The Whispering Woodwind

[Messageboard Golem]

By Glenn Dean, Staff Reviewer d20 Magazine Rack

*Caution: May contain spoilers!

Sizing up the Target
The Whispering Woodwind by Creative Mountain Games (CMG) is a d20 system adventure designed for 2d level characters. Written by Mark Clover, this product is a 38 page PDF that retails for $5.

First Blood
The Whispering Woodwind is set in Creative Mountain Games’ World of Revloc, though it could easily be adapted to any campaign setting by simply changing the names of the locations. The adventure would easily fit into a coastal setting close to a medium-sized or larger town. It uses both site- and event-based encounters to develop its story.

The adventure begins in the town of Jalston, where in reacting to a local emergency the party meets an innkeeper with a problem. Eventually, the adventurers are hired to recover an item from the inn’s former bard, and are led on a merry chase down the coast. On the way, they meet a number of colorful inhabitants, and eventually find a small hamlet with troubles of its own, where the adventure climaxes.

The Whispering Woodwind is not a hack-and-slash dungeon exploration. While there are several combat encounters, the adventure provides many encounters that can best be handled with shrewd roleplay. The setting for the adventure is relatively low fantasy – most of the encounters are with animals or humanoids in a civilized setting. The overall feel is more gritty and realistic than some of the more high-magic, high-monster adventure offerings.

Though designed for 2nd level characters, each encounter provides a sidebar on “Adjusting the Bar”, enabling the encounter to be easily scaled for levels 1-4, or to change the difficulty on the fly if the party is having too easy or too hard a time with the encounter.

The adventure file includes a brief supplement that outlines a culture called the Trundlefolk, nomadic bands of people reminiscent of gypsies. The supplement provides two complete NPC classes for the Trundlefolk, and this culture could easily be imported into any campaign. Also included is a list of Open Game Content spells developed from the “name” spells in the Player’s Handbook.

Critical Hits
The great strength of this adventure is the depth of the setting and the development of the non-player characters the adventuring party will encounter. CMG has gone to great lengths to create vivid, interesting NPCs that the game master can portray in a realistic manner. Each of the primary NPCs is described using CMG’s “PROSE” system, which rates each character’s outlook in terms of view on Politics, Religion, Others, Self, and Economics, along with some basic character traits. With a little study of the system, the GM use these NPCs and their surroundings to create a living locale in which to base a campaign with a great deal of realism and internal consistency.

The adventure also makes good use of boxed text both for encounter descriptions and to provide suggestions for the game master. Its handling of skill checks in roleplay is particularly effective, with a number of possible responses for each situation mapped out depending on how players handle each encounter. This assistance is invaluable for a relatively novice GM who is attempting to introduce more roleplaying and character interaction into his or her game.

Critical Misses
The Whispering Woodwind does have a couple of challenges a prospective GM should be prepared for. Though many of the encounters are event-based, the exact timeline is left to the GM to develop. Because of the detail provided, the GM should also be sure to study the links between events carefully, to be better prepared to transition from one to another. At least one significant encounter is not directly relevant to the basic adventure plot, but could be used to develop a number of interesting future adventures.

Lastly, the town of Jalston in which the adventure begins is not described – there is a $1 player download from CMG that gives some good basic background, and a full DM‘s treatment of the town is forthcoming. This might pose a challenge for a GM whose players decide they want to spend some time in town before proceeding on the adventure.

Coup de Grace
Virtually all of this adventure is Open Game Content, with the exception of shaded text boxes. The bonus NPC classes and spell list are a nice touch. The adventure is well balanced for 1st to 4th level play, and shows careful attention to detail in the use of stat blocks. At $5, this adventure is a tremendous value, particularly for a gaming group that is looking for an adventure that encourages greater character interaction and roleplay. Combined with the Jalston products from CMG, this adventure could provide an excellent starting point for a low-level campaign in a believable setting with richly developed NPCs.

To see the graded evaluation of this product and to leave comments that the reviewer will respond to, go to Fast Tracks at www.d20zines.com.

 

[ejja_1]

Mark Clover was my DM for the last Chicago Games day, I enjoyed myself so much that I asked him for some more examples of his products. He was nice enough to oblige with review copies of all his products for me to look at.
I Just got done running this whirlwind of an adventure module, and my players and I had a great time. The general plot of the module, has the players hired by a local merchant to capture and return a bard who has wronged the merchant in several ways. Starting off with a chase, the action runs pretty fast and furious from that point on. The players have to make decisions as to whether to stop for information or to forge ahead in search for the elusive bard. By the time my players caught up with their quarry, they had to make several alignment checks to keep from their muderous desires.
Hot on the trail of the despicable bard, the party found what they thought might be him being chewed on by a large brown bear. The players try as they might, could not convince the bear to relinquish the corpse long enough to ascertain it's identity.
A combat insued and 2 of the 5 players were taken down by the bear, the others managed to take it out finally. Bears are deadly in 3rd Ed! Afterwards they discovered the poor man that had been killed was not who they were looking for, frustrated the party continued on.
Along the way the characters were introduced to the Trundlefolk, a gypsy like band people living in the local woods. The party almost became too engrossed with the camp, as there were sevarl things of intrest happening there. Once the party had finished the adventure portion, they did return to the camp and partied with the jovial group. The Trundlefolk could easily have been removed from the module, and used as a seperate source for adventure hooks and play.
After leaving the Trundlefolk, the players ran into a small town that was being haraassed by some local bandits. And low and behold if the bard they sought wasn't hold up in their camp with them.
Greatly entertaining for all, and easy to run. The Creative Mountain Games Prose system, makes it easy to play the NPC's. By rating the strength of their convictions on general subjects, and providing three words as descriptors for general attitude and character while giving you enough leeway to still make them your own. The maps and illustrations included were easy to follow, and the storyline was well written and could be easily implemented by even the most novice of DM's.
Trundlefolk, Bandits and Bears oh my!
Great fun for $5.00

 

[Psion]

This one is a bit short too. Please revise it.

 

[ejja_1]

I will have a revised version latenight 07/11, im swamped with work currently. That ok with you?

 

[JoeGKushner]

Man, talk about your overdue reviews. The Whispering Woodwind version I have is a 3.0 adventure for four 2nd level characters. This is a Questus Supplement and set in the world of Revloc Questus, but due to the small scale, can easily be slipped into almost any setting. Mark has updated this to 3.5 last July as mentioned on the En World message boards. Price of $5 is fair for a 38 page adventure but may be a little expensive in comparison to newer electronic books with better art and layout.

There are somethings I didn't like. In my copy, an older one, there were several misspellings and some stat block issues. Editing is something two people rarely agree on but I found some parts a little cumbersome to read. Nothing big and most of the stat blocks were for non-combat oriented encounters so not a big deal. The layout was a little troubled with a lot of NPCs with no combat focus right in the text, when they could've been put at the end of the book. It's only a big problem when numerous NPCs are detailed at once as you're reading and then have an NPC stat block and then reading and another NPC stat block. My PDF had some low resolution Larry Elmore art. A good use with poor results due to the resolution.

The adventure has good points as well. The NPCs are rich and crisp. The plot is seemingly simple, find a bard whose done a merchant evil, but a time limit puts the focus on the players moving. The players will have opportunities to role play with various NPCs. The strength of this is that there is a helpful guide to running them, the CMG Prose System which gives each NPC a listing for politics, religion, others, self and economics, as well as an explanation as to what those things mean. There are encounters that the party can avoid or skip, but ideas on how to handle them either way are presented.

Ideas on how to change the encounters for a wide variety of group styles and power levels is included, but these are more general offerings than true specifics. Things like, “Make X another level” instead of “Make X level Y with additional bonuses of A, B, C.” The use of shaded, boxed, and unboxed text is also useful, especially for new GMs.

The maps in my book are full color and look just a tad too rasterized but effective. Each one has a Key with various locations marked off on it. For example, Trundlefolk have 14 locations noted on their map, while the Great Mouth Bay area itself has fourteen.

The Whispering Woodwind can be encounter heavy but does have dangerous moments. The module would work well in a low magic campaign setting as there aren't a lot of fantastical creatures or even mundane ones like humanoids. New GMs will appreciate the advice on role playing and the boxed off sections. For a night or two of entertainment, The Whispering Woodwind has your fix.