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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Simon Collins" data-source="post: 2008099" data-attributes="member: 9860">Beware! This review contains major spoilers.The Standing Stone is the 4th core adventure for D&D3e by WotC. It is designed for four 7th-level characters (EL's range from 3 to 13 with several EL 10's). It costs $9.95.Production and Presentation: The front and back (soft)cover are standard WotC cover art – nothing spectacular here. The internal art is black & white, of mediocre quality. The page count is 32. 9/10 of the page is text, the rest a runic border. The text is clear and readable. The internal covers contain maps – a standard map of the surrounding area at the front, on the back a mediocre map of the inside of the warlord’s barrow and a small but very nice 3D map/drawing of the village of Ossington. The Story: An evil tiefling sorcerer discovers a spell that transforms animals into humans. Together with his allies – a vrock bard, an evil insane druidess and his transformed cat familiar he plans to pave the way for a demonic invasion. He takes over the village of Ossington, which is built within a double druidic stone circle on which the spell is inscribed. The transformed animals become the inhabitants of the village. The tiefling has killed the original villagers and a paladin who came to investigate – the paladin’s ghost now seeks vengeance. The local elves kicked up a fuss after all the local animals disappeared (transformed by the tiefling) - the tiefling lured the elven leaders into a trap and massacred them. The remaining elves now wage war on the village. The tiefling seeks a band of adventurers to defeat the ‘evil’ ghost and elves, thereby saving the ‘innocent’ village.The High Points: I loved the setting of this adventure – it has a very Celtic feel to it, with stone circles, dolmens, barrows, a hill figure and a pagan temple. This is accentuated by the surrounding mysterious forest and the presence of several fey creatures. The twist in the plotline of the PCs protecting a village run by demons from elves and a (ghostly) paladin is a great idea, and the author offers plenty of scope for the PCs to take the plot in various directions from this central premise. There are several mysteries to unravel and a sub-plot involving a lawful neutral undead gravewight (a new monster) in a nearby trapped burial mound.The Low Points: As seems to be the case with all WotC products, with the focus on stats, combat, traps and plot, not enough attention has been paid to depth of character for roleplaying purposes (though this is better than the previous core adventures). In the stats for the tiefling sorcerer at the end of the module, a section reads:‘Roleplaying Notes: Dyson has a thin tail, but he keeps it well hidden when not relaxing among his allies.’ Oh, boy, that gives me a real insight in how to roleplay this NPC as a DM!!! That hidden tail has real personality. Granted, there are hints on the kind of things Dyson might say elsewhere in the module and there are good basic ideas for each NPC, but I would have liked to see more detailed roleplaying hints and tips. For me, tactics should be no more important than personality, as I find roleplaying NPCs _believably_ the hardest and the most rewarding aspect of DMing.Conclusion: The best of the WotC core adventures so far, with a creative plotline and a mysterious setting, even though the NPC characterisation and the artwork could have been better.</blockquote>

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