Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Morrus" data-source="post: 2008129" data-attributes="member: 1">This is a playtest review.The Longest Night . . . part 1 of the Witchfire Trilogy, set in Privateer Press' Iron Kingdoms setting.  This product is two-thirds adventure, one-third sourcebook . . . and it's great.First, the good . . .The book itself is beautiful; the production quality is even better than WotC's standard. The front cover boasts the best art I have seen so far on any published adventure (and I've seen a few!), the pagecount is a whopping 64 pages (and that's with a smallish font, too), information is well laid out, with useful sidebars in just the right places, and the artwork by Brian Snoddy and Matt Wilson, while black and white, is of excellent quality (either of you guys feel like donating a few pics to Daemonforge?)The Iron Kingdoms setting itself is excellent.  As I believe someone else said, there are few adventures that can support a new setting on their own - but this is one of those few.  I wait eagerly for more information on this world.  In the meantime, I will comment on what we have so far.The setting can be loosely described as 'steampunk', although I don't feel that this term is entirely accurate.  The technological elements of the setting are far from overwhelming as some might fear - they blend seamlessly into a traditional-style fantasy setting.  Steamships, firearms (opertaed by magical blasting powders), the wonderful steamjacks (...the ultimate fusion of the wizard and engineer's arts.  They are powered by a coal fired steam plant, but given a mind through magic.) all serve to enrich the setting in a subtle yet effective way.For those who don't like the idea of technology in D&D - yes, it can be easily removed.  But after you read The Longest Night, I doubt you'll want to!The NPCs in this adventure are well detailed and, more important, interesting.  The City of Corvis is equally detailed, and seems far more real than, for example, the town of Brindinford from The Speaker in Dreams.  Privateer Press make the effort to cover geography, law and order, merchants, shops, guilds and unions - more than enough for a DM to run a believable city.  This brings me on to one of my favourite things about this module - the writers' attention to the small details.  For example - one of the initial encounters has the PCs defending a caravan from ambush.  Now, if your players are like mine, one of them is bound to open one of the caravan's chests for no reason whatsoever, and you will find yourself saying something like "You find . .err . . some spices . . .".  Privateer Press have made the effort to provide an unobtrusive sidebar with a random chart describing the contents of any chest the PCs should happen to open.  Other such sidebars include wandering monster tables, histories of various areas (hey, you never know when you might suddenly need that info), or little boxes saying things like "If anyone gets the idea of blowing a hole in the old drawbridge with the explosive kegs, it has hardness 5 and 25 HP."  References to the Core Rulebooks include page numbers, which makes relevant info simple to find in a pinch.The plot itself is original and captivating.  To cut a long story short, the PCs are asked to investigate a local case of body-snatching from the nearby graveyards (and yes, the writers do provide a plausible answer to the quesiton 'Why don't the watch do it?'); this turns out to be connected with an old witchcraft scandal.  Through investigation, they PCs will explore the tomb of the dead witch, the catacombs beneath the city, and the depths of Widower's Wood before discovering who is behind all this and why.  By the end of the adventure, they find themselves dealing with an undead attack on the city orchestrated by . . . well, that would give it all way!The focus of the adventure - not that the PCs will realise this for quite a while - is the sword called Witchfire.  No mere Holy Avenger this, methinks - this artifact actually sounds interesting!  You find out more in later installments of the trilogy.The adventure is long, varied and interesting.  When I first picked up the book, I couldn't stop reading it.  It's like a novel, with its detailed characters and locations, captivating storylines, intriguing plot and finely crafted, immersive backdrop.  I'll need a thesaurus if I'm gonna write any more . . . <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />   And now, the bad . . .It's not clear which skill is used to roll the check to reload a gun.  A handout or two would have been nice.The adventure does tend to railroad the players, moving them from one set piece to the next.  The final scene was the most problematic, since the players do little more than watch the events resolve themselves with no way of influencing the outcome.  This factor is the reason that this adventure did not score 5/5 from me; in places the adventure is more of a novel than an interactive game.Incidentally, I notice that other reviewers have bemoaned the lack of background source material; I can't agree with them.  This is an adventure, not a sourcebook, although it does remarkably well as such.  Perhaps some info on witches in the Iron Kingdoms would have been nice, but that would just have been yet more icing on an already very sweet cake. In summary . . .This adventure is quality stuff; it has its flaws, but there is only one test when it comes to such an adventure: did my players enjoy it?  The answer was unequivocably "yes".  As Privateer's first attempt, I was impressed.For those interested in the setting, Privateer have created a website with backgound info on the Iron Kingdoms:  <a href="http://ironkingdoms.com/" target="_blank">http://ironkingdoms.com/</a></blockquote>

Verification