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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="Tuerny" data-source="post: 2008370" data-attributes="member: 674">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 BadThere 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</blockquote>

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