Review - Rescue at Rivenroar

Rescue at Rivenroar is WotC's first stab at an adventure path. They have chosen to base it in Elsir Vale, which many of us remember from the Red Hand of Doom. The tie-in and setup is simple. Sinruth, a hobgoblin wanna-be, grew up on the stories from the Red Hand of Doom. He is now an adult, and wants to assemble his own army and carve out a fiefdom. After having done some networking and picked up a nice lair, Sinruth sends his hobgoblins to throw a party at Brindol, where they pillage and burn, before kidnapping 7 people. Now it is up to the players to track down the culprits, and return with the kidnapped people. They follow the hobgoblins to an underground lair, where they face (aside from hobgoblins) a decent variety of monsters, before they kill Sinruth and find out that he was nothing but a small part of something much (much) bigger (I bet you didn't see that coming, now did you?)

The Good
* I like the fleshing out of the 7 NPC's (6 actually, one of them croacks before the players can do anything), there is a lot of potential roleplaying fun in the 6 NPC's. Or of course, they can just shut the hell up and tag along.
* Magic item parcels fleshed out by the DM - very good, i often find myself changing most stuff in adventures anyway.
* The combat encounters. In general, they are varied, interesting and look fun. The Ogre encounter has great potential. Many of them have gimmicks, or interesting terrain, or just a surprising combination of monsters.
* The Skill Challenges. The council man and the treck through the woods look good. The interrogation might be a tad weaker, but still has decent potential.
* I love the way the adventure starts, that while they introduce themselves to each other, they get assaulted by hobgoblins. I usually start my campaigns by initiative as well


The Bad
* Rescue is nothing but an old-fashioned rail-road. The players' choices consist of going left or right inside the dungeon. Well, they do have the option at first of not interrogating the captured hobgoblin, but that is hardly a choice.The reason why this isn't under "Ugly" is because most adventures are just that. It seems very few can handle making stuff that is "off the rails".
* There is no background story, or anything else why the players are in Brindol. Of course, it is not needed, since they are litterally thrown into the adventure, when hobgoblins burst through the door of their (favorite) tavern while they are getting to know each other (supposedly).
* The fact that each NPC knows exactly where (at least) one other captive is, is a bit too sought for my taste. Plus it's quite needed. No player worth his salt will not investigate the whole dungeon. Speaking of which, did i miss them, or is there not a single secret door?
* A few of the combats seem a little sought? Like the Chamber of the Unbound Flame - Seriously, who makes stuff like that to impress others? Or the oneway portal from a place in a swamp.. I mean, come on.
*They put an encounter with not one, but two Needle Fang Drake swarms in there - Sounds like a TPK waiting to happen. That monster just looks broken.


The Ugly
* There is coming background support via Dragon! But it won't be there until August. Sigh. So you make us an adventure, but if we want to use the support of Dragon, we have to wait for a whole month (if not more) before we can start? I believe this could have been planned much better.
* It's downright silly that the rules for the torch that the goblins in the first combat throw is found 2 pages further on, without a reference for it.
* The map of Brindol has numbers on it, but there is no list that explains what those numbers are. Looks like a sloppy cut and paste from RHoD.
* Crypt guardian chamber - they forgot to update the evistro's claw damage as per errata to 1d12+5
* Rivenroar is nowhere to be found on the map of Elsir Vale.


Now, there is probably more, but these are just the things I noticed myself, after skimming it, and then reading it through. Overall, let's just say I am not impressed. While WotC certainly doesn't have the best track record when it comes to adventures, I expected more, especially considering that this is suppose to entice players to play the adventure path for a wooping 18 months. This is not saying that the AP can't turn out to be made of cool with extra awesome-sauce on top, but this first adventure certainly didn't convince me that I will be using it ever.

Overall, I will give it 3 out of a possible 6. Because the basics (great encounters, interesting skill challenges and good opportunities for interesting roleplay) are covered more than decently. Had all the stupid mistakes not been there, it would definitely have been a 4, and had the format been as in KotS, it would probably been a small 5, but a 5 none the less.

Here's to hoping they get better, or that Clark and Scott give us that AP we were promised, come october.

Cheers,