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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Psion" data-source="post: 2008995" data-attributes="member: 172">Treasure QuestsFast 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 LookTreasure 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 LookTreasure 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.ConclusionPlayed 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</blockquote>

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