The direct follow-up to Master of the Desert Nomads, and essentially the second part of the same adventure, Temple of Death is really the culmination of what started in X4, however, probably because of this, it’s also a much more exciting adventure.

If X4 ended with no resolution or any satisfaction for players, X5 makes up for that by giving players a lot more action and a final dungeon, the titular Temple of Death, which is well worth the price of admission as players keep uncovering the mystery of the Master and his impending attack on their lands. There are some problems with cultural sensitivity here as the land of the Master, Hule, is very much a barely veiled version of southeast Asia, and it very specifically contains no Lawful characters… which feels a bit wrong, this is easy to change as a DM, in order to create a more morally diverse populace, and I definitely recommend it. Also, because it makes little sense to make all NPCs “chaotic” as there are several characters that go out of their way to help the  party… Remember that D&D did not have good or evil alignments, all Lawful was good and all Chaotic was pretty much evil. The mix and match alignments like Lawful Evil or Chaotic Good, for example, were exclusive to AD&D at this time. 

One of the big highlights to this module, however is its art, drawn in a pretty attractive sepia, by legendary comic book artist Tim Truman, it’s full of really cool pieces, particularly the monsters in the appendix and the full page illustration of the Temple of Death, one of the coolest pieces of interior art in D&D modules up until this moment, we would have bigger and better things in the future (Ravenloft is just around the corner), but this is really something else.