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ShortQuests -- individual adventure modules! An all-new collection of digest-sized D&D adventures designed to plug in to your game.

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Messageboard Golem" data-source="post: 2010233" data-attributes="member: 18387">By Glenn Dean, Staff Reviewer d20 Magazine Rack*** Warning – Possible Spoilers ***Sizing Up the TargetLands of Mystery is a set of adventures for Kenzer’s Kingdoms of Kalamar campaign setting. Written by a number of authors including Christopher Heath, Tony Wilson, James Mischler, Brian Jelke, and Scott Meredith, this is an 80-page softcover that includes maps and 25 special illustrations that retails for $15.99.First BloodLands of Mystery provides a set of four Kingdoms of Kalamar adventures for characters of level 1-8. Each of the adventures can be used alone, or as part of an ongoing Kalamar campaign. The adventures have complete maps, full monster stat blocks and adventure-specific appendices at the end of each adventure, and use the Kenzer ImageQuest system that provides a series of illustrations to be shown to players during the course of the adventure. The adventures are set in Tellene in the Kalamar setting, though the adventures could just as easily be set in any campaign setting with very minor modification.“The Sirocco’s Kiss” is the first adventure in the collection, designed for characters of 1st to 3rd level. In this adventure the party discovers a mysterious cult operating out of a strange ship, and will be drawn into an encounter with an extremely powerful monster. Although the party is provided with a magical item to exploit the monster’s weakness, this is still a very dangerous scenario, since its final encounter is an EL 10. The adventure itself is fairly short – probably good for a single playing session – but does include a fully fleshed out city dock quarter to use for further adventures.The second adventure, “In Too Deep”, is designed for 2d to 4th level characters. This is a set of short site- and event-based encounters in and around a small fishing village. Roleplaying opportunities abound in this adventure; there are a couple of novel encounters, and conceivably all of the encounters could be resolved through clever diplomacy and roleplay without any combat at all. Two of the encounters provide an opportunity for underwater adventuring, with some limited rules for handling underwater events included at the end of the adventure. “In Too Deep” could potentially be used for two to three short gaming sessions, depending upon the depth of the role play.“Night of the Rot Lord” is a fairly direct investigative-type event-based adventure in which the PCs must save a village from a horrible disease. The village is fully statted, so it has potential for use in further play, but the adventure itself is fairly short, probably one session at most. It does include descriptions of a number of horrible diseases that can be added to the campaign.The final adventure, “Unguarded Hoard”, designed for characters of 5th to 8th level, is my favorite of the four. The party is hired to investigate rumors of hobgoblin raiders and the lair of a dragon -- doing so provides city-based, overland, and dungeon adventuring in a brief, probably one to two session scenario. This is one of the few published adventures I’ve encountered that provides a set of options for both evil- and good-aligned parties to pursue. Though the adventure itself is short, the PCs actions could provide sufficient hooks for a number of ongoing adventures. This last adventure also includes a complete description of the Free City of Bronish that is adequate for a wealth of adventuring ideas.Critical HitsAs a GM, I’ve always found it useful to have a couple of short adventures to use as side treks, or to fill a single session or two while bigger things develop in the campaign. Lands of Mystery provides that in a nice package – a number of short, complete adventures that have the added benefit of prepared illustrations to enhance the game. While I won’t say the adventures themselves are earthshakingly original ideas, they do provide a range of material that includes city, wilderness, underwater, and exploration encounters, role-play, puzzle, and combat options, town and city backgrounds, plus full encounter tables all in one package. Given the cost of many published single adventures of similar length, Lands of Mystery isn’t a bad value for the dollar.Critical MissesOddly, though all four adventures are packaged together, there are no hooks that link the adventures together. Kenzer has provided a series of sidebars that explain how to link these adventures individually to other published Kalamar adventures. I would have been nice, though, to see some linkage between the adventures so that they could be used in sequence without any additional work. As it stands, they could be linked together, but the GM must figure out those links – as published Lands of Mystery provides four independent modules in one binding.Encounter scaling feels a bit off. The first adventure is specifically designed to put a low-level party up against a very powerful creature – potentially a fun game session, but certainly one fraught with risk. The other adventures are all stated to be for a specific level range “but adaptable for use with more or less experienced PCs by adjusting the strength of the foes described herein” – except that no further guidance is provided on what an appropriate adjustment might be. While experienced GMs should be able to handle this, in the “Unguarded Hoard” adventure particularly even the base level range of 5th to 8th is a little broad to not have some scaling suggestions, especially given one of the foes in that adventure. Clearer scaling suggestions, or a tighter level range (I’d suggest 2d, 3d, 3d, and 6th respectively) would make it easier for the GM to fit these adventures to his particular party.Coup de GraceLands of Mystery provides the GM with four nice stand-alone adventures all in one bundle, complete with some great illustrations. As a Kalamar product, none of its contents are Open Content, but the adventures could be easily adapted to any setting. While GMs might want to exercise some care in fitting a particular adventure to their group, overall this product is a reasonable value for its cost.To see the graded evaluation of this product and to leave comments that the reviewer will respond to, go to The Critic's Corner at <a href="http://www.d20zines.com/html/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=index&catid=&topic=3" target="_blank">www.d20zines.com.</a></blockquote>

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