Natures Fury

[Tuerny]

Please be aware that this, like most of my reviews, contains spoilers.

Nature's Fury, with adventures by Mike Mearls and James Bell, is the fourth module released by Fiery Dragon Productions. Both of the included adventures, Swords Through the Ice Gate and The Crystal Tower, are site-based adventures with an icy theme to them. The first one revolves around a gateway to a world locked in ice and the second centers around a wizard's tower on an ice flow. While nominally set in the setting of Karathis discussed on Fiery Dragon's site, they are very easily inserted into most any campaign setting. There are even details included to do so.


The Book
The module, a standard laminated, staple-bound booklet, is forty pages long. The margins are blank and are generally 1.5" wide. The front interior cover contains a number of useful tables for keeping track of challenge ratings, the traps in the second adventure (The Crystal Tower), and the hit points of the iceberg in the second adventure.
The cover illustration, by Brian LeBlanc, depicts a small horde of bugbears facing off against a group of fur-clad humans. This is, in my opinion, the best Fiery Dragon cover by far and aptly conveys the mood of the first adventure. The interior artwork, by Todd Secord, is composed of black and white drawings that are largely unexceptional save for those drawn from the work of Claudio Pozas.
The maps are informative, including a grid and scale.
Also included are the distinctive counters that have allowed Fiery Dragon to stick out from the crowd in module production. This set is artistically rendered by Claudio Pozas and is generally well done.
The content of the book is divided into two adventures and five appendices. Each adventure contains an introduction, an adventure synopsis and background, a section on modifying the adventure, a list of keyed encounters, the adventure aftermath, and the adventure's maps. The appendices summarize the monsters and NPCs of the adventure, introduce the new magic items included in the adventure, and include the obligatory legal text.


The Meat
The first adventure, Swords Through the Ice Gate, by Mike Mearls, deals with the opening of an ancient gate between the PC's world and the frozen world of Gillidia. Through the machinations of a newly awakened white dragon, and the recovery of a gate key, the gate was reopened resulting in the curse that covers Gillidia to extend through the gate and a tribe of bugbear servitors of the white dragon to capture the inhabitants of a village known as Owen's Point. This is where the PCs come in. For whatever reason, the PCs arrive in Owen's Point to find the villagers missing and the area covered in snow during the middle of summer. Obvious signs lead to the gate where they discover that there is some internal dissent in the bugbear tribe. Not all of the bugbears support the dragon with the same levels of devotion and their are opportunities to get the majority of the bugbear tribe to stand aside while the PCs deal with the dragon and rescue the captives.
The second adventure, The Crystal Tower, by James Bell, deals with the tower of a long dead renegade wizard, which once sat on a glacier. The glacier has since begun to break apart and the piece with the tower has floated within site of a coastal city. Two groups have taken an interest in it. One, the Academy of the Kathendas Enclaves, once contained the dead wizard within their ranks and seeks to recover a piece of his work known as the amulet of wizardly power. The second, the DelSardo family, seeks to recover the magical talisman in order to gain some control on the Academy's direction. The PCs are brought in by the Academy, while the DelSardo family has sent a group of operatives to recover the amulet. With that set-up in place, the PCs must navigate a trap and puzzle-filled tower with a hostile, and unknown, enemy group also seeking it out.

The Good
In many ways this is Fiery Dragon's best release so far. Both of the adventures are interesting, site-based adventures filled to the brim with good ideas and interesting settings. Swords Through the Ice Gate utilizes a good combination of action and negotiation to avoid the tedium that many site-based adventure can evoke. The ritual combat, which takes place in a pool filled with large chunks of ice, to determine who leads the tribe is particularly interesting due to its cinematic potential. The Crystal Tower takes the traditional trap-filled wizard's tower scenario and adds a number of elements to make it more interesting. The melting glacier as a time limit idea, while not completely new, is intriguing in this particular case. The addition of a rival group with the same ends is similar in its utility.
One thing that is also exceptional in this modules is its Using in the Campaign section. While many modules contain one, the sections included in Nature's Fury are truly exceptional, containing a variety of good and useful ways to adapt the adventure to alternate campaigns. In addition there are several suggestions to making the adventures more interesting, such as making the rival group in the Crystal Tower more dynamic in their actions rather than static.

The Bad
There really is not very much that is negative about these adventures. If you truly abhor site-based adventures you probably would want to stay away from them. Beyond that this adventure is a good buy.

Rating: 5/5

 

[Psion]

Nature's Fury

Fiery Dragon is perhaps the prime example of a "D20 System success story." Provided the opportunity of the OGL and D20 system and trademark licenses, they put together their own little company and started churning out their own adventures. While not unique in that, they did rise above many of their contemporaries to get recognized by the "big boys." They joined White Wolf publishing's Sword and Sorcery banner, a move that should give their products wider distribution and exposure.

Nature's Fury is the first product by Fiery Dragon Productions with the Sword & Sorcery logo on the cover, the fourth adventure product from FDP and the second "double adventure." The included adventures are Swords Through the Ice Gate and The Crystal Tower. Swords Through the Ice Gate is by Mike Mearls (continuing with his Lieber-esque naming theme started with the Swords Against Deception in FDP's To Stand on Hallowed Ground) and is designed for a party of 6th level characters. The Crystal Tower is by James Bell and is designed for a party of 5th level characters.

A First Look

Unlike FDP's first double adventure, To Stand on Hallowed Ground, Nature's Fury does not use the "double cover" scheme. The front cover features attractive color art by Brian LeBlanc of some humans about to clash with some humanoid creatures (presumably bugbears.) Nature's Fury is a staple-bound soft-cover book with 40 pages of material.

The interior is black and white and most of the art is by Todd Secord, who has done the bulk of FDPs artwork to this point. I think his depictions of monsters are decent, but really find his depictions of humans unappealing.

The adventure includes one page of cut-out color counters on cardstock. The art on the counters is by Claudio Pozas, and I find his art very appealing. His depictions of creatures on the counters are also duplicated in black-and-white in the appendices with the stat blocks of these creatures.

The cartography is decent. The maps are clear and the key is simple and readable.

The use of space is good. The text density is decent, and the inside front cover was used for challenge rating tables. Even higher text density is used on the stat blocks in the appendix and on the OGL.

Swords Through the Ice Gate: A Deeper Look
(Warning: The following section contains spoilers to secrets of the adventure.)

The basic premise behind Swords Through the Ice Gate is that the players must track some abducted villagers through a gate to a world locked in ice. A good deal of exposition is devoted to describing how this world came to be. Ultimately, though, the author recognizes you may have no interest in gates to other worlds and provides alternatives in case you wish to set the adventure in a cold region in your own game world, as well as a number of good plot hooks for involving the players.

The adventure is primarily site-based, but the primary deviation from the typical dungeon crawl is that the players end up stepping in the middle of bugbear politics. A dragon trapped in the ice has convinced some bugbears to assist her in digging her out of her entrapment. The bugbears have kidnapped the humans to assist them in this task.

When the players first make it through the gate, a shaman that has fallen out of favor with the bulk of the bugbear tribe will try to manipulate the players into destroying his rivals. There are several potential paths from here. By helping the shaman to displace the current chieftain, the party can then use his influence to get what they need out of the bugbears. Fighting the bugbears and forcing the facts they need out of them will be much more difficult. Sneaking past them is virtually not an option, as the party will have to sneak out a significant portion of the human villagers that they are here to rescue.

Once they have the necessary information from the bugbears, they will have to go to the dragon's lair to free the remainder of the villagers. Chances are that they will not be able to do this without an encounter.

For the most part, this is a typical site-based encounter with the exception of the political dealing. If the players are the sort that would not consider talking to bugbears so long as they have a sword to hack with, this adventure could be quite a challenge for them.

The Crystal Tower: A Deeper Look
(Warning: The following section contains spoilers to secrets of the adventure.)

The Crystal Tower is also a cold-themed adventure. In this case, the object of the adventure is to retrieve an item from a legendary tower of a long dead wizard notorious for his defiance of the prevailing wizards guild. His research wasn't all that productive, but there is one thing he was well known for: traps.

A second complication exists: the PCs aren't the only ones interested in the crystal tower. When they arrive there, the explorations of a second band of adventures are already underway.

As with Swords Through the Ice Gate, many ideas are provided for adapting the adventure to your own campaign world, and many variant plot hooks are provided to change the nature of the PCs' involvement in the adventure. Some of the suggestions for adapting the adventure to your own campaign are obvious (e.g., change the name of the city), but only a half of a page is devoted to it and the inclusion of adaptation notes is appreciated.

The tower is encased in a slowly melting iceberg, so time is of the essence in this adventure. Should the players take too long, the tower will melt its way loose of the iceberg and plummet to the bottom of the sea. By itself, this takes a long time. However, should the PCs toss around too many fire-based spells while in the tower, they may be speeding their own demise!

The primary living opposition in the adventure is the other adventuring party and some of their hired brutes. As a default they are placed in the adventure as static encounters, but suggestions are provided for running them as a more dynamic entity.

As promised, the tower is filled with a number of fiendish traps. Most of them are fairly sensible, and there are fairly logical outgrowths such as means to raise and lower the security of the tower.

Conclusions

Both adventures are fairly strong. Though I didn't find the concepts as interesting as the ones in FDP's previous double adventure To Stand on Hallowed Ground, they provide more than re-warmed kick-in-the-door action. Though this may throw some more simple-minded players who are accustomed to straightforward dungeon crawls a curve ball, it should be a refreshing

Another contrast with FDP's prior adventures is conversion notes. Though Mike Mearls already made a habit of including them, it was nice to see Rob Bell include them in his adventure as well.

I think that including the color counters by Claudio Pozas was a good idea. The double-cover thing was interesting, but ultimately of little value to the consumer. The counters, on the other hand, are attractive and give you something that you can use.

One of the things I find most fascinating about the module is that it seems like many of the things that went into its making happened right in front of me. Claudio Pozas first came to my attention when Eric Noah started hosting his website, which was soon to be followed by the announcement that FDP had decided to hire him for his work. Soon thereafter, it was announced that White Wolf's D20 publishing arm, Sword & Sorcery, would be publishing FDP's material. This is the fruit of that labor.

Nature's Fury physically appears more polished than prior FDP products. However, with this module they continue to deliver a solid package of useful and creative game material that I have praised in earlier reviews, with perhaps a little added refinement of additional care to make sure that their adventures are portable to your own game world.

There are many D20 System vendors churning out adventures. But I definitely think FDP is one to keep your eye on.

Ratings:

Idea content: 4 -- Nature's Fury is better than your typical dungeon crawl with politics, role-playing opportunities, and good integration ideas and plot hooks. However, its premises and encounters are not quite as creative as To Stand on Hallowed Ground was.

Ready to use material: 5 -- Full stat blocks, good maps, good use of the rules, traps and encounters, and no obvious deviations from the rules. The full color counters as also a great feature, and look better than ever!

Value for Money: 4 -- Dense type, conservative use of ads and OGL is in small type, taking less than a page. No obvious padding and a full color counter insert for the price that that give an adequate page-per-dollar ratio.

Overall Substance rating: 4

Overall Style rating: 4

 

[Napftor]

As stated by the staff reviewers, this 39-pg production houses 2 distinct modules with an "icy" theme. I think that 1) having a theme like this is a pretty nice feature and 2) getting 2 modules for the price of 1 (in this case $8.95) is quite agreeable to a gamer's wallet. If you want to know the plots of these, then please refer to the above reviews as I am not going to take space repeating them here. Suffice it to say, both modules are imaginative and hold the interest of players and DM's alike. Mearls and Bell know their stuff and I think they'll be contributing quality products for a long time. Added bonuses include Claidio Pozas's adequately rendered counters (while Pozas himself is a superb artist, I think the art greatly loses something in the scaling down process) and the handy Challenge Tables et. al. inside the front cover. The cover and interior art is top-notch and gets no complaints from me. Now, onto the actual modules themselves:

SPOILERS BELOW
Swords Through the Ice Gate: The idea of taking the protagonists to another world is one that never loses appeal for me. Here, the normal concerns of character-action repercussions do not have to be weighed as carefully-->"Want to upset the balance of power in the bugbear village? Go for it! You're going back through the gate to your safe home. Nothing you do will directly affect your campaign world (unless your DM decides to follow-up with another gate module, this one where vindictive refugees from your actions in the other world come for your hides!)" But, I digress.
The rules for dealing with the cold are simple and the possible combat on the ice to determine tribe leadership is quite exciting. This whole module was the best I've read yet and I really can't find fault with it. Hopefully, we'll see more like this in the future.

The Crystal Tower: It's double trouble as the PC's must complete their objective on a melting iceberg while at the same time outwit evil adventurers out for the same objective! Sound good? It is. The backstory is explained well (as it is for Swords...) and the evil wizard's tower has traps both devious and deadly. The tumbler mechanism for the traps is ingenious and it is more than believable that the ogre left behind by the wizard was killed by his own stupidity. There are, however, a few items that the DM must watch out for when preparing to run this module...

• Area #36 is not listed on the map
• When Lannora sets off the "massive" ram trap in Area #37, wouldn't the PC's hear this from just the 20 feet away that they are?
• The compactor in Area 39 is not correctly described. It states that the compacting wall is "the entire twenty-foot eastern wall" and "will advance at a rate of five feet per minute, taking four minutes total to reach the western wall...". But according to the map, this area is 10 feet wide and 20 feet long. And while there is no compass point, it would not help anyway. Either the compacting wall is 10 ft. and will take 4 minutes to squish the PC's or it is 20 ft. and will take 2 minutes to do its job. I'd have to go with the former
• On page 33, Area #54 should actually be #53

There are also a couple of pet peeves that surface in this module. First, I don't really like the inclusion of real-world names in products. This is usually either a bad joke or a lack of creative juices. Possible tomes to be uncovered here have such names as Arcana Unearthed and A Study on the Ancient Island of Atlantis. 8) Second, I find the need to page back and forth between the map and the text that goes with it (separated by 12 pages at the beginning) rather tedious. Perhaps a detachable map is the best option here.
Back to the good, there is a subtle hook to get the PC's from The Crystal Tower to Swords.... I had wondered why a dual module would have both so close in level and this explained it nicely. Well done.

So despite the minute errata I have listed, Nature's Fury is a solid buy in every category. Another winner from Fiery Dragon.

 

[Messageboard Golem]

Two chilling adventures with an icy theme.

In Swords Through the Ice Gate, the heroes must find the missing inhabitants of Owen's Point, who have been kidnapped and taken to a distant world covered in ice.

The Crystal Tower features a treasure hunt within an ancient trap-filled tower frozen inside a floating iceberg.

 

[Simon Collins]

Beware! This review contains major spoilers.
This is not a playtest review.

Price: $9.95
Page Count: 40
Price per page: About 24 cents per page
Designed for character levels: 5-6

External Art: A relatively good piece of colour art showing a group of bugbears, led by their fanged leader atop a rock, facing fur-clad PCs.

Additional Page Use: The back page contains an introduction and overview to the two adventures, as well as a small average colour picture of PCs investigating some bodies fused into an icy cave wall. The back inside page contains ads, the front inside cover has challenge tables (a summary of ELs, CRs and stats), and a couple of small charts for tracking changes within the adventures. The first page contains credits and contents. The penultimate page holds the OGL.

Internal Art: The quality of the black and white internal art ranges from poor to good. There are also a set of square cardboard counters for the relevant monsters stapled to the centre of the module - the quality of the pictures depicting each monster is average to good.

Maps: The maps are basic, clear, scaled, and keyed to the adventures.

Page Layout: The text density is good and there is little white space. Margins are not large.

Writing Style: Both adventures are written in a clear and entertaining manner. I was unable to find any typos.

The Adventures:

There are actually two adventures in 'Nature's Fury', both set in extremely cold conditions.

In Swords Through The Ice Gate (14 pages), The PCs discover a village and its surrounds suffering from freak winter weather in the middle of summer. All the inhabitants are missing and the village has been smashed up. Following the tracks the PCs discover a portal to an icy world called Gillidia. The villagers have been taken by a tribe of bugbears, who are offering them as sacrifice to a white dragon half encased in ice. The PCs can benefit from interacting with an exiled bugbear before mounting a rescue operation for the villagers. The adventure includes background on the world of Gillidia, adventure background, summary and plot hooks, advice for using the adventure in your own campaign, tips for running the adventure, a summary of the rules dealing with the effects of the cold climate, and ideas for further adventures.

In The Crystal Tower (18 pages), the PCs are hired by a wizards guild to retrieve research from a traitorous wizards' tower, which is located within an iceberg. Another mercenary group is also searching the tower when the PCs arrive. The PCs must avoid the guards and wards of the tower, beat the competing mercenaries to their goal, and return with their prize to the wizards guild. The adventure gives background, synopsis and hooks, as well as adapting the adventure for use in your campaign, tips for running the adventure, a summary of the rules dealing with the effects of the cold climate, a section on running the competing mercenaries, and ideas for further adventures.

The Appendix has stats for the monsters, stats and some description for the NPCs, and three new magical items.

High Points: The first adventure focuses on roleplaying and combat, whilst the second focuses on traps and puzzles - between them there is a nice balance. Given their focus on cold climates, the two adventures are relatively simple to integrate into a campaign setting (and there is good advice for doing so). The text is clearly written and the plots are straightforward and logical. The addition of creature tokens for the monsters and NPCs is a nice touch.

Low Points: Both adventures are solid without being exceptional. There's not a lot I can pick out as being bad (maybe the internal art in places), but nothing that shouts top quality at me either.

Conclusion: On the high side of Average - clear, well thought out, with plenty of advice and original basic premises, but lacking a certain flair overall. About a 3.8 if I was allowed to score with decimal places.

 

[Psion]

Doesn't "3.8" round to "4"?

I thought this was pretty good, myself. FDP gives you plenty of adaptation notes and ideas, which I appreciate, and is a point most adventures seem to miss.

 

[Simon Collins]

Maybe I should have written "close to scoring Good" rather than "3.8" - or "on the upside of average". My maths was never very good!!

I agree there were definitely some nice touches, particularly the adaptation advice. But for me the overall impression was of two adventures with rather standard storylines, and under-developed NPCs - i.e. the excellent advice, editing, etc., did not outweigh my disappointment with the overall story and atmosphere (which to my mind promised more than it delivered).

 

[Simon Collins]

Mind you, I've just checked my Players Handbook and it says to always round down! ;-)

 

[Messageboard Golem]

Nature's Fury is a two adventure game book from Fiery Dragon. The earlier reviewers did a great job in covering what is inside; this review will focus on how it was to DM for my normal gaming group.

Although they are set in the opposite order in the book, I'll cover The Crystal Tower first, as that is for 5th level characters, and Swords Through the Icy Gate, which is for 6th level (at least). Since pretty much any party that does both will do them in this order, I'm not sure why Fiery Dragon choose to put the higher level one first.

<spoilers below>
The Crystal Tower by James Bell.

The map, NPCs, and creatures are all towards the back of the module, so a sticky bookmark is invaluable. Especially since none of these are on the inside back cover. The map would have been nice there, but instead, an ad.

I ran this right after Green Ronin's Madness In Freeport, and had the iceberg float off the coast of Freeport. There is an NPC group that is going for the same treasure as the players, and tying them to the Freeport (or pick a city in your world) underworld is no problem, and adds to the fun. I recommend it.

This was my first Fiery Dragon counter game, and I have to say it works well. I pulled out a bunch of gnolls for the first battle, and one of my players yelled "hey, those look like gnolls!" No words from me, and the artwork conveyed enough to let her make the right conclusion. Nice.

However, the module has the Gnolls taking up a great defensive position behind an overturned table, and then gives them no missile weapons. I recommend DMs just give them some.

The main puzzle in the center was great, and it was hard to keep a straight face as the players tinkered with it. Basically, there is a device on many floors that control tower security and access to the main treasure. There is a clue found on an old guard's body that helps. What is very nice about it, at least for my group, is that it is not a "stop the game until you do the puzzle" thing, at least until the very end. It's play with the puzzle and suffer the consequences until you figure it out. By luck, skill, or whatever, my players did well with this.

The traps did manage to kill the party Cleric. It was an explosive runes trap that got her, and it's not hard for it to take out a 5th level character, especially if they are down hit points already. The player was not very attached to her passive healer, so she finished the adventure as a Monk, so no worries.

The other, NPC, party tried to fight the players, then surrendered, only to have their leader slain by gargoyles. Ilgen Jaspar, the NPC rogue, ended up getting a share of the treasure and is now a roving NPC with a grudge against my players.

The last room was a bit of a let down for my players, who were itching for a boss monster, and got two wimpy Ice Mephits and a trap. Unfortunately for the drama, they were pretty well healed up before entering this room.

A very nice touch is that the iceberg is melting, and the embedded stone tower will sink to the bottom of the sea. I had to accelerate the melting a bit to keep the tension up, as they were moving well ahead of the timeline.

If you have more than four players, definitely scale up. But watch out for the traps. Fifth level wizards can just evaporate in this place!

No matter what the timeline says, I recommend the tower start to sink as soon as the players grab the big treasure. Let them rush up to the top before the place fills with water, it adds to the fun.

Swords Through the Ice Gate by Mike Mearls.

This was the first time my players got to go through a portal to another plane, and they loved it. Some interesting role-playing of bugbear factions against each other, and a great fight on floating ice bits in a warm spring welling up in an ice field. And a dragon, the first my players had faced.

The map is even harder to find than in the other adventure, so a sticky bookmark is a requirement. It is near, but not in, the middle of the book. The monsters and npcs are in the back of the book with the ones from the other adventure. Hmmmm...

I knew my players would do well until the dragon, but I worried about a total party kill when they did. So I ran a homegrown adventure and Fiery Dragon's Ghost Machine before my players got to the bugbear valley, to get some levels up. I set both my adventure, and the Ghost Machine, in the other plane, so after the Owen's Point opening of this adventure. Sensing I over corrected, I scaled up the bugbear opposition by adding some Gnomish Necromancer support. But I digress...

Back into the plot, my players enjoyed dealing with the bugbear shaman, but they never trusted him. The fight on the ice was fraught with sinking PCs, as player after player missed rolls and slipped into the ice water. A good many castings of endure cold had been cast beforehand, so there was more laughter than panic. I think the Paladin went in the drink four times!

The dragon's ice lair was also fun, with some water elementals giving the players a good challenge.

Then the dragon. I had let some of the players get up to 7th level. Yet facing a 189 hit point white dragon with spells will be beyond the reach of most parties at this level, especially since the module has good instructions on how she will fight intelligently from above, out of reach of the fighters.

Here the DM should fill in where the text does not. I believe in having things the players have to run from, but I use shows of force, to let the players have a chance to run, before wiping them out.

I did so here, targeting only the half orc fighter who had a few metric tons of hit points in the first breath attack. The players got the message, and grabbed the prisoner, and prepared to run. Then the dice failed me, and the player's spells were all landing even with her great saving throw numbers, I was rolling 1s and 2s! Charmed bugbears were distracting her, and taking the hits instead of the players. She became confused, and came down within range of fiery swords, and was missing on her melee, and though her breath was bringing the players to a few hit points, it was not taking them down. Before anyone could believe it, the tide had turned, and the total party kill had turned into a dragon kill. There was much rejoicing.

I caution other DMs, this was an unnatural result, and I had six players, two 7th level, and four 6th level.
The module does not discuss what the players might do besides combat to the death. The players could leave the last prisoner with the dragon. They could try to grab him and run with a distraction of charmed bugbears as my players did. Or they could see "the boss monster" and decide to fight. The module seems to assume they will fight and win, but I don't see it, not four 6th level players. So be prepared.

In any case, the rest is balanced enough and the dragon fearsome enough, most DMs will see the problem. I gave lots of foreshadowing, so they had a number of tricks up their sleeves, and were willing to go through all their spells, potions, and scrolls.

Downside
A bit too much page flipping, and not enough role-playing. The big thing to watch out for is a total party kill with the dragon.

Upside
Cool counters by Claudio Pozas, great settings, a sense of wonder and novelty.

Conclusion
All in all, two fun adventures, well worth a place in my bookshelf.