Of Sound Mind

[Messageboard Golem]

The Plot: The characters are motivated by strange nightmares, missing children, and a bizarre murder to investigate the odd happenings around the town of Bellhold. They must penetrate the former lair of a slain dragon, discover what bizarre force is tormenting the town, and put a stop to it before the town is turned into mindless slaves. The Mood: Odd occurrences, terrible nightmares, and ancient secrets haunt the town. The frayed nerves and shattered spirits of the townspeople have everyone on edge. Children and animals have gone missing, and the aura of fear is nearly palpable in the air. Whispers audible only in the mind add to the confusion, but it is clear that a dark force is determined to rob the people of Bellhold of their sanity and freedom. Of Sound Mind: A psionic fantasy adventure for the d20 System. Designed for 1st-level characters, Of Sound Mind provides an adventure where investigation, bravery, stealth, skill, and a strong will are the keys to completing the adventure and rescuing the people from the small town of Bellhold from a terrible enslavement.

 

[ASEO]

Of Sound Mind: 5

Psionic Adventure for first level characters.

49 pages

$10.95

Cover Art is OK, interior and back cover art by Claudio Pozas is great, in a comic book style.

Spoilers...


This is the first psionic related module I've seen, and I must say I am impressed. The adventure is a great way of introducing psionics into a campaign, or letting new psionic characters get their feet wet.

The adventure focuses around a small copper mining town that is suffering headaches caused by the psionic attention of a stone which holds a portion of a dead Sapphire Dragons psyche. This stone, not knowing its current status is attempting to bring the local region under it's sway just as the dragon once did. The players are asked to investigate the problems in town, track down some missing children, and find out what happened to the local adventuers that went before them. This leads the party to the dragon's old minds that are now infested with goblins and the sole surviving troglodyte whose tribe fell to the goblins. The party must navigate the lower mines and enter the dragon's old quarters where they find the goblins using the stone/being used by the stone. There are several opportunities for diplomacy and role playing as well as hack and slash. There are also several opportunities for problem solving and developing combat tactics. The party must recover the stone then get it to the local church bell tower to destroy it. Oh did I mention that the friendly towns people are now completely dominated by the stone and are trying to stop the PCs?...Maybe the PCs want to hack their way to the bell tower, maybe they don't.

I found the maps to be well done, the text is clear and concise. NPC stats are listed in the back and plenty of notes are given in the text describing the different NPC/goblin's motives.

Several new magical items are detailed and 4 new monsters are listed, at least 1 of which appears in the CCII, but is listed here for people who don't have that book.

There is 1 new spell: Corpse Scream that makes a severed head scream when approached - it is neat for the story and horror value, but since I don't have my PHB with me, I'm not sure how it compares to a Magic Mouth or Alarm spell.

Copies of the dream handouts are available on the Fiery Dragon web page.

The module mentions an up coming sequel. I can't wait to check it out as well.

 

[Messageboard Golem]

If this is the first psionic adventure you've checked out, I recommend that you purchase If Thoughts Could Kill by Bruce "Psionic Guy" Cordell published by Malhavoc Press. It's a 5 Dollar pdf. download and it's a superb psionic adventure. A comparative review would be interesting...

-Zarrock

 

[ASEO]

I may have to do that. I've had my hands full with the printed releases, and haven't really looked at any PDFs yet although I hear that many of them are good.

ASEO out

 

[Psion]

Of Sound Mind

Of Sound Mind is an adventure for beginning (1st level) characters. The adventure is billed as a "psionic" adventure. The premise and many important encounters in the adventure utilize the Psionics Handbook. The adventure claims that it can be adapted for higher level and for use without benefit of the psionics handbook.

The author of Of Sound Mind is Kevin Kulp. Kevin is a longtime RPGA DM, and is perhaps best known amongst the online community of ENWorld as "PirateCat." He was involved in the playtesting of the Psionics Handbook, and his entries in the story hour section of ENWorld are amongst the most popular.

A First Look

Of Sound Mind is a 48-page staple-bound softcover booklet priced at $10.95 US. In addition to the pages, the module has an insert with full-color cardboard counters. Discounting the counters, this gives the adventure a price-per-page ratio the same as Necromancer Games' Prisoners of the Mage and slightly worse that Wizards of the Coasts' Lord of the Iron Fortress, both of which also have 48 pages.

The front cover depicts some adventurers in a clash with some skeletal creature with a dragon and a goblin in the background. The front cover art is decent but not great; it has a sort of sketchy oil painting look. The back cover has a smaller picture by Claudio Pozas that I did find rather interesting and attractive. I am given to wonder why Claudio's picture wasn't used on the front cover.

The interior is black and white (except for the counter sheet). Interior artwork is by Claudio Pozas, Todd Secord, and Tori Brine. Again, Claudios work seems to be the most attractive to my eye. The interior maps are clear and functional. The color counters are functional and attractive… and scary! The dragon counter included looks a little big for first level characters to face.

The interior text is in a relatively compact typeface, and conservative margins and leader spaces are used. Combined with the price per page ratio and the inclusion of a counter sheet, this delivers a fairly good value for your money.

A Deeper Look
(Warning: The following text contains spoilers regarding the premise and encounters in the adventure. Read at your own risk.)

The adventure starts with the "town in trouble" premise that is common in d20 system adventures. However, the author is subtle about introducing the threats, so this may be of a slightly different stripe than many such adventures.

The adventure is written to utilize many aspects of the Psionics Handbook, but provides alternatives in case you are not interested in using psionics. Adaptation notes are provided to adapt it to your campaign, including notes on scaling the adventure similar to such notes that are often provided in adventures in Dungeon magazine.

The party wanders into town and notices a farmer who is having some trouble with some horses. After they assist him in recovering them, he can relate a little bit about the situation about the town.

The town is called Bellhold, and one of the main activities of note here is the forging of bells. Some time ago, the town was under the rule of an evil sapphire dragon, which forced the citizens to labor at his behest to expand his hoard.

Recently, there have been some strange occurrences in the area. The whole town has been experiencing headaches and nightmares. Several children have disappeared, and a group of adventurers sent to find them have also disappears. This all comes to a head when the party gets involved in investigating a rather unusual murder, and the party starts getting taunting nightmares of their own.

After uncovering some rather unusual murderers (some psionically endowed animals), the party will be led to investigate the old mines. The old mines have some goblin inhabitants, including one psionic goblin that is at the source of the problem. The psionic goblin is attempting to re-awaken an artifact that is a strange legacy of the sapphire dragon that ruled here years ago, and is responsible for experiments that are causing some other local problems as well. The optimal solution would be for the players to destroy the artifact, a task that is daunting to perform but made possible within the scope of the adventure. However, they will have to do so while dealing with several mind-controlled citizens of the town they are trying to save!

Conclusion

On a basic level, this is a simple "dungeon crawl to save the town" type of scenario. However, it has a layer of complexity that goes beyond more typical examples of this premise. First off, the nightmares and unusual occurrences will add an interesting feel to the campaign. Further, there is an investigative layer to the adventure that will give more puzzle-oriented players a degree of satisfaction. Finally, the nature of the final encounter provides the possibility of a very tense and exciting session.

The adventure is not written in a strictly linear fashion, leaving the PCs to go about their information gathering in town however they desire. There are a few important pieces of information the players will have to uncover in order to have a good chance of succeeding at the adventure, but at least the GM is warned of these points in advance.

Overall, this is a very nice effort. The game rules – including the psionics rules – are deployed very well in this module. As with many Fiery Dragon offerings, there are lots of additional creatures and items as well as nice "extras" to the adventure like the counters and handouts of the nightmares that the PCs experience. This should be a nice introductory adventure for a party, especially if you wish to highlight the use of psionics in your game world.

Ratings: Ideas: 5 Material: 5 Value: 4

-Alan D. Kohler

 

[Messageboard Golem]

By Steve Creech, Exec. Chairman, d20 Magazine Rack

This reviewis for Of Sound Mind by Kevin Kulp, one of the designers of Wizards of the Coast’s Psionic Handbook. Of Sound Mind is a 48-page adventure from Fiery Dragon Productions (www.fierydragon.com) under the Sword & Sorcery imprint that retails for $10.95.

This psionics based adventure is designed for character levels 1-2 but contains all of the necessary information to scale it up to 4th level (or more if need be). It also lists ways to convert the story to a non-psionic adventure for those who choose not to incorporate psionics into their worlds. The basic premise is that the characters must penetrate a long dead dragon’s lair in search of clues behind the disappearance of some small children and an adventuring company. They must also discover why everyone in the nearby village is suffering from a severe headache. Obviously, things become very complicated from there and in short order, the players are in over their heads.

Of Sound Mind is an excellent adventure to introduce psionics into a campaign. The story itself is well written with a consistent storyline and good flow. The amount of psionics used and the rules governing them allow a novice GM to step up and run this module without much need for modifications. A nice feature is the inclusion of cardboard counters that represent each encounter in the story. These cutouts completely eliminate the need to breakout or haul around a bunch of miniatures everywhere you game.

Overall, Of Sound Mind is a solid adventure that does a good job introducing psionics to any low level campaign. Novice GMs or GMs who are new to psionics will do especially well with this module even if they need to scale it to better challenge the party. However, GMs experienced with psionics may find the adventure too simple for their tastes without significantly altering it. If you are truly looking for something that is a little more different than your average run-of-the-mill low level adventure or if psionics is something new that you want to introduce to your campaign, then Of Sound Mind is a good buy. But if your party is higher than 5th level or experienced with psionics, you might be better served to wait until you have a real need for a beginning level adventure.

To see the graded evaluation of this product, go to The Critic's Corner at www.d20zines.com.