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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Psion" data-source="post: 2009935" data-attributes="member: 172">OrcfestOrcfest is an introductory adventure, designed especially to introduce new players and DMs to the d20 System. This includes a complete adventure and additional advice and guidelines. The adventure is written by Thomas M. Reid and published by Fast Forward Entertainment.A First LookOrcfest is a 96-page perfect-bound softcover book priced at $19.99.The cover has the same grainy red look as most Fast Forward books have. The cover art depicts an orc with fafepaint. The picture is by Phil Renne, one of the better artists that contributed to Mongoose Publishing’s line of products. Phil Renne also does most of the interior art, and most of his pieces are fairly good. Though uncredited, there are also several other rather crude drawings in the book that are obviously not by Phil Renne.The interior text is fairly dense, with a conservative font size and close paragraph and line spacing.A Deeper Look(This section contains some spoilers to the content of the adventure.)Orcfest is sorted into two major sections, a players tips section and a DM/adventure section.The player tip section provides advice for new players of the d20 System. The advice is generally solid. Some of it is somewhat redundant with the core materials, such as a sample combat. However, much of it is rather fresh, and takes into consideration the sorts of things that the core books don't touch upon, like common expectations of players. Perhaps the strongest part of this section is where the author breaks down into basic terms elusive d20 System concepts like flat-footedness, surprise, and attack of opportunity. There is also tips for beginners on class and equipment selection and dungeon exploring techniques, among other things.The DM and adventure section is essentially split into two parts. The adventure itself is in unshaded text. Alongside the adventure is a variety of shaded sidebars covering the nuances of designing and running adventures. This is a novel and promising approach. Each step of the way, the sidebar advice shows the DM how the adventure was developed and techniques for handling specific situations that arise in the adventure. This sort of advice may be a drag for an experienced DM, but it seems like it would give a new DM up to speed in a very short time.The adventure itself is pretty decent. It is not a simple hack-and-slash. It is, however, the classic "beleaguered village" scenario. The mayor of said city asks the characters not to simply knock heads with the local orcs. Rather, he suspects the orcs are up to something, and asks the characters to search from some ancient magical masks that can disguise them and assist them in infiltrating an upcoming orc festival. Once at the orc festival, the players may participate in a number of games that orcs play at a festival, opening some interesting role playing opportunities. After that, the characters may discover something of the Orc's secret weapon, and the adventure is very flexible, allowing a variety of possible player actions. The ending of the adventure describes various stages of the orcish assault that may occur.The end of the book provides a number of adventure hooks for possible future adventures in the area, along with a few sample characters the DM may want to drop in as opposition.Given FFE's general tendency to heavily load their dungeons with magic (a technique formally embraced by Jim Ward in Enchanted Locations), you might worry the same happens here. However, the sidebars show in great detail how the treasure is laid out, and shows that the adventure is, indeed, rather rigorously in line with d20 System conventions.ConclusionIf you are relatively new to the d20 System, Orcfest is a great introduction and should be a boon in getting the game going. The adventure is solid and interesting, going beyond the basic dungeon crawl formula with some interesting roleplaying and infiltration possibilities. The advice is generally sensible, and the way that it is presented promises to be a nice step by step introduction to DMing.However, experienced DMs and players will not find the adventure much of a value. While the adventure is still solid, the advice sections take up a major portion of the book, and would probably be more of a hindrance than anything else.-Alan D. Kohler</blockquote>

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