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Message: <blockquote data-quote="trancejeremy" data-source="post: 2008898" data-attributes="member: 924">Shadow of Exile is the 2nd adventure in the Witchfire Trilogy from Privateer press.  It's 64 pages and priced at a very reasonable $9.99. One actually wonders why they used 64 pages, because they also happen to use extremely large outside margins, about 1 3/4". Sometimes the margin is used for a sidebar, but very rarely.  The interior artwork is pretty good and the maps are clear, if a bit too much on the artistic side for my taste.Because this is set in Privateer's own setting, which no one else has (as it the main setting book isn't out yet), this module starts off with a 6 page overview of the setting (it's somewhat steampunkish). The adventure itself consists of 3 main parts, the first two of which revolve around tracking down and capturing a woman (the one depicted on the cover), or at least stopping her from going to this temple and ressurecting her dead mother. Several reasons why the PCs are asked to do this are given (including some for those who haven't played the first module).The first part (about 15 pages) revolves around a journey through a swamp on a boat to the temple on a steamboat. This is basically a gauntlet - the PCs get several things thrown at them that they have to deal with. While not exactly Deliverance, it's pretty swampy in terms of what happens. I thought this was pretty much the dullest part of the adventure.The second part deals with the Temple itself. It's a temple dedicated to a goddess of Technology, so it has all sorts of technological gadgets in it.  Basically, the PCs must do a room to room seach following their quarry, as well as deal with the priests of the Temple (who aren't happy being invaded) as well as the forces of the woman they are chasing, and other people chasing her. The third part takes place in the city the players left from (Corvis).  It seems there was something of a coup, and person that hired them has been arrested. They must break into the jail and free him.It ends with three appendices - one for new monsters, one for stats of NPCs, and a small one on firearms.All in all, it's a very interesting adventure. For the most part, it's very imaginative, especially the Temple. Most of the NPCs are well detailed in terms of personality and seem real. However, there are several downsides.For one, the players are on rails. They really have no choices at all in this adventure. They must follow an exact path.  That's good for writing adventures, but not much fun for the players. Similarly, none of their actions really matter. They are preordained to fit in the story arc of the module.For another, the main character is described as being neutral. Yet she casually kidnaps innocent people, enslaves them, then murders them so she can turn them into zombies. If that's not evil, well, very little is. This might be minor for some people, but it bugs me.While they do try to give you enough to make it stand alone, it does on a few occasions reference material on their website or the previous module in this series. I think that is generally a bad thing.So, ultimately, while this is a pretty good module, it's also a bit problematic and it's only really useful if you want to run a game set in their setting (the Iron Kingdoms). And even then, you'll probably want to wait until their main setting book comes out. I would give it a 3 1/2, but it seems best to round down to a 3.  It probably would have been a much better novel or novella, since it's apparently trying to tell a story.</blockquote>

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