The physical books, should you decide to purchase them, might be easier to use as downtime reading material. But at the table it might be better to use a computer to help you navigate for needed information. Even as a PDF, this thing is difficult to navigate. There are bookmarks in the PDF, so you can easily navigate to certain sections of the text, but none of the text itself is highlighted or linked to pages. This is something you might want to consider adding yourself as a DM in any relevant areas your PCs are exploring. One of the frustrating aspects of this is how tedious it can be to seek certain information. Here is an example that I hope illustrates my experience:
A given room might have enemy stat info and treasure. Using OSE, I need to convert the HD info of these enemies into THAC0 and Saving Throws. Then, if these enemies are important (say a leader of a faction, a lieutenant, or something like that), they may have more information in the bestiary about their abilities. However, they may also have another block of informational text not found in your room or the bestiary and but can be found in another room which happens to be their living quarters; this completely separate room details what spells or items this enemy is prepared to use. That's still not all: there is an entire section dedicated to the faction they belong to at the beginning of the book, so you have to look that up as well. These enemies might also have spells specific to this module, so you'll have to go to the appendix and look up the spell information. Whoops, they also have a specific magic item that will help them that's detailed in the back of the book in an appendix. Ok, battle's done. Your players are now sifting through the treasure. Wait, this item isn't in the module, nor OSE, nor the OSRIC book. It's found in some other zine or resource. So you have to look that up. Ok, everything is said and done. Time to move on. And then you'll one day find MORE info about this now dead guy in another section in the appendix "World of Archontos"; and it turns out they were a leader (happened several times with human characters that had specific roles in the society detailed in the setting).
See my discussion post for the end of my review.
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