5E Adventure Review: Death at Black Marble Quarry

Death at Black Marble Quarry is a one-session adventure for level 5 characters. The characters must investigate a quarry where the miners (quarrymen?) have uncovered an ancient temple. Unfortunately for the workers, this let loose the undead trapped within, and the quarry workers were all killed.

Enter the PCs – they need to enter the quarry, explore the old temple, and end the threat.

There are a lot of things wrong with this adventure. It would love an editor. Some of the descriptions do not make much sense, while people who dislike long boxed text will be horrified by what they see within.

However, however, however…

The core of the adventure is good. It has a great concept behind it. The encounters are challenging, and though flooding the temple often to a depth of three feet is a bit of a problem for halflings (take a boat!), it means everything occurs in a unique environment. And after you have finished the adventure, you still have the potential for a lot of later developments, for it opens up the world rather than closing it off.

Some of the DCs may be a little high, and it is not an experience for the faint-hearted. But the story develops well. From the meeting with the amnesiac elvish spirit outside, through the unnerving temple inside, to the final confrontation with something so terrifying an evil death cult wanted to capture it: this is what I want in my Dungeons & Dragons game. Something the players will talk about later. And I am sure they will!

Death at Black Marble Quarry is hardly a polished product. Boxed text occasionally makes the mistake of assuming player actions, and there are sections where it is evident that the adventure changed, but the boxed text did not.

It is short: only five major encounter areas. I expect it will take most groups between two to four hours to play. (It took us a little over two). But we had a lot of fun with it.

A good concept and the basics of execution can take an adventure a long way. Yes, I would prefer a better-edited product, but we had fun with this one. And I cannot ask for more!