Another old review.

Rappan Athuk, The Dungeon of Graves: The Upper Levels is a Necromancer Games adventure for the D20 system. Looking through the book, it is designed for groups level 4 - 9, though I would recommend a minimum level of 7. This is something that should have been on the cover, but isn't. As you may have guessed, this adventure details the top levels of a very large dungeon complex. I will admit a little bias here, as I generally do not care for such adventures. They just don't make much sense to me. Necromancer Games tries to avoid the pitfalls associated with giant dungeons, namely that most of the creatures living there have no food sources and all happily get along. They do a fair job, having some areas just not connected to anything else, and having scout parties from other parts of the dungeon show up. Book construction: the adventure is 48 pages, though one is for the standard D20 license and the other is an ad for a different product... a practice which is becoming very popular lately and one that I don't care for. The cover artwork is nice, not incredible, but not bad. Interior artwork is quite good, and the maps are workable. Typeface is easy to read, without an overabundance of white space.

The adventure: basically, it's a dungeon. A brief history of just how the dungeon was created is presented. Pretty standard fare. There is also a list of all the dungeon level names, including those not covered in this book, which I think is a good idea. There are multiple areas that can be accessed from the surface, depending on which entrance you use, which I think is kinda neat. The monsters presented are generally pretty tough, and Necromancer gives them all basic strategies which they will use, which I really like. None of the monsters just stand around and wait to die, they have plans and contingencies in place in case someone wants to kill them. This is one of the high points of the adventure for me. Monsters encountered include wererats, undead, a rakshasa, basilisks, and other nasties. And there are a TON of traps. Many of them are very deadly. If the PC's aren't careful, they will die.

One of my favorites, I either ran or played parts of it several times and enjoyed it a lot.