Interlude: Sands of Pain

[Messageboard Golem]

The second adventure sourcebook in the Interludes series brings the characters from Bluffside south to the Dragon Sands. This adventure features a mix of horror and romance, done Arabic style. Sands of Pain can be used as a stand-alone adventure in any game world, or to enrich the world of Bluffside: City on the Edge. Web enhancements will be available in a special password protected area, free for your downloading pleasure.

Loves lament is perhaps the loudest. When a noble bard falls in love with a desert flower from the Dragon Sands, he will move mountains to get her back from her evil uncle. But there is more to this simple romance than first appears. Will the passion of these star-crossed lovers be forever extinguished, or will our heroes journey into the depths of the Sands of Pain? An adventure for 4 player characters of 4th level (can be adjusted accordingly) New creatures, spells, items, prestige classes and feats New places of interest (POIs) in Bluffside and Kirkwood, the new village of Hotempa, and new NPCs

 

[GameWyrd]

Interludes: Sands of Pain is a pre-packaged adventure for four forth level characters. It’s better than most published adventures for four forth levels characters insofar that throughout the book there are tips for increasing or decreasing the difficulties of scenes if your group of players are just off level. Sands of Pain is based in the Bluffside campaign setting from Thunderhead Games. It’s better than most campaign specific published adventures insofar that having Bluffside is an advantage but not an necessity.

I don’t normally mention text size and density so early on in a review (if I mention it at all) but I don’t normally find myself noting just how good the text density is in published adventures. The text size is small. In the greyed boxes in the first half of the book the text size is smaller still – the stats for thugs you’re not even using don’t dominate the page. There’s a section mid-way through the book when the two column layout becomes a three column layout. This is done so it is easier to find just what you’re looking for and it works. It’s not as if they’re trying to squeeze a playable adventure into just 32 pages either, Sands of Pain is 64 pages long. Half the book is made up of appendixes.

It’s a lirtle strange. Brief Expeditions to Bluffside, the first adventure in the Interludes series, was set outside the of Bluffside but was used as a good scenario for people on route to the city. Sands of Pain, the second book for Interludes, starts off in Bluffside and then hurries the party out and off elsewhere. I think that’s a bit of a risk. It could be that the more experienced GMs may deliberately want to engineer enough adventures in the city to root the characters interests there before considering trip off to the wilds. I would have looked first to a pre-written game set solely in Bluffside before I wanted one that takes the party outside. On the other hand, there’s more to the campaign world than just the city and adventures like this are a good way to bridge the gaps between places of interest.

If you’re reading a review of an adventure then you shouldn’t be worried about spoilers. Sands of Pain deals with a desert culture, people who ride camels, wear turbans and have a different culture from the people of Bluffside. Sands of Pain deals with an extremist civilization hating faction within the desert people. Oooh-kay. I suppose this is a bit like running a game back in the 70s or 80s that was set in a large empire run by a corrupt few, where people call each other comrade and the PCs find themselves having to steal some important weapon secrets and make it back to the West safely. It seems all too easy to read in references to current affairs into Sands of Pain – and that may or may not be a bad thing.

I find pre-written adventures easy to pick apart. One of the weakest parts of any pre-written adventure is that it tends to be inflexible. Sands of Pain make us of "Theme Boxes" and these try to provide some more flexibility. I’ve already noted that throughout the adventure there are notes on how to up or down power combat encounters - that’s one use of the theme boxes. Other theme boxes offer up alternations to make if the party is particularly magic-user heavy, supported by many clerics, full of rogues, strong fighters or even blessed with an ample quota of psionic powered characters. It’s great. It’s just a small touch but it’s enough to start the process of lifting Sands of Pain up and out of the mire that is "yet another pre-written adventure". One quibble with the theme boxes is that the "Pits and Puzzles" gauge is described as being appropriate for parties who like to role-play. Um? Sure enough the logo pops up when there could be hidden traps in the ground or ways around fights. The logo never appears to suggest a detailed history for an NPC or a tricky ethical dilemma that’ll have the characters in a heated debate for hours and risk exposing one of them as rather less innocent than she pretends. It’s good enough though since the Pits and Puzzles box appears at suitable pit or puzzle points in the adventure.

I like rumours in games, especially in city-based games. It’s great if the GM can include the "word on the street" bit in their game or reward players who actually go out and ask questions with answers. There are loads of rumours in Sands of Pain. Rumours are a great aid to flavour. There are aids for crunchier sides to the hobby to; there are plenty of mini-maps suitable for GM but probably not players. DC checks for important dice rolls are easy to spot in their light-grey boxes at the side of the page. There is an awful lot of information packed onto any given page in Sands of Pain. This makes for a slightly fiddly read. It is easy to miss when an optional scene ends and backbone plot scene begins. I normally sit down, skim quickly through a book before reading it over the course of a night or two. I couldn’t do that with Sands of Pain. The book is just too tightly packed for any kind of meaningful skimming. This is good news for people after value for money products ($US12.99, btw, and with today’s exchange rates even I can work out that that’s Euro12.99). If you’re going to GM from the book then read it thoroughly first. Sands of Pain is not something you can pull off the shelf and run without preparation. Fortunately, author Jeffery Quinn is good at getting all the information needed into stat boxes and notes clearly and succinctly.

Half the book is appendix material. This space is used wisely. The first appendix summarises interesting places in a trading post the players will end up in. The second appendix has six monsters (one of which can be used as a character race) and a small collection of weapons and equipment. There are a good number of illustrations of creatures in this second appendix too. In many ways the second appendix is quite successful as a mini-beastiary. Appendix 3 is for the stats of important NPCs and doesn’t skimp on detail. Appendix four has some photocopy ready player handouts and appendix five some maps.

I don’t hide the fact that I’m not a big fan of pre-written adventures. Any adventure rated by me and compared to other possible purchases on the market that doesn’t get a below average rating is doing rather well. Sands of Pain does rather well. The adventure’s strengths overcome the weaknesses and there’s the potential to spin it out far beyond the scope of the book.

* This GameWyrd review was first published here.

 

[Messageboard Golem]

I wanted to post a kudos to the entire staff who took Jeff's adventure and made it a wonderful story.
Becky Glenn did the layout, and editing and some writing on it and was a HUGE influence on the final piece. Matt Mosher was also a big help in getting this adventure to print. Scott Purdy did all the art for this adventure as well. So a huge "high five" to the whole team.

Thanks GW for the review, and I will take a 3 from someone who does not like pre-made adventures!

 

[CCamfield]

So it sounds like this is - as adventures go - an above-average product, GameWyrd. Would you agree?

 

[GameWyrd]

Yes, if I weigh up various adventures I've seen then Sands of Pain does better than most. On a scale purely based on the worst to the best adventures then this is at least a four star deal.

 

[Psion]

Interludes: Sands of Pain

Interludes: Sands of Pain is an adventure modules for 4th level characters by Thunderhead Games, published under the Mystic Eye Games banner. As with Interludes: Brief Expeditions to Bluffside, Interludes: Sands of Pain is set in the "meta-setting" associated with the city of Bluffside.

A First Look

Interludes: Sands of Pain is a 64 page perfect-bound softcover priced at $12.99.

The cover of the book has a gold tone background. The cover illustration by Jhoneil Centeno depicts a caravan of desert dwelling humans being stalked by draconic creatures.

The interior is black and white, featuring illustrations by Scott Purdy and Tamara Pressman. The interior art in adequate to good quality.

The interior text is very dense, and the layout is crisp and readable. OCG content is placed in shaded blocks, though any place that a character description is not all OGC, the non-OGC portion is an adjacent column. This is a significant improvement over the layout of MEG's Raw Recruits.

A Deeper Look
(Warning: This section contains spoilers regarding the plot of the adventure.)

The adventure pits the PCs against an organization called the Callanna, an group primarily made up of druids and rangers that believe that civilization has expanded forever. Though an idealistic organization, to achieve their goals they have fallen in with dark powers and are predominantly evil. The Callanna are plotting to create a war between the predominantly human city of Bluffside and the Dragori empire to the south, which would stand to weaken both.

The adventure starts with the characters in Bluffside overhearing pleas for help from a well-to-do man being assailed in an alley. After dealing with the ruffians, the man, one Jaisyn Bruice, invites the PC to his inn to receive a reward for their intervention. When he goes to retrieve it, he returns sobbing, having received a letter from his lady love announcing her departure. He then hires the PCs to retrieve her from her uncle (who he believes was responsible for her disappearance.)

The truth is that Jaisyn's love, Carryn, is an agent of the Callanna who is in Bluffside stirring up ill-will against the dragori. The real reason that Carryn left was because the Callanna are under attack in the desert known as the dragon sands. The reason Jaisyn was attacked is because an enforcer under the hire of the Callanna wanted to retrieve an amulet that Carryn had left with him that was of some importance to the Callanna.

The flow of the plot is fairly straightforward. The PC investigate Carryn's uncle's domicile in Kirkwood. There they encounter some resistance, and find that Carryn is headed south into the dragon sands. They continue to follow clues (and possibly tracks) to a town in the dragon sands called Hotempa, and then to an oasis where the Callanna are under attack, and finally to the steadfast of the Callanna, the Temple of Eternal Stars.

The temple is an extensive dungeon setting. In addition to facing the various threats there, the players discovers that Jaisyn has set off on their own and is arriving at the temple just ahead of them. They arrive in time to see Jaisyn being stabbed by his love as she shows her true colors.

The adventure includes new points of interest, including the desert town of Hotempa. Also included are statistics for a number of new creatures and other elements encountered during the adventure, including the dune wyrm (a new type of dragon) and the Callanna prestige class.

Like the creatures, prestige classes, and other elements, NPCs are featured in the appendix. Most of the stat blocks are well done, but there are a few questionable points. For example, Carryn is a 4th level druid/4th level Callanna. The Callanna only has one level of spellcasting advancement per every two levels, but she has access to 4th level spells.

Conclusion

This is a fairly simple plot for a lot of setup. For how much material is provided here, they players could have easily been exposed to more details on the Callanna plot and been involved in the situation rather more compellingly. As it stands, they get catapulted into the plot with very little motive to stay faithful to their employer when things go sour. The adventure is also fairly linear, but doesn't try to hard to keep the players following the path, and possibly has too few clues.

On the bright side, there is a lot of background material, which provides for some flexibility in the way the game is run, provided that the DM is willing to make up some additional clues to keep the characters on task. Interludes: Sands of Pain is effectively as much a small region sourcebook as it is an adventure.

Further, the book uses Thunderhead Games' "Theme Boxes", which add a great degree of flexibility to the adventure. As with the prior Interludes adventure, these theme boxes provide variants in-line with the text allowing the DM to accommodate different play styles or make adjustment for different party level or makeup.

Overall Grade: B-

-Alan D. Kohler

 

[Messageboard Golem]

By John Grigsby, Staff Reviewer d20 Magazine Rack

*Caution: This review may contain spoilers.

Sizing Up the Target
Interludes: Sands of Pain is a 64-page adventure/sourcebook (the second in the Interludes series) located in the Bluffsides: City on the Edge campaign setting. It comes from Thunderhead Games (a member of the Mystic Eye Games LLC) and can be ordered from either website or picked up at your local friendly game store (or even through our own FRP Games sponsor!). It retails for the low price of only $12.99. Interludes: Sands of Pain is written by Jeffrey Quinn, with help from Becky Glenn and Matthew Mosher.

First Blood
Interludes: Sands of Pain takes characters to a new region of the Bluffsides campaign; the land of the Dragon Sands (which is conveniently detailed in the upcoming Dry Lands: Empires of the Dragon Sands sourcebook from Thunderhead Games). If you don’t happen to own these fine products, don’t worry, for the materials herein are also generic enough that using them in an existing campaign setting would be relatively easy. A few name changes, some minor adjustments, and they’re ready to drop into any Arabian-style setting that you wish.

Without giving away too much, the adventure revolves around assisting a young man with freeing his love from the clutches of her evil uncle. Of course, as the Bard said, the course of true love never runs smooth, and there are plenty of wrinkles in this tale for the characters to iron out. It should be noted, however, that it does rely on the idea that the characters are heroes and will be drawn to aid someone through the goodness of their hearts. Characters of a baser nature may need other motivations to play out this adventure.

The adventure itself is well written and easy to follow, especially through the use of theme boxes (described below), with a good balance of combat and role-playing opportunities. Though it seems simple from the brief description above, the plot is actually quite complex and will keep even budding detectives on their toes. There’s enough here for several quality sessions of role-playing adventure.

But adventure isn’t all that this product is about. It’s also a sourcebook for the Empires of the Dragon Sands. To that end, there are not less than seven new monsters, five new magical items, a host of new equipment, and a new prestige class fully detailed in this sourcebook. Furthermore, certain key areas (those that might be used on a semi-regular basis in a campaign) are given extra treatment. For example, even though an inn which the characters visit early on serves as little more than a backdrop for this adventure, details of the owner, regular visitors, rumors that might be gathered there, and plot hooks are given and a map of the place is included, making it easier for GMs to use it in a future adventure or to expand this one. There are even a whole section of new NPCs and plenty of ideas for continuing the adventure.

In short, not only is this a high-quality adventure, but also a great sourcebook that expands the Bluffsides campaign setting.

Critical Hits
I think the thing that I found most interesting about this work is the concept of theme boxes. This is my first excursion into Thunderhead Games products, but if all of them utilize theme boxes, it won’t be my last. The theme box approach utilizes checkboxes at certain key encounters. The most commonly utilized are Greater Than and Less Than, which provide a means for the GM to quickly alter the encounter for parties or higher than or lower than the recommended strength for the adventure. Others include Holier Than Thou (options for parties with strong or multiple divine spellcasters), Mind Over Matter (for parties with strong or multiple psionic characters), Puzzles and Pits (for roleplay heavy parties), Spell Slingers (for parties with strong or multiple arcane spellcasters), Sword and Shield (for parties with strong or multiple fighters), and Treacherous Traps (for parties with strong or multiple rogues).

Of course, not every encounter has a theme box and not all theme boxes are present where they are used. The idea is a good one and I’m only sorry that someone hasn’t thought of it before now. It’s nice to have these options available for a group like mine, that tends to have more bloodthirsty types than thinkers and whose ability to roll 20s seems uncanny.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the sourcebook material as well. The setting is a dry, dusty desert, where the heat can get oppressive during the day. In such conditions, metal armor would cook anyone wearing it within a few hours. To combat this problem, the inhabitants of these lands have developed ceramic armor in place of metal plates. It’s a good system, and one that gives a nice touch of fantasy to the setting.

I also applaud the fact that the maps are largely interspersed in the text of the adventure, at the entry for the encounter location. This makes running the adventure a lot easier, as I don’t have to flip back and forth between a map page and the adventure.

Critical Misses
I didn’t find any real problems with Sands of Pain. From a mechanical standpoint, everything seems well balanced, the adventure is not only playable, but also interesting, and the setting is rife with flavor. It is, as I said, very much setting-specific, but I don’t consider that a fault, since it is a part of the Bluffsides campaign line and it is easily adapted to other settings with a minimum of work. There are one or two references to spells or items detailed in other Thunderhead Games products, and it would have been nice to see them reprinted here, but they are not vital to the adventure and the loss is minimal, at best.

Coup de Grace
In summary, a great product with a lot of support for an established campaign setting, yet flexible enough to stand on its own. If you are just looking for a fun adventure in an Arabian-style setting, you’ll love this one. If you are an avid collector of the Bluffsides campaign series, you really can’t go wrong! d20 Compliance is observed throughout the book and the Open Gaming Content is set off by shaded boxes, making it easy to identify it at a glance. Most all of the new material is designated OGC.

This adventure is highly playable, not only because of the expansions to key encounter locales (that provide them to be used in further adventures), but because of the sourcebook material that is included herein. Players will find less material specifically targeted at them, but the new equipment section has a few new weapons and a lot of ceramic armor.

Even though it is an Arabian-setting, the designers have not fallen back on timeworn clichés in the design of the adventure. The setting is unique and the adventure itself fairly fresh and exciting. For the price you pay, you get a lot of good stuff. I’d say it’s well worth it whether you’re a newcomer to the setting, or a long-time resident.

To see the graded evaluation of this product, go to The Critic's Corner at www.d20zines.com.