A Review of the Role Playing Game Supplement Dungeon Crawl Classics #96: The Tower of Faces

Dungeon Crawl Classics #96: The Tower of Faces by Nick Judson is a role playing game supplement published by Goodman Games for use with Dungeon Crawl Classics. As such, it is covered by the Open Game License and some parts are considered to be Open Game Content as a result. This is an adventure for level 6 characters.

The supplement is available from DriveThruRPG as a 29-page PDF for $5.59 but was purchased at a reduced price as part of a special bundle. Two pages are the front and rear covers, two pages are ads, one page is the front matter and a quarter of a page is the Open Game License.

The Introduction explains that this adventure won the Rodneys Design Award and that it isn’t a traditional dungeon delve. Instead, the characters are summoned to guard a wizard and spend the entire adventure at a single location, interacting with various beings.

Adventure Background explains that the city of Naos, necropolis of the Chaos Kings, has been randomly attacked by creatures from Limbo. The attacks have all been destroyed in a single day and the rulers of the city have had little interest in stopping them. Then a caravan carrying an ingredient – food, not magic – to a wizard was destroyed and said wizard decided enough was enough. He is going to summon a creature to put an end to this and told his minions to summon guardians. Unfortunately, summoning spells don’t work perfectly in Naos and the characters are scooped up by accident.

The Adventure Outline explains how to best run it and The Deliveries explains that the characters will need to receive and store various deliveries; a timeline and what these are is given.

Background on the Setting: The City of Naos gives some details on Naos and The Estate of Yonaxis the Magnificent describes the wizard’s tower and grounds. After describing these, the adventure starts. The characters are first summoned, by accident, then offered a job. Each day, they will need to deal with deliveries from a strange assortment of beings and perform other tasks. Should the wizard be successful, the characters will be rewarded; they will still; get some pay if he isn’t.

The Random Die Drop Encounter Generator has 20 different NPCs the characters can also encounter; there is the die drop table at the end.

One and three quarters pages of handouts follow as well as a map of the estate.

Dungeon Crawl Classics #96: The Tower of Faces in Review

The PDF is bookmarked but only the major sections are linked. Navigation could be better. The text maintains a two-column black and white format and appeared to be free of errors. There are a number of black and white illustrations, as well as the map, handout and table, which appear to be custom. Presentation is good.

This is a rather different type of adventure. The characters stay in one place as people come to them, though they may, and sometimes will, end up exploring some of the locations on the estate. Though stats are given for all the encounters, in the vast majority of them, the characters shouldn’t be fighting. These are NPCs delivering requested items, after all, and the characters’ job is to take said items, not start a fight over them. The adventure doesn’t seem to have properly considered what will happen if the players are notably bloodthirsty; the adventure as it stands could come tumbling down. Dungeon Crawl Classics #96: The Tower of Faces is a different sort of adventure that definitely won’t appeal to everyone and it can be found by clicking here.