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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 9302067" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dungeon/Polyhedron Issue 96/155: Jan/Feb 2003part 3/10Provincial Prior Cause: Another short coastal adventure for 1st level characters, this time a tie-in to one of their recent T. H. Lain novels. The PC’s are sent on a mission by the local equivalent of the Knights Templar. They’ve had a rough time lately, being banished from the country, having to smuggle their treasure out in short order. Unfortunately, one of the forces doing this has vanished, along with half their stuff. You’re sent to find them. Exactly why they’re entrusting such an important mission to 1st level characters I’m not sure but oh well. When you get to the last place they were sighted you get attacked by a one-eyed wild boar. You then find the dead body of the envoy. Heading up the cliffs nearby, you encounter the ruffians that killed him, who are trying to make away with the horses after finishing off the remaining squire. After beating them, you find out that the squire isn’t dead after all. He’ll deliver exposition that leads you to the culprits - Gruumsh worshippers. (hence the eye removals) Heading to their hermitage you’ll be attacked by a priest & barbarian with a one-eyed falcon. When you get there, it’ll be guarded by some darkmantles, a homunculus and a troglodyte, with a bugbear cleric at the end trying to destroy one of the missing holy items and some correspondence that proves the templar has indeed switched to Gruumsh worship, so you’ll need to spend more of the campaign hunting him down to retrieve the rest of their stuff. The kind of adventure that leads you by the nose from one encounter to the next with very little consideration of what would happen if the PC’s make any choices other than the one expected, this is shockingly flimsy and poorly designed, and definitely wouldn’t have been published if it weren’t a tie-in adventure written by a member of staff. This is what happens when you let your novelists cross the streams without properly playtesting what they write. Not quite as offensive on a rules design level as Bill Slavicsek’s tie-in adventures, but still bottom tier dreck I’d never stoop to using when there are so many better ones even in the same issue.</blockquote>

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