Neuroglyph
First Post
No matter how epic your character becomes, no matter how many demon lords your character strikes down, no matter that your character might ascend to near god-like status, every hero has their humble beginnings in an introductory adventure. 
And every band of heroic adventurers, regardless of the renown they garner, must first pass through the trial of banding together for their first quest together. And quite often, it is that starting adventure that can set the tone for not only the campaign, but also for the interactions of the heroes with one another in the party.
Thick Skull Adventures has created just that sort of starting adventure for their first foray into the D&D 4e marketplace. Their first release, The Haunting of Larvik Island, is a tale of danger, exploration, and treasure hunting for a lost legacy on a mysterious island – what would seem to be the perfect fare for the neophyte adventurer!
The Haunting of Larvik Island
The Haunting of Larvik Island is an introductory adventure for five 1st Level D&D 4e/Essentials Characters, and can be easily adapted to almost any Dungeons & Dragons campaign setting. The adventure module contains fifteen encounters, with complete descriptions, encounter maps and monster stat blocks for each. The module also has player handouts, as well as GM background information, to allow it to be customized to nearly any setting.
Production Quality
The production quality of The Haunting of Larvik Island overall is quite good, and although there are a few typos and some design concerns prevented the work from having a higher rating. The contents are well written, with an engaging storyline, and with the material presented in a format that is readily usable by any D&D Dungeon Master. The monster stat blocks, hazards, and traps are presented in the revised MM3/Monster Vault format, and do not require any access to a monster manual or DDI to use the adventure.
The cover art is vivid if a bit stylized, but I found many of the black-and-white illustrations in the interior of the module to be quite good, and really enhance the reading of the product. The player handouts are also very well done, and are mostly grayscale for easy printing, although there are a couple full-color handouts that might strain the printer.
The author’s encounter and overview maps, which were produced using Campaign Cartographer 3, are well drawn and of high quality. However, although the encounter maps quite detailed, they are a bit small, and would take a bit of work to get them to print out to the proper scale for use at a table top.
The Adventure
As The Haunting of Larvik Island is an adventure module which many might end up either GMing or playing, it is important to keep spoilers to a minimum. As such, plot elements will not be discussed beyond the initial introductory sections, and the remainder of the adventure will be referred to in as general terms as possible.
The adventure sets the heroes out to explore a mysterious island that has been rumored to have a lost treasure hidden there by a local folk hero. The treasure is purported to be hidden in caves which are only accessible once every 35 years, when the tides around the island change course and allow them to be entered. The authors provide a couple of adventure hooks with quest rewards as a way to inspire the heroes to journey to the island, in case the lure of treasure is not sufficient to get a band of heroes heading out of town with sacks and shovels.
The authors of The Haunting of Larvik Island did a good job in creating a wide variety of encounters on the island, as well as backstory on why certain creatures are roving about the wilderness. There are some very good exploration elements provided in the adventure to give the heroes that Treasure Island or Pirates of the Carribean vibe. One of those elements the authors used was termed “encounter transitions” which are indicators of potential for encounters in a region. These include things such as tracks, sightings of shadowy forms in the distance, and smoke. I really liked those encounter elements, and they provide great foreshadowing to the action, not to mention that it gives the island ecology of monsters and animals a very organic feel. Should the heroes choose to follow up a transition, this will in most cases lead to a combat encounter while they are exploring the island’s mysteries.
And while the story line of the main quest in The Haunting of Larvik Island is somewhat linear, with encounters that must occur in a certain order to gain clues to the next encounter or to solve the quest, there is, thankfully, more to the adventure. The island does contain a few encounters which are not required to solve the location of the hidden treasure or the side-quests, which the player-characters can choose to divert to at a whim. This gives the adventure an overall “sand-box” feel, and certainly make exploring the island more interesting.
There were a few elements of the adventure which were a bit troublesome, however. One of which was a skill challenge which was not quite detailed enough, and had some issues. The main problem was that there were only 3 possible skills to use to resolve the challenge, which required of 6 successes. Should the heroes be untrained in those three particular skills would almost certainly doom the skill challenge to failure, which would also lose the player-characters a vital clue to the quest.
There was also a rather confusing note at the beginning of the adventure that the use of the Commune with Nature Ritual really could not be used to circumvent using the clues to find the lost treasure. This was a bit confusing as the ritual is 6th level, and no 1st level party is likely to have access to the ritual, let alone cast it. Later, a pair of ritual scrolls are provided in one of the treasure parcels, which explains the previous note. But given that the author decided that “the answers provided should be helpful but ambiguous”, it really seems mercurial to have put the scrolls in the adventure as a treasure at all.
Encounters
Overall, the encounters in The Haunting of Larvik Island seems to be nicely balanced for 1st Level adventurers, and as previously mentioned, each comes with a full color encounter map to make set up easier. The adventure appears capable of being adapted to 2nd or 3rd level heroes with a few tweaks, mainly by adding an additional monster or two. The encounters are designed in the same format as what we have seen from official WotC products, with a set-up section, followed by sections detailing monster tactics, hazards, obstacles, and lighting. The monster stat blocks are clean and easy to read, and the monsters themselves are some imaginative re-skinnings of official monsters, as well as some new original monsters specific to the adventure. All the monsters have been updated to the higher damage output levels which are expected in the post-MM3 D&D 4e game.
The Player Handouts
The player handouts are really “old school” and remind me of some of the old TSR modules. There are handouts for maps and diagrams found along the way for the characters to use in their explorations, and even images of a couple major monster encounters to give the players an idea of what they are facing. The artwork on the player handouts is very good, and definitely enhances the story-telling elements of the adventure.
Overall Score: 3.75 out of 5.0
Final Thoughts
In the final tally, despite a few technical issues, The Haunting of Larvik Island is a solid first release from Thick Skull Adventures. It has some fine writing, an engaging story, and overall it makes for a fun and exciting first adventure for 1st level characters. The maps and illustrations show some real talent as well, and the module is a piece worth looking into for almost any Dungeon Master. The PDF of the adventure is also quite competitively priced, and the author packs in quite a lot of content for only a few bucks.
So until next review… I wish you Happy Gaming!
Editor’s Note: This Reviewer received a complimentary copy of the product in PDF format from which the review was written.
Grade Card (Ratings 1 to 5)
And every band of heroic adventurers, regardless of the renown they garner, must first pass through the trial of banding together for their first quest together. And quite often, it is that starting adventure that can set the tone for not only the campaign, but also for the interactions of the heroes with one another in the party.Thick Skull Adventures has created just that sort of starting adventure for their first foray into the D&D 4e marketplace. Their first release, The Haunting of Larvik Island, is a tale of danger, exploration, and treasure hunting for a lost legacy on a mysterious island – what would seem to be the perfect fare for the neophyte adventurer!
The Haunting of Larvik Island
- Authors: Stephen Newton & Matthew Murdock
- Editors: Jeff Mitchell
- Illustrators: Antoni Layos Tira (cover/handouts), Catherine Harkins (interior)
- Publisher: Thick Skull Adventures
- Year: 2011
- Media: PDF (46 pages)
- Cost: $5.99 (available from RPGNow.com)
The Haunting of Larvik Island is an introductory adventure for five 1st Level D&D 4e/Essentials Characters, and can be easily adapted to almost any Dungeons & Dragons campaign setting. The adventure module contains fifteen encounters, with complete descriptions, encounter maps and monster stat blocks for each. The module also has player handouts, as well as GM background information, to allow it to be customized to nearly any setting.
Production Quality
The production quality of The Haunting of Larvik Island overall is quite good, and although there are a few typos and some design concerns prevented the work from having a higher rating. The contents are well written, with an engaging storyline, and with the material presented in a format that is readily usable by any D&D Dungeon Master. The monster stat blocks, hazards, and traps are presented in the revised MM3/Monster Vault format, and do not require any access to a monster manual or DDI to use the adventure.
The cover art is vivid if a bit stylized, but I found many of the black-and-white illustrations in the interior of the module to be quite good, and really enhance the reading of the product. The player handouts are also very well done, and are mostly grayscale for easy printing, although there are a couple full-color handouts that might strain the printer.
The author’s encounter and overview maps, which were produced using Campaign Cartographer 3, are well drawn and of high quality. However, although the encounter maps quite detailed, they are a bit small, and would take a bit of work to get them to print out to the proper scale for use at a table top.
The Adventure
As The Haunting of Larvik Island is an adventure module which many might end up either GMing or playing, it is important to keep spoilers to a minimum. As such, plot elements will not be discussed beyond the initial introductory sections, and the remainder of the adventure will be referred to in as general terms as possible.
The adventure sets the heroes out to explore a mysterious island that has been rumored to have a lost treasure hidden there by a local folk hero. The treasure is purported to be hidden in caves which are only accessible once every 35 years, when the tides around the island change course and allow them to be entered. The authors provide a couple of adventure hooks with quest rewards as a way to inspire the heroes to journey to the island, in case the lure of treasure is not sufficient to get a band of heroes heading out of town with sacks and shovels.
The authors of The Haunting of Larvik Island did a good job in creating a wide variety of encounters on the island, as well as backstory on why certain creatures are roving about the wilderness. There are some very good exploration elements provided in the adventure to give the heroes that Treasure Island or Pirates of the Carribean vibe. One of those elements the authors used was termed “encounter transitions” which are indicators of potential for encounters in a region. These include things such as tracks, sightings of shadowy forms in the distance, and smoke. I really liked those encounter elements, and they provide great foreshadowing to the action, not to mention that it gives the island ecology of monsters and animals a very organic feel. Should the heroes choose to follow up a transition, this will in most cases lead to a combat encounter while they are exploring the island’s mysteries.
And while the story line of the main quest in The Haunting of Larvik Island is somewhat linear, with encounters that must occur in a certain order to gain clues to the next encounter or to solve the quest, there is, thankfully, more to the adventure. The island does contain a few encounters which are not required to solve the location of the hidden treasure or the side-quests, which the player-characters can choose to divert to at a whim. This gives the adventure an overall “sand-box” feel, and certainly make exploring the island more interesting.
There were a few elements of the adventure which were a bit troublesome, however. One of which was a skill challenge which was not quite detailed enough, and had some issues. The main problem was that there were only 3 possible skills to use to resolve the challenge, which required of 6 successes. Should the heroes be untrained in those three particular skills would almost certainly doom the skill challenge to failure, which would also lose the player-characters a vital clue to the quest.
There was also a rather confusing note at the beginning of the adventure that the use of the Commune with Nature Ritual really could not be used to circumvent using the clues to find the lost treasure. This was a bit confusing as the ritual is 6th level, and no 1st level party is likely to have access to the ritual, let alone cast it. Later, a pair of ritual scrolls are provided in one of the treasure parcels, which explains the previous note. But given that the author decided that “the answers provided should be helpful but ambiguous”, it really seems mercurial to have put the scrolls in the adventure as a treasure at all.
Encounters
Overall, the encounters in The Haunting of Larvik Island seems to be nicely balanced for 1st Level adventurers, and as previously mentioned, each comes with a full color encounter map to make set up easier. The adventure appears capable of being adapted to 2nd or 3rd level heroes with a few tweaks, mainly by adding an additional monster or two. The encounters are designed in the same format as what we have seen from official WotC products, with a set-up section, followed by sections detailing monster tactics, hazards, obstacles, and lighting. The monster stat blocks are clean and easy to read, and the monsters themselves are some imaginative re-skinnings of official monsters, as well as some new original monsters specific to the adventure. All the monsters have been updated to the higher damage output levels which are expected in the post-MM3 D&D 4e game.
The Player Handouts
The player handouts are really “old school” and remind me of some of the old TSR modules. There are handouts for maps and diagrams found along the way for the characters to use in their explorations, and even images of a couple major monster encounters to give the players an idea of what they are facing. The artwork on the player handouts is very good, and definitely enhances the story-telling elements of the adventure.
Overall Score: 3.75 out of 5.0
Final Thoughts
In the final tally, despite a few technical issues, The Haunting of Larvik Island is a solid first release from Thick Skull Adventures. It has some fine writing, an engaging story, and overall it makes for a fun and exciting first adventure for 1st level characters. The maps and illustrations show some real talent as well, and the module is a piece worth looking into for almost any Dungeon Master. The PDF of the adventure is also quite competitively priced, and the author packs in quite a lot of content for only a few bucks.
So until next review… I wish you Happy Gaming!
Editor’s Note: This Reviewer received a complimentary copy of the product in PDF format from which the review was written.
Grade Card (Ratings 1 to 5)
- Presentation: 3.75
- - Design: 4
- - Illustrations: 3.5
- Content: 3.5
- - Crunch: 3
- - Fluff: 4
- Value: 4
