Genius Adventures: The Black Skull Laughs by Ed Greenwood is a role playing game supplement published by Rogue Genius Games for use with the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. 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 4-6 characters of 7th-9th level.
This is a 21 page PDF that is available from RPGNow for $3.99 but which was purchased at a greatly reduced price as part of a special bundle. One page is the front cover, one page is an ad for other products and two pages are the Credits and Open Game License.
The first page has a map of the adventure location, essentially a small dungeon. This location is just as boring as it appears on the front cover; it’s simply 10 identically sized and shaped rooms connected in series by identical corridors.
The first page has a brief foreword by Ed Greenwood. In it he explains the reason for the dungeon design; to provide a realistic location of its type and demonstrate that such a layout can provide an interesting adventure with the proper contents.
The Adventure Background explains that a local lord has had his, presumably magical, crown stolen by skeletons that have come from a nearby crypt, and that the characters are hired to recover it. The actual background is that this was a former minor dwarven waystation in which a dwarf who attempted to turn into a lich was killed and walled into the last chamber. This was turned into a crypt after the dwarves abandoned it and then the leader of some bandits accidentally disturbed the dwarf who was by now undead. The near-lich, now known as the Black Skull, is now reaching beyond the crypt.
Next is some material that can be learned from locals, the conditions and layout of the crypt and the fact that there is a safe passage through the location to the final chamber.
Each room bar the last – which contains the lich – has a safe route through it. Each also has a completely different and sometimes weird encounter. Leaving the safe route opens characters up to attack, as does interfering with many of the items. There are clues as to what the safe route is and a lot of temptations to pull the characters off it.
Genius Adventures: The Black Skull Laughs in Review
The PDF has bookmarks, with major encounter linked. Navigation is not bad for a comparatively short supplement of this type. The text maintains a two column format and no errors were noticed. There are a number of colour illustrations which would appear to be stock in nature, bar the map. Presentation is okay.
This adventure has an interesting concept; to make a location interesting by what’s there, rather than by how it looks. The various different chambers have unique and different encounters in them, and many of them are definitely dangerous if the players do not think their way through them. In this, the adventure is rather more Old School than typically Pathfinder in nature. Players expecting to be able to solve problems with DC rolls will be disappointed, as there are none. Each encounter requires actual thinking rather than rolling. A group that does not know how to handle this will likely hate the adventure.
Genius Adventures: The Black Skull Laughs is an interesting and different way of handling an essentially boring location and it can be checked out by clicking here.
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