B4 The Lost City with Goodman Games & Beyond the Lost City Retro Review B/X BECMI

We will take a look at B4 The Lost City, Goodman Games Original Adventures Reincarnated, and B 4.5 Beyond The Lost City.
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[@ddiver7908]

Awsome review and explanation of the Lost City! That medusa picture you had is pretty sick ngl. I need that as a tattoo.

[@anarionelendili8961]

The Lost City is a great adventure and one of my favorites, too. I like moving the place to the Great Desert and have them to be an offshoot of the Traldar in Mystara. The trio of gods is almost a perfect match, especially when you read in the Hollow World supplement on Milenians, the descendants of the Traldar, whose priests also wear facemasks. Thus nicely tying everything to the usual starter area of the Duchy of Karameikos, where the commoners, the Traladara, are descendants of the Traldar and worship a trio of gods who map very nicely to the Cynedicean trio. However, the adventure is brought down, in my opinion, by the fact that it was written as a Basic level module. Thus, everyone is at a very low level, and so are all the NPCs, too. In short, these big 'save the ancient civilization' adventures work better, in my opinion, when geared towards higher levels. Basic level adventurers should be worrying about the local orc tribe raiding homesteads rather than Ancient Lost Civilizations and Eldrich Horrors. Also, the dungeon-building wasn't great in the olden days. The three factions really ought to all have secret passages leading out of the pyramid and into the Lost City itself. How else are they bringing food, water and other supplies? The pyramid should be more of a 'temple' for each of the factions, with plenty of other faction members in the Lost City, who act as the logistical support for the 'priesthood'. In short, I think that the Lost City would work much better as a mid-level Expert Module, say 7-9. It has been on my to-do list to upgrade the adventure to those levels for our own BECMI campaign. This also alleviates the issue of filler adventures, when needing/wanting to face Zargon.

[@RichardtheDungeonCrawler]

Yes. It would make a great expert level adventure. Your right players would not need to do all the "side quests" to gain enough levels to take down Zargon.

[@midnightgreen8319]

This is my favorite adventure as well! I love the Goodman Games version, even though I don't run 5e.

[@yeoldegeek71]

Nice one Richard. B4 is a fabulous module, though I do believe the lower (inverted) pyramid levels were the weak part as presented, as the maps were very generic and the encounters just felt like a random array of monsters - too random for a DM to add details to as it's tough to justify most of the locations.... whereas the top 5 levels felt nicely organic. The City itself is indeed incredibly inspiring, and I think Goodman Games did a mostly excellent job in their version of it. Though I admit to not liking their reasoning for the city dwellers' madness.

[@RichardtheDungeonCrawler]

I agree geek. I wonder how many groups make it all the way down.

[@hallacar]

I have not heard of B 4.5. Is it set up to use the Basic/Expert rules? I loved the original and have the Goodman Games version as well, though I have not read through it very thoroughly. When my current campaign reaches its conclusion I want to start a new one with Lost City being its starting point. I may even try to tie it in with the Desert of Desolation series. Great episode as always.

[@sketchasaurrex4087]

It's gotta be Undermountain for me. Having the metropolis of Waterdeep on top of a massive mega-dungeon just works for me.

[@RichardtheDungeonCrawler]

I am not familiar with that one. That is 2E?

[@sketchasaurrex4087]

@RichardtheDungeonCrawler it's in the forgotten realms. 1e had Undermountain. 2e had Ruins of Undermountain. 3e had Return to Undermountain (where I first found it). 4e and 5e had a compilation of everything previous.

[@RichardtheDungeonCrawler]

@@sketchasaurrex4087 Thanks. I will check out the 1E version!

[@jimzecca3961]

Did you look at the recent 2024 5E conversion that WotC did as part of the Infinite Staircase book? Also, Zargon is one of the Elder Evils discussed in Elder Evils/Exemplars of Evil from the late 3.5 days.

[@RichardtheDungeonCrawler]

@jimzecca3961 No I have not read it. Is it worth the read?

[@MdJamiulislam-n6n]

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