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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Messageboard Golem" data-source="post: 2010651" data-attributes="member: 18387">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 <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/devious.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":]" title="Devious    :]" data-shortname=":]" /></blockquote>

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