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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Simon Collins" data-source="post: 2009112" data-attributes="member: 9860">Beware! This review contains major spoilers.This is not a playtest review.Dark Awakenings: Shadowland is the sequel and conclusion to Dark Awakenings: Guardian, Auran's first d20 adventure. Similarly to Guardians, Shadowland includes a CD-ROM with sound, music, scenes, maps, background information and the entire adventure in.pdf format. The adventure is designed for PCs of levels 3-4.At $19.95 for 56 pages, the adventure seems at first sight to be very expensive, but one must take into account the CD-ROM as well. In addition, four of the central pages are in colour. Against this, there is poor use of space with about 8 pages of non-adventure material, and an additional 4 page glossary which seemed a bit over-the-top. In addition, the 3D images on the CD-ROM crashed my PC after 30 seconds or so. I have a fairly decent graphics card and I won't be buying a new one just to view this CD-ROM (the graphics require an NVidia TNT or equivalent card with full Open GL and Direct X 8 support). All in all, I found this to be fairly poor value in terms of amount of content, but I am somewhat influenced by the fact that I was unable to view the 3D contents of the CD-ROM.The art is generally good, though some of the characters portrayed are a little jowly. The cover is an interesting piece of computer-generated art showing two huge stone hands clenched over an ash-covered brick path with hellish mountains in the background, all set in a sphere tinged with greenish lightning.Though maps are colour and scaled, indoor maps are not gridded and there are no compass directions. They are of average quality and computer-generated.The quality of writing and editing is good. The author really evokes the atmosphere of Shadowland in a dark, grim fashion and the NPCs are evoked engagingly.Following on from the plot of Guardians, the PCs must enter Shadowland, the realm of the Queen of the Dead, in order to retrieve a magical jewel stolen from the island of Guardian. The artifact was part of a magical prison entrapping a powerful demon. The PCs must regain the jewel and attempt to return to Guardian to face the demon before it escapes.The adventure offers two means of travelling to Shadowland - a journey on a ghostly boat piloted by the ghost of a murdered priestess introduced in Guardians, or on a ship captained by a half-celestial known as Lord Fate, who demands payment for the journey.The PCs must overcome the horrific illusory nature of Shadowland whilst they travel towards the keep where the jewel is being held. The keep itself contains magical traps and undead. The PCs must then attempt to escape the keep (if they have survived to retrieve their prize) during a firestorm and may be hunted by a poweful undead (new creature, a Darkseeker) riding another new creature, a Shadowdrake, dependent on their actions within the adventure.They may return to Guardian using the same means as they arrived. There they can attempt to re-imprison the demon. A clue in the keep in Shadowland (in the form of a riddle) may encourage the players to actually release the demon in an attempt to destroy it permanently.There is a lengthy appendix, including random encounter tables, NPC stats and details, new creature stats and description, including a Bean Sidhe (banshee), and a number of magic items relevant to the adventure, some of which are very powerful.Conclusion: There were a couple of things I really liked about this adventure - the atmosphere created by the writing (this was backed up by the still scenes on the CD ROM that I could view which were rendered well) and the depth of information given on the NPCs. I also appreciated the way that the author created options within each scene and gave advice to GMs on dealing with players who want to take alternative actions.  What I didn't like was the wasted space. The actual adventure only takes up 18 of the 56 pages and the action seems to be over and done with pretty quickly; essentially the plot can be summed up by saying the PCs enter Shadowland, travel to a keep, retrieve an artifact after defeating the keep's guardian, return to the island of Guardian and defeat the demon. Not a particularly original plotline, even though its presented well. Having said that, I would have liked to see ELs for each encounter and creature stats in the text rather than at the end (just my personal preference - I don't like flicking between different parts of a module when I'm GMing if I can help it). I also felt, like Guardian, that the background of the setting, the adventure and the NPCs overwhelmed the adventure itself. So I'm going to give this an average score because although its a well-written and nicely detailed adventure its too short and basic for its price tag, despite the benefits of the graphics, sound and documents on the CD-ROM. After Guardians, which I enjoyed, I expected more from Shadowland and found myself somewhat disappointed.Note: If you are going to buy it, make absolutely sure your Graphics Card will run the 3D graphics.</blockquote>

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