Beware! This review contains major spoilers.
This is not a playtest review.
Price: $8.95
Page Count: 114
Price per page: About 8 cents per page
Designed for Character Level: 1-4
Format: Adobe Acrobat (.pdf) file downloadable from www.0onegames.com. A variety of quality can be achieved dependent on the size of file you're willing to download - anything from 7 MB to nearly 22 MB.
External Artwork: Comic book style colour piece of two male warriors facing off, whilst female warriors collapse about them.
Additional Page Use: The first two pages contain the OGL, and credits and contents. The back page contains a very brief outline of the adventure laid over some maps. The last page is blank.
Internal Artwork: The artwork is mainly colour, in a very cartoonish style. I don't like it personally, but it depends on your tastes.
Maps: The maps are on the whole excellent. There are a large number of them at the end of the module - 32 pages of maps and handouts in fact. Its a shame the rest of the module does not show the quality of this section
Text Density: The font used is slightly larger than normal and there is a fairly large margin at the top of each page (though the remainder of the margins are slim). There are a few blocks of white space here and there, plus the aforementioned blank page at the end.
Text Style: The style is poor, with many grammatical mistakes, typos and a stilted tone perhaps reflecting the author's Italian nationality (I presume English is not his first language, though its better than many who do claim English as their first language). Its all written a bit breathlessly, with a lot of energy and enthusiasm, but it lacks refinement.
The Adventure: Anyone who has read the novel 'Legend' by David Gemmell will quickly gain a very good understanding of the background (and much of the action) of this adventure. For those who have not, an enormous barbarian horde, the Nadir (sorry, the Zenith), is planning to attack the civilised western lands of the Drenai (sorry, the Draman). These lands are surrounded by a chain of high mountains that are breached by only one passable valley. Across this valley lies a seven-walled fortress, called Dros Delnoch (sorry, Draman Del), which is the only defence against the invasion and must be held at all costs until the western lands can gather their armies - about three weeks. Leading the defence of the fortress is a legendary warrior, Druss...er...Deathshadow. Anyway, I won't go on about the similarities anymore - suffice to say that much of the background story and plot of the adventure is plagiarised heavily from Gemmell's novel.
The module itself begins with the legend that forms the backdrop to the adventure - seven evil undead generals, made from the soul shards of the most evil god thought destroyed centuries ago, are rising again after disappearing for millenia. They seek vengeance on the western lands for their part in the destruction of the evil god. One of them has allied with the leader of the barbarian horde, exhorting him to take control of the tribes and swarm into the western lands. The fact that the barbarian leader is whacked out on drugs kind of helps too.
The PCs must seek an alliance with a nearby cult of priests to help defend the fortress, discover a traitor back in the fortress, and follow clues left by the legendary Steel General (who defended the fortress against a similar attack many centuries before) to help open a portal to another plane where the soul of the Steel General still resides, before returning to the fortress to help save the day in a climactic finish where the PCs literally merge into one spirit to battle the evil undead general behind the attack. Several missions are also included throughout the adventure where the PCs get a chance to be heroes in the defence of the fortress and may discover a secret means of doing significant damage to the opposing army.
The actual module itself gives stats and descriptions for all of the major NPCs before the adventure begins. The main text of the adventure is split into events and locations, and also includes stats and descriptions for some of the minor NPCs. There is also a lengthy sidebar outlining the likely course of the battle for the fortress, which the GM can use to monitor events as they occur - it includes details of the weather on the day and the likely number of casualties if things progress normally.
In the Appendices, seven new monsters are detailed, stats for standard Draman and Zenith forces are outlined, before the module launches into its plethora of maps and handouts.
The High Points: I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed reading Gemmell's novel 'Legend' and the opportunity to roleplay in this heroic story is a very tempting one. And, there are the bones provided in this module to be able to do so. The NPCs are well detailed, with lots of opportunity for roleplaying, intrigue, skill use, puzzles, and of course, combat. The maps and handouts are also very good. The adventure itself does vary at times from the plotline of the novel and attempts to give the opportunity to the PCs to be a worthwhile and important part of the story, in a way that does not compromise the sanctity of Gemmell's plot. Though it's meant to be run as part of 0one's Seven Avengers game setting, I'd probably ignore all the simplistic name changes, use Gemmell's world setting, characters and names, and have a rousing good adventure.
The Low Points: That is, once I had done the several hours of work it would take to get this adventure to the point where I could actually run it. The organisation of the text is fairly unconventional to say the least with information relevant to one section found several pages later, and some reorganisation of the information would be essential. The PCs are railroaded to the extreme at times, including the plot hook (the only one) that requires one of the PCs to be the manservant of one of the major NPCs. The EL's of some of the encounters are way over the proposed levels of the characters in some encounters (unless the PCs have gained an essential piece of knowledge which they could easily not do), and would need to be significantly amended (the module begins by stating that it is "a deadly adventure" and PCs will have to be replaced as the adventure moves along). The style of writing is poor and I personally didn't like the art.
Conclusion: This has been a very difficult module to assess, since I believe that it could lead to a fantastic adventure if a GM were willing to put the work in, and had a love of Gemmell's novels. However, its greatest strengths lie in its plagiarised background details, NPCs and setting, and its weakest aspects lie in the quality of the writing, organisation, art and expression of the story in roleplaying terms (i.e. choice of actions within the plot outline). The maps and handouts are an exception to this trend, but are not enough to save the overall quality of the module from mediocrity, and despite it potential.
