the Speaker in Dreams

The Speaker in Dreams

Speaker in Dreams is the third in the line of third edition Dungeons and Dragons modules published by Wizards of the Coast. It is designed for fifth level characters and is written by James Wyatt. While it is in a series it can easily be used as a stand alone module. It is standard thirty two pages long with decent black and white art and good cartography. There are a wide range of encounters in this city based module and what really makes it unique is there is an adventure flowchart showing how the module can progress.

Speaker of Dreams is a very good module that I have ran three time. Each time took about two sessions to go through. It is a rare city based module that does not feature a main dungeon in it. The best part of the module and it is a shame that no other module I have seen has tried this is the flowchart. The plot is laid out for the DM in an easy to follow way. It shows how the encounters lead to one another and the choices the player characters will have through out the module. Some encounters are action, some location based, and others and interactions. On the flow chart it is very easy to see which encounter is what type. The module does not have to be followed perfectly as even the flow chart says that character plans and doings can upset how everything pieces together and that is fine. For a different kind of city module The Speaker In dreams fit’s the bill nicely.

The adventure has the player characters coming to the town of Brindinford. There is a fair going on so there can be ample reasons to get the player characters to go there. The adventure tries to use peace bonding of weapons and spell casters hands. It is a nice idea but can be a little more problematic then the level of realism security towns in a fantasy world might have. The first part of the adventure can see the characters going against were rats. This can be problematic for characters of this level. I know of at least one DM who had the campaign end because the whole party got infected by lycanthropy. Another instance I saw had the fighter using the lone silver dagger power attacking were rats while the party tried to protect him. If the party is not ready for were rats then the adventure can fall apart very fast. The module though does have an option to deal with Grimlocks instead, but I always felt that fighting the were rats in the clock tower was much more dramatic.

The module is basically in two parts and the realization of the second part starting has always been a good scene. The evil it seems is over and the characters have defeated many monsters and evil creatures. The mayor of the town is making a public announcement and I had best results when the player were thinking they were going to get rewarded and public recognition. The mayor though announces martial law and at that point everyone should realize that something more sinister is going on. It has been a great scene in the games I have used it in.

Speaker in Dreams is a well paced city based module. It offers a lot of different encounters and a bit of a mystery for the player characters. It has a good mix of encounter for action and interaction. It is written for third eidtion but I have had no issues using it for other editions of the game.