Messageboard Golem
First Post
First adventure in the Dark Heaven Legends series
Eldest Son
- Thread starter Messageboard Golem
- Start date
I am actually surprised that someone else has not rated this product yet. It seems to have been out for a while. While not a frequent reviewer, I have run this adventure a couple of times as a one shot and have noted some ups and downs. Since I usually check these reviews before buying, I thought this might be of use to others.
Eldest Son is the first adventure from Reaper, a miniatures company. While there is an advertisement for a continued line of adventures and hints at a setting in the back of the book, to my knowledge, only this adventure has been released.
Production/Appearance.
The adventure is packaged in a perfect bound book, with a glossy soft cover. The production quality of the book itself is excellent – it has survived several months of game use with no significant wear and tear. The artwork on the cover is reminiscent of four-color comic book art or anime and depicts the four pre-generated characters that are used throughout the adventure. The artwork in the adventure follows the same pattern and is good if you like the style, although my preference runs to the more realistic. In addition are photos of painted miniatures from the Reaper line. Miniatures represent several of the pre-generated characters from the line and in the back is a recommended list of Reaper minis for depicting ALL of the encounters in the adventure. As a side note, I did not use miniatures for most of the encounters, so extra purchases are not required.
Plot/Content
*Spoiler Alert – spoilers follow!*
Written as a starter adventure for first level characters, the adventure centers around the quest of a young noble (a player character) to find and (hopefully) rescue his eldest brother, so that he can return and assume their father's lordly estate. The eldest son has gone off to university, gotten into trouble, and needs little brother to get him out. Added to the mix, there is trouble in the family estate and a third party is out to stop the party from coming to the rescue. The party has to get to the city, do some detective work, possibly get sidetracked, hopefully end up in a sewer crawl to rescue the brother, and then return him home to save the family estate.
Assessment
The plot has echoes of Shakespeare mixed with Warhammer FRG. Despite the anime artwork, the feeling that I got was of dark fantasy. But that’s me and the adventure as written could easily fit into most fantasy worlds (that have a large medieval city and a feudal style of government). I was surprised by the amount of role-playing room in an adventure from a miniatures company. This is not a miniature company's hack-n-slash fest for D20. Prior to the above mentioned sewer crawl, there is a lot of room for the party to get involved with various subplots generated by the eldest son's disappearance and debts. The key NPC's are detailed with stats, personality, and motivations.
Whether you and your players like this adventure or not will be determined by taste. But I think that this adventure does have something for everyone, as adventures go. There is a lot of room for a DM to free form this adventure.
There is some strong railroading in the beginning of the adventure to get the party involved. While the use of the pre-generated characters is not required, I've found that the adventure only really works if one of the party members is the youngest son. The groups that I ran did not have a problem with this since it meant that 1) the youngest son character was of minor nobility in a feudal world, and 2) that the adventure is for first through third levels, so the character will be new anyway. The other players are assumed to be companions of the youngest son with little limitation on class, race or social status. Another option that may work, but I did not try, is to have the ailing father hire the party to find his eldest son (maybe with the youngest son along for the ride as an NPC).
After the initial hook, the hunt for the missing son is unscripted. An experienced DM can have a lot of fun here either sidetracking the party or letting them run loose. Also, considering the hook, a more evil inclined party may seek to do away with the elder brother, father, and other impediments to the lordly inheritance. Don't laugh, one group did it.
Overall, depending on how it is played, the adventure can be deadly or a cakewalk depending on whether the party is cautious and well role-played. The sewer crawl itself is rather short and the dungeon crawler crowd would not be pleased. Neither would the hack-n-slash type of player as there is a good bit of detective work required. The only minus I give is that the DM will not be able to play this adventure out of the wrapper. There is a must here for preparation time. Otherwise, this is a great starter adventure for a new party.
Eldest Son is the first adventure from Reaper, a miniatures company. While there is an advertisement for a continued line of adventures and hints at a setting in the back of the book, to my knowledge, only this adventure has been released.
Production/Appearance.
The adventure is packaged in a perfect bound book, with a glossy soft cover. The production quality of the book itself is excellent – it has survived several months of game use with no significant wear and tear. The artwork on the cover is reminiscent of four-color comic book art or anime and depicts the four pre-generated characters that are used throughout the adventure. The artwork in the adventure follows the same pattern and is good if you like the style, although my preference runs to the more realistic. In addition are photos of painted miniatures from the Reaper line. Miniatures represent several of the pre-generated characters from the line and in the back is a recommended list of Reaper minis for depicting ALL of the encounters in the adventure. As a side note, I did not use miniatures for most of the encounters, so extra purchases are not required.
Plot/Content
*Spoiler Alert – spoilers follow!*
Written as a starter adventure for first level characters, the adventure centers around the quest of a young noble (a player character) to find and (hopefully) rescue his eldest brother, so that he can return and assume their father's lordly estate. The eldest son has gone off to university, gotten into trouble, and needs little brother to get him out. Added to the mix, there is trouble in the family estate and a third party is out to stop the party from coming to the rescue. The party has to get to the city, do some detective work, possibly get sidetracked, hopefully end up in a sewer crawl to rescue the brother, and then return him home to save the family estate.
Assessment
The plot has echoes of Shakespeare mixed with Warhammer FRG. Despite the anime artwork, the feeling that I got was of dark fantasy. But that’s me and the adventure as written could easily fit into most fantasy worlds (that have a large medieval city and a feudal style of government). I was surprised by the amount of role-playing room in an adventure from a miniatures company. This is not a miniature company's hack-n-slash fest for D20. Prior to the above mentioned sewer crawl, there is a lot of room for the party to get involved with various subplots generated by the eldest son's disappearance and debts. The key NPC's are detailed with stats, personality, and motivations.
Whether you and your players like this adventure or not will be determined by taste. But I think that this adventure does have something for everyone, as adventures go. There is a lot of room for a DM to free form this adventure.
There is some strong railroading in the beginning of the adventure to get the party involved. While the use of the pre-generated characters is not required, I've found that the adventure only really works if one of the party members is the youngest son. The groups that I ran did not have a problem with this since it meant that 1) the youngest son character was of minor nobility in a feudal world, and 2) that the adventure is for first through third levels, so the character will be new anyway. The other players are assumed to be companions of the youngest son with little limitation on class, race or social status. Another option that may work, but I did not try, is to have the ailing father hire the party to find his eldest son (maybe with the youngest son along for the ride as an NPC).
After the initial hook, the hunt for the missing son is unscripted. An experienced DM can have a lot of fun here either sidetracking the party or letting them run loose. Also, considering the hook, a more evil inclined party may seek to do away with the elder brother, father, and other impediments to the lordly inheritance. Don't laugh, one group did it.
Overall, depending on how it is played, the adventure can be deadly or a cakewalk depending on whether the party is cautious and well role-played. The sewer crawl itself is rather short and the dungeon crawler crowd would not be pleased. Neither would the hack-n-slash type of player as there is a good bit of detective work required. The only minus I give is that the DM will not be able to play this adventure out of the wrapper. There is a must here for preparation time. Otherwise, this is a great starter adventure for a new party.
Messageboard Golem
First Post
What do you mean when you say –? I have seen others use this in their reviews and was just curious.
RangerWickett
Legend
Um, it's just an error. The software here can't handle certain characters, like smart quotes. If you type in the field provided, there's no problem, but if you type in a word-processing program and then copy-paste, you'll end up with those crazy symbols.
