Fancy squelching around a disease-ridden swamp in search of corrupting evil? Then this adventure is for you... and it STARTS with a dragon...

The DM's Section includes an adventure summary, wandering monster chart, and extensive background about what's going on and how it all came to be. There's also scaling information and an impressive selection of 'hooks' to get the party interested in this adventure. It's noted that as well as the actual antagonists provided, there's a deadly magical disease and the swamp itself to contend with - and this last is a hostile environment that will prove as much a threat to the party as anything else. As an aside to that, suggestions are made for the best ways to introduce replacement characters for those which perish.

The adventure proper begins with the party already in this misty, chilly, smelly swamp. Then they hear sounds of combat close by... The first part of the adventure involves exploring the swamp itself and finding out at least some of what's going on. And meeting the dragon. Mustn't forget him! Opportunities for combat and looting abound, along with clues to find that should take the party onwards.

The adventure then moves to a small fortress called the Forge, which the party will have to infiltrate (or besiege) as well as a few other places and people to investigate. Then it's off underground to a lair located in an ancient temple, a dank and dark place peopled by an unlikely tribe that doesn't meet common perceptions of their kind. In true Lord of the Rings style, an artefact must be retrieved and flung into the depths.

In all a coherent and quite interesting adventure provided you like slogging through swamps. There's plenty of fighting to be done, but it's not as puzzle heavy as some adventures in this line, although some reasoning is needed to find out what is going on and how to put a stop to it. It should prove a nice episode in your campaign.

Make sure you have a northern area in your campaign world where a bog or swamp makes sense to fit this adventure in.<br><br> <b>LIKED</b>: The history is complete enough to provide motivations for most of the NPCs, but generic enough to fit into any standard fantasy world. The encounters are not amazingly imaginative but still a lot of fun.<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: Solid, but a few holes will need to be filled in by the DM. This is really no problem for DMs accustomed to fitting published modules into their campaigns. There are a couple of unique magic items each DM will have to weigh whether it will imbalance an individual campaign or not.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Very Good<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Very Satisfied<br>

This is my second DCC and i'm liking it more and more. I'm not a hard-core DM and i dont have much time to prepare or make my own campaigns bottom up, so the way these adventures are made save me alot of time. I link all the stories together and throw in a couple of extra puzzles.

What i really liked about this one, are the colormaps/grids that are made with Dundjinni (made by one of the people from Goodman Games, see the link at their site). They can be downloaded as a .pdf. My players liked them very much.<br><br> <b>LIKED</b>: Easy to use format<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Very Good<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Very Satisfied<br>

I've really agonized over this review. If there's anyone here who follows my reviews, or gets any use from them, you may have noticed that I rarely write negative reviews.

Usually, I will only write a negative review if I feel that the product misrepresents itself in some fundamental way, or is truly an inarguable waste of money. Otherwise, I just refuse to review anything which doesn't strike me as noteworthy.

Legacy of the Savage Kings is not a waste of money, but it is arguably the weakest of all the Goodman Games adventures I have seen thus far. More importantly, I feel it misrepresents itself to the buyer.

The title and cover copy seem to suggest that this is some sort of barbarian-kingdom themed dungeon crawl. Visions of the ruins of King Conan's Aquilonia immediately come to mind. I know that's why I bought it.

In actual fact, while there is a barbarian king's tomb in this story, the majority of the adventure plays out as a pretty stock cavern-crawl adventure set in the middle of a swamp. The major foe is a female magic user, and her hench-creatures are among "the usual suspects" for a swamp/cave crawl. The Legacy of the Savage Kings of the title is essentially the aforementioned tomb -- the rest of the adventure carries a different flavor.

After much debate, I finally decided to say nothing about this module, rather than give it a bad review. After all it was functionally adequate, even if it did misrepresent itself to some degree.

However, Goodman Games has just released a "prequel" to Legacy of the Savage Kings -- adventure 17.5, War of the Witch Queen -- and I felt compelled to speak up.

I haven't bought War of the Witch-Queen. I presume it's better than Legacy of the Savage Kings. Certainly, the author of both adventures, Harley Stroh , has shown himself capable of much more creative adventure design than he showed in Legacy of the Savage Kings.

Still, I had visions of people who really enjoyed War of the Witch Queen rushing out to buy the sequel -- and I felt compelled to speak up and say, "Be aware of what you're getting here. It's very standard stuff, and the so-called legacy of savage kings barely exists in the gameplay, except as plot background"

And now, I've said it. Buyer beware.<br><br> <b>LIKED</b>: The production values are top-notch, as ever, with Goodman Games.<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: This is probably the weakest adventure Goodman Games has ever released, in my opinion. Both the publisher, and author Harley Stroh, have shown they are capable of so much more. It must've been a bad day all around at the publishers when this one passed muster.

The adventure title and cover copy are subtly misleading. This is not really centred around any legacy of any savage kings -- it's a pretty standard cavern crawl set in a swamp, whose sorcerous "boss" figure has some pretty standard hench-monsters.

Maybe this adventure would be good enough for other d20 publishers, but Goodman Games is better than this. It barely passes with a 3 out of 5 stars because it's not fundamentally broken, just an unfortunate low point for the publisher.

War of the Witch Queen is probably great, but think carefully before buying this one. <br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Acceptable<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Disappointed<br>

While the other dungeon crawl classic have been quite good (with, I feel, the 1 exception) this seemed to lack that vital something. There are a number of great encounters and some very interesting ideas. Having grown up with dnd for 22 years now I appreciate the dungeon crawl classics for what they are don't get me wrong. If your are looking for a couple of nights of hack and slash mayhem then this is great but if you more then you'll need to put in the leg work. The ideas and encounters presented however will certainly privide a DM with some grist for the old ideas mill<br><br><b>LIKED</b>: Easy to use and integrate into an established game. Clearly presented for the most part. Some interesting ideas that could be developed.<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: Came acroos as a string of encounters one after the other with very little problem solving or roleplaying - although this could be added with only a little work.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Acceptable<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Satisfied<br>