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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Simon Collins" data-source="post: 2009559" data-attributes="member: 9860">Beware! This review contains major spoilers.This is not a playtest review.At The Edge Of Dreams is an adventure from Monkey God Enterprises for four to five PCs of levels 6-8.At The Edge Of Dreams is a 106-page adventure at a price of $18.95, fairly standard for its type and size in terms of volume of content. Font size, margins and white space are all reasonable. The art ranges from average to superb with much being good or better. The front cover beautifully captures the feel of the adventure itself with a pastiche of colour and image. Maps are clear with scale, and compass direction for the outdoor maps. Writing style is excellent, whilst editing is good, with occasional errors.The adventure begins with a brief overview of the setting - the Shield Islands, an ancient land once ruled by the Faean (a variation on fey creatures). The Faean have mainly retreated to another plane that overlies the Shield Islands, whilst the islands are now ruled by mortal kingdoms. The introduction also gives a complete EL summary (which ranges from 3 to 19, though the higher level encounters will only be faced if the party is truly stupid or the GM is truly cruel) and some advice on converting the adventure to a more generic setting.The adventure synopsis gives a thorough introduction and overview of the adventure for the GM - essentially the villain of the piece is attempting to start a war between the mortals and the fae. The PCs must follow clues, survive combat, avoid traps, travel to the fae realm and back again, and roleplay their way out of a number of awkward situations before confronting the villain in a climactic finale. Five decent adventure hooks are given to start characters into the adventure.The adventure itself is written extremely well - these are some of the touches that the author Christopher Coyle, has added to enhance the adventure:* Lists of useful information that each important NPC knows. Depending on roleplaying or Diplomacy checks, the PCs can change the attitude of the NPC to gain more information. Modifiers due to such issues as race, alignment and class are also given.* Detailed guidelines to the GM for the effects of relevant spells the PCs might use.* A variety of optional encounters.* Not just a description of important NPCs, not just guidelines on their personality, but actual advice for roleplaying them for the GM - e.g. "Speak in short, clipped sentences as if you were saving your energy. Squint suspiciously, constantly interrupt with questions..." And there are good reasons given for this type of behaviour too. Each NPC also has an initial reaction: friendly, indifferent, hostile, etc. to set the GM on the right path and give a baseline for how the PCs improve or lose the relationship with the character.* A simple but clever speech mechanism to reflect the fae's knowledge of the importance and power of words - guidelines for extrapolating this for yourself. This mechanism, which involves rhyming, would need further playtesting before I could say whether it became intensely annoying or actually worked, but it seems pretty cool on first reading it.* Some great ideas to reflect a more traditional feel for the fae than standard D&D gives. Vulnerability to iron, faerie rings, the faerie realm with changed time, and fae wards and tokens, plus a range of new fey-type creatures are offered. Includes guidelines on dealing with travel time in the two different realms, as the difference in time passing can be very important.* Timeline of events that happen unless the PCs interfere with them, making the adventure both event and location based and avoiding the trap of railroading as much as possible. Advice for amending the timeline in relation to the PC's actions.* A couple of possible sub-plots within the main framework of the adventure.* Full tactical advice dependent on PC tactics for the climactic finale.* A really convincing link through a magic item to further adventures set in this realm.The appendices contain statistical information for all the creatures used in the adventure, several new creatures, spells, and magic items (including fae rings which are somewhat like teleportation circles to the fae realm except iron distorts their functionality, sometimes quite disastrously).There is also a section explaining the difference between fey and fae (Faean being the term to describe the fae creatures that inhabit the Shield Islands and their fae counterpart). Fae is a variant of the Fey type but has added qualities and weaknesses that reflect a more traditional view of faeries. The variant reflects different faean's links with the four seasons (plus water and shadow), the hierarchy of the faean society (noble faean, sprites, hunters, knights, and creatures). Indeed, there are two templates, one for fae creatures, and one for dark fae creatures, as well Wyrdlings (humans who have been kidnapped from mortal families and raised by the Fae), and a Faeblooded (Half-Faean) template.A final section details the main mortal religion, the White Church, with its triumvirate of good gods, but also gives a mysterious hint at a rumoured Black Church, a cancer lying at the heart of the good-aligned White Church. Enough info to run the adventure, with a tantalising glimpse at the depth of the setting that underpins it.Conclusion:I have to say right from the outset, this type of Celtic-influenced setting always blows me away. What made this adventure for me though, was that the author has obviously put in a great deal of thought and effort into giving not just an exciting, varied adventure but also the support for the GM to bring the quality of the adventure into play on a practical level. If I can see any major influence on the adventure (and it really stands on its own to be fair) it is the Chronicles of Prydein (if you haven't read the set of five (kids/teenage) books by Lloyd Alexander then shame on you, go and get them now even if you're over 18). The mysterious Celtic feel, the depiction of the fae as truly frightening opponents instead of cartoon characters, and the grey moral issues dealt with in this adventure raise 'At The Edge Of Dreams' to an adult level, however.There are a few minor editing errors, but stat blocks seem sound and treasure seems to be within reason.I can't wait for another adventure for this setting to be released, and as soon as my players reach 6th level this is the adventure I'm going to run. I think that's all I need to say.</blockquote>

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