Plague of Dreams

[SJ]

Note: This is a playtest review.

Plague of Dreams (PoD) is an introductory character level adventure from Fiery Dragon Productions for Monte Cook's Arcana Unearthed (AU) game. The guidelines suggest that this module will take 4 1st-level characters to approximately 3rd level by completion. The product is a 64-page adventure with color covers and black-and-white pages. The retail price is $15 USD.

PoD takes place in and around the city of Gahanis, a location in the central region of the default lands of the AU game, the upcoming Diamond Throne (DT) setting. The party is introduced to the adventure through contact with a local trade guild, one noted for its mystery and secrecy of operations. It seems this guild, among other parties, desires a powerful magic item, and their best clue to its location has been appropriated by bandits. Unknown to the party, a powerful force mirrors their every move, setting up a climactic battle in the final chapter. Whether the characters agree to work for the guild or not, they will travel to many points of interest including an abandoned fortress built by the Giants hundreds of years ago and a mystical lake where villains and beasts are rumored to lair.

Each of these locations is detailed, with 16 pages of the book dedicated to providing content for the city of Gahanis. This feature alone is welcomed as at the time of this writing the Diamond Throne product from Malhavoc Press is not yet available. DM's looking to get started with AU games for their players should appreciate the information offered for the party's initial home base. While not intricately detailed, (there are no maps of significant buildings of the city, or detailed statblocks for each shop owner and passerby), there are plenty of intrigues, backgrounds, and flavor text to allow a DM to breathe life and pique interest into his AU game. As an example, the owners of the various trade guilds compete for business (legitimate and otherwise), and there are multiple instances of petty conflicts and opinions among the owners and operators mentioned in the location descriptions.

The adventure itself ties in with the residents and visitors to Gahanis, so alternative hooks and seeds to the suggested plot line are easy to accommodate. This is one feature I demand from adventures, as my parties NEVER seem to be able to follow the planned path. With enough detail on the attitudes and motivations of the NPC's in Gahanis available, any DM should be able to reign in those birdwalking party members and get them to generally follow the module sequence. If the players choose not to trust the guild who initially contacts them, any number of officials from the city or merchants would be more than willing to include the PC's in their plans for uncovering the mystery set before them.

No new classes are offered by PoD, but since AU is only weeks old, there should be plenty of new material from AU itself to satisfy. PoD does feature some new monsters from the DT setting, as well as offering up a few low CR baddies on its own. The stats for these monsters, like the Dark Scamp and Seether, are detailed in the module. What is missing, however, is a good image of each beast. While images are provided in the Counter Collection IV: Worlds of the Diamond Throne product (which I also own, so it wasn't a problem for me), there is no good visual representation in the module. Images here would have helped.

In terms of the general art included with PoD, it is very good, if sparse. A few images are used to give glimpses into the NPC's, and others are artist perspectives of interesting locations described in the adventure. The Giant-built town hall of Gahanis and the looming wall and gate of the Battlehome fortress were neat enough I copied them to distribute to the players (and help add visuals to my descriptions).

The maps for the fortress layout and dungeon/cave locations are excellent quality, but no more special than you'd expect from a basic 2-d layout. The overland maps of the areas near Gahanis are not as detailed, but are generally useful. The map of the city of Gahanis is fairly detailed and is keyed to the descriptions of locations in the text. I bought PoD at GenCon and was given a color handout of the city map without the keyed location markers. I don't know if retail buyers will get this map, but it's on glossy paper and looks great. Perhaps it will be offered as a free download.

In playing, the amount of flexibility given by having places to go and people to talk to allowed a great depth of roleplaying to the game. We have all likely experienced a situation where the DM tended to railroad the party into the plot hooks because he didn't have enough satellite material to allow the party to explore. Improvising is fine, but it's quite convenient to have pregenerated material that you know is consistent with the adventure on hand.

The encounters provide a nice mix of city-based roleplaying, allowing DM's to sow a little intrigue and introduce some recurring NPC's, with outdoor adventuring where using the land and dealing with the elements lets your Greenbonds and Witches shine, with good ol' dungeon crawling where the nasties lie in the darkness waiting for your characters to bring them dinner. We had a rather large party (up to 8 characters), and I found some of the encounters to be slightly less challenging to them as written, but it is a trivial matter to increase the danger for an encounter as opposed to trying to scale it back on the fly.

I give Plague of Dreams a top score, it provides a detailed backdrop for a blooming AU campaign, with great locations and interesting NPC's, as well as a good mystery that will lead your players into multiple locations, traps, and conflicts. In my mind, anything less than the best score means that there are parts of the adventure that I would have done (or wish had been done) differently. Despite the few minor concerns voiced above, I wouldn't have changed PoD at all.

As one additional item, it segues nicely into Mystic Eye Games' Siege on Ebonring Keep, so that you can use both adventures for your AU game. Cooperation among licensees in this way is something DM's should really appreciate, I know I did.

 

[Messageboard Golem]

It seemed like a routine mission: Stop the bandits plaguing merchant caravans in the lands of the Diamond Throne. But the PCs soon discover there is much more going on than meets the eye when the forces of death and ancient memory threaten to unleash a plague of dreams.

 

[Messageboard Golem]

It's good to finally have an adventure for Arcana Unearthed. Nobody wants to run a game until they're sure they're getting it right, and reading a published adventure is the best way to find out what the designer actually intended things to be like. This adventure is particularly good from that viewpoint, since it showcases a whole bunch of different aspects of the system. We get to see what a dungeon crawl would look like in Monte Cook's new universe, how to run a city adventure, and how to run a wilderness adventure as well.

The adventure begins in the port city of Gahanis, a place ripe with intrigue. The merchant guilds and other factions all have complex opposing interests and there are plenty of chances for a party of PCs to get embroiled in them. Everything funnels the players toward the main adventure, but it feels as though they're wandering around and making their own decisions. Nicely done. There's enough background material that the Storyteller doesn't have to smack the players for wandering off track all the time. If they want to go look into a shop or talk to some other faction, you've got enough material pre-prepared that you don't have to wing it.

I'm afraid this makes the City section of the book seem better than it actually is. Gahanis is actually pretty sketchy for something that's supposed to be a major focus of the campaign. The map is vague, there are no stats for most of the minor characters and there are no layouts for the major buildings. On the plus side, there's room for a whole lot of non-combat roleplaying in the city. On the minus side, most players will use it to needlessly threaten NPCs, waste time, preen and try to look tough/mysterious.

This generic, sketchy feeling is a problem throughout the book, and the fact that it has so few illustrations doesn't help. The players will cross a wilderness, investigate a ruined fortress and a mysterious lake, fight some monsters underground and solve a mystery, but it all feels awfully generic, almost like its written just to show off the system. Except for the mystery, which is actually pretty cool.

There are no new classes or prestige classes in this book, which is a good thing, since there are way too many of them already and for some reason everybody seems to feel like they have to throw a few new ones into everything. There are some new monsters, but there aren't any pictures of them. That seems like a pretty serious oversight and one that makes it hard for the Storyteller to do her job.

With all that said and done, this is still a good product. Its pretty and well-produced and it has a great plot that doesn't drag the payers around by the nose or force you to drag them. It's not easy to find adventures that are both this heavy on plot and give your players this much freedom, especially in the early sections. If you want to mess around with Arcana Unearthed, you've probably found the right place to start.

Katsumi approves, pretty much

 

[JoeGKushner]

Fiery Dragon does two things right in my book. The first is that the provide an inexpensive, time saving alternative to unpainted metal miniatures in the form of their counters. The second, something not seen in a while, is fantasy adventures. With Plague of Dreams, an introductory adventure for Monte Cook's Arcana Unearthed, I hope that's changed for the better.

Broken up into five chapters, Plague of Dreams provides the GM a good taste of what the world is like in a setting that doesn't use alignments. While some ideas, maps, magic items and monsters can be taken into any d20 setting, the book really needs Arcana Unearthed to be fully used for those wondering how 3.0/3.5 it is. This is especially true with the NPC's who are using Monte's alternative magic system.

The adventure starts off in Gahanis, a small town that's mapped with important locations noted. The interesting thing is it's not far away from the Ebonring Keep. Most of these are standard places adventurers are going to head in to get new equipment and trade up their material, but some of it, like the sibeccai area, shows that the setting is indeed different as they have large houses to accommodate their giant guests. The backgrounds of the races aren't highly showcased, but all of them are present and different, allowing the players to select any race as a native to the area. After the players gather information about the town, they're contacted via dreams by the merchant guild, the Jaren.

The Jaren want some bandits captured and an item that was taken from a caravan brought back to them. Because these bandits were members of Gahanis, it's best to avoid a scandal and keep it quite right? On the way out, the players may hunt down rumors of where the bandits are and Battlehome, a fortress used by the giants to fight the dramojh in the past, looks like the most likely place. Once again, Fiery Dragon gives MEG a nod with a rumor of the Ebonring being held at Battlehome once. A nice touch.

At Battlehome, the players will get an idea of what the dungeon crawls in this setting are like. If evidenced only by this adventure, while the architecture has changed, not a lot else has. 1st level players are still fighting and chopping their way through warriors, goblins and dire rats but hey, it's not a new d20 system, it's an alternative one. The good news is that there are several new and unique creatures to keep the party on their toes and several lose ends are provided for GMs who wish to expand upon the adventure, like returning the body of a dead noble to his far away home.

After the party battles the bandits, they'll learn that not everything is as it seems and that the item they're looking for is actually at another location. This is the standard point A, B, C adventure where the party has to move forward in order to achieve their mission. As such, it's fairly linear and provides a good starting ground for GMs who've never sat behind the shield before.

Once the party gets to their new destination, they have to battle the bandit forces and in doing so, discover that there is an item of great power involved at the heart of their travels thus far. The real problem though, is that those who've hired the party have other ideas for this item and have sent out one of their own, the feared Blue Knight, a champion of death, to retrieve the Malus Morphaera from the corpses of the players.

The adventure ends in an open fashion and allows the players to pick which path they'll follow as regards to the destruction or care of the Malus Morphaera allowing the GM a high level of control over which direction he'll take his campaign.

The first thing I thought useful was that it's set in the same area as Mystic Eye Game's Siege of Ebonring Keep adventure. While no notes are provided on how to link the two adventures, there are many notes on the rivalries between the two towns. There are some inside jokes too like a drink with an oily coating that is set on fire called the Flaming Lip, a tribute to the Simpson's and the Flaming Moe.

The art is generally good, but the styles don't mesh well. Parts of it are almost comic book like while others appear to be charcoal drawings. I wasn't too crazy about the layout as often the first column looked liked it was bowed to the right. The page numbers have part of the border surrounding them that cuts the text away in a semi-circle. The light gray background wasn't murder on my eyes but the faded symbols occasionally distracted me. Editing was fair with no obvious issues creeping up on a first reading and the price, at $14.95 for 64 pages, is industry average, is not a little lower.

Plague of Dreams is probably a little easier to run than Siege on EbonRing Keep as it's smaller and less expensive, requiring a bit less work to customize and prepare. If you want the full AU experience, I suggest getting both but for brand new GMs, Plague of Dreams is probably you're better bet.

 

[Psion]

Plague of Dreams

Plague of Dreams is an adventure written for 1st level characters in Malhavoc's Arcana Unearthed d20 variant game. It is published by Fiery Dragon, the first adventure publication in a long time. The adventure is written Monte Cook, James Bell, and Todd Secord.

This review will assume some familiarity with the terms for concepts (races, classes, etc.) introduced in Arcana Unearthed. This book is not written as a generic D&D adventure and I will not approach it as such (and I believe those who have criticized it on those grounds are in error. I would as soon criticize a Spycraft or Mutants & Masterminds adventure for not being usable in D&D.)

A First Look

Format: 64 page perfect-bound softcover book; $14.95.

Art: Cover art by Kieran Yanner depicts a sibeccai warrior overlooking a darkened landscape. The interior art is black-and-white and includes work by Leanne Buckle, Brian LeBlanc, Claudio Pozas, Todd Secord, and Kieran Yanner. As frequent readers may know, I am not historically a fan of Secord or LeBlanc's work, but I saw nothing here that I would label as less than "good." That said, the size of most art is rather small, most of it being a third of a column or less.

Cartography: Ed Bourelle and Mike Johnstone. Bourelle seems to have done most of the outdoor cartography, and it is up to his usual stylish high standards. The interior cartography does not have Bourelle's styling, but it simple and functional.

Layout: A conservative body text font is used and line and paragraph spacing is close, making good use of space. The book uses a typical two column format. An attractive but someone bolder-than-optimum watermark is used, depicting writing and symbols.

A Deeper Look
(Spoiler Warning: This section contain some secret plot details.)

The book is organized into an introduction, six chapters, and an appendix. The introduction provides summaries for the GM, plot hooks, and integration notes. The first chapter describes the town of Gahanis, where the adventure begins. The second through sixth chapters describe various stages of the adventure. The appendix contains statistics blocks for important NPCs and monsters, similar to the format of Fiery Dragon modules of old.

The adventure is set in the Diamond Throne setting, the default setting for Unearthed Arcana by Malhavoc. The adventure does not require the Diamond Throne setting book (and in fact, that book is not out yet in print format at the time of this writing.) The adventure contains much of the pertinent information about the area, and the chapter on the town of Gahanis, in particular, provides some details about areas and personalities that may come in handy when doing roleplaying and investigation. However, the Diamond Throne setting might provide additional details that might be useful, shedding some light on the organizations, races, and cultures of the world of the Diamond Throne.

Those who have the Diamond Throne or are otherwise familiar with the design philosophy behind it may be familiar with the ideal of characters who transcend good or evil. This adventure strives for that idea of moral ambiguity. The motivating powers behind the adventure all have their own motives. The players may sympathize with all, some, or none of them.

The adventure is organized into multiple site based sections, though some of the sections have events and/or other investigation required to get them there.

The adventure is, on the surface, your typical dingus hunt. The players are contacted by the Jaren, a powerful trade guild, but supernatural and mundane means. A book they were interested in was stolen in a caravan raid. Though the locals may have hired bounty hunters to take on the bandits, the Jaren are interested in the PCs discreetly looking for two specific bandits from the local populace (believed to be spies/traitors) and the book.

The disappearance of the book was no accident. The Jeren desire it because it contains information on the true dingus of the adventure: an artifact called the Malus Morphaera, or the Sphere of Nightmares. An NPC that the PCs may have already bumped into is also seeking the sphere, and working with the bandits; he tipped off the bandits to the caravan to get the book. A final complication is that a champion of death nominally in the employ of the Jaren may see her own purposes for the sphere.

Some investigation might reveal the ancient giant fortress called Battlehome to be a possible bandit hideout. Upon investigating, the will find the two bandit spies there, but they will have to face many dangers in the ruins of Battlehome and discover that the book is not here, but in another bandit lair somewhat distant. On the way to the bandit lair, the PCs may encounter some complications such as agents of the NPC in collusion with the bandits.

Upon reaching the lair, things get complicated. The PCs will have to deal with the bandits, but the will have to face the Blue Knight, the champion of death with her own agenda.

Conclusion

This adventure uses two classical D&D ploys: the bandits and the dingus hunt. The nature of the ambiguous faction behind them might be a fresh angle for some, but to be fair, I have seen such affairs in D&D games.

Nonetheless, this is a decent adventure. It has some complications, but it probably not too difficult. The players may have to decide if the Jeren are worth trusting, but even if they are ambiguous about that decision, the Blue Knight in their face should wash away any indecisiveness at the end.

As is normal for Fiery Dragon, the supporting village setting provides a nice backdrop with lots of possibilities, but it doesn't become more of a setting supplement than an adventure.

Overall Grade: B-

-Alan D. Kohler