Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Psion" data-source="post: 2009871" data-attributes="member: 172">Interludes: Sands of PainInterludes: 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 LookInterludes: 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.ConclusionThis 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</blockquote>

Verification