Sundered Faith

Simon Collins

Explorer
Beware! This review contains major spoilers.

This is the second booster adventure by AEG. It is designed for four to six characters of level 6-8. It costs $2.49.

Production and Presentation: This module is 16 pages but each page is only ½ the width of an A4 page. The front (soft)cover features poor colour artwork, the back cover features an introduction for the players to the adventure. There is no internal artwork though the central pages contain a basic and poor quality map of the Temple of Azrael, but sufficient to run the adventure. The final page and the inside back cover contains OGL bumpf. The inside front cover is the beginning of the adventure.

The Story: A recent earthquake has opened up a connection between an abandoned temple, dedicated to a god of Undead, and the city sewer system. When sewer workers are brutally murdered, the PCs investigate and find hordes of undead occupying the sewer, an underground lake beneath the sewer and the temple itself – the undead are being created by the altar, powered by the head priest committing suicide on it when the temple fell. The PCs must defeat the undead and consecrate the altar.

The High Points: A short passage at the beginning gives advice on scaling the adventure – always useful. The temple’s corruption causes healing spells to be severely weakened – magical light spells, spells that specifically target evil or undead creatures and turning undead all automatically fail. This is a nasty surprise for the PCs – good idea. The linking of undead and the sewer system lends a nice unhealthy atmosphere. There is a nice twist on the ‘you find a +1 sword’ where the PCs may finish off the enchantment of a nearly-completed magical sword left behind by a wizard when the temple was abandoned.

The Low Points: Now don’t get me wrong, I’m a great fan of undead and this _is_ a temple of undead, but sometimes this adventure seems as though the author made a list of undead and then allocated them rooms on a map. We have ghouls in room 1, ghouls and a ghast in room 2, zombies in room 3, a gargantuan undead snake in room 4, more zombies in room 5, wights in room 6, more ghouls in room 8, skeletons in room 12, more skeletons and zombies in room 13, more wights in room 14, wights and skeletons in room 16 and a spectre in the final room 17 – you get the picture. There is a lot of treasure in this adventure, which also seems somewhat randomly placed – it seemed too much treasure to me.

Conclusion: A couple of nice ideas in what is essentially an undead slaughter fest. I can’t give this more than an average rating.
 

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I realize that these instant adventures face limitations in space, but still if I spend money for a pre-generated adventure, there are certain things I want.
1) Art: The map is clear and readable. but otherwise no art is in this adventure.
2) Boxed-Text: You know what I mean, the graphic verbal descriptions that are supposed to imbue the proper mood for the players.
The text in this adventure is OK, but not award winning.
3) Role-playing: Very little. What little role-playing that will occur happens with the means you choose to tie this module into your campaign. The adventurers hired to do the dirty work plot device is here, along with some suggestions of what to do if your players fail to cooperate by cheerful agreeing to face their doom, bwa-ha-ha-ha.
4) Smart NPC's: By this I mean, are their motivations and actions reasonable, or has the writer had them do something stupid so that there will be an adventure? Mostly. The villains are given reasonable motivations, and the neutrals aren't too stupid, although for the amount of money that the characters are being offered, the backstory needs a few more twists. Logically, some cheaper mercenaries should have been hired first and never heard from again, bwa-ha-ha-ha. (I've got to stop doing that.)
5) Goodies: New items and/or monsters. One of each, which is fairly standard for this format.

The adventure is OK, but the treasure placement has the let's reward the characters without having a logical reason for the treasure being there feel. All in all I'd rate this a 3/5 except for one factor, the price. At a MSRP of $2.49, these have an excellent value, making this adventure rate a 4/5.
 

"Brutal murders in the city's sewer system!" says the public notice, which promises great wealth to "those brave enough to face the danger." Intrepid PCs must venture into the sewers, discover the threat, and bring back proof of its defeat.
For 4-6 characters of levels 6-8
 

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