There's life after death... as long as you are a D&D character.
This book is all about raising the dead. Which might be a friend. Or it might be an enemy, to be raised to interrogated... or to be killed off again, who knows. This softcover book four adventures, all focused on raising that one dead friend.
d20
Remember the days when third edition was around, and hundreds of other companies joined the fray under the OGL and the d20 umbrella? This is one of those products. From a mechanics perspective this is a d20 / 3e game, but by its nature the ideas and concepts easily translate into 5e. Unfortunately you'll have to convert any of the monsters / enemies yourself if you're a 3e user.
Tip: monsters can often simply be replaced by their 5e counterparts. The 3e versions are often a little tougher than their 5e counterparts, but not always. NPCs may take a little more effort. See also here.
Raising... raising...
66 pages, containing 4 adventures. In each adventure the goal is to raise a dead character. The adventures are aimed at those cases where raising isn't simply a case of casting a resurrect spell, or paying a wandering cleric to do the job for you.
- Nature's Boundy - aimed at raising a character that follows a philosophy rather than a divine power
- Kinslayer's Moon - you're competing with another NPC party, trying to raise an evil character
- The Crypt of Ronashim - offers poor characters an option to recover the dead
- Them Bones - this is the final alternative when even regular raise read and resurrection spells have failed
Limited
The adventures by themselves appear fairly solid, there's little wrong there, but... Although it's nice to have a few 'raise the dead' adventures at hand - just in case - there are a few issues.
Number one is that these are just four adventures. It would have been nice if the book would have been a bit thicker and would have provided some additional ideas and hooks for raising the dead. It would have been even better if the book would have dealt with some of the consequences of raising the dead... How does that impact the game world? How would different societies / classes / species / cultures deal with raising the dead and characters that have returned to life? What if the resurrected character is unhappy about being resurrected?
Or, from a DM-running-a-game perspective: assume you have a party in which one player's character died. Now the remainder of the party is trying to resurrect that player's character. How do you deal with a player who doesn't have a character to play?
Summary
4 good adventures, with somewhat limited use. Handy to have around, but it could have been so much better if it would have provided more of a generic 'raise the dead' treatise as well. Okay, but could have been better.
Data
Generic
Name: Raise the Dead
Setting: Generic
Type: adventure
System: d20 (3e)
Author / design: Casey Christofferson, Brendon Simpson, Lance Hawvermale
Copyright / Publication: 2003
About: 4 adventures that handle raising dead (player) characters
Package
Format: softcover
Score
Pages:
-2 - at 66 pages it's a bit thin
Opinion:
0 - Fine for what it is, though could have been more
Total score:
-2
The Verdict
It's a nice-to-have for fallback, but you'd have to convert it to 5e, and carefully consider how to handle the player who doesn't have a character to run... Nope, this definitely could have been better. Still a nice to have, but I gotta' be honest: you could come up with some of these ideas yourself. Perhaps even better ones...
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