Scorchfire

By Malrex
The Merciless Merchants
OSR
Levels 7-9

Your party successfully emerges from whatever dark hole you were conquering (or fleeing from) to be greeted by fire-swept terrain; a burning hell! A wildfire leaves a blackened and charred landscape. Ash storms blanket the smoldering remnants of charred trees and smoke blurs vision. Is the nearby town unscathed? Any survivors? Is there safe passage through the raging inferno? The adventure isn’t over….it just begun.

This eighteen page adventure is an escort mission, a bunch of level 0 villagers, through a wildfire. And, strangely, I don’t hate it even though it’s an escort mission. It’s decent enough for what it is, with a variety of situations to bemuse the party. Where bemuse is defined as “two of the villagers just got eaten by giant gar. Do you want to continue down the river?” 

You’re on your way out of the dungeon. Oops, everything is burnt.And the sky is all hazy? The heavy smell of smoke in the air? There’s been/is a wildfire! That’s a cute little element to spring on the party when coming out of a dungeon. It has shades of Ye Olde Bandits hitting the party when they come out of the dungeon. But with some variety. I like the setup! Making your way back to the nearby town/village/settlement, you find it totally burnt. And with some refugees. Twelves, in fact, all briefly summarized in a little table for the DM’s easy reference. Like Palisa, who wis unhinged and manic and will drown herself if not watched. And while not mentioned, this easily lends itself to a bunch of dead kids. Which is what a good idea in an adventure should do: lead the DM to places to springboard to easily. So, you’ve got all these refugees … let’s think of as, perhaps, Hit Points, and you want to get them to the next settlement. There’s two main roads, which they want to take. Also, they are a pain in the ass. “We should go to the river so we don’t get burned!” “I can’t swim!” “The road is quicker…who knows what’s off the road!” “Who put these guys in charge anyways?” Perfect! The designer communicates wonderfully the chaos in any group. If it were me I’d kill off everyone expressing an opinion and only take the sheep, but, hey, that’s Captain Pragmatic speaking. O, it’s an escort mission, but, you’re kind of high level at this point and the concept is fun. The stakes are low, it’s just some human villagers lives, and the situations are kind of fun … but in more of a dark comedy way than a humorous way.

The monsters are generally either pissed off because of the fire or having a great time because of it. A fire giant couple in a great mood, but missing their pet Sparky. Or Cave bears in a creek … who have burnt paws. Fire demons and the like, or a desperate Dryad and some pixies trying to protect her tree. There’s a little wanderer table, that has a lot of environmental things on it, like the fire shifting directions, or a mudslide from the rain and so on. It’s clear that Malrex researched wildfires and the “oh, that makes sense!” nature of the associated impacts. It’s got some great little things on it to help spice things up. It’s not not entirely clear to me how the fire shifts. I think one more sentence would have addressed it, but I THINK that the areas marked “scorched” on the map (most of the map …) shift a hex when the fire moves south? But, also, not real rules about a wildfire being IN your hex. So, a couple of interesting misses from this standpoint, but overall its a great way to cover the impact of the fire without doing the whole “make a saving through every turn” (read that in a whiny voice) thing that a lot of adventures do with environmental impacts.

Magic items have good descriptions, some little follow up hooks with them in some cases and nonstandard effects in some cases. Which is exactly how i like my magic items. 

With regard to the actual encounters, along the roads for the most part, there is some decent variety to them. We meet Orias the druid who, like all druids, is an asshole. Fire replenishes the forest, and so on. Yeah yeah, he treats and burns and shit, but, if it were me I’d be having the townfolk passive-aggressive, or even aggressive with him. Which, again, is what a good encounter description should do: springboard ideas. We’ve got slavers looking for new slaves and a decent will o’wisp encounter … everything old is new again when you’re escorting those level 0’s. There’s also some decent opportunities to pick up followers. One or two of the townfolk, a pixie in the druid grove, and so on, if the party is nice to them, etc. That’s a good touch and brings in the elements of high level play that are missing from a lot of adventures. 

The writing is decent, not too long and with good enough descriptions in most places. I’m not super duper excited about it, or the encounters, but also I recognize that they are WAY above average for the vast majority of adventures. You can scan them quickly and the core of them is always pretty good. I just wish they were perhaps a little more evocative, both in the encounter and the writing of it. 

This is a hard one to rate. The situation is fun, interesting, and is something that it is uncommon. And fun IS the reason for playing D&D. So, suck it up and take a Best … because a good idea is still a good idea in Brycelandia.

This is $4.25 at DriveThru. The preview is eight pages. You get a really good idea of the encounters and tables presented as to what the adventure is about, its tone and so on. Great preview!

https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/252309/scorchfire?1892600

Also, I bought Castle Oldskull: Bears. The blurb made me think it was going to be a kind of pamphlet on the mythic underpinnings of bears. In folklore, history and the like. Thus if you want to write an adventure about bears, or have a bear appear in your adventure then you could consult it and get some ideas of the various cultural symbolisms of bears and leverage that. That’s pretty cool! But, also, that’s not what this is. It’s about bears in this particular fantasy world, some ice bear variants, dwarf berserkers and so on. I shall keep searching for my shining city on a hill!