The Bandit Wizard

[Crothian]

The Bandit Wizard is an action-packed, whimsical adventure for any fantasy roleplaying game. You'll find the adventure has plenty of opportunity for roleplaying and courageous battle. Conversion into your favorite game system or setting is a snap.

Darek Flugthorn, a notorious troublemaker wizard, has been banished from his home, Coluris. Now, in the dry dusty Southlands, he is intent on proving that he truly is a great wizard -- by robbing from the peasants in the countryside. His ingenius strategy is filled with magic and mischief, but how long will it last? Enter the heroes, ready to kick some wizardric butt and send Darek back home. As one might guess, evil goblins are intent on making the whole process a little more difficult than advertised.

The adventure comes in a 6-page PDF. Artwork is from LPJ Design's great Fantasy Anthology. Written by Nathan J. Hill (Barbarians Versus, Eldritch Ass Kicking, Lawn of the Dead), pick up your copy today for $1.00.

 

[Crothian]

Bandit Wizard

This adventure is a bit different from most I read. It is designed for low leveled characters but not restricted to one system. It is an adventure with no rules associated with it. It has some generic info on foes to guide the DM but is not attached to anything mechanic wise. This of course makes it easy to use for d20 and non d20 games alike. It also makes it easy to use with many of the alternative d20 systems like Conan, Blue Rose, and the other systems that are similar to d20 but different enough to make it hard to convert things easily.

The Bandit Wizard is a PDF by Mystic ages On Line. The six page PDF is well written and clearly organized. It doe not have any book marks but does not really need any for its size.

The adventure is pretty simple and as the title suggests there is a Wizard that has become a bandit. The adventure is not totally serious so it can be played up for some laughs,. The Wizard uses illusions and some other spells to mostly trick and contain the people he is stealing from and does not actually kill them. The adventure is more for low level characters. I would guess one through three should work best but a party of higher level could still be changed by the module if the DM makes the enemies powerful enough. And with the higher level Wizard, the more tricks he has to fool and confound his prey.

The nice thing about the generic modules is also one of the biggest downfalls. There is a lot of work for the DM to do. An any and all enemy, NPCs, encounters etc that need to be defined need to be defined. The module is not long so there is not a lot of work to run the module. The spell selection for the Wizard alone can be a bit of a pain since the spells are used for such a big part of the modules set up. A creative DM can actually really make the Wizard more formidable and bake the banditry more creative with the use of the right spells.

The module has some nice ideas in it but really would have been more useful if it was longer. A six page adventure is just not that long and does not have a lot of encounters. I would stretch this out and add a few elements to it with the hop that it could fill a game session. I am not sure if the idea of a generic rules adventure work. I know d20 is the fantasy king and there are other fantasy games out there. But I would think that more people would be interested in it if it was just d20 then will be since it is open to any system. The module is one that the DM will need to work at to get it playable. And that really is not always a good thing.

 

[NathanHill]

Thanks for the review!

I appreciate your look at the adventure!

For those interested, the Bandit Wizard is available from RPGNow (for $1), and the link to Mystic Ages Online is: http://www.mysticages.com/.

Thanks,
Nathan J. Hill