The Watchtower in the Wood

By Travis Legge
Aegis Studios
5e
Level 1-3

In this adventure, the characters venture forth from the safety of the Isle of Hope, seeking to bring order to the Plains of Marrow. The adventure offers options for the characters to begin in various areas on the Isle of Hope, but regardless of the path taken, the party eventually makes their way to the haunted lands of the Plains of Marrow. After crossing the harrowing and chaotic lands (and fighting off some of the dark denizens) of the Plains of Marrow, the characters come across a small wooded area. A small stone fort with a lone watchtower stands in a clearing among the trees. Within this camp, the characters will find adventure, drama, and their first dharmachackra!

Another 24 page adventure that should be a page. Whatever vision was trying to be communicated didn’t make it. Sixteen pages of introduction and wandering monster tables, supplemented by six pages of appendix filler leaves us with two pages for the adventure proper. Which is one encounter. I like the cover, but for some reason it reminds me of FATAL.

This is an adventure for some new setting, Choe Pho, so I’m going to assume that the base setting book has the details that are missing from the adventure. You’re in this city and you’re travelling to the Plains of Marrow … “to bring order to it.” You can go North to get there, through the mountains, or south through the forests, east through the grasslands or west through the desert. And there you find a dharmachackra. None of that is described in this adventure and, frankly, I’m a little curious how you can go any direction and get the same place. At least I assume it’s a world feature and not a crutch. We’ll assume it’s all in the setting book.

The adventure consist of a wandering monster table for each of the cardinal directions. The direction descriptions are essentially all the same, with desert adjectives replaced with mountain or forest adjectives. Settlements, tribespeople. All generic. There’s a paragraph or two for each entry on the four wandering tables, which all reduce to “it’s a creature.” There’s not really anything interesting in any of them. The Plains of Marrow are covered in fog and all of the monsters on the table are undead. If you roll a certain encounter then you find the watchtower. Or, if two days pass you also find it. So … no maps in this one. Just an abstracted “encounter wandering monsters until you find the tower after a set time period.”

The watchtower is populated by a couple of furry goblinoid creatures. They are getting attacked by undead every two minutes. The chief wears a necklace that’s attracting the undead. There are little to no details on the titular watchtower.

There’s nothing in this adventure. Some wandering monster tables and an abstracted watchtower. Nothing remotely evocative or interesting to be found.

This is available at DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/202902/The-Watchtower-in-the-Wood?1892600