Secrets of the Nethercity – Backed!
One of the casualties of my nascent writing career has been my table time rolling them bones behind a DM screen. To get a minor fix, I do still enjoy a good D&D read from time to time. Lately though, even that limited amount of delving has suffered due to the dearth of quality material produced by companies that don’t hate me.
The flip side of the, “Don’t give money to people who hate you,” is, “Do give money to people who don’t.” Given the way tabletop RPGs have been browbeaten by the hate mobs these days, it’s getting harder and harder to find new and worthwhile material suitable for the tabletop. That’s where Alexander Macris steps in with, Secrets of the Nethercity, a fine new addition to the ACKsiverse.
For three thousand years, the secrets of the Nethercity have been hidden. Now the delving of man has breached the ruins, and the lore and treasures of the ancients wait in the darkness below for those bold enough to seize them. But an inhuman evil slumbers in that darkness, and the time of the Awakening is at hand….
It’s a big dungeon, but clocking in at 240 rooms geared for mid-level play it’s a little too small to be considered a mega-dungeon. It’s also built for a more d20 style experience than this old grognard can enjoy, but as an old grognard, it’ll be a simple matter to streamline the thing for B/X. If it ever hits the table, that is. Just in case, I sprung for the hard copy, which is a requirement for the hasty notes and scrawled HP tracking in the heat of battle.
And if it never hits the table, this purchase will make for a fun read. Macris knows how to write a functional adventure with an entertainment value holds up under the weight of tfw no players, without the need for extraneous details (read: the dreaded, “this room once held [long list of things] but is now empty.”) Add to that the value of keeping the fertile ground of the tabletop hobby well watered so that it can outlast this temporary influx of social locusts who are like, totally into Big Bang Theory and all that nerd stuff, once they move on for other fields to scavenge.