francisca
I got dice older than you.
Review of Black Blade Publishing’s, “Ice Tower of the Salka”
Author: James Carl Boney
Art: Chad Thorson, Matt Finch, Dan Bezio
Editing/Cartography: Matt Finch
Executive Summary: A solid dungeon adventure, good for an afternoon or three of fun for experienced adventurers.
This adventure was read and reviewed, this is not a playtest of the adventure.
The vital statistics of the adventure:
- Designed for the Swords & Wizardry Game
- For character levels 8-12
- 4 Dungeon level maps
- 11 pages of text including title page, introduction and dungeon key
- 3 pages of new spells, magic items, monsters from the S&W Monster Book, and one previously unpublished monster
- quality illustrations throughout
- 1 page of adverts
- 1 page of OGL License gobbly-gook
The Ice Tower
The adventure itself is a very solid dungeon adventure, with some room for referee expansion if needed/wanted. Boney is clearly schooled in the old ways of adventure construction, as all the hallmarks of vintage FRPG adventures are present, including: a rumor table, tough foes which often require more thought than simply stabbing/fireballing to death, a handful of save or die traps, and a nice helping of mysterious “weird magic” encounters. Sprinkled throughout are plenty of suitable rewards for the player’s efforts.
The encounter descriptions themselves are nice and compact, yet quite evocative. I feel these descriptions are verbose enough to not only convey the nuts and bolts of the encounter, but also descriptive enough to set the mood for each encounter, all without belaboring the point and cluttering the module up with pointless exposition. Personally, I like this style, as I’m given a framework to work with, rather than a script to read.
In addition, this adventure seems to be populated “just right”, in the sense of balance between monster and non-monster encounters. You won’t find room after room of monsters waiting in stasis to attack the party, nor will you find the players building dice towers while yet another dead end corridor is mapped. As I say, the balance is present, and I wish more authors had this level of feel for design.
No critical errors or “that’s just plain dumb” kind of things are apparent in this adventure. It seems quite solid, and my only regret in writing this review is that I couldn’t pull together enough players to run it and review it as a playtest.
Execution and Presentation
The layout of the module is fairly plain, but functional, in the seemingly standard two columns of text, room names in bold, etc.. which we’ve all seen before. It other words: it does the job in a straightforward way without distracting the reader with marginally useful sidebars, “creative” layout, etc…
The editing is pretty solid. I did notice one typo, a minor continuity issue, and one labeling/numbering mistake on an encounter. None of this gets in the way of the fun, however, and are pretty minor quibbles to be sure.
The art is all nicely executed and well placed, providing good visuals which match the description in the text.
Finally, having cut my teeth on Gygax, I love finding new/obscure words in RPG material. In this case, I got two: Tyrantix and altarware. The former describing a female tyrant and the latter the implants found in conjunction with an altar. I think this is a nice touch and nice little nod to the tradition Gygax set forth, which has sadly been forgotten by certain big-name publishers.
For those of you wondering, the PDF prints out fine and this document is not a toner/ink hog, as the maps are classic style, with just enough light gray around the grid to make the encounter areas to pop out. Speaking of the maps, as I say, they are drawn in the classic grid style we all cut our teeth on, and are easy to reference and free of clutter.
Bottom line, this is nice solid adventure with more than enough info to stand on its own, but lean enough in details that it could be worked into just about any campaign. Certainly worth the money in PDF or dead-tree format.
Author: James Carl Boney
Art: Chad Thorson, Matt Finch, Dan Bezio
Editing/Cartography: Matt Finch
Executive Summary: A solid dungeon adventure, good for an afternoon or three of fun for experienced adventurers.
This adventure was read and reviewed, this is not a playtest of the adventure.
The vital statistics of the adventure:
- Designed for the Swords & Wizardry Game
- For character levels 8-12
- 4 Dungeon level maps
- 11 pages of text including title page, introduction and dungeon key
- 3 pages of new spells, magic items, monsters from the S&W Monster Book, and one previously unpublished monster
- quality illustrations throughout
- 1 page of adverts
- 1 page of OGL License gobbly-gook
The Ice Tower
The adventure itself is a very solid dungeon adventure, with some room for referee expansion if needed/wanted. Boney is clearly schooled in the old ways of adventure construction, as all the hallmarks of vintage FRPG adventures are present, including: a rumor table, tough foes which often require more thought than simply stabbing/fireballing to death, a handful of save or die traps, and a nice helping of mysterious “weird magic” encounters. Sprinkled throughout are plenty of suitable rewards for the player’s efforts.
The encounter descriptions themselves are nice and compact, yet quite evocative. I feel these descriptions are verbose enough to not only convey the nuts and bolts of the encounter, but also descriptive enough to set the mood for each encounter, all without belaboring the point and cluttering the module up with pointless exposition. Personally, I like this style, as I’m given a framework to work with, rather than a script to read.
In addition, this adventure seems to be populated “just right”, in the sense of balance between monster and non-monster encounters. You won’t find room after room of monsters waiting in stasis to attack the party, nor will you find the players building dice towers while yet another dead end corridor is mapped. As I say, the balance is present, and I wish more authors had this level of feel for design.
No critical errors or “that’s just plain dumb” kind of things are apparent in this adventure. It seems quite solid, and my only regret in writing this review is that I couldn’t pull together enough players to run it and review it as a playtest.
Execution and Presentation
The layout of the module is fairly plain, but functional, in the seemingly standard two columns of text, room names in bold, etc.. which we’ve all seen before. It other words: it does the job in a straightforward way without distracting the reader with marginally useful sidebars, “creative” layout, etc…
The editing is pretty solid. I did notice one typo, a minor continuity issue, and one labeling/numbering mistake on an encounter. None of this gets in the way of the fun, however, and are pretty minor quibbles to be sure.
The art is all nicely executed and well placed, providing good visuals which match the description in the text.
Finally, having cut my teeth on Gygax, I love finding new/obscure words in RPG material. In this case, I got two: Tyrantix and altarware. The former describing a female tyrant and the latter the implants found in conjunction with an altar. I think this is a nice touch and nice little nod to the tradition Gygax set forth, which has sadly been forgotten by certain big-name publishers.
For those of you wondering, the PDF prints out fine and this document is not a toner/ink hog, as the maps are classic style, with just enough light gray around the grid to make the encounter areas to pop out. Speaking of the maps, as I say, they are drawn in the classic grid style we all cut our teeth on, and are easy to reference and free of clutter.
Bottom line, this is nice solid adventure with more than enough info to stand on its own, but lean enough in details that it could be worked into just about any campaign. Certainly worth the money in PDF or dead-tree format.
