Very dense, a lot of work went into this clearly. You can feel the experience of the writer and that this has been played before publishing. Ergonomy could be a better, with zones identified on the map, diagrams to identify the relationships between factions for instance or a visual history line. All in all, it's not going to be a picnic, neither for you nor for your players.

I've soloed part of this--it's great, if you're looking for a classic Moria-style dungeon. It is NOT gonzo, but rather presents the environment with more fidelity to Gillespie's version of dwarven culture.

Read but not yet played. Nice Book, some great ideas. Some criticism so far: -The pdfs are not index-linked. That ist rather easy to do but an immense game-changer for the users. -there are some Typos, like "Cockwork Scorpion" on p. 46. Not ideal proofreading. -there are no player-maps. I know that many OSR judges let their players do the whole mapping, but it would be ideal if there were maps without all those secret doors etc. At least in the pdfs, or to buy for some $/€.

• The layout gives you the stats of all monsters directly in the text of the rooms, where you encounter them. But if there are 10 rooms in a row where you encounter Luft Baboons in just little variations, it becomes quite unreadable. Perhaps one textbox with the stats per page would be helpful for quick reference by the judge/GM. -the landscape besides the drifting dungeon itself is rich in background, but poor in encounters besides the descriptions of the towns and the reference to some bandits/monsters.

Dragon Slayer is an excellent all in one book for playing Old School style TTRPGs. Highly recommended!

I’m of two minds about this. One the one hand, it’s a cool setting and you get a massive amount of detailed content to run for your players. On the other hand, this feels a bit unfinished. There are lots of mistakes in the module (like the number of goblins is said to be X but then assumes it’s Y). And the recommended frequency of random encounters is ludicrous. E.g. even if you know exactly where you’re going, you have to cross almost 30 hexes to get to the first dungeon entrance, so you’ll get 18 random encounters on average. I’ve had to adjust to a more normal frequency so my players can actually get to the dungeon without dying.

Useful elements, but not worth the price.

I liked the map and some of the random tables are decent. Unfortunately, I felt the book focused way too much on trivial details while skipping over truly important ones. For example, there are DOZENS of secret entrances and doors marked on the map but there is no guidance or any information and virtually any of them. And yet, we have three different creature stat blocks where the only difference is the increase in hitpoints and an attribute or two.

I had other frustrations with how this dungeon is set up and thought about giving fewer stars. But at the end of the day, I think those are more due to personal preference than any fault in the construction of the product.

So overall, I'm giving this a solid "Meh. Wouldn't recommend but wouldn't recommend against if you think it's what you're looking for"

My absolute favorite version of the B/X framework with additional spells and rule modifications that I normally add into my OSR games are already here. I much prefer the art in this over many other RPGs currently on the market. It may be a fantasy heartbreaker among many but it's everything I want in one.

Bought this because of the @everyone ping on the osr discord. It's actually a really good read.

Book layout A+, art A++, rules are A+ as well. Quick easy ruleset to explore a realm full of dungeons, monsters to be slain, treasure to loot...if you survived the traps. Only book you need, but GGs Barrowmaze is A++ as well.

I struggled with giving this 4 or 5 stars and eventually decided on 5 with a caveat (below). As a product - an old school adventure "megadungeon" I give it a 5. Personally, I love the geomorphs and being able to easily insert my own sections to the base campaign... so that's a plus for me. The caveat is with the PoD version. I suspect this product is at the upper edge of page count for what DriveThurRPG can produce. My print hardcover does not have good binding - it started with 3 places in the book where there was a noticeable gap in the binding - I can see the glue used and there is a crack between the pages... and with extremely minor use (it's stat on the shelf for all but a handful of openings) these breaks in the spine have increased to 5, so the physical version is not up to long term use (or even any short term use) beyond looking nice on your gaming shelf.

I have a question: I traveling from Helix to Barrowmaze is 2 hexes, that is 5 miles each, and wich are doubled because of swamp, how can that add up to 20 miles? It should be 40miles and impossible to travel back and forth in a day.

I purchased the PDF for this and very much liked this. It is a Moria inspired mega-dungeon that has a well done old school feel. I like making adventure I purchase my own, and the unmapped secondary locations gives me the ability to easily do that.

My complaints are minor. I would have liked unlabeled maps for use with VTT. Items unique to this product, such as Seachad Board's, Gungathol Trumpets, or Longpoint Daggers for example, should have been all listed in a new items section but are easy enough to find using ctrl-F.

Another great piece of world created by Gillespie, the fantastically curated really helping you get inside the world. Love it.

Ich sage es nur sehr ungerne, aber dieses Buch ist in meinen Augen eines der schlechtesten Monsterhandbücher, die ich bisher in der Hand hatte...

Speaking as a DM this has been the core "thing" of the longest-running and most successful tabletop campaign I've been involved with. The book excels in clean/easy presentation for both the main town of Helix and the dungeon itself--those elements have been astonishingly easy to run. The dungeon is surprisingly varied for as uniform as it appears on the surface. Great art throughout.

I find the "story" of the module very thin and the pantheon details are quite weak, but it's malleable and easy enough for a DM to flesh out. Small random encounter tables, particularly on the barrow moor, are a bigger issue to me. I find the complete lack of detail given to the nearby "big city" Ironguard Motte pretty nonsensical. As a physical product, especially an "anniversary special edition," I think a fold-out poster map of the Barrowmaze would have made a lot of sense.