By Jon Brackin
Brackin Adventuring Company
BECMI
Levels 3-5
On the hottest night of summer… it begins to snow. For as long as anyone can remember, the quiet village of Frosthollow has celebrated The Night of Falling Snow, an ancient midsummer festival unlike any other. White ribbons flutter from old trees. Candles burn in every window. Gifts are exchanged beneath a blazing summer sun while soft snow falls from a cloudless sky. The villagers call it a miracle. They have forgotten that it is a warning. This year, the snow arrives early… and it does not stop. As impossible winter spreads across the countryside, travelers find themselves drawn into a mystery buried beneath centuries of tradition. Forgotten journals, hidden chambers, and an ancient ritual reveal a terrifying truth: the festival was never meant to celebrate the snowfall. It was created to keep something from crossing the threshold into the world. And at the center of it all waits a smiling traveler known only as The Pale Guest. Will the heroes uncover the truth before midnight, restore a ritual no one remembers, or unknowingly open the door to an ancient horror?
This seventeen page adventure uses about eleven pages to describe about ten areas in a village about to reawaken an ancient entity. It’s sparse, with little specificity. There is an outline of an adventure but little to ground the characters actions or the DMs responses.
I am continually mystified at the lack of adventure that passes for adventures. The barest outline of an adventure is somehow expanded to twenty pages and then a few dollar price tag slapped on it. We get little more than DM notes, time and again, the kind scribbled on my party tracker page ten minutes beforehand to run tonight’s game. What ends up being published is just anything that anyone could come up, with all of the specificity and adventure just not present, the stuff the designer SHOULD be working on to help the DM bring the game alive. Yes, the DM needs to do work, but the designer is there to inspire them to greatness and provide the tools to do so.
There’s this village where it snows on a day in the summer every year. The villagers hold this festival with a couple of traditions attached to it. Well, wouldn’t you know it, the snow doesn’t stop this year and gets VERY heavy. The party is there for [the usual lame reasons.] Oh no, people are missing! Poking about you find the basement of the inn has some old records, and the traditions are bastardized versions of a yearly ritual that has to be done to keep THE VISITOR away. The party must convince everyone in the village does a Whoville song and dance number and the entity will sleep for another year. Or, just stab the 12HD dude till it dies.
The most specific thing in the adventure is, what a coincidence, also the most interesting. The villagers hang ribbons from a tree in the village with their names on it. (And, the missing villagers have ribbons there also, with their names faded away. I’m not sure how you know that given that the names are no longer there, but the concept is decent.) This is great. It’s like a line of text. It’s specific. It grounds the DM and gives them something to build on. This is by far the most interesting thing in the adventure.
The actual locations are given this description style that is … poetic? An attempt to be poetic? Let’s look at “Chamber Two: The Ice Archive”
A chamber sealed within magical frost.
Contains stone tablets.
These preserve the complete ritual.
Uh. Ok. How about another room, for comparison? The Hall of Forgotten Names:
Thousands of names carved into walls.
Reading them aloud causes spectral figures to appear.
Most are harmless.
Three become Snow Wraiths.
Meh. This borders on pretension. It’s the fucking idea for a room being sold as a room. Put in a fucking description. Look, I’m supportive of new ideas but also you gotta recognize when they don’t work and this don’t work. There’s nothing there! At some point we’re told “Eventually clues point toward old records beneath the inn.” What are these clues? Not present. Nothing. The DM gets to make them up. This is just some notes on a napkin about some major beats in a potential adventure. How about monsters? Here’s notes about an attack by Candle Guardians. Or,, maybe, Frostbound Remnants, both phrases are used: “Four Frostbound Remnants attack as soon as the door closes behind any person entering. “ What the fuck is a Candle Guardian?
This is a ridiculously low effort adventure. I’m sure some work was put in to it, but its like the designer has somehow never seen what an actual adventure is and what one needs to run an adventure. Like what the fuck a monster is.
This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru with a suggested price of $2. There is no preview. You gotta put in a preview man, so we can make an informed decision to purchase or not.
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/573268/the-night-of-falling-snow?1892600