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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Psion" data-source="post: 2010128" data-attributes="member: 172">SanctuarySanctuary is an adventure for a  party of 3rd-4th level adventurers. The book includes a compact disc with music/background sounds, 3d images, and a pdf version of the book. This is the third such product produced by Auran, after Dark Awakenings: Guardian and Dark Awakenings: Shadowland, but does not follow the storyline of those two.The adventure is written by Keith Done.A First LookSactuary is a 110 page perfect-bound softcover book packaged with a PC and Mac compatible CD rom. Consider that price would have been competitive for the book alone, based on amount of content, the package comes at a decent price.The cover of the book depicts a medallion on a wood surface, designed by Jason Robson.The interior is mostly black and white, but there are many glossy full color maps. Bob Jones is once again responsible for the black-and-white artwork, and brings the pages to life with his slick, detailed character and location portraits.The interior body text is fairly small, though double paragraph spacing is used. The use of space is generally good, though the layout is in some ways confusing, such as scattering references to parts of the adventure through the appendices. Also, many NPCs have PC style character sheets, which strikes me as a waste of space; if the NPCs had been put into stat blocks, they would have only taken up half a page each instead of two pages each.A Deeper LookThe CDThe CD that comes with the game contains music tracks, a PDF of the adventure, and 3D virtual reality images of certain scenes in the adventure setting. However, if you are familiar with Auran's adventures, the 3D images are quite a bit different. Instead of using a custom 3d rendering program as Guardian and Shadowland did, Sactuary uses Quicktime movies as it's 3d viewer. Quicktime is quite a bit less capable than the custom 3e viewer of the previous adventures; for example, in the previous adventure the GM could select options to add weather to a scene or add certain details to the scene as the situation warranted, and the images are memory resident vice rendered on the spot, making the images rather pixilated if you zoom in too much.However, Quicktime does have one advantage over the custom viewer made by Auran for the previous adventures: it does not require a high-end video card. I was unable to run either of the previous adventures on my laptop, but using quicktime should be a snap.The Adventure(Warning: This section contains spoilers to the content of the adventure.)When I picked up the module and felt the heft, I thought I was in for quite a lengthy adventure. However, I was surprised to find that little over a third of the book was actually the section describing the adventure. The rest of the book is supporting material: handouts, maps, a region history, notes on various NPCs, and rules.The adventure is actually fairly straightforward. The characters are hired to track down a noble out to grapple with an old nemesis. Their search takes them to a town full of suspicious acting villagers. If the PCs press the villagers, they can find out that the supposed slavers are hiding out in a nearby abandoned keep. If they arrive at the keep, the inhabitants of the keep will take them captive with the aid of sleeping gas.When the players come to, it becomes their responsibility to escape from their captors and learn that this is not a slavery operation at all, but the keep is under the sway of a vampire. The players must get past the vampire's minions and find her before she awakens, for she is rather likely to be able to slay the party if she does.The plot smacks more than a little of railroading to me. The book does say it's okay if they don't fall into the trap and you can do whatever you want if they don't. That said, aside from the considerable wad of background material, there is little troubleshooting advice or alternate paths provided for in the adventure.One of the more interesting rules bits is the vampire itself. The vampire is created using a modified template. Modifications include alterations that allow the vampire to create ghoul or ghasts as spawn if the creature is slain with energy drain vice constitution drain, and the vampire spawn create ghoul spawn and can actually be active during the day. Most significantly, this vampire variant is dependant upon an object that now houses their soul, and creates a sanctuary to house the object (thus the name of the adventure.)The NPCs are lavishly detailed, but many are mechanically flawed. For example, there is a character with the weapon specialization feat that not only is not a fighter, but does not have the weapon focus prerequisite.ConclusionThe adventure itself is fairly straightforward, if perhaps a little cliché. If the players follow the presumed plot flow, it could stand to be an interesting and engaging adventure, and the sounds and images could well enhance the mood. However, the adventure itself does seem a bit railroaded, and if the characters do not follow the predictable path, the whole adventure could easily go off the tracks and much of the point of the adventure and supporting material would be lost. The author really should have made some alternative means of completing the adventure.The book and CD are actually very stylish, and it is good to know that Auran is listening to feedback and making their products more accessible. However, it seems that the supporting material:adventure ratio is a bit higher than you could make meaningful use of.Overall Grade: C+-Alan D. Kohler</blockquote>

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