Free Adventure Review: Madness of the Rat King

Pros

• Interesting take on rats
• Varied enemy design
• Maps, including grid maps that can be printed
• Quick combat encounters
• Puzzle situations with open ended solutions
• Almost everything to run the adventure is included except per-generated characters (including creature and magic item stats)
• Free! (Well, pay what you want)

Could Go Either Way

• Might not be “epic” enough for some people, especially for a first game, but could be a plus for those that prefer lower key games.
• It's really a single dungeon delve, but it has a lot of room to expand into much more
• Cthulhu similarities that not everyone may approve and makes customizing it into a introduction adventure for a campaign a bit trickier

Cons

• Cover and other battlemap elements are a bit lacking (though not completely absent)
• Some of the specific details will be lost to those new to D&D that don't know the lore

Introduction

Now that the Dungeon Master's Guild has been launched, there is a lot of content coming out for Dungeons & Dragons 5^th edition. As such, I'll be looking at content that I think is worth mentioning. I'll be starting with the free adventure Madness of the Rat King. The adventure features colour maps, new creatures, some new items, and a new dungeon delve.

Other Information

At the time of writing this, I've read through and run the adventure. Almost everything needed to run the adventure besides pre-generated characters is here. The exception is such things as weapon and armour tables. I like seeing the items and creatures included with the adventure like this and wish that every release did something like this (though doing it in a separate booklet, like previous D&D 5^th edition released, is also fine).

The Adventure

New Monsters

All kinds of new rat creatures are presented here for your use as a Dungeon Master. They are generally well balanced and amusing from what I saw. As the name of the adventure suggests, there are a lot of rats. However, the way they are done was appreciated by me and my veteran players. The creepiness and weirdness of some of them should also work quite well on new players as well.

New Items

The stand out new items here, in my opinion, are the ring of alertness and Storm's Herald. Both items have interesting features to them. In the case of Storm's Herald, it is one of those items that can act as an iconic campaign item. It also allows for a story to be formed around the item, though it is not told in the adventure. It scales with level so it isn't too good for a level one party but stays relevant as the party levels up. The other items aren't too powerful, so there isn't much of a concern of having the party steamroll the next published adventure (you could always adjust things if it made the party too powerful and if it was your own adventure).

The Adventure Itself

The adventure takes the form of a dungeon delve. Where it rises above that kind of standard adventure is in some of the details surrounding the delve. The different types of rats, for example, have a charm to them that was appreciated by my players. The items and back stories had their moment of charm as well. The few characters that get speaking roles are one of my favourite parts, and I had a lot of fun with them.

Information is displayed quite well. The presentation of combat groups, their intended difficulties and options for 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd level was appreciated and well done. The adventure was generally easy to read and had very few typos (the ones present didn't influence the meaning).

The map itself can also be re-appropriated for a different adventure if needed by the Dungeon Master. It's rather small but fit quite nicely into a single quick session, especially with role-play before and after arriving at the location. They are also provided on multiple sheets for printing purposes, but this also lets you, as the dungeon master, easily connect them however you like with tunnels if you wanted to reuse them.

I mentioned the item Storm's Herald earlier, and the encounter to get it is really quite nice and required some problem solving. This encounter and room, by itself, could be lifted into a custom game with little issue and work very well. There are also some other riddle situations present in the adventure and also opportunity to role-play with the 2 big characters of the adventure.

There are multiple Cthulhu like details in the adventure, and this can go both ways. If you like that, the details fit together very well. However, it makes it harder to convert the adventure to something else without making many more changes to the adventure. It can be done, but the Mark of the Deep in particular becomes a bit trickier to convert while keeping the same flavour. In the case you try to change it to a death cult, for example, coming up with a curse that has roughly the same effect is tricky. Otherwise, it's mostly a straight forward change and almost all of it still fits (demon, and devil would be a similar change).

The Art

There is no art here besides the maps. For a free adventure, I think this is perfectly acceptable. The maps are quite well done as well and are far more important to actual play. They feature the areas well and provide a grid layer if you want to print them and use them with miniatures. I've seen free map packs with worse maps than this. I've seen priced adventures with worse maps too. 

Summary

I'd say that if you are looking for a level 1 adventure, you could do worse than Madness of the Rat King. It features a well drawn map that could be reused, if nothing else. I feel it also has some charm and generally, my players enjoyed it. There are also some puzzle situations that allow for creative solutions (the adventure provides some suggestions, a few of which are intended, but leaves room for the players to come up with their own). Players that are expecting a more “serious” threat than rats and are less knowledgeable about the lore may be disappointed though. By lore, I mean the at times hilarious reliance on rats in low level adventures. Many of the rooms seem to also be lacking elements that would allow for creative use of terrain, though this can be fixed by the Dungeon Master. However, my overall verdict is that it's worth a look, even if only to reuse certain elements in your own home games. If you like it and can afford it, throw some money the author's way too.