The third of the DB series for Castles & Crusades, this is another 26 pages of dungeon crawl, written by Casey Cristofferson and illustrated by Peter Bradley.
It’s an extension of DB2, and adds levels 4-6 to the dungeon. The monsters are bigger and more varied than in DB2, and there are new items, spells, monsters, diseases, and so forth to inflict upon the party. The majority of the opposition are bugbears, ogres and gargoyles, but there is something downright nasty towards the bottom, with its own plans for global domination, along with traces of dwarven cave-divers and gnomish archaeologists.
The map is, as with DB2, far too small for comfort. There are about another 50 encounter-dense areas, so again somewhere between 3 and 10 sessions of play in my estimation.
Foreshadowing and author comments make it seem there are intended to be at least two more installments of the Crater of Umeshti, which I couldn’t find; maybe they haven’t been written yet. I’m particularly intrigued by the gnomish underground inn of Lamplight Station, mentioned a few times in DB2 and DB3 as a place to rest up without going back to town, but it’s obviously further down than level 6.
Rating: 4 out of 5. More original and interesting for me as a DM than DB2; easy to use and to drop into an existing campaign. Let down by hard-to-read maps.
Halfway Station 