Download Dragondown Grotto (Dungeons & Dragons Fantastic Locations Accessory) fb2

Next to nothing has been said about this product--I think in part to avoid spoiling the mystery of the module. It makes sense, but its tough to buy something if you have nothing to go off of but the (admittedly pretty awesome looking) front cover art. I hate sealed packs for just that reason. So here you go...details!

The Premise: Your adventurers happen to discover the location of a hatchery, deep underground in the forested wilderness, that has been taking in discarded but still viable dragon eggs, hatching the wyrmlings and selling them to evil persons as guardians or mounts. You are to go and retrieve some of the eggs for an interested collector, but things take an unexpected turn...

What you need: The pack contains maps and the adventure, but you need to buy all the minis yourself (or acceptable stand-ins). It seems a shame to go all out and get these lavish maps and then have to represent the monsters with dice. I would recommend picking up a few packs of the War of the Dragon Queen (Dungeons & Dragons Miniatures Product) minis and then buying what you don't get piecemeal on one of the stores that sell individual minis (Paizo.com is good).

1 cool looking kobold
8 lizardfolk + leader type (preferably blackscales)
2-4 ogres (met in twos, so you can recycle the minis)
1 cool evil mage guy
6 hobgoblins + leader
4 specters
1-4 dragonnes (met individually, so you can recycle the minis)
1-2 cadaver collectors

Some dragons (these can get pricey so you might want to improvise...)
1-2 red dragon skeletons
medium silver dragon (v. young)
small black (v. young)
large green dragon (young adult)
huge black dragon (mature)

There's indications I've seen advertised that the kit also includes adventure seeds for other adventures, but haven't seen anything about that from looking over the materials.

The maps themselves however are beautiful and a lot more varied than I would have imagined. They unfold to 21x30" each and are lavishly drawn and colored. Three are full page maps (Spawnscale Hatchery--a big underground aging temple/dungeon locale, Dragondale Grotto--which is rocky badland with copses of trees sinking into a wide circular chasm in the middle, and the Dragon Graveyard--a big gray wasteland with walls of mounded dragonbones piled up like hedges and a big dias in the middle) and two interconnected half page maps (Forest Cliff Lair which is half underground passages with a treasure hoard in one corner, and half wilderness with a river cutting diagnally through it and a little magical stone circle)

I thought the adventure was a good romp, definitely on the higher power end of things, but more of a "situation" adventure than a "Fantastic Location". Certainly it has the most dungeons and dragons I've seen in a Dungeons & Dragons adventure. They say it's scaled for "mid-level" play, most of the encounters are from around 6-11 CR.

So yeah, that's the details without ruining the adventure.

Like the other Fantastic Locations, this one has two battle maps (double sided) and an encounter booklet. The art is uniformly well done and the maps can be easily flattened and laminated at your local office supply store to increase their durability.

These are some of the nicest accessories published by WotC, in my opinion. They get plenty of use in DDM Skirmish and my home RPG campaigns.

Got to love D&D great A++

A+++