Dungeon Crawl Classics #56: Scions of Punjar

Scions of Punjar is the second 4e adventure set in the Tarnished Jewel. This one for characters starting out at 4th level. Weighing in at 56 black and white pages, Scions retails for $13.99 in print. Exterior art by Eric Lofgren shows the adventurers fighting some scarecrows while internal art by Doug Kovacs covers various parts of the adventure. By using one artist, the book has a unified feel to it and even better, since Doug is a solid artist and the black and white work looks good, it’s a well illustrated text. Interior maps are by Tom Martin and are top notch.

Scions of Punjar has no tie-ins from Sellswords of Punjar and is able to be run on its own. The city of Punjar itself doesn’t take much prominence and as long as the city you’re using has a graveyard, you should have no problem running Scions.

The adventure is simple in motivation. The party is contacted by the Dev’shir family to discover how some of their heirlooms, long buried with the dead, have wound up on the market. There are several options given for why the players may be working for the Dev’Shir family, but no quest experience attached to any of them.

In some ways, I’m a little disappointed in Scions. The first batch of adventurers for 4e from Goodman had various little extras. Sellswords for example, had a full battle map. Forges of the Mountain King numerous Fat Dragon 3-D counters. Isle of the Drake full color maps of the landscape. While Scions does include several great handouts for player consumption, this is a standard bit and I was expecting, based on previous adventurers, a little more.

The adventure includes a flow chart, but there is a limited number of options and while I normally love a good flow chart, the adventure needs enough depth to make good use of it. Here, there are never more than two options for the players to investigate so the use of the flow chart, while possibly handy for new Game Masters, is perhaps space that could have been put to better use. For example, there are no random encounters in the city. While you could hunt down the old RUnequest Cities for such, having a few columns devoted to it here would’ve been nice.

The adventure pits the players against numerous types of opposition. Players have the option of handling several of the encounters with brute force or with skill checks. Between hunting down the information and preparing for the final battle, players will have faced traps ranging from a mine cart loaded with bladed weapons and launched at them, to dire stirges and hosts of undead.

Among the menaces, players will get to face some new monsters like scarecrow homunculus and skeletal claw swarms. New magic items are also included and one of them has a huge nod to old Celtic myth in that it’s used to reanimate the dead. Strangely enough, while there is some background in the adventure, the players tend to get it not through exploration of the city, but in chunks in several encounters. Their role tends to be one of reaction, not of action. For example, the main enemy has a past with the player’s employer but there are no rumor tables with the old true/false leads and red herrings.

In one of the locals, the players have the opportunity to gable. There are no options to simplify things of gambling such as done in the old AD&D 1st edition Dungeon Master’s Guide, but the GM is expected to break out cards and start the gambling.

To me, these little bits that fail to make Punjar come alive, makes Scions of Punjar not necessarily an adventure in Punjar. There are a few references to some of the locals, like the Slayers and some of the guards being corrupt, but their impact on the adventure is low. In addition, so much of the adventure takes place outside of the city proper, that the city is little more than a backdrop. This is perfect if you want a generic adventure that can be easily used in most campaign settings but after the high Sword and Sorcery flavor of the players fighting shoulder to shoulder in a dark dirty slum against the Beggar King, it’s not quite the same.

The adventure is broad enough tough, that GMs can easily customize numerous bits. For example, if you’re just starting 4e, the players may already be a friend of Elam Dev’shir. Perhaps they come to the Dev’shir family when they notice the family crest on goods in the market! The adventure does have numerous other side quests for the players to investigate and handle after the main quest is finished. At its page count and price point, with its handouts and portability, Scions will provide nights of solid entertainment.