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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Zan Thrax" data-source="post: 2008163" data-attributes="member: 400">Necromancer Games are meant to have a "1st edition feel", and this module certainly looks the part. The first of the 18 pages is a cover designed like the old modules from the early eighties. The rest of the module is laid out very nicely, in a standard two column format, with margin notes. The art consists of well done black and white ink drawings.Unfortunately, appearance isn't all that matters for an adventure. While the story is a good one, with a creative background leading up to the events of the module itself, there are several glaring errors of both adventure design and Dungeon Mastery. The adventure is intended to be used with pre generated characters (available here in a .zip file), including a sorcerer around who the story revolves. While using pre-generated characters is not necessarily bad, they are best used to introduce new role players to a game, or for one-shot adventures in unusual settings. Neither of these works well with a story that is based on one character's background, leaving the others with little motivation. A second major design flaw is the use of two very hard battles, and no simple ones. Since the module is clearly aimed at rookie players (and to some extent, a rookie game master), such dangerous encounters, both of which punish poor strategy, are an excellent way to alienate the new players that are supposed to get hooked on the game.There is one last problem, and it is the worst one. Throughout the adventure, the Dungeon Master is instructed to tell the players what their characters do or think. It also instructs the Dungeon Master to disallow the party from setting up camp in a farmhouse they come across. While this sort of dictatorial Dungeon Mastering may go unnoticed as such by the novice players the adventure is meant for, it will annoy anyone who has played any sort of role-playing game before, and may well turn new players off as well.A veteran Dungeon Master can probably make something decent out of this, mainly by making Corian into an NPC and avoiding using the pre-written description boxes. However, the module is not meant for veterans, it is meant to be an introduction to the game, and it is not very good for doing that at all.</blockquote>

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