Deadly Ice

[Simon Collins]

This is not a playtest review.
Beware! This review contains spoilers.

Deadly Ice is a generic adventure from 0one Games, designed for PCs of levels 4-5, but with information on scaling the adventure for parties of different levels.

Deadly Ice is a 5.74 MB .pdf file comprising 50 pages including 'covers'. It costs $6. The product makes good use of the bookmarking and thumbnail feature of the .pdf format. The fairly significant colour graphic at the top of each page may cause excess toner usage when printing. The layout is otherwise pleasing on the eye and clear in its defining of different types of information. The idiosynchratic art ranges from average to good, whilst the maps are up to 0one's usual excellent standards, though the internal maps do vary in scale between 5 and 10 ft. per grid square. The writing style is pretty basic and a little stilted, with regular grammatical errors, but is certainly better than some previous 0one releases.

The PCs are engaged by a dwarf to bring a human liquor tester through the Frozen Orc Pass, a snowbound pass that is home to a tribe of fearsome orcs. A petty thief, who has angered the orcs by murdering their prince, is now being hunted by the orcs. He flees the orcs, ending up in the same inn as the liquor tester. Using a magical globe, he exchanges minds with the liquor tester, and flees the inn in his new body, hiding out in a trap-filled dungeon until the trouble passes. The PCs must solve the mystery of the mind-swap, save the liquor tester's mind (in the thief's body) from the orcs, and attempt to reunite his mind with his body by retrieving it from the dungeon.

As usual with 0one adventures, the adventure is split into events and locations. The events are interchangeable to a certain degree and the two main locations could even be used independent of the adventure itself - the inn and the dungeon. The NPC section has background information and personality descriptions as well as stat blocks for ten NPCs with whom the PCs can interact with. There are also some new magical items (including the globe that can facilitate mindswapping) and some new monsters (including a snow troll and some skeletal dwarven undead with the cold subtype).

The product ends with some nicely designed player handouts and some more superb maps.

Note: Maps of the inn can be found in another 0one product, Battlemaps: Floorplans, Inn Vol. 1.

Conclusion:
On the positive side, the adventure seems easy to integrate into most standard fantasy campaigns with a little work. There is plenty of advice on scaling and integrating the adventure, and there are good opportunities for amending the adventure to suit PC actions and decisions.

There are some problems with stat blocks - for example, one NPC (an elven Rog 3/Sor 1) has a Diplomacy skill of +14 (with a Cha of only 16 this should be max +10 with no feats), three feats (none of which include Skill Focus: Diplomacy, and the character should only have 2 feats), a Will save of +2 (should be +4, with a Wis of 12), and an alignment of TN (which I presume stands for True Neutral). Similar problems can be found with stat blocks of other NPCs.

Also, the GM will have to fill some holes in the plotline (such as how the orcs know what the thief looks like - the NPC orc sorcerer has no spells to enable him to divine the thief's identity) and ignore the simplistic writing style. If she's prepared to make the effort to amend the errors, the adventure should be fun to run with several options both during and at the end of the adventure for allowing the PCs a fairly free reign in deciding the outcome.

 

[Messageboard Golem]

This brand-new, generic adventure in the Ø1 Games' Master Adventures line is designed for four 4th - 5th level characters. Hired to escort a man through Frozen Orc Pass, home to the infamous Frozen Scimitar Orcs, events soon change for the adventurers into a truly frightful ordeal. This adventure features new undead creatures, as well as a challenging plot that may have several twists and turns that could develop the adventure in different directions. This well-balanced adventure may be altered for those who wish to customize parts to better match their gaming style. The adventure features ten fully detailed supporting characters and villains, as well as thoroughly detailed dungeon to encounter the hideous new monsters.

 

[GameWyrd]

I always think of absolutely stunning floorplans whenever anyone mentioned 0one Roleplaying Games and so when I opened up Deadly Ice I whisked through it to see whether the adventure would give me any more. It does! Deadly Ice has two full-paged "battlemaps" – one room per page – as well as a few wonderfully illustrated maps and multi-room floorplans. 0one call again on their prodigious artistic talent to produce a set of four beautiful player handouts. Handouts are one of advantages of PDF products like Deadly Ice have over books. You can print these handouts off as many times as you need – one for each player, one for each game and a GM copy too – and there’s no danger that they’ll be forever ruined if someone spills their pepsi on them. Those of us without colour printers will not enjoy the full benefits but it’s still very much better than cutting up your only paper copy of the game. 0one Roleplaying Games are adapting well to the PDF media in other areas too; this is the first e-product I’ve come across in a while that has internal bookmarks. That is to say, you can click on the PDF’s contents page (rather than open the bookmark sidebar) and skip straight to the matching chunk of text. Deadly Ice’s default display is to have "continuous – facing" of the pages and although this is great for scanning through their battlemaps on-screen it doesn’t make it easy to read the adventure on-screen. That’s a small grumble though because I think it’s more than likely that Deadly Ice will be printed off by GMs before running the adventure.

Deadly Ice is an adventure and therefore you should assume that this reviews contain spoilers.

It can be hard to spoil a dungeon crawl. You go in the front, battle your way through and if you’re lucky you’ll encounter some new and interesting monsters. If everything goes well then the characters escape with the treasure. There are new and interesting monsters: Snow Trolls and the wonderful Whitemonks. I love the Whitemonk critters, tiny snow beasties with lots of teeth. There’s also a collection of ice aspected dwarf undead. These enjoy top quality illustrations too. The illustrations are just sketches, not quite the full colour of monster manuals but the effect is quite appropriate for ice and snow creatures and very much more easy to print off.

Deadly Ice is only half dungeon crawl though. The first bit is surprisingly successful and influences the dungeon crawl hugely. If the players pick fights with the orc tribes before the dungeon crawl then they can continue to expect trouble from them. If they talk to the orcs and buy themselves some time then they can concentrate on the already challenging task at hand without extra hassle from the orcs. I think Deadly Ice is a challenging scenario, it’s designed for four or so players of fourth level but early in the download we’re talked through possible adjustments if we want to lower or raise the power level slightly.

The dungeon crawl gets going when the characters decide they need to enter a dwarven tomb and chase down a rogue wizard who has exchanged bodies with someone they’re trying to protect. It’s almost a shame about the exchange of bodies; it’s the only element of cheese fantasy in an otherwise traditional fantasy adventure. Nevertheless the body exchange continues in the theme of messing with the player’s heads and that’s always a winning combination. Once in the tomb they’ll be... okay, they won’t be surprised to find that there’s an added undead complication.

I’m far more interested with the first half of the game though, the prelude to the tomb. I think Deadly Ice is a good game to begin weaning your players away from dungeon crawls and towards interactions with NPCs. The good work begins with the extra effort put into the human the group of characters are supposed to be escorting through the dangerous pass. The GM told to really get to grips with Stolypin’s strong accent and his quirks – such as insomnia. Honestly, with your GM hat on can you imagine how your players might react when the fellow they’re supposed to be escorting is discovered wandering around by himself the very first night of the scenario. Then there’s the villain of the piece, the body swapping, Griska, he’s escaped the orcs once and he could escape them again – even if the characters think they’ve sorted everything out. He has that special potential to become a re-occurring bad guy. He could be one of those NPCs that the players love to hate. The other NPCs at the Fang aren’t quiet as engaging but that’s mainly because they’re one hit wonders, there to shine just while the players are in the Inn. The Fang is the name of the dwarven inn that persists in the middle of the icy pass despite all the orcs that would rather it wasn’t there.

The events in the Fang are planned well. The whole game hinges on the body exchange taking place and Griska running off in Stolypin’s body. I suspect in 9 out of 10 attempts Griska will manage to do this. The players need to work out where Griska’s gone and decide to go after him and I suspect in 8 out of 10 attempts they’ll do just that. That’s good going.

The success of the first half of the adventure is two fold – it’s fun, it has engaging interaction with NPCs, and it’s important, how the PCs treat the NPCs has wide reaching implications.

Still, despite the first half of the scenario, Deadly Ice is mainly just a linear adventure. There is always the risk that the characters won’t take the bait. If they decide to persist with the orcs then the GM will have to wing things. The GM will have to get the weather conditions just right as to ensure the players decide its in their best interest to seek shelter in the Fang without resorting to railroading them. Deadly Ice suffers from other typical pre-written adventure problems. The game’s default beginning has the places sitting in an inn when they’re approached with the job offer. That’s the most strained of all RPG cliches. The GM will have to work out why the players are in the inn, why the dwarf employee knows to come and contact them and be sure that his game geography can cope with a near artic mountain pass patrolled by orcs so close to a big city. To Deadly Ice’s credit it suggests a few other possible hooks and leads into the adventure.

I don’t expect much from pre-written adventures, especially ones that involve orcs and dwarf tombs. Deadly Ice is a pleasant surprise though, rather than falling to the worst cliches (inns, orcs and dwarven tombs!) it climbs up and holds its own on top of the pile. It’s just not a very impressive pile. The 0one Roleplaying Games quality maps and battlemaps are an added bonus and a real lure especially if you happen to be fond of pre-written scenarios.

* This review of Deadly Ice was first published at GameWyrd.

 

[Messageboard Golem]

By John Grigsby, Staff Reviewer d20 Magazine Rack

Sizing Up the Target
This month, Øone Games offers us Deadly Ice, a 48-page PDF downloadable adventure for four 4th- to 5th-level characters by Mario Barbati. This adventure is the latest in the Master Adventures line from Øone Games.

First Blood
Besides a complete adventure, you also receive four beautifully detailed player handouts, two battlemaps suitable for use with miniatures, five new monsters, three new magical items, and a detailed dwarven inn. The inn and its staff can easily be used in other settings or for further adventures, making this a valuable component.

The plot is simple enough; the adventurers are hired to escort a man through Frozen Orc Pass to a dwarven citadel. It sounds easy, but events conspire to insure that this quest will be anything but a cakewalk. Though not essential, a dwarf or someone familiar with the language and culture would be helpful.

The adventure offers puzzles to solve, as well as a good mix of combat and opportunities for role-playing. Notes are included for adapting the adventure to your own setting (including changing the terrain) and scaling the adventure for higher or lower-level characters. Text to be read aloud is set off by italics for easy reference and the major NPCs are given a section all their own, which makes it much simpler to find the one you need at a glance. The beautiful illustrations that accompany the NPC stat blocks make it easy to describe them to players.

The adventure itself is well written, with clear, concise style that makes it easy to follow. Key events that occur during the course of the adventure are headed with bold, underlined text, telling the GM exactly when the event should occur. Stat blocks are given in the accepted format within the text of the adventure, which means no flipping between sections to find the vital statistics for an encounter.

Critical Hits
As is the usual with Øone Games, the maps are gorgeous, and in full color. The miniature battlemaps are a nice touch and will surely add to the enjoyment of those who use such props. Finally, the artwork that accompanies the adventure is vivid and functional and could be shown to players to help them better visualize NPCs and monsters. It was a shame (though understandable) that the PDF was locked so that artwork could not be copied and printed separately.

A lot of effort has gone into this adventure to make it both challenging and fairly adaptable. Encounters within the dungeon make sense (no dragons in closets) and everything fits the ecology of the locale.

Critical Misses
Like previous Øone products, this will require a lot of ink to print out, especially given that the maps are in such beautiful full-color. Don’t get me wrong, I’d rather them be such, but after printing and paper costs, it probably would have been cheaper for me to simply purchase a pre-printed work than to print it from the PDF. PDF is a wonderful creation (thanks, Adobe), but it will never replace the feel of a book in your hands.

The adventure states that “sections to be read aloud are featured in italicized text” and this is true, to an extent. Unfortunately, it seems to be a sporadic occurrence. Certain rooms are given great flavor text; others are described for the DM, who is left to give their own description to the players. If you are going to add flavor text, be consistent! It should be given for all encounter areas, not just a few.

Finally, we come to the battlemaps. I like battlemaps, really I do. I use miniatures in my games, and so it makes it easier and more exciting if the players can actually see their positions. However, the two battlemaps that are included are for locales that are of lesser importance. The encounter in the guardroom is much less involved and exciting than the encounter in the finale, for example, and I would rather have had a battlemap for the final battle than for a small skirmish.

Coup de Grace
Excellent artwork combines with good plot and writing to make this a worthwhile purchase, if you’re looking for an adventure that won’t take more than one or two sessions to complete. The adventure is scant on Open Game Content, with only the monsters being specifically designated as such. The story is quite original, I don’t recall ever having seen anything like it before and it’s sure to thrill (not to mention, chill; heh heh). D20 Compliance is good, with no glaring errors in this department and the adventure does have some replay value through the dwarven inn that can be used for further adventures. I didn’t give as high a rating as I otherwise might have on dollar value simply because the areas chosen for battlemaps are not where a lot of the action is most likely to take place and also because of the amount of ink that printing this is going to require.

To see the graded evaluation of this product and to leave comments that the reviewer will respond to, go to Fast Tracks at www.d20zines.com.