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This is a two level cave system housing jerlamain. It is a good example of a mediocre OSR module.

Bob the Sage is looking for a magic sword. He sends the party to investigate some caves in the mountains.

That’s the extent of the hook. Ok, so, the sages name is actually the more pretentious sounding Alexar, otherwise the hook is presented faithfully. I’m usually a fan of terseness, however Bland is never in style. The background and introduction is suitably brief, coming in at only one page with almost half of that being a rumor table. I wish that one page was a little more interesting. The rumor table could have been an excellent opportunity for building up the caves, the mites that live in them, and the stranger in charge. Instead we get: the strange that passed through the village ten years ago was not of this world. Ahhh, come on! How about mentioning some of the atrocities he committed, or some bizarre behavior? Both of those would have added to the villains reputation and gotten the parties juices flowing. There’s no wilderness adventure on the way to the caves, but there is a very small, and lame, wandering monster table for the wilderness. Kobolds, goblins, wolves, giant spiders, giant ants and stirge. The DM is advised to roll once on the journey to the caves. The monster selection is uninspiring and lends nothing to the adventure and there are no stats provided. It’s pretty much just wasted space.

The adventure takes place in a cave with two levels with about 28 rooms between the two levels. Level one is a trident shape; three different linear maps connected at the beginning. Level two has rooms and corridors surrounding a large underground lake. These are not the type of maps I like seeing. The module is supposed to be an exploration to find a sword, but the maps only lend themselves to a grind, especially level 1. The encounters proper tend toward the verbose side. For example, room 0 of this module:

A twenty foot deep crack in the mountains, with no hand holds or foot holds, drops straight down in to a dark cavern. Torches dropped or lowered in to the crack reveal a passage leading to the south, though no other information is available without dropping down in to the crack. It is best of the characters use ropes to climb slowly down the crack, though the rash among the group may elect to leap down in to the cavern below (suffering normal falling damage.)

That’s a large paragraph that adds almost nothing to the adventure. It does convey the entrance is a cavern pit, but thats it. How about “Sinkhole entrance. 20′ deep.”? There we go: not only does that convey the same information but it actually provides more; now we know how much falling damage to apply. Hmmm, I also usually complain about being evocative, so how about: “Gloomy sinkhole entrance, 20′ deep, located in a misty dell.” Ta Da! Don’t take this as me singling out this room or this product, quite a few modern products do this, which is what I mean when I reference a module or entry as being overly verbose. Encounter keys need to be terse enough to scan quickly, yet convey JUST enough information to get the DM started on the room.

With a two exceptions, the module doesn’t really have anything interesting in it. The new monsters are “Hobgoblin” and “Kobold.” New monsters are supposed to be wonderful and exciting and fill a party full of dread because they don’t know their abilities. “Does not appear in OSRIC document” does not mean it qualifies as a new monster. I wish more folks used bizarre new creations of their own. There are a couple of kobolds, armed to the teeth with magic swords, and some hobgoblins, along with the main bad guy, a ‘new monster’ version of a Gith. The last new monster is a Mite, which appears to be a Jerlamain.

Therein lies the one interesting feature. The wandering monsters on level 1 are all jerlamain, who retreat after one of their number is killed. Those that retreat add their numbers to the NEXT wandering monster encounter. This is a pretty good way to simulate an increasingly large number of monster attacks on the party. The defeated foe gathers more of their number and hit the party again. The party better hit them hard or they are going to have some serious troubles on their plates! The module also contains a great number of dead adventurers. I like that since it adds a bit of foreshadowing to the adventure and gives the caves a sense of history. If these dead folks were elaborated upon in the background/rumors then it would have added to sense of discovery and history of the caves.

A desert wilderness adventure with a small dungeon and vengeance filled villain. A little work could turn it in to a very good adventure.

It’s a story as old as time itself: a servant girl sleeps with the sheik, get pregnant by him, and is then banished to the wastes for being a slut. Except, in D&Dlandia she has gypsy blood, makes a pact with a demon, and turns in to a vengeance spirit that lays waste to the surrounding countryside for well on 300 years now.

The backstory is longer than I would have liked, however it gets an A for effort anyway … The demon has taken over the fetus of the pregnant servant girl, and his fate is now tied to hers. The servant girl/demons rampages go on for 9 months before she lies dormant for awhile, and she eats the uteruses from her female victims but leaving them alive, otherwise killing all others. There’s also a demononess working to free her demon lover from the fetus. To quote Stan Marsh: “Dude, this is pretty fucked up right here.” I Approve! EVen if you don’t, it’s better than killing the spiders in some old ladies cellars.

The adventure is set in and around a wasteland/desert environment. There are extensive rules for dehydration, including the amount of water needed by the party and their animals, how much water spells can create, and the impact of dehydration on characters. There are also extensive rules for heat, including temperature variations during the day and how this impacts characters in various types of armor. There is some off-handed mention of sandstorms and the like. I would have preferred MORE sandstorm and physical environmental issues. The heat and water issues feel more like accounting to me … and just to be clear I do not enjoy accounting, especially while I’m trying to have fun.

The party is going to travel through the desert on some caravan routes, trying to figure out what is going on. The desert is about 240 miles wide and 350 miles long, so, pretty damn large. The wandering monster tables are mostly animals, which I approve of, I just wish they were a little more interesting. Essentially the party will wander around the desert, visiting an oasis or two and some ruins covered in sand. Once they’ve proven themselves worthy the demononess will show up, in disguise, and tell the party what to do, They need to go get a sword, kill a certain special giant scorpion to get it’s blood, coat the sword with blood, then go kill the servant girl/demon. Fetch Quest! This smacks of plot, but only just barely so. The core issue seems to be the demononess relaying the information after the party proves itself. That’s not nearly the best solution to conveying the needed information. I wish it had been better handled.

Most of the encounters are rough. A giant golem with the powers of a rust monster. A group of between 100 and 300 scorpions of various sizes, mountains of undead flowing from a well. I like these.  They present little set pieces for the party to play with. Hopefully the party is a smart one and isn’t going to wade in to an encounter with the scorpion king without some recon work first. That should reveal the VERY large number of giant scorpions. This should trigger some creative play from the party, which is one of the things I’m really for a module to enable. This sort of thing is carried over to the two caves complexes, to a certain extent, which will be major focuses of the adventurers. They are not large, six keys in one and 18 in another, but they show hints of greatness. Just getting to them will be hard; they are on a sheer cliff face the party will need to find a way to reach. One complex has a huge chasm that separates the chambers from each other. Overall though the encounters in the caves are not as interesting. Wilderness encounters, good ones anyway, can be very interesting because of the large number of ways a party can explore them. The enclosed space of a cavern or dungeon allows for less of this freedom, which is one of the reason I like weird and strange things in my dungeon. Those weird and strange things keep the party thinking creatively and keep them in exploration mode, albeit a different type of exploration. Too many of the encounters in the caves are of just another room filled with a beastie.

With a little work this could be a very nice adventure indeed. I would probably beef up the rumors of the main villain play up the uterus-eating thing. Ok, so the module doesn’t actually SAY she does that, but it’s heavily implied. The sort of foreshadowing should really get the party shaking, especially if it’s reinforced through a couple of corpse encounters in the desert. I would probably also beef up the cave systems a bit, maybe through a mashup with module AA#15: Stonesky Delve, or something similar. Those two changes, one minor and one less so, would turn this in a VERY nice adventure.

This is an adventure framework using a Runquest clone system. It has that Runequest feel, of mystic bronze-age fantasy, but is quite a barebones product.

It was a simple mission from the sage: gather some wood from a holy tree in the Whispering Wood. But dreams turn in to reality as the characters explore the mysterious sylvan wood. What evil lurks in the mysterious tombs of this majestic wood?

This adventure module is for the GORE system, a retro-clone of BASIC/Runequest. It involves the characters exploring an ancient wood and almost certainly getting caught up in the conflict within. The wood is about 40 miles wide and 20 miles deep. There are a variety of trail and roads that pass through it, as well as a small river that pools in a lake in the middle of the wood. There is no wandering monster table, but rather a huge boar that roams the woods that the party could encounter. Ol’ Yellowtusk is an interesting idea, but since that’s where the wandering monsters stop … well, I like more variety.

The woods have two notable features. The first is the lake in the middle. Being magical, characters looking in to the lake could imagine something wonderful and jump in and try to join it. Or at night they could imagine something terrible in the lake and jump in and try to fight it. That’s truly the extent of the lake. There’s an island in the middle that’s left to the DM to expand. There’s also a small ridge line near the lake with a bridge that is probably being watched by the badgermen, one of the forests two primary factions. That’s it, nothing more than “probably being watched.”

The two factions in the forest are both very deadly. The first consists of three fairy spirits who do mystic combat with the party who drain MP’s night, and then charm/control the characters during the day. It’s going to be rough to defend against; they are not pushovers. This faction wants the idols of the other faction destroyed and will command the party to do so if they take control of the characters. The other faction is a large tribe (24+)  of badgermen who like to perform live sacrifices once a month. Both groups are essentially immediately and always hostile to the party. The badgermen have a small  16 room temple complex near their lair that they’ve taken over. The temple complex has more than a few very nasty encounters and a couple of tricks in it: a golem that can’t leave it’s room. pools of slime, puzzle rooms, and so on.

Overall, this is just an adventure framework. Two small faction descriptions, without maps, and a small temple complex are not enough to sustain adventure right out of the box. If the GM were willing to put in some significant work  then something more workable can be obtained, but then again that’s true for almost every product. I was disappointed in factions. By both being hostile it gives the party nothing to work with. There’s no Fistful of Dollars available, just a combat with both groups.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/25569/The-Secret-of-Whispering-Wood?affiliate_id=1892600

An old pirate lair in sea saves. The map design, while making sense, is not very interesting, and there’s not enough strange to explore. The detail comes in all the wrong places. It’s a stocking exercise, similar to B1.

Arrrrrrr! Pirates! Treasure! Ghosts! Curses! All this and more awaits as you explore the rumors of The Pearl of Pirates’ Cove.

This module is arranged much in the same way that B1 – In Search of the Unknown was. Each chamber in a group of sea caves has a short description followed by a blank space to write in a monster and a treasure. A table in the back of the booklet provides a list of monsters and treasures for the aspiring DM to populate the rooms with. 15 treasures and 20 monsters are provided to populate the 39 rooms of the sea caves. But … I get ahead of myself.

The module starts with a two full  pages of background and introductions. The background in particular, at a full page, is a little longer than I would have liked to have seen. This being a sort of introductory work, a full page is given on stocking the dungeon with treasures and monsters, along with a few words of advice, such as noting that there are more rooms than monsters and treasures … on purpose. Not every room should have a monster, not every treasure should be guarded, and there should be a lot of nothing in dungeons, so I heartily approve. There’s a small ten entry rumor table, which I always appreciate seeing in a module, and the rumors are better than most. There’s a lot of half-truthes and a few truly useful entries.

The dungeon centers around a group of sea caves in a cove, once the abode of the dread pirate Sally Golightly. Like I said, there’s an longish backstory there …   The sea caves are a chore just to get to; the party will need to rope down from above or climb up from boats below. That’s very nice. It presents a nice challenge to even get to the caves, especially for a low-level party, and provides a reason why they still have not been looted. There are a couple of false cave complexes as well, one of four chambers and one of seven chambers, which should provide a note note of realism … not all dungeons have bright neon welcome signs pointing to the doors. The pirates caves on the upper level have a design that resembles a long corridor with chambers/rooms/doors branching off of it, with a couple of chambers having a second exit. The lower level, where the loot is hidden, is a linear affair of the ‘run the gauntlet’ type: room after room of traps & encounters until you reach the treasure chamber. That makes sense, even though it’s not the design looping and extensive map design I’m usually looking for. There’s a small wandering monster table of six entries which consist of vermin and animals. I like those types of encounters on a wandering table, however a certain Ghost, that of a pirate, is missing from it, which detracts a bit.

The various encounters are on the bland side. The rooms of the upper chambers especially so. Each room tends to be described by what use the pirates had for it and what went on in the room, sometimes with a suggestion of what sort of monster could be placed. “There are many nests apparent” and so on. This is, IMHO, the wrong way to describe a room. I don’t care about the normal contents of the bedroom, even _I_ can make that up. I want new, unusual, strange, and weird to be described. The upper chambers have nothing interesting going on. Nothing strange, unusual, or weird at all. The linear lower chambers are more interesting. A log over a rushing stream. A giant stone face with hollow eyes, several traps, from pits to a homage to the first sequence of the first Indiana Jones movie. I’m a sucker for giant rolling stones. There is a chessboard puzzle in the lower halls, which seems out of place. I would expect to see that in some kind of funhouse dungeon and not in something that is attempting to se a bit more serious. It is, however, a classic puzzle type.

The existence of the lower halls, and the traps, are alluded to in the upper caves by clues that party can find. I like that; the players are rewarded for exploring. I seem to recall that B1 had several rooms already populated by monsters & treasures, as an example for the DM prior to the DM stocking the rest of the dungeon. This module lacks that and could use it if it were aiming to be an introductory product.

A Pathfinder module that attempts to invoke an old school Sword & Sorcery feel. The kick ass cover and name are a bit let down by the contents.

What’s this … a Pathfinder module review?! Indeed gentle readers, but not just any old module …  a Xoth.Net module. These folks have a reputation, from this product and the Bride of the Spider-God book, for publishing old school adventures. Let’s see, shall we? It’s going to help if you imagine those cities and towns from the first Arnold Conan movie while reading the review.

This adventure has an egypt-like setting and centers around the attempts of a beast cult to bring their fallen religion back to the forefront by turning a group of their followers in to beast-men. This effort is being led by a group that has infiltrated the palace.

The module has a bit of a non-standard organization. It describes four separate areas and then describes how those areas can be used to run an adventure. This particular style tends to pop up most often in city adventures: you get the city described and then you get some plots with advice on running them in the city. This tends to create a very open-ended type of adventure and encourages sandbox-like play, which also means, of course, that the DM needs to put in no small amount of effort to flesh things out.

The first section described is the hook. While traveling the players run in to a slave caravan with some beautiful, and scantily clad, female slaves in tow. One of the slaves signals the characters to rescue her, with the implication that the party fight the caravan. This immediately triggered my anti-plot defense system. What if they don’t rescue her? They can’t buy her from the caravan? etc. My fears were largely unfounded though for in the rear of the module there is that nice little section on how to run the adventure. It goes in to a small amount of detail on how to proceed if the party ignores her; essentially reintroducing the adventure in the next city through slaver raids, rumors, and the like. This was a nice surprise; after expecting a railroad I instead found a helpful bus & taxi guide for day trips and further excursions.

The second section is an extremely brief description of the city the adventure takes place in. Seven locations in two pages is not much. Essentially it’s a brief description of the gates, the barracks, and the faceless sphinx … which none of the locals will talk about.

The third section is a description of the royal palace. The party will end up here either quickly if they rescued the slave girl, or slowly if they took the bus & taxi route. The king is old & tired, the advisors are corrupt and plotting, and the party gets to stay as ‘guests’ of the palace. During this stay the party should get a chance to interact with the various NPC’s in the palace and perhaps stumble upon the secret tunnels, as they explore or try to escape. The palace has about 40 or so keyed entries, but that’s not as important as the NPC’s. These sorts of things live or die by the NPC’s personalities, and these just don’t cut it. There’s not enough going on beyond the main plot to sustain things. Reference is made to the various courtiers being held in check by the subtle influences of the core villains, but we get no details of those those courtiers. This would have added an element of factions that could have provided quite a bit more role-playing opportunity. There are a couple of other notable things. First, there’s an absolutely wonderful table that describes what the courtier is up to in the courtiers lounge, if one is present. “Sleeping with jewelry on a nearby table”, “Beating a slave”, ” Counting money”, “make love to a female (75%) or male (25%) servant”, “Being blackmailed”, and so on. That kind of detail is GREAT and screams both ‘old school’ and ‘massive opportunity for roleplaying fun.’ Second, it displays the travesty that the thief class introduced in the Greyhawk supplement. Yes, that means skills. For example: If you make a DC 17 check in any Knowledge check then the Scribe regards you as an intellectual and will be friendly to you. GAH! ABOMINATION! ABOMINATION! I suppose roleplaying it out would be too much to ask? Then again, this IS a Pathfinder module, and that IS a part of the modern game. But it’s not old school, not in my mind.

The final section describes the cultist tunnels, entered through the Palace or the Sphinx. The map is small, with only 15 rooms, but it’s good for it’s size. About half the rooms have a second entrance, so it’s a bit of a looping map design, especially for it’s size. This is great since it allows the party to bypass some areas, set up ambushes, and be ambushed. There is not enough weirdness in it for my tastes, but there is a well done statue trap and one nice environmental issue to deal with. Otherwise it’s a bunch of mostly empty rooms with not much going on in them.

There’s a page that follows the offers advice on how to use the areas to run the adventure. I already went through the hook section advice that given, however there’s a lot of good, and terse, advice on how to run the adventure in the palace and how to run the climax of the adventure, a human sacrifice in the tunnel section. What’s missing here is a general timeline of events. There IS some sense conveyed in this last advice section, that there are events transpiring outside the involvement of the PC’s, however it could be much stronger.

So, it is old school? Maybe. 🙂 There’s a definite Swords & Serpent-men feel, it’s open-ended to a very large degree, and it has a random courtier activity table with a halfway decent, though small, tunnels map. It also has skill checks, standard magic items, and not much for the PC’s to poke/play with, like pools/statues. Given the title it was bit too bland in the atmosphere department. It tries for Swords & Sorcery, but need more cowbell to actually get there. It’s certainly not bad, but will take a lot of work to get a good run out of it. It does have a pretty cool cover though. 🙂

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/114508/Legend-Song-of-the-BeastGods?affiliate_id=1892600

This module most closely resembles a small wilderness area adventure with significant opportunity for exploration underwater. As a framework, its generally missing the detail that accompanies a location-based encounter, and further work by the DM to expand it will probably be needed.

Legends and rumors whisper that somewhere, many days from the coast, lies a sunken city. Who built it and why are a mystery. The rumors conflict with each other, but all agree that a vast amount of wealth awaits under the waters for those bold enough to claim it!

This is a follow on adventure to module X1 – The Isle of Dread. Like that module this one involves a journey to a group of islands in search of treasure. The Kopra make an appearance as well, further tying the two modules together. Dread focused quite a bit on the journey to the island and then the exploration of the interior. This module glosses over the journey, and the island exploration portions are much smaller. It’s quite likely that the party will spend a significant amount of time underwater, and there are some rule clarifications to help the DM deal with that. There’s also an overly-long backstory.

The hook here is quite light, and rubs me a bit raw. It starts with rumors in a bar and an old man offering information. It also involves each character rolling the dice with the old man and almost certainly (14 chances out of 18) gaining a permanent boon to an attribute or the like. While I like that sort of mechanism in a dungeon I certainly don’t like it in the introduction. In the dungeon it feels like a reward for exploration and taking chances, like drinking from a magical pool. In the introduction it feels arbitrary and unearned. There are no details for the journey to the island, the DM being encouraged to consult the Expert rules if they want to play that portion out.

The primary adventure is played out on a sunken plateau with three mountain peaks/islands poking up, creating a triangle like area between them. The area in and around the peaks is quite shallow, particularly during low tide, from 2-4 feet. There are a variety of statues in the low-tide region as well, along with some geysers that can erupt. The geysers provide a small environmental hazard however the status play no part. The islands have some very small ruins on them and there are two Kopru caverns on them. The Kopru caverns greatly resemble those in Isle of Dread in form: terraces, mud pits, etc. The only wandering creatures will be giant sea life: crabs, barracuda, sharks, stingrays, eels, snakes, etc.

The set encounters generally involve fantastic sea life: hydras, an octopus, squid, sea dragon, etc. There are two or three potentially friendly encounters as well, at least one of which should provide some clues to the PC’s of the whereabouts of the sunken city (the second Kopru cavern.) The encounters are generally straight forward, with one or two showing the seeds of something interesting: mud-pits with creatures lurking in the bottom, statues with curses, etc. All in all though, the encounters are generally not greatly evocative or interesting. There are more than a few non-standard magic-items. These don’t fall in to the weird/unusual category, but they are are more than standard book items. A sword with a larger bonus to certain sea creature, a variety of rings with minor effects, etc. The most interesting is probably a magical helm of underwater action/breathing. This BEGS for weirding things up, but the opportunity is lost. The sunken city is largely not described and in ruins, with little detail provided.

Tales of a tropical paradise! Beautiful native women! Mountain full of precious stones! Rumors of being torn limb from limb by bestial guardians are but a minor worry when the rewards are so great!

This is an OD&D module and appears to be a designed for introducing new players to OD&D play. As such there’s a four page section at the beginning which describes OD&D to the players. It begins with “You are about to take a tip back in time. The machine that is going to allow this is your own mind and ability to imagine.” It then goes through something similar to describe the three core classes, with another similar section for the DM. The DM section does focus on the mechanically different systems in the Little Brown Books, as compared to newer games, where ‘new’ is define as everything that came later, including the Greyhawk supplement. This goes so far as to suggest the module NOT be adapted to other rules sets, in order to preserve the LBB experience. Or, rather, the authors LBB experiences …

The background and introduction are about a page long. This is right at the edge of what I prefer, and in fact it might be about right given the larger font used. The starting section is brief, noting that the players journeyed to the isle by boat, were rowed to shore, and dropped off by the crew. The section finishes up with a suggestive Betty Page-like beach illustration. This is the second time the author has included something suggestive in a product. I approved then and I approve now. There’s room for all types of art styles in an OSR product. I also thought the Book of Erotic Fantasy was quite tastefully and well done, so go figure. In any event, the 70’s are alive and well, thanks in part to the author.

What follows is a trip to a village of beautiful young women, with no male villagers present at all. Hmmm …. The party should pick up on the clues and after  talking get moving toward the Valley of the Bones and the titular Temple of the Ape. To get there they are going to have to run a gauntlet of wandering monsters. I count a minimum of a 46 hex journey, with a 33% change of a wandering creature in each hex. Wanderers include 1-2 trolls, 1-2 hydras, 1-2 wyvern or minotaurs. A cockatrice, basilisk, medusa, or 2-12 ghouls, among others. The table is suitably old school. The tables are SUPER deadly for a party of 1st-4th level characters. I generally approve of that, but there are SO many encounters likely that I’m not I’d run it as written. In all likelihood the party will meet 10 wanderers, and I don’t see a party surviving that, even if they choose to run away or hide each time. The replacement character boat ferry is going to have to be very strong, logistically. It should also be noted that a second village is located  on the way to the temple, one of young maidens, but it has no detail at all. It’s almost as if an entire section was accidentally left out.

The temple proper is a short twelve room affair. The map is interesting, aesthetically, however not in an exploratory fashion. It’s just too small to offer a full range of exploration options, with side hallways, ambush routes, and passes to cut people off at. There’s a magic pool or two for the players to drink from, and some new monsters, however otherwise the temple is pretty straightforward … with a lot of deadly opponents.

Is this a good example of LBB adventure? I started with Holmes in 79 so I don’t know. There are at least three elements here that seem to relate. First, the magic pools are a classic element of old style play. Exploring something that could kill you or give you a bonus is a class element. Secondly, encountering new creatures is a good example as well. In the beginning no one had yet memorized the monster manual so everything was new, and because of that every creature was scary. Third, the set up is a decent old school one. There is a certain bizarre nature to a tribe of beautiful native women, bettie page lookalikes, ‘protected’ by giant apes in a village without men. That sort of original thinking is something that I fondly remember from my early days, before dungeons and adventures became more standardized. It’s not a megadungeon, there are not non-standard magic items, the slime/ooze/vermin quotient is low for my tastes, and there’s not quite enough for the party to explore, all of which are qualities I attach to classic play style. It is, however, suitably different enough that I plan on keeping it and running it.

This is a small regional module that details a home base in the Ordan valley and five short adventurers in this borderlands area. A small wilderness map is provided, about 12 miles by 12 miles, along with a wandering monster table for the valley. It’s suitably old school, with a variety of encounters that will quickly overwhelm a low level party: Owlbear, werewolves as outliers with bandits, orcs, and kobolds being more common. I don’t like humanoids on my tables, I like my monsters to we doing something while wandering, and I like stats provided with my wanderers. This table strikes out on all three fronts and just comes of as bland. A word of advice to all publishers: everything in the module should contribute to it.

The home base is a small farming community in the valley, complete with fortified inn, temple, mage tower, and “druid” grove, where druid is defined as “cleric who likes animals and nature and cant turn undead anymore.” The mage buys magic items and trains. The temple provides healing and trains. The fighters in the inn provide training, etc. Most of this really just feels like a logistical exercise in providing for all that a party may need. As a home base the inn is mostly forgettable. There are a few NPC’s in it however most of them are rather bland. One of two of them show promise: a potentially murderous bar-maid who tries for revenge if the party wipes out the valley bandits, or a Baron Harkonin-like trade who puts a price on the bandits head with a bit extra if the killings are extra gruesome. Those two are really the standouts with most of the rest of the NPC’s not even coming close to their level of flavor text. I like strongly flavored NPCs with hooks, especially in a home base, and I wish there was more in this one.

The five adventurers are nothing too special. There’s some orcs camped out in an abandoned temple. There’s a bandit camp. There’s some trog caves. There’s a druid trying to get all of the above groups to attack the humans. Finally, there’s a forgotten tomb. Most of the areas have some leads to one or more of the others: letters from one party to another, maps in scroll tubes, etc. Each setting has about 15 or so keyed encounters. There’s not really much to distinguish the various encounter areas, other than to say they are generally a jumble of monsters with lots of animated statues and wood golems present. These are going to be tough adventurers for a 1st level party, but I like that. A few things rubbed me the wrong way. Doors in the tomb that can only be opened with a certain key and NOT a knock spell. That smacks of a computer RPG fetch quest, which I LOATHE. There are a couple of other issues related to known and unknown passwords, which are very difficult to discover at these levels. One of the maps, an old temple with orcs in it, has the beginnings of some decent maps. One of the levels has three separate areas that don’t connect, reached through different ways. That’s a good thing and should drive a party NUTS. There is some information provided on organized responses to incursions, which I appreciate.

This module could use more detail & customization. I’d like the magic items that appear to be more unque. There’s a single example, a magic sword that’s a mageslayer. I’d like to see more like that, and even more customization of the magic items than that. There’s not many weird things to poke around or play with; oh, there’s a corridor with some evil goo on it, however I’d have liked to see more in the way of weird and strange things, both environmental and things for the characters to play with, like pools, statues, etc. As it is many of the keyed locations in the same dungeon feel a bit disconnected from each other.

This is a small wilderness area adventure that can probably be completed in one session. It has several touches of whimsy and classic fantasy which I really enjoyed, although the core villain fell flat for me.

A river barge did not arrive as scheduled! The Baron had something on the barge that he wanted badly, so the party is sent to find out what happened and recover the box!

This is a small wilderness based adventure that could probably be played in a single session. I was more than a little thrown off by the background in this, much as I was in Jungle Ruins of Madaro-Shanti, by Frog God. In that case the module cover, a picture totally unrelated to the module, threw me for a loop and it took a LONG time for me to orient my self to the atmosphere. In this case the module background conjured forth some kind of mental image of a Mississippi river boat. THAT lead to magical economy thoughts, which I loathe, so I was very put off. I know it sounds silly, but there it is. Once I got that taste out of my mouth and started envisioning The African Queen, a P.O.S. boat, and small jungle trading posts, then I did a much better job of getting in the mood. I generally don’t care about art in products, however I must admit that it certainly does have it’s place in setting the mood or style, especially on the cover. Now that we all know I hate riverboats and it may have tainted this review, unjustly, let’s move on.

The maps is a pretty basic one of a river crossing. It fills an entire page with one inch equaling about 160′, or about 1,300′ by 1,700′ in total. Essentially, the east bank is forest on the north side and marsh on the south, split by a trail that leads to the river. The river is wide, has depth markings and a three small islands in the middle. The islands are connected by a marshy/waters/ low spot in the river. The west side of the bank has some hills. There are three wandering monster tables provided, a general one, one for the river, and one for the shoreline/bank. The author correctly notes that they are minimal. They are themed appropriately, but they have no detail and no stats. I like stats with my monsters, inline, and I like my wanderers to be doing something; looking for food, digging a new house, etc. The bank table does have a noble with a small backstory; that’s the sort of detail I’m looking for in a table. In addition, let’s beat the dead horse of ‘expectations’ once again. Buccaneers appear on the table. That word conjures up a certain image in my mind. “Dirty river bandits” conjures up a different image. There are a couple of supplemental maps for a small way station that appears on the island. It’s pretty straight-forward map of an inn, two stories and a basement, with it’s own vermin-filled wandering table. I don’t like to context shift. There are about 16 or so keyed wilderness encounters and another 16 or so in a small way station on the central island.

The encounters are rather straight-forward, with a few vignettes thrown in. There’s a series of four encounter areas that relate to a group of bugbears caught in the act. The creatures encountered contain a lot of wildlife with a few fantastic encounters thrown in. Those few contain the whimsy that I’m primarily looking for in module. Cyclops & Centaurs in love. Pegasi women (topless & hot!. I’ll let you decide where I come in on the “women in realistic armor” debate.) River hydra! A troll at a bridge-like thing! I love that kind of stuff. You know what I don’t love? Were-rats. I hate them. Maybe it’s just me, but it seems like they are COMPLETELY overused. Were-WOLVES on the other hand are underused. I’m sure there’s some cognitive zeitgeist that dictates when to use a wold and when to use a rat. There’s a wolf here, but it feels like a rat. Hmmm, maybe it’s something like treachery/hiding vs raw violence? There’s a decent little backstory integrated in to the inn encounters and several of the wilderness encounters and the party should be able to piece what happened together. It’s nicely integrated, subtle enough to not be a slap in the face but obvious enough to make catch even the densest and inattentive parties eye.

This is a nice little adventure, probably suitable for one night or convention slot. I like the heavy use of vermin and wildlife and very much enjoyed the whimsy/fantasy aspects. The core plot was ok, and it probably could have been enhanced by focusing on the violence, as opposed to the treachery/hiding aspects that are instead used. The magic items are pretty much all book items, and I like mine more unique, tending toward the weird.