"Retro-feel" dungeons seem to be back in these days, but this module is more than just nostalgia-massage for the old-time gamers.

Idylls of the Rat King demonstrates why old-school style D&D adventures can be preferable to modern, bloated. pseudo-epics:

1. It's your adventure, for your game world. The adventure setting is only as detailed as it needs to be. The starting town, it's inhabitants, and the relevant adventure areas outside the town are all properly detailed. The authors don't try to force a "melieu" or a setting on you -- the default "heroic fantasy" setting the core rulebooks imply is also implied here. If you want to darken the setting, deepen it with detail, add millenia of campaign history, or otherwise customize or "weird-ify" the setting, that's your perogative as DM, when preparing the module -- as well it should be!

2. It's a streamlined adventure, without being simplistic. As above, if you want to add side-treks or extended character bits while running this adventure, then more power to you as a genuine DM. The authors of Idylls of the Rat King concentrate on giving you a site-based plot with one or two genuinely good twists. It's "linear" insofar as it's site based, but linearity done properly does not mean that the players are led by the nose, or forced to act in ways they don't choose. Idylls of the Rat King offers a clear "mission", and the adventure has a beginning. a middle, and an end, with some suspense and some twists along the way. That's good linearity. That's "The Lord of the Rings"-style linearity. That's one of the oldest and most popular structures of storytelling on Earth..

3. It's not stupid. Sure, at the risk of death for heresy, some of the things Grandpapa Gygax and his crew created for the early D&D adventures were extremely fun -- but some of the stuff was just, well, stupid. Gygax' penchant for one-roll-live-or-die lethal traps is infamous, and some of the scenarios in the early modules confounded even fantasy-world logic (Why are all these monsters living peaceably side-by-side in this dungeon? How does the dragon eat, sequestered in that small subterranean cave far underground? Why are there so many monsters thriving near a substantial settlement of gnome fighters?) Idylls of the Rat King manages to avoid design stupidity without bogging the adventure down in unnecessary or irrelevant explanation in the process.

4. It's a an adventure for first-level characters that isn't boring! How often does that happen in the modern age of D&D?

With crisp, clean artwork and layout, plus an engaging story, Idylls of the Rat King is one of the best D&D adventures I've seen in a while. Goodman Games has managed to resurrect all the good qualities of first-edition D&D here, while leaving all the dross behind. No pretention; no dead-weight detail -- just straight-ahead, sword-and-sorcery fun. I give it my highest recommendation.