Olgar Shiverstone
Legend
I picked this adventure up today. While adventures are my favorite product, this one, authored by Ed Stack, is average at best. Overall Grade: C
** Possible Spoilers Follow **
Concept: The PCs enter a graveyard to locate some missing townspeople, and end up chasing tomb robbers through an ancient tomb complex. The adventure is designed for 4-6 players with level 2 characters, and if experience is awarded as written they will conclude the adventure at 4th - 5th level.
The adventure consists of a full color outer map cover, and a black-and-white 64 page adventure booklet. Within the 64 pages, 2 pages are devoted to title and credits, one to advertisements, 5 1/2 to adventure abckground, 11 to adventure overview, 2 1/12 to weapon of legacy statistics, and the remaining 40 to tactical encounters for the 23 encounter areas using the latest WOTC adventure format.
Production values: The cover and interior full cover map are attractive. Interior illustrations are appropriate and include one player handout. Most of the text is legible -- the "Features of the Area" section of each tactical encounter (which contains terrain feature information as well as illumination & treasure info) is slightly hard to read due to the combintion of font and a grey-shaded background. Paper quality is poor -- very thins and prone to wrinkling near the staple binding (What happended to good paper quality, like that in the 1E adventure days? Those modules could take a beating!).
Pro:
- Easy to run for the novice Dm -- all is straightforward, and the tactical encounters contain lots of hints about tactics and using the area to the greatest advantage
- Maps are easy to read
- Complete stat blocks for all monsters (I haven't checked stat block editting, sorry)
- A nice variety of combat locations -- by a waterfall, on ledges, etc, etc
- A wide variety of monsters (almost no two the same)
- Links to two follow-on adventures
- A village at the beginning offers the potential for assistance or hiring NPCs, though it isn't actually fleshed out.
- Text boxes seem to provide appropriate information.
- Lots of opportunities to perform a variety of skill checks (with exceptions, see below)
- Inclusion of Weapon of Legacy information for further campaign use
Con:
- The hook. A villager approaches the party in a tavern and asks: "Are you adventurers?" ...
- Dungeon layout. With the exception of a trick labyrinth at center, it is strictly linear -- one area leads directly to the next -- and the labyrinth is an odd mechanic that just gets the party lost for a while before moving on to the next area. There are no wrong turns, dead ends (that matter, anyway), or alternate paths to follow.
- Poor mix of encounter types. Of 23 encounter areas (all the keyed areas), there is 1 puzzle and 22 combat encounters (about 3 of which could be bypassed through skillful use of diplomacy). The overall adventure feels a bit too much like a series of mini skirmish areas strung together one after the other, rather than an exploration of a tomb or a high-speed chase.
- Despite the variety of monsters, not a single one has a note as to what source it is from (and the majority are not from the MM). That makes it tough for the DM to look up additional information.
- Overall organization. When running the adventure, you'd have to review a text box in the overview section, then flip to the back for the encounter section which has the rest of the boxed text and encounter details, then flip back to the front to start the next room, then flip back ... Given that the whole thing is linear, why not just make every romo two pages, and put all the information together?
- Key information about conditions for encounters is buried in the "Feature of the area" sections, which are organized at the end of the tactical encounter, which doesn't lend itself well to smooth encounter flow. I'd prefer that preparatory information to come before the tactis sections and stat blocks.
- Pacing. Although the party can certainly rest, I think there should have been more below-CR encounters, or empty exploratory areas ... gaining 2-3 levels, from 1st to 3rd level spells, in 23 rooms is far too fast a pace to be gaining experience if you award at the standard rate. Depending on your game session length, this one would go pretty quick.
- Not much for the traditional rogue to do. While only 1/3-1/2 the monsters aren't crit-able, there are minimal opportunities for key rogue skills such as Open Lock or Disable Device (I'd say there are no traps or pickable locks, but since I had a hard time reading most of the "Features of the Area" sections I started scanning and might have missed one). Admittedly, the lack of traps & locks has something to do with the tomb raiders preceding the party through the dungeon ... but that doesn't mean that there couldn't be some locked side chamber, or resetting traps, or ...
It's the linearity of the adventure, combined with the combat-after-combat, that spoil this one for me -- too much of a video-game feel (and not in a good way). A few more interaction-based encounters and at least one alternate path would raise the grade to a B.
Edit: I happened to pick up Dungeonscape at the same time, and it seems to me WotC missed out on a great chance for synergy by showing off some of the clever ideas in that book. Dungeonscape is a great dungeon design resource -- kudos to Jason Buhlman and Rich Burlew!
** Possible Spoilers Follow **
Concept: The PCs enter a graveyard to locate some missing townspeople, and end up chasing tomb robbers through an ancient tomb complex. The adventure is designed for 4-6 players with level 2 characters, and if experience is awarded as written they will conclude the adventure at 4th - 5th level.
The adventure consists of a full color outer map cover, and a black-and-white 64 page adventure booklet. Within the 64 pages, 2 pages are devoted to title and credits, one to advertisements, 5 1/2 to adventure abckground, 11 to adventure overview, 2 1/12 to weapon of legacy statistics, and the remaining 40 to tactical encounters for the 23 encounter areas using the latest WOTC adventure format.
Production values: The cover and interior full cover map are attractive. Interior illustrations are appropriate and include one player handout. Most of the text is legible -- the "Features of the Area" section of each tactical encounter (which contains terrain feature information as well as illumination & treasure info) is slightly hard to read due to the combintion of font and a grey-shaded background. Paper quality is poor -- very thins and prone to wrinkling near the staple binding (What happended to good paper quality, like that in the 1E adventure days? Those modules could take a beating!).
Pro:
- Easy to run for the novice Dm -- all is straightforward, and the tactical encounters contain lots of hints about tactics and using the area to the greatest advantage
- Maps are easy to read
- Complete stat blocks for all monsters (I haven't checked stat block editting, sorry)
- A nice variety of combat locations -- by a waterfall, on ledges, etc, etc
- A wide variety of monsters (almost no two the same)
- Links to two follow-on adventures
- A village at the beginning offers the potential for assistance or hiring NPCs, though it isn't actually fleshed out.
- Text boxes seem to provide appropriate information.
- Lots of opportunities to perform a variety of skill checks (with exceptions, see below)
- Inclusion of Weapon of Legacy information for further campaign use
Con:
- The hook. A villager approaches the party in a tavern and asks: "Are you adventurers?" ...
- Dungeon layout. With the exception of a trick labyrinth at center, it is strictly linear -- one area leads directly to the next -- and the labyrinth is an odd mechanic that just gets the party lost for a while before moving on to the next area. There are no wrong turns, dead ends (that matter, anyway), or alternate paths to follow.
- Poor mix of encounter types. Of 23 encounter areas (all the keyed areas), there is 1 puzzle and 22 combat encounters (about 3 of which could be bypassed through skillful use of diplomacy). The overall adventure feels a bit too much like a series of mini skirmish areas strung together one after the other, rather than an exploration of a tomb or a high-speed chase.
- Despite the variety of monsters, not a single one has a note as to what source it is from (and the majority are not from the MM). That makes it tough for the DM to look up additional information.
- Overall organization. When running the adventure, you'd have to review a text box in the overview section, then flip to the back for the encounter section which has the rest of the boxed text and encounter details, then flip back to the front to start the next room, then flip back ... Given that the whole thing is linear, why not just make every romo two pages, and put all the information together?
- Key information about conditions for encounters is buried in the "Feature of the area" sections, which are organized at the end of the tactical encounter, which doesn't lend itself well to smooth encounter flow. I'd prefer that preparatory information to come before the tactis sections and stat blocks.
- Pacing. Although the party can certainly rest, I think there should have been more below-CR encounters, or empty exploratory areas ... gaining 2-3 levels, from 1st to 3rd level spells, in 23 rooms is far too fast a pace to be gaining experience if you award at the standard rate. Depending on your game session length, this one would go pretty quick.
- Not much for the traditional rogue to do. While only 1/3-1/2 the monsters aren't crit-able, there are minimal opportunities for key rogue skills such as Open Lock or Disable Device (I'd say there are no traps or pickable locks, but since I had a hard time reading most of the "Features of the Area" sections I started scanning and might have missed one). Admittedly, the lack of traps & locks has something to do with the tomb raiders preceding the party through the dungeon ... but that doesn't mean that there couldn't be some locked side chamber, or resetting traps, or ...
It's the linearity of the adventure, combined with the combat-after-combat, that spoil this one for me -- too much of a video-game feel (and not in a good way). A few more interaction-based encounters and at least one alternate path would raise the grade to a B.
Edit: I happened to pick up Dungeonscape at the same time, and it seems to me WotC missed out on a great chance for synergy by showing off some of the clever ideas in that book. Dungeonscape is a great dungeon design resource -- kudos to Jason Buhlman and Rich Burlew!
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