A Review of the Role Playing Game Supplement The Depths of Barrow Hall

The Depths of Barrow Hall by Robert Marriner-Dodds is a role playing game supplement published by Dragon Turtle Games. It is a Dragon Drop Mini-Adventure, which are mini-adventures, for four 3rd level characters in this case, that are designed to be easily dropped into a campaign, although this is also described as being a deadly dungeon that is unsuitable for characters that players are attached to. The adventure is intended for use with the Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition game. As a result, it is covered by the Open Game License.

This is a nine page PDF that is available from RPGNow as a Pay What You Want supplement. One page is the front cover and one page is the Open Game License and there is a full page map of the barrow.

The first page has the adventure’s background, how to customise it and how to start it. The adventure location is in a barrow, an old tomb, but one that can be placed anywhere. With some tweaking, it could fit in many settings. There are descriptions of the general internal appearance of the barrow, unless stated otherwise, and the rest of the supplement covers the adventure.

The Depths of Barrow Hall in Review

Although the PDF is technically bookmarks, there are only two which lead to the cover and first page. As a result, the bookmarks are pretty much useless. They aren’t really needed for an adventure of this length, but they would have been appreciated.

The text maintains a two column format and no errors were noticed. Description text that is intended to be read aloud to players is italicised, in a different colour and marked off by horizontal lines, making it stand out from the rest very easily, which is useful. The sole illustration is a black and white map of the dungeon complex, which has a hand drawn feel and looks pretty decent.

The tomb itself is full of traps, some of them quite dangerous, as well as undead and a cursed treasure – the latter players will probably not appreciate, given what it likely took to get to it. There are also two lairs, a false one and a genuine one, and characters may not realise they haven’t found the final encounter. The treasure is pretty standard, with nothing very unusual; something to make it more interesting would have been nice, rather than generic. Although there are a number of monsters, no stats are given, only references to the Monster Manual, which is a bit inconvenient. It would have been helpful to have everything to hand.

The adventure works pretty well as a one shot, but by toning down some of the more dangerous traps it could also be dropped into another campaign, which would make it more useful. The adventure could have been improved on by having all the stats included, and perhaps an unmarked map for players, but overall this is a nice, deadly mini dungeon. The Depths of Barrow Hall can be checked out for free by clicking here.