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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Simon Collins" data-source="post: 2009422" data-attributes="member: 9860">Edit: Score revised from 3 to 4 (see below for comments)Beware! This review contains major spoilers.This is not a playtest review.Jade Magi Sewer Crawl is an adventure from MonkeyGod Enterprises for characters of 4th-6th level.At $14.95 for 72 pages, this is fairly good value in terms of content volume compared with other products of this size. As standard with MonkeyGod products, use of space is fairly good, though the graphic margin is not small. The internal mono art ranges from poor to good, with most being average. The cover art makes good use of colour, but lacks texture, whereas the art on the back cover (by Theodor Black) is by far the best in the book, showing a Chinese woman armed with fans and covered in dragonfly tattoos (also found inside in mono). Maps are average to good, the internal ones lacking compass direction. The writing style and editing are average, with occasional but regular mistakes.The adventure is centred on the town of Blue Silk village, a Chinese-style community that is in need of help. Unbeknownst to the villagers, the walls of an ancient magical pool have broken and the water has seeped into the sewers, mutating plants and changing various animals into dire equivalents up and down the food chain. The animals have feasted upon one another but now seek further sustenance in the village itself. The situation is complicated by numerous political and social encounters triggered by various NPC villagers, and the PCs find the pool itself guarded by yuan-ti, released from stasis by the earthquake that cracked the pool wall. Clues from the sewers allow the PCs to learn the true history behind the secret underground pool.The first half of the adventure is very free-form, with various optional encounters in the village, mixed with a more dungeon crawl flavour in the sewers beneath the village. The NPCs are well detailed, and most have their own agenda clearly set out for the GM. A beginning encounter with a gossipy NPC can furnish the PCs with much information about the various villagers and their idiosynchrasies. The ELs of the encounters range from 4-7, but much of the adventure is taken up with NPC descriptions and advice on running the various (probaly non-aggressive) interactions that may occur between the PCs and the villagers.Conclusion:The adventure has a good mix of roleplaying, combat, traps, and mystery. Some of the statistics need amending by the GM (don't authors and editors use the free character generator with the PHB to check these things?) and it may be a bit heavy on the roleplaying side if your group prefers combat-orientated adventures. However, the adventure has a sound and logical backstory, engaging NPCs, and plenty of useful advice to the GM for running what could be quite a complex adventure. I felt it would lose much of its appeal outside its oriental setting, but it could be adapted to a more generic setting.</blockquote>

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