Treasure Quests

[Messageboard Golem]

An unique hardbound book with with interior wire binding, to lay flat on the table but still look great on the shelf! This book contains 78 maps and their encounter keys, complete with d20 system stats! Together, these maps and encounters form the basis for a marvelous fantasy campaign, or you can drop them individually into your existing campaign

 

[Psion]

Treasure Quests

Fast Forward Entertainment is a small game company headed up by James M. Ward, author of such influential titles in prior editions of the Dungeons & Dragons game as Gods, Demigods, and Heroes and Deities & Demigods. With the possibilities afforded by the d20 system license, the company soon jumped on the opportunity to turn out a few products for the d20 fantasy market.

Fast Forward has tried to approach the market by creating some products with a different sort of appeal. Their first round of hardcovers was the "items of power" series. These books provided extensive exposition on a variety of new magic items, with the option to buy facsimiles of some of the items.

Their next "idea" product is Treasure Quests. Treasure Quests is a collection of interconnected miniature adventures collected in one volume, with a binding made to allow it to lay flat.

A First Look

Treasure Quests is a 160 page hardcover book with a spiral interior binding that allows it to lay flat without damaging the binding of the book. The book is priced at $26.99 US. This is a bit expensive for a book of this size. The binding may account for some of this cost.

The cover of the book has a scarlet grainy texture similar to FFE's prior hardbounds. The front cover has a color picture by Tina Druce-Hoffman depicting a dragon amidst a billowing cloud of its breath weapon.

The interior is black and white. There is no interior art other than the various maps. The cartography appears to be computer generated. The maps have scales and simple legends. There is a disclaimer that in the exterior maps, not to take the scale too literally when it comes to building size, which is fair enough. However, some of the interior maps have scales on the order of 30 yards a square, which makes many of the interiors positively cavernous if you take them literally; the GM will have to apply some adjudication to use the maps.

A Deeper Look

Treasure Quests contains a variety of keyed maps for complete with descriptions. Most of the locations fit within two facing pages and have descriptions and statistic blocks.

The various locations are denoted by a "link" designation, including number from 1-13 and letters from A-F. Each number seems to correspond to a general area or adventure, and each letter under that number (1A, 1B, etc.) corresponds to a single locale in that area sufficient for a short session.

Each locale within a listed number somehow links to the other numbers, and the contents of one numbered adventure seems to refer to future adventures in the book. In essence, all of the adventures in the book have some relationship. You can use the book as a sort of super campaign. However, each individual adventure appears to be separable, so you can pick out an individual session and use it when you have the need. There is an underlying story of the campaign played as a whole. In the early adventures, players catch wind of three legendary adventurers. Later in the book, they catch wind that these legendary heroes are no longer so heroic, and they may eventually have to face them.

The locales vary in type. There are many buildings, castles, caverns, and cellars. But there are also forest haunts and quarters of the center of a large city. There is a great variety of adventures to be hand here, and you should be able to find something to match the locale of your PCs. The adventures also have a variety of opposition, from run of the mill warriors, high level NPCs, yuan-ti, undeas, and so forth, as well as a variety of traps and puzzles.

There do appear to be a few mistakes in the layouts of some of the sessions. For example, one map appears to have some of the keyed locations swapped. In another session, a room description says that the door in the southeast corner leads to the next link, but the only door in the southeast corner leads to another room that is keyed in the same link.

Likewise, there appear to a few mistakes in the stat blocks, such as a cleric with a domain spell that does not match his domains. The treasure is a bit heavy in places, and there is no clear outline of ELs or what levels are appropriate for what sections.

Conclusion

Played as a single mega-adventure, Treasure Quests could be interesting, but in terms of rules consistency and application as well as presentation and ideas, you are better off going with something like Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil. However, where the real strength of this book comes is its sheer utility. You can use it as a super adventure, or you can safely pull it apart and use it piecemeal when you need an adventure. The individual sections are written in a way that they can stand well on their own, but there are enough links to other adventures that they could form a functional backdrop or sideline to existing adventures you want to run.

The drawback of the book is that the statistics are often off, treasure is perhaps overly generous in spots, and often the level of challenge varies wildly over the course of a single encounter area.

-Alan D. Kohler

 

[Sayburr]

This sounds very interesting... could it be used as a arching plot set around other things? In other words, drop in one of these every now and then and still be able to tell a complete story?

 

[Gilladian]

Sorry, but I would give this product about a 2 in 5 stars. I found the product to be riddled with typos, poorly written, unoriginal and useless. The adventures have several problems:

1) WAYYYYY too much treasure: an orc with a ring of regeneration. A dragon's hoard hidden by a pack of stirges and an illusion (plus some ropers that can be avoided).
Another ring of regeneration being worn by a ghoul who cannot even benefit by it.

2) When someone tells me they are going to give me a series of interconnected adventures, but each little one page spread adventure is playable by itself, I do not expect that in many cases that means that one adventure is this three rooms in the ruined castle, and that adventure is the next three rooms. To me, those are NOT separate adventures, nor are they playable as such.

3) total lack of logic and cohesiveness. I realize that everything cannot be provided in such brief writeups, but when an NPC is described as "an evil lord" and then in the very last sentence, a bombshell informs me that the lord is dead; he's really a doppleganger. No explanation, no reason, no hint as to why or what it means, or when it happened; it just is!

4) booooorrrrrriinnnnnng adventures. No reason for the places to exist, no hints as to where the areas might be in relation to each other. Just places full of monsters, no other substance.

I was hoping for mini-locations and adventures that I could drop "whole" in my campaign. Instead I have a nicely bound makeweight. Don't bother.

Gilladian

 

[Archer]

Why don't you write a review and give it 2 stars instead of saying so in a comment?

 

[Psion]

Gilladian - Like Archer said: then do a review. Important note: per ENWorld policy, don't refer to other reviews.

You will note I adressed many of your points in my review. Frex, I said there is too much treasure. Sans those problems, it would have been a 5 not a 4. I maintain that the utility of this product is rather high. Thus the 4.

Other points I think you are just wrong on. How are the city quarters just "places full of monsters?" Further, you decry little plot development; that's a feature, not a bug! If it had convoluted plots, that would not only waste space, it would actively interfere with the drop-in nature of the adventures. This is pure, unadulterated content; that is what gives it its utility.

Further, you say you are looking for "mini locations" and then complain they are "too short." AFAIAC, they are just right. I dropped in supposedly short adventures from other anothologies and had them take up a month of game time. For a night's distraction, these are perfect.

 

[Felon]

Gilladian, I third the motion that you post your comments in review format.

 

[yongi]

I thought that this was a particularly grand idea for a product.
I have a very irregular group of games who get together about
4 times a year and the concept fit my needs perfectly. The binding
and layout concepts sold me on it. Sadly, I was
more than a bit put off by the typos and the map error. I do think
it's useable, but not necessarily for the "New DM" as it is billed.
I felt that there was a chunk of work that would have to be done to
clean the adventures into a fully playable condition. But, all in
all, I think it's a reasonable purchase if you're willing to work the
raw material into something finer.

 

[JacktheRabbit]

Ok, I have now gone over the product much more closely and I must say that I am not impressed in the least. This one is going back to the store and fast.
I have to reduce my rating of this product to a 1 based on the sheer number of errors I have found within it as well as the reasons I have listed below.


1. Monster numbers - At several points the description calls for multiple monsters only to have a single monster stated below. In addition I noticed at least one spot where the description says 8 ogres but the stats only include hitpoints for 4 of them.

2. Bad Italics - The italics seems to be the section you read to the
players. Yet in places I have seen crucial information included in here. One example was where the trap in the room is described in the italics text.

3. Wrong monsters - A description calls for a skeleton only to have a zombie stated below.

4. Every page has multiple typos. Some are minor, some require several
minutes to figure out or correct.

5. Every page has gross technical errors. CR's are not always given and sometimes they are for a single monster and sometimes they are for the entire group.

6. Treasure generally would make even Monty Haul jealous. One item in
particular is a staff that would double the firepower of a 20th level wizard if he got his hands on it. Yet it is given early enough in the book that the wizard gaining it would be between 8th and 11th level. This is a guess of course since no party strength suggestions are given.

7. Lots of the treasure is clearly 2E material. Potion of Super Healing?

8. You cannot just open to a random page and use it as a quick adventure. Many of them are actually a couple buildings of a larger ruins or a small section of a larger dungeon. The rest of which is laid in the previous or following pages.

9. None of the pages have a suggest party level. If this is supposed to be usable as lots of separate quick adventures then it would be nice if they included party level suggestions.

10. Many of the "adventures" quote other areas but don't even give page numbers but instead give vague chapter references.

Some of these are minor issues but many of them are very serious gaffs that very much reduce the usefulness of the product. The sheer number of them also makes me wonder what kind of review process this book was given.

 

[Simon Collins]

Beware! This review contains major spoilers.
This is not a playtest review.

Treasure Quests is a book of linked adventures ranging from low to high level.

At $26.99 for 160 pages, this is a fairly average priced book compared to others of similar size. The book uses ring-binding to effect a flat layout (no need to balance pages open with heavy objects). This is a good idea at first glance, being very effective in regard to its aim. However, my previous experience with ring-bound books has been that pages tear out very easily when in constant use - time will tell on this one. The cover art is good (although it features a green dragon breathing fire). There is no internal art, but each two-page spread has an accompanying mini-map. The maps are fairly average - each one has compass direction and scale, though the scales vary considerably, changing between feet, yards and miles - examples range from 20 feet squares to 100-yard squares, and 8-mile squares for one of the city maps.The writing style is facile, condescending and lacking imagination. Text 'boxes' include game rule information and automatic character actions - e.g. "You move a little faster wanting to get to town before the noon sun warms you too much". Editing mistakes are regular.

Each two-page lay-flat spread has a short adventure with a few locations and a map. Most locations have an occupant with some form of treasure. Each adventure can be linked to another to create one big mega-adventure or used to slot in to an ongoing campaign for more experienced GMs. The adventures have a thread running through them - three heroes who saved the area 300 years ago from humanoid invasion have left their scattered belongings through the various locations in the mega-adventure. The adventure begins in a small village leading onwards in location and challenge until a final showdown with three liches in the finale.

I won't waste my time describing each of the adventures - none of them contain anything you haven't seen before if you've been roleplaying a year or more. Take stock locations (orc lair, country village, city, necromancers tower, dragon lair, etc.). Add monsters from the Monster Manual or NPCs from the DMG as appropriate. Add treasure, lots of treasure. Voila. Instant adventure.

There are no ELs for the encounters nor CRs for the monsters/NPCs. There is little mention of personality or background for any of the characters. Statistics are often incorrect. Information relevant to one adventure is to be found in another later on. Treasure is monty-haul like, monsters included that are WAY too high for the supposed low-level PCs (and vice-versa). The list is endless.

Conclusion:
James Ward tells in the introduction that he was GM'd by Gary Gygax back in 1974. The adventures in this volume have not moved on much from those days. First-time GMs with munckin players may enjoy this volume for its simplicity. Apart from that and the temporary advantage of the ring-binding, I can find nothing more to recommend this volume.

Don't waste your money.