Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Messageboard Golem" data-source="post: 2008426" data-attributes="member: 18387">This is a serviceable adventure that has been significantly overrated so far. If foe no other reason then for the sheer amount of filler space used to fill in the obligatory 32 pages.16 size adventure spread on 32 pages is my first thought when I think of the "Belly of the Beast". Not only are the inner covers completely blank but the margins stand at a bit over the two inches (filled with really, really ugly drawing of the tentacles) "Credits" take a whole page distinct from one taken by "contents". Additional pages are taken by Introduction (which is not really an adventure synopsis) and Customization/Open Gaming Content (not including the OGL that takes additional half a page in the back) and a rather useless combat reference table.   Chapter headings (five in total) are written in a largest font i have ever seen used in a published product and take a quarter to a third of a page each and section headings are each size of a paragraph.What is left (and that is not much) is a semi decent adventure centered on trying to forge alliances between the group of disparate characters in an adverse situation. NPCs are fairly well detailed and can provide for some good role-playing. Sadly, setting itself is somewhat contrived and reasons for the NPC's presence are somewhat tenuous so DM has a lot of work to do in order to use the material in a believable fashion.Finally, what really does in this adventure for me, pushing it as low as 2 in my mark, is art. Except for the cover illustration which is just reasonably bad computer rendering of an orc fighting some tentacles and the small NPC portraits which are of the non-descript 5 minutes sketch variety, everything else (and there is a lot) is horrible - possibly worst I have seen in d20 products so far. (Piece on the page 25 is my personal "worst fantasy art - ever").The adventure has a good idea (a single one) and some good NPC's but is so badly presented and so contrived that it is really not worth buying after all.</blockquote>

Verification