The Great Library is a quintessential tier 2 dungeon crawl from the Mini-Dungeon Tome. It adheres to the old-school mentality that powers much of this book’s material: less is more; make it your own. As such, it offers some evocative details and challenges even on an otherwise fairly simple map. Additionally, the big bad guy makes for a fantastic recurring villain given his nature…

Rating: Content 4/5 and Form 4/5

Pick up the Mini-Dungeon Tome at DriveThruRPG and use the Mini-Dungeon Assistant at the AAW Games website to pick the adventure specs you want!

Read on for the full review!

MDT Review Series

Reviewing a book like the Mini-Dungeon Tome by AAW Games is that there’s just a lot of content, and all of it is “separate”: these are individual one-shot adventures, and not a continuous campaign. So, I’m going to take a crack at reviewing these adventures individually, and generally only after I prep or play through it.

The Great Library: What Is It?

The Great Library (MDT p. 160) by Jonathan Ely is an 8-chamber underground library currently being examined for necromantic lore by a spirit naga named Kazzak.

Content 4/5

There are a handful of guardians that the naga has turned loose to keep interlopers out, or at the very least cause enough of a ruckus to alert him should they advance beyond the first chamber. There is a single creature (an invisible stalker) that remains loyal to a geas-like agreement to protect one of the chambers rather than the naga, but its mission is much the same: keep intruders out. There’s potential for recruiting it to aid the adventurers is there, but they’ll need to speak Aquan or have a spell handy to communicate with it; otherwise it’s just going to attack!

The amount of scenery details in the form of book shelves, chairs, desks, and so on makes for some really close quarters combat. Importantly, none of the maps in the Mini-Dungeon Tome have a scale listed on them. Most seem to be scaled at 1 square = 5 feet, but a great deal of them work much better at 1 square = 10 feet, and The Great Library is one of the latter. There are three large monsters featured in the complex, after all: Kazzak the naga, a cloaker, and a monolith champion, which is a creature from Kobold Press’ Tome of Beasts. None of them are going to work well in any of the chambers if you leave the scale at 5 foot squares; they’ll all be squeezing (PHB Chapter 9). Even if you increase the scale, there may be some rooms with features that force the creatures to squeeze at times, though I’d argue leaving that option is a strategic choice.

Weirdly, there’s a throwaway mention of a naked goblin just standing there in Room 3…what’s the deal? No name or motive, the creature is not bolded in the text so it’s hard to tell if it was meant to be an encounter, and she’s hanging out by a much more powerful creature (the cloaker). In our game, we named her “Goblinda” and the players considered recruiting or interrogating her, but when the cloaker attacked, she fled. They never saw her again. A much better use of her would be as Kazzak’s alarm: she doesn’t fight or anything, but simply runs to tell Kazzak of intruders, potentially, goading adventurers to approach the cloaker unawares if they move to intercept her.

Kazzak makes for a great recurring villain: spirit nagas can’t be permanently defeated without a wish spell to stop them from regenerating in 1d6 days (per their entry in Monster Manual). This is an awesome use of such a creature, but it does beg two questions unanswered in the adventure:

  1. Where does Kazzak first start in the complex and/or regenerate?
  2. What are the stakes if Kazzak is not slain permanently?

Since perma-death is an unlikely outcome — what 7th level characters have a wish spell handy? — having an idea of where Kazzak re-forms and what he’s ultimately up to would be cool. These are big questions in a lot of ways, establishing how this adventure plays out, fits into your campaign, and what the consequences are if Kazzak isn’t defeated, and this is one of the things I love about the Mini-Dungeon Tome in general, but I could see others giving it a black mark (or at least raising a red flag). Not all DMs are interested in filling out details that are this (potentially) important to the thrust of an adventure.

So take that as a warning: if you like ad-lib and making adventures your own, this one is going to sing. I certainly thought so! But if you don’t like that stuff, consider checking out the next session and the Resources section down below so you don’t have to do much critical thinking 😉

Playtest Report

I ran this adventure for four adventurers of level 7. A fifth joined in the final session, and was simply dropped in as a prisoner being held in the room with the monolith champion. We’re using a somewhat more desolate version of the Forgotten Realms setting.

The Story. The adventurers received word that a local patrol was attacked and dominated to leave the area of an old 5-building ruin, basically just the burned out remains of basements. Some ancient cult of wizards (probably from ancient Netheril, an empire of wizards) moved some books here, most like. The heroes head out to investigate, and cross swords and spells with Kazzak and his minions. They discover the naga’s necromantic pursuits, and also learn that an adventuring wizard (the fifth PC) is held captive by the naga, who hopes to extract additional arcane lore from him. After the party defeats the naga and unearths some artifacts from the place (mainly the locked chamber at area 7), the party heads back to their headquarters, only then learning that spirit nagas require a wish spell to be permanently defeated! Highlights of the adventure: the “Doh!” moment when the players found out the naga isn’t truly defeated; naming Goblinda, despite her brief appearance; randomly rolling up scrolls in several rooms, and then two artifacts, which include a magic javelin (ho-hum) and THE FREAKING EYE OF VECNA!

Encounter Balance. I screwed up! I assumed 5 foot squares, and thus every fight was a stationary mess. The cloaker kept moving into and out of different rooms to keep from squeezing, but the players used the thorn whip spell and some eldritch blast add-ons to great effect, forcing it to squeeze at times. The naga fight was intense even though he too had to squeeze, mainly because as a creature that doesn’t fear death (he’ll just come back in a couple days!), he could let loose and dive right into the party’s midst. A well-placed lightning bolt really pushed the party’s limits, though no one died. The monolith champion was frightening in close quarters, but the effects of squeezing had him whiffing way too often. Additionally, the monolith champion doesn’t have a lot of interesting abilities, but it’s got a high enough Intelligence that it should be using the furniture (a desk), the door, the hallway, and simply grappling or throwing characters to keep spellcasters or big damage-dealers locked down or wasting movement and actions. Overall, this adventure was fun tactically speaking, but really would’ve been a thousand times more intense if I’d re-scaled the dungeon to 10 foot squares. It’d work at 20 foot squares, as well, but might feel a bit too open at that size: even if the gargoyle fight would have almost too much open space. Characters of 7th level are going to have a healthy mix of short and long ranged attacks, so opening it up too much doesn’t actually favor the tactics of flying creatures as much as you might think.

Development. Once Kazzak was defeated, the party had no idea that he’d be back in 1d6 days. They learned that after heading back to civilization and doing some research, so now they have to determine what to do about it. Whatever it is, it involves them finding a way to get their hands on a wish spell, which won’t be easy. In the interim, I’ll think of stuff for Kazzak to do; probably just bump his challenge rating a little and add some necromancy school spells, as well as have him show up with some undead next time the party encounters him. As for treasure, all areas list “a few scrolls of levels 3-4” and up, except for Room 7 which also has some “randomly determined cursed artifacts.” I literally just hit D&D Beyond, pulled up the relevant subject (the spell lists of a few of my players’ classes, a list of all cursed items) and rolled a die. For the scrolls, I rolled what class’ spell list they’d come from first (I had a druid, warlock, and wizard in the party, so I just rolled 1d3 to determine which one). I got the following:

  • Javelin of returning…actually a javelin of backbiting!
  • The Eye of Vecna <– The party decided they want to find out how to destroy this item as part of their next adventure.
  • Spell scroll: Level 8 wizard: illusory dragon (XGE)
  • Spell scroll: Level 5 bard, cleric, druid, wizard: planar binding
  • Spell scroll: Level 5 warlock, wizard: contact other plane
  • Spell scroll: Level 5 druid, ranger: tree stride
  • Spell scroll: Level 5 druid, sorcerer, wizard: control winds (EEPC)
  • Spell scroll: Level 5 druid, ranger: wrath of nature ( XGE)
  • Spell scroll: Level 1 druid, ranger, sorcerer, wizard: fog cloud
  • Spell scroll: Level 1 warlock: hex
  • Spell scroll: Level 3 cleric, druid: meld into stone
  • Spell scroll: Level 3 cleric, druid, ranger, sorcerer wizard: protection from energy
  • Spell scroll: Level 4 bard, druid, sorcerer, wizard: confusion
  • Spell scroll: Level 3 warlock, wizard: summon lesser demons (XGE)

Form 4/5

The Mini-Dungeon Tome is one of the best laid out adventure compilations out there. I’ll be brief because this will get repetitive as I do multiple reviews from this volume. The highlights are:

  • It’s worth noting first that despite the simple layout of the dungeon, the map itself actually is extremely functional. It shows a level of detail that really helps establish certain facets of the dungeon crawl experience, namely the positioning of the light globes that appear in most chambers. All throughout the Mini-Dungeon Tome the maps have great, adventure-specific details like that.
  • The books margins are color-coded so you know what tier the adventure is.
  • There’s a little bubble at the top of each adventure spread that tells you how many PCs are expected, and then another that tells you the level expectations. This makes finding an adventure appropriate to your campaign’s current level a breeze.
  • Monsters are bolded and colored in the text, along with a page reference. I really like the fact that they use the font coloring in addition to bolding the text.

Finally, the tome ends with an appendix that provides very abbreviated stat blocks for all of the diseases, traps & hazards, and monsters that appear in the tome. This makes it incredibly useful as a reference when thinking about monster tactics regarding the actual creature abilities or how they interact with the hazards near their lairs. I’d argue the abbreviated nature of many of the special abilities leaves out too much information, though, so there are lots of higher-level creatures and threats that you simply cannot run from this Appendix; you’ll need the full monster entry from the Monster Manual or Tome of Beasts or wherever the creature comes from to actually run things at the table. But it is still nice to have the reference, because for prepping an adventure you often don’t need the full shebang, just a guide to what the monster’s capabilities are.

As previously mentioned, most monsters come from the Monster Manual or Tome of Beasts, but there are also a few unique critters that appeared in earlier versions of these adventures (before they were compiled) or from other adventures by AAW Games. There’s a PDF appendix available (if you buy the PDF version of the Mini-Dungeon Tome) that has full stats and descriptions for these creatures, but notably I can’t find that appendix available separately or any where else (legit) online, not even AAW Games’ store. Jonathan G. Nelson, the owner, is pretty active on social media and has compiled helpful resource links (see below), so getting it shouldn’t be too hard, but I’d love to see it added to their site.

Mini-Dungeon Tome by AAW Games

Mini-Dungeon Tome by AAW Games

Resources

Placing Kazzak. Need help figuring out where Kazzak should be at the start of the adventure? I placed him in Area 6, giving him quick access to Area 3, which has lots of places for him to hide, squirm around, and otherwise target his dominate magic or use his lightning bolt without being cornered. He can always retreat to his hidden sanctuary (Area 8) or head over to the monolith champion (Area 5) to recruit some backup. This also allows him to flank the party if they head toward Area 5 & 4 early on, which has several long corridors…also perfect for a lightning bolt.

Developing Kazzak. Kazzak should have long-term goals if there’s a chance he won’t be permanently put to rest (likely the case for 7th level characters). You could have him swap out his spell list for a few necromancy school spells over time. Unless you increase his challenge rating, he’s not going to have more spells, necessarily, but his tactics will change drastically depending on what you swap out. For his single fifth level spell, all of the necromancy spells from Xanathar’s Guide to Everything are interesting choices: negative energy flood, enervation, or danse macabre (if he needs minions especially!). Water breathing is a pretty dumb 3rd level spell unless he’s got some important minion who normally breathes air accompanying him…which isn’t the case, so I’d swap that for animate dead in a heartbeat. His larger goal could be:

  • Swapping spells.
  • Adding these (and other) necromancy spells, and thus potentially increasing his challenge rating.
  • Gaining undead followers, in which case he can later be encountered with zombies, skeletons, ghouls, or more powerful creatures that are closer to being his equal, such as wights, wraiths, or vampire spawn.

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