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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Simon Collins" data-source="post: 2009931" data-attributes="member: 9860">This is not a playtest review.Orcfest is an adventure designed for beginners to D&D with advice for starting players and GMs. I could find no official reference to the level the adventure is suitable for, but seems designed for 1st-2nd level characters.Orcfest is a 96-page mono softcover book costing $19.99. Margins, font size, and white space are all reasonable. There are several full page mono sketches by Phil Renne which are pretty good; the filler art in the rest of the product is both poor and at times inappropriate to its context. Maps are a little dark, but scaled and with compass direction. Writing style is clear and simple in the ideas it puts over, though the language used may be a little intellectual at times for the intended audience - new players and GMs. Editing seems good, though one reference to an EL34 encounter is obviously wrong!Orcfest is specifically designed to introduce new players and GMs to D&D. It is split into three parts - a players guide, a GMs guide, and the adventure itself. Players GuideThis is an 18-page introduction to D&D for new players. It includes advice on being a 'good' player (such as not talking over the GM), picking a character class (with advice on how to complement others' choices, especially if two or more people choose the same character class), buying equipment, interacting with NPCs, playing your character in an adventure, and exploring a dungeon (including advice on traps and mapping). It also has a significant section giving a basic understanding of the essentials of combat, before also dealing with such complications as being caught falt-footed, saving throws, attacks of opportunity, partial actions, flanking, cover, and spellcasting. This is followed by two examples of combat to show how the rules work - one for a combat with a single creature, another for multiple creatures. There is some final information on roleplaying with creatures, and treasure and its uses. This players guide can be photocopied and handed out to players before the adventure is run.GMs GuideThis begins right at the basics - getting a gaming group together, including advice on location and environment. It continues with advice on actually running your first adventure, as well as managing players character creation. The book then splits into continuing GM advice in sidebars with the adventure itself running alongside. Advice is given on understanding stat blocks, adjusting Encounter Levels, running NPCs, town generation, defining laws (and the consequences of breaking them), improvisation, avoiding railroading, describing the scenery, using traps and puzzles, balancing treasure, giving out XP, replacing dead characters, and running combat. All of this is essentially designed to help a beginning GM.The AdventureThe adventure surrounds the town of Solitude and the problems they have been having with orcs. There is a good mix of combat, roleplaying, traps, puzzles, and skill use. Two parts of the adventure focus on a dungeon crawl and infiltration respectively, whilst the climax deals with a serious threat to the existence of the town from the nearby orcs. Sidebars take a deeper look at orc culture for the beginning GM, and discusses the different parts of the adventure in terms of their advantages and disadvantages (the contained setting of the dungeon crawl vs. the open-endedness of the infiltration section). The introduction gives enough detail of the town of Solitude to run some basic interaction, though the detail is low on information about personality, being of a more practical nature. It should be noted that about 36 of the 96 pages are actually adventure - the rest is advice to newbie GMs and players.An appendix of sorts contains eight 1/2-page adventure ideas for further adventures with plot hook, background, the basic situational building blocks of the adventure and a monster/character idea. Two magical items from the adventure are also detailed.ConclusionThis is a good basic adventure for groups new to roleplaying, to introduce them to a range of D&D experiences and brings together much advice from the DMG in a format that is easy to read and relevant to the adventure being run. It's not really designed for more experienced GMs and players and I couldn't recommend it on this level, though the adventure is actually quite good, only lacking detailed advice on NPCs. This weakness is reflected elsewhere in the advice given, as the focus is on running the game in terms of rules rather than roleplaying (though there are sections of advice on roleplaying too). Though it has limited appeal to experienced roleplayers, a GM new to roleplaying will not go far wrong in picking this volume up for running her first adventure.</blockquote>

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