Crothian
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Sinister Secret of Whiterock
Free RPG day was last weekend and I was able to pick up this Goodman Games module. When it comes to free stuff I was not expecting all that great of things except for this module. They have shown to put good effort and write very creative modules and even their two dollar modules have been some of the best. Of course the quality of all the free RPG day was higher then I expected, but I was still very impressed with Sinister Secret of Whiterock. I read and found a way to fit it into my campaign this week so this is a playtest review.
The Sinister Secret of Whiterock is number 51.5 in the dungeon Crawl Classics line. It is amazing that there are so many of them and still the quality is this good. The module is written by Harley Stroh and even though it is just sixteen pages long a lot of thought went into this one. There are some really fun and creative things going on here. The cover art I thought could have been better but the interior art is really well done and the three player handouts are really nice. One of them even gives us a hint into the huge Dungeon Crawl Classic 51 that this module can connect too.
As this is a review of a module there are going to be spoilers so please do not read forward if you may play in the module some day.
Like most dungeon crawl classics the how the player characters get involved is not that important or set in stone. There are a few suggestions like looking for lost kids or locating a black maned owlbear that has been sighted near a town. I just had the place be uncovered after a serious of floods and the player characters were asked to explore it. The background story connects direct to that of Castle Whiterock, DCC #51. As that is not out yet I ran this with no connection to that module. It was really easy to do.
There are just twelve encounter areas in the module. But what I really like about it is that it is mostly a vertical module and not horizontal. The players will enter through a flight of stairs and fight some undead and some weird albino like gnomes. There is a pit trap that leads down they can use or if they explore farther they will find a huge opening that goes all the way down to the final encounter. Climbing down is a lot easier then climbing up though and the other rooms are easy to get to from the big vertical drop.
There are some neat encounters like an assassin vine and the owlbear. There are a few traps and even one that can smash some magical items. Our rogue was clever enough to set that one off and was able to get out of the collapsing walls and not die. But the treasure was toast. I did like that one of the doors has a open locks table in the module. Basically depending on how well or how bad the rogue does at picking the lock determines what happens. They could set off a couple of traps, get their hands smashed and basically ruined, or get lucky enough to not just open the door but also a secret door that has treasure in it. Of course that is also trapped and the treasure could get crushed along with the rogue like I wrote about above.
The final encounter was perhaps the most fun. I would have liked to seen a little more definition from the module. The players find themselves at the bottom level as the place starts to flood. The module give some basic guidelines and it worked pretty well. Our group had some trouble but one of them was able to spider climb and use ropes to help the others while another could breathe water so he had no fear of drowning.
This was a short and fun module. There is plenty of action and uncommon challenges. For low level characters they were using a lot of skills that are not normally seen. Movement and getting around was very important with the climbing and swimming. The fights were not particularly tough but good enough to challenge the player characters. If we continue to see modules of this quality for Free RPG Day, that holiday will be successful for many years.
Free RPG day was last weekend and I was able to pick up this Goodman Games module. When it comes to free stuff I was not expecting all that great of things except for this module. They have shown to put good effort and write very creative modules and even their two dollar modules have been some of the best. Of course the quality of all the free RPG day was higher then I expected, but I was still very impressed with Sinister Secret of Whiterock. I read and found a way to fit it into my campaign this week so this is a playtest review.
The Sinister Secret of Whiterock is number 51.5 in the dungeon Crawl Classics line. It is amazing that there are so many of them and still the quality is this good. The module is written by Harley Stroh and even though it is just sixteen pages long a lot of thought went into this one. There are some really fun and creative things going on here. The cover art I thought could have been better but the interior art is really well done and the three player handouts are really nice. One of them even gives us a hint into the huge Dungeon Crawl Classic 51 that this module can connect too.
As this is a review of a module there are going to be spoilers so please do not read forward if you may play in the module some day.
Like most dungeon crawl classics the how the player characters get involved is not that important or set in stone. There are a few suggestions like looking for lost kids or locating a black maned owlbear that has been sighted near a town. I just had the place be uncovered after a serious of floods and the player characters were asked to explore it. The background story connects direct to that of Castle Whiterock, DCC #51. As that is not out yet I ran this with no connection to that module. It was really easy to do.
There are just twelve encounter areas in the module. But what I really like about it is that it is mostly a vertical module and not horizontal. The players will enter through a flight of stairs and fight some undead and some weird albino like gnomes. There is a pit trap that leads down they can use or if they explore farther they will find a huge opening that goes all the way down to the final encounter. Climbing down is a lot easier then climbing up though and the other rooms are easy to get to from the big vertical drop.
There are some neat encounters like an assassin vine and the owlbear. There are a few traps and even one that can smash some magical items. Our rogue was clever enough to set that one off and was able to get out of the collapsing walls and not die. But the treasure was toast. I did like that one of the doors has a open locks table in the module. Basically depending on how well or how bad the rogue does at picking the lock determines what happens. They could set off a couple of traps, get their hands smashed and basically ruined, or get lucky enough to not just open the door but also a secret door that has treasure in it. Of course that is also trapped and the treasure could get crushed along with the rogue like I wrote about above.
The final encounter was perhaps the most fun. I would have liked to seen a little more definition from the module. The players find themselves at the bottom level as the place starts to flood. The module give some basic guidelines and it worked pretty well. Our group had some trouble but one of them was able to spider climb and use ropes to help the others while another could breathe water so he had no fear of drowning.
This was a short and fun module. There is plenty of action and uncommon challenges. For low level characters they were using a lot of skills that are not normally seen. Movement and getting around was very important with the climbing and swimming. The fights were not particularly tough but good enough to challenge the player characters. If we continue to see modules of this quality for Free RPG Day, that holiday will be successful for many years.
