Quick Review - Raiders of the Forgotten Treasure

Raidersof the Forgotten Treasure by the Middle Kingdoms Adventure & Company is a short 8-page dungeon crawl that is compatible with Swords & Wizardry and can be easily moved to any of the OSR systems. Raiders is an interesting adventure because of the writer and the premise of the adventure. From the title page:

“The adventure you see before you was created from the imagination of a 7-year-old Game Master known as the “Inkling.” The Inkling doesn’t need a backstory and doesn’t care what level your characters are. The only thing the Inkling cares about is stocking the dungeon with scary, hard to beat monsters and traps, and rewarding you with more loot than you can carry.”

In that single paragraph is all anyone needs to know, the adventure is short (maybe filling a single 2 to 3 hour session) filled with interesting variations on creatures, a heck of a lot of coppers and an interesting trap to bugger your players with and create stories for good times to come.

There is no story, no adventure hooks and everything as such is left in a hands of the Game Master to figure out. Each of the area is written in a simple concise style that gives the GM all the information he or she needs but leaving enough open to add in original or edited material (for example when I ran this it took place in a derelict space transport) and is highly adaptable.

+Frank Turfler's art is, as usual, incredible and the map (the first time I've seen his cartography) is a small isometric piece that shows everything needed to the GM. The adventure's presentation and layout also lend to the age of the author as it is set-up to appear as it was written on scrap loose-leaf and post-it notes. The random background scribbles and drawings lend to the overall feel of coming from a 7-year-old instead of an adult pretending to be a child and lends to the feelings this style of adventure are supposed to invoke.

While lack in story, the monsters and traps offered by this adventure show a massive creative mind that wants to fill everything with new and interesting material. I honestly CANNOT wait for the next inkling adventure to see what this Father (artist) & Son (writer) team can produce next.

Oh … beware the Vampiric Bugs … or ignore them … they may only exist in the mind … or maybe not.

Inkling Adventures – Raiders of the Forgotten Treasure is available at Gumroad for $2.00 and comes with an adventure, map, paper minis and a tile set.