Indie Game Friday: Super Stone Legacy

My RPG Review Ratings

So as I'm doing more reviews (not the Indie Game Friday), I've been refining my system more and more, but all the while I've been trying to avoid giving any proper number ratings in my various reviews. I don't intend to start now, but I have noticed that my reviews' conclusions generally fall into five categories, so I suppose they can generally be broken down into numeric values if someone absolutely has to have that sort of ranking. I personally don't find this too useful, as my categories tend to focus a lot on personal taste and target audience, but I figure I'd post these categories below for reference.

• Failure - The lowest category includes works with no, or almost no redeeming factors. These are games that are poorly put together, and even when the content can be made out, it is objectionable, nonsensical, or just plain bad. If it's a video game, it might barely run or not run at all. If it's a tabletop game it may be a total hack job, poorly edited, and barely coherent. You won't see me reviewing many of these at all, because at this level, it's entirely possible that the game in question may be too bad to even be funny.
• Not Recommended - These sorts of games are similar to Failures, but at least they may be considered proper games. Some may have a redeeming factor. The game may be poorly put together, but at least it is playable, or understandable. Some amount of concerted effort was put into a game like this, and sometimes games at this level may be amusing, even if only unintentionally. This is the first level where I may do some sort of review, likely played for laughs.
• Mediocre - At this level, a game is playable, and likely has little major technically wrong with it, but may just not be fun. If it's a tabletop system, it may be complex enough, or just boring enough to put off the flow of a game. If it's an adventure, it may be somewhat bland, and so forth. Again, these are likely not unintentionally amusing, but at the very least they can pass some time, although I wouldn't go out of my way to play them or acquire them. Sometimes I may say a mediocre game is worth checking out if the price is right. Some free games, for instance, are adequate time killers and worth taking a look at. Some may have done one particular thing quite well, and merit examination for at least that one thing.
• Limited Recommendation - This is a game that is well put together. It may have flaws, and it may appeal to a limited audience, but for that audience, I do recommend it. I will tend to put a caveat in place. For instance, 'this game is excellent for those fans of oldschool dungeon crawlers' or 'this game is worth picking up, but only if it is on sale'. Because people's tastes vary, this qualification applies to a lot of things that I review, and a number of excellent games may fall into this if I believe that they'll appeal mostly to one genre. If I believe a genre specific game is excellent enough to appeal even to those who aren't particularly interested in that genre, or might just convert people to seeing the good in it, then I'll probably bump it up to...
• Recommended - These are games that are either works of art in and of themselves, have cross genre appeal, are classics in the general 'rpg' industry, or have other serious merit. There may still be people who aren't going to enjoy them, but these products will likely be memorable some years, or even decades after release. That is not to say that these works are beyond critique, but their merits make it so even their flaws are easily overlooked.

I do hope that this helps for those who want to see the general categories I set things in. I should note that even if I do find flaws in a product, they can very well get into the Limited Recommendation or Recommended categories, if they are a fun or otherwise excellent experience. As I continue to refine my review process, I will try to be more clear about which categories things fall into.

Indie Game Friday: Crawl

RPG Crawler Reviews: Basic Fantasy Role playing Game

RPG Crawler Reviews: Tales From The Yawning Portal

A look at the new dungeon crawl compilation for D&D 5th edition. Yes, I get a bit nitpicky, and yes, I think I'm gonna take some hits for my criticisms, but I still love it.

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Indie Game Friday: Soda Dungeon

RPG Crawler Reviews: Dungeons of Dread (AD&D 1e)

Indie Game Friday: Battle Brothers

RPG Crawler Reviews: Lair of the White Wyvern

Indie Game Friday: rooMaze

D&D Retrospective 1 - Original Dungeons & Dragons White Box

Indie Game Friday: Guild of Dungeoneering

Indie Game Friday: Super Dungeon Tactics

New Season of Indie Game Friday

Finally getting around to starting a new season of Indie Game Friday with a review of Void Pyramid!

RPG Crawler Reviews: Tome of Beasts

My short video review of Tome of Beasts, from Kobold Press.

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Or as a pdf on RPG now [Affiliate Link]:
http://www.rpgnow.com/product/190499/Tome-of-Beasts-for-5th-Edition?affiliate_id=902296

Review - Volo's Guide to Monsters

New video review up for Volo's Guide to Monsters.

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Review: Low Fantasy Gaming

Hello, this is the RPG Crawler, and welcome to another oldschool game system review. This time I’m covering Low Fantasy Gaming, by Stephen Grodzicki, a system available as a free pdf from https://lowfantasygaming.com/ or as a softcover from lulu on demand printing for a paltry fee. The low fantasy gaming site does have links to adventures available through their $1 adventure framework patreon, so if you decide you like the system, be sure to return to their site to see if that’s of interest as well.

Now, onto the system itself. I will be using the freely available pdf for this review. The PDF is 184 pages, from cover to legal notice at the end, and fully bookmarked for easy navigation. It is done in a subdued color scheme with black and white art. Design follows a two column scheme throughout, with appropriate non-wrapping breaks for images and tables. And there are a lot of tables. The writing is closer to British English style than American English, though the distinction is never truly a problem, as it never verges far into territory where the linguistic differences are all that evident.

Indeed, the writing is quite solid and concise, with rules clearly explained without getting too pedantic, and where there is some ambiguity it is intentional, as this is supposed to be a relatively rules light system. We’ll see just how well it approaches that goal later on. An interesting bit to note is that many tables within the rules are simply guidelines or there for inspiration, and as such may have specific references that should be substituted on the fly. For instance, one of the entries on the random treasure tables is ‘Title deeds to Ironcliff Keep on the Isle of Abusi,’ which will clearly need to be altered to something more appropriate to a particular game master’s campaign. Aside from these references and inspirational entries, the core book doesn’t actually detail any settings, but rather presents a stand alone rule system.

The rules themselves use the Open Gaming License and incorporate many concepts, classes, monsters, spells and so forth that you would see in various retro clones, but this system is distinct from many of those clones. It does not use a straight d20 system. While combat uses a pretty standard d20 + bonuses vs. AC sort of set up, skill use and attribute score checks use something more akin to the old proficiency and attribute checks from Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, where you roll a d20 and try to get the listed attribute score or lower, perhaps with some modifications.

Low Fantasy gaming starts with a quick explanation of what Low Fantasy Gaming is, and in this ruleset’s case, that means adaptable rules, quick and dangerous combat, the idea that magic is rare and dangerous to use, and a focus on a relatively realistic world. This is done through a limit on character levels, with twelve being the maximum, a consolidation of the classes into just five, a readjustment of the ‘standard ability scores’ we’ve come to know from these adaptations, an adjustment of the combat system itself, and the existence of exploit mechanics to allow for truly impressive combat maneuvers.

Character creation goes through the usual steps of rolling attributes, selecting a class, picking some skills, but before you roll for starting gold you’re also expected to create a short background and roll for starting bonds with the rest of the party. While party bonds have little direct non-roleplaying effect on the game, backgrounds can be used to determine whether certain activities that aren’t covered under the core group of skills benefit as if they were actual skills. You’ll also note that you do not choose an alignment. Low Fantasy Gaming does not use an alignment system.

So the first step, after choosing a name, is to roll up attribute scores. Low Fantasy Gaming uses seven core attribute scores, plus Luck, Of the core seven scores you have Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution, then Intelligence, Perception, Willpower, and Charisma. The usual ‘wisdom’ having been replaced with Perception and Willpower. Using the core method, you start with an automatic 15, then roll 4d6, dropping the lowest, six times to get seven numbers, then assign them as you wish among the seven core attributes. There are a few alternate methods listed. The system uses a spread similar to 3rd edition and pathfinder for bonuses.

Characters also start with a Luck attribute, which starts at 10 + half the character’s level at the start of each adventure, then gradually decreases as their luck is tested. A luck check is done similarly to other attribute checks, where a d20 is rolled and modified for the situation, and if it is equal or lower than the luck score, it succeeds. However, succeeding on a luck check reduces the current luck score by one, although luck can be restored during a long rest or at the beginning of another adventure. The luck mechanic replaces saving throws from other d20 systems, and a luck check might be modified by a particular attribute, for instance a trap may call for a dex based luck check, which applies any modifier the character has from the second ability to their luck score for the check.

Now I’ve seen luck mechanics similar to this in other games and I have to say that I kind of like the idea, since it does imply that a hero’s luck can be stretched only so far, which is actually a bit of a common theme in some sword and sorcery fiction.

Classes follow a similar theme to 5th edition classes actually, with each one gaining a number of abilities as  they level up. However, that level range is much smaller than most modern systems, with a level cap set at 12. The available classes are Barbarian, Bard, Fighter, Magic User, and Rogue, and they generally do what you’d expect them to do if you’re familiar with any sort of fantasy rpg. You should note the complete lack of clerics and similar priest classes, which seems to have been done for a number of reasons, not least of which is that, thematically, most ‘priests’ in low fantasy settings rely less on the blessings of a divinity and more on either raw muscle like any other warrior or on dark magical pacts, which fits the Magic User. Healing spells, such as they are, have been rolled into general Magic User spells.

There is also a lack of multiclassing rules, however each class gets among their other abilities, a set of ‘Unique Features’ at 3rd, 6th, 9th, and 12th level which can be used either to give the particular character an ability customized for their background and development, or to implement a bit of multiclassing by borrowing from other classes. This rule is optional and can be replaced with an attribute score increase instead, but I actually kind of really like it. It’s definitely more work on the GM’s side, but it allows for a fair degree of personalization, especially within the context of these rules, without inflating the game with masses of feats which all have to be carefully balanced to prevent exploitation. At least this way, if an ability doesn’t work out, the GM will be within their rights not to allow it again.

Skills operate on a simplified list that seems derived from the fifth edition one, with each skill having an associated attribute that it relies on. A character’s class determines how many skills they get, and training in a skill grants a +1 bonus to the attribute checks based on that skill, as well as access to a reroll pool. The reroll pool is a nice touch, with a character starting with 1 reroll pool die per level at the start of an adventure. During that adventure, if they fail a skill check or a luck check, they may use one of these die to reroll it, or in the case of a roll with advantage or disadvantage, reroll one of the dice. Yes, this system uses the 5th edition advantage and disadvantage rules. They work rather well and I have no complaints about that.

Moving on to Races, although the default presumption is that almost all characters will be human, there are rules included for dwarven and elven characters, in the event that the GM is using them. Are they balanced? Mmm, kind of? They aren’t terribly overpowered, and their weaknesses are glaring enough that I would still see them being relatively rare even in a game that used them.

Equipment follows a rather similar arrangement to a lot of osr games, but rather than listing prices for every little thing, most gear is broken down into rarities, and then each rarity level is given a random gold spread. For instance, each item under the ‘common equipment’ rarity costs 1d6 gp, while rare equipment costs 5d10 + 50 gp each. Almost everything except for weapons and armor (which are a constant value each) and truly expensive items such as vehicles and buildings, are treated in a similar manner. Even the truly expensive items simply list a ‘minimum cost’ rather than a hard number. It’s kind of neat, and adds an element of unpredictability in pricing.

So I’ve discussed the basic skill and attribute use rules, and the basics of combat are very similar, with heavy inspiration from fifth edition, but one particular mechanic bears mentioning. Martial Exploits are divided into two categories, minor exploits such as disarming or dirty fighting and the like, and major exploits, such as impaling someone’s limb to a wall with a spear or crushing multiple foes together. These are really open ended, and use a variety of different checks, with basic attribute checks used for minor exploits, and luck checks after a successful attack roll used for major ones. It seems like it would make for a fair amount of variety in combat, without having to provide a minutia of minor rules for dozens of situations.

Injury is handled with a few special rules. Having half or less of your hit points results in the staggered condition, which can open a character up to different abilities, while being dead or not dead on falling to below 0 hit points is checked at the end of combat. A character is either ‘all dead’ or ‘mostly dead at the end of a combat, with ‘mostly dead’ characters likely having to roll on an injuries and setback table, which can result in long term or even permanent injury. This table is also used during special attack results from some weapons, or from exposure to some monsters’ attacks.

Characters can take a short rest or a long rest. Short rests take a few minutes, while long rests take a few days, and both are generally accomplished on longer adventures. During a short rest, a character can attempt to recover hit points, class abilities, or reroll dice. This is not automatic, and there are will checks involved to do so. Further, only three short rests can be taken each day. A long rest automatically grants the recovery of a number of different things, including total recovery of class abilities, reroll pool, one point of luck, other attribute points and hit points.

The magic system is interesting. Although the only spellcasting class is ‘Magic User’, items are built in such a way that there are ways for other classes to access spells. Which is a little odd, since the system is aiming for less magic overall, but it makes sense in a way. For one, the dangers inherent in magic use are very real, and at some point unavoidable. For another, there’s a certain literary history of warriors and rogues getting their hands on unknown devices, scrolls, and so forth, then running the risk of being overwhelmed by the dark powers they are untrained for.

All characters in this system can attempt to detect the presence of magic within 30’ in an inexact manner, just by making an intelligence or perception check to pick up on the weird way their own instincts react. But a more important aspect of magic use in this system is the Dark & Dangerous Magic chance. Every single time a spell is cast, or certain magic items are activated, the character rolls a d20, and on a 1, the spell works but with a Dark & Dangerous Magic effect. If the roll succeeds without a DDM effect, then subsequent spells increase the chance of a DDM effect by 1 each time. So it’s nearly inevitable that at some point a caster will trigger an effect, unless they don’t cast all that much. The counter resets when an effect is triggered or when an adventure is completed and a new one begins. Some spells and items don’t care about this chance, and just automatically trigger a DDM effect.

When a Dark & Dangerous Magic effect is triggered, The caster’s luck drops 1 point, and the caster has to roll on a big table with all kinds of weird and strange effects, some of which might very well have permanent impact! Some of them have good side effects, but even the good ones will mark a character as having played with forces beyond mortal control, and likely have serious roleplaying effects.

The spells themselves include a lot of simplified versions of the spells common to most osr style games, with the notable exception of things like resurrection, teleport, and falsehood detection. The spells also cap out at level 6 due to the overall character level cap of 12. There are 20 spells per level listed, with a few clerical healing type spells mixed in. Although the lack of ability to raise the dead means that character death is a real threat and a permanent thing, the existence of the remove injury spells do somewhat mitigate the ‘injury and setbacks’ that can accrue on characters over time.

The GM information section has some interesting snippets, with several optional rules including a chase system for running long distance chase scenes after combat, basic downtime suggestions, and a madness system that allows for long term effects from the stresses and horrors characters are likely to face. The level advancement systems given don’t rely so much on experience, but rather a de facto milestone system, where characters simply gain a level after each adventure, or gain one ability from a new level after each individual session. Not my favorite way of doing things, I must admit, but I guess it saves a lot of bookkeeping on the GM’s side. There are also basic rules for Morale and Reactions, in case a GM needs a little bit of randomization in what the monsters encountered do.

Monsters too follow a simplified format, similar to what one would expect of older editions. Hit dice are back to just d8s for every monster, attack bonus is based almost purely on the monster’s hit dice, though some aspects were borrowed from later editions. Some monster abilities have a recharge condition, for instance. There are various monster ‘types’ that grant abilities across all monsters of a particular type, for instance Undead or Lycanthropes, but there is also a monster type called ‘Boss Monster’, which is basically a template that can be applied to any creature to render it into a challenge for an entire party. I kind of like how it’s handled, though I’d have to see how it works in actual play.

Trap rules are mostly guidelines, with traps divided into two categories. There’s simple traps, such as your basic spring trap or trip wire, which can be detected and removed like traps might in any other game. Then there are ‘complex traps’ which are treated more like encounters and puzzles. This is another distinction I can appreciate, because there’s a hell of a lot of difference between finding and disarming a poison dart trap on a chest, and trying to deal with a rotating room with an active rolling boulder as it slowly fills with water. The latter should require some degree of teamwork and planning, more puzzle than trap, really.

The final point I want to talk about before getting into my overall thoughts on the system is the treasure section. Rather than a number of keyed treasure types, random treasure is divided into just two sections. ‘Carry Loot’ represents items that are carried on not one creature, but an entire group of creatures. It is a roll on a table that gives a wide range of relatively portable results, ranging from just a few coins to supplies, jewelry, and such.

Lair treasure is more straightforward. Each hit die level gives gradually more and more treasure, in the form of a possibility of a magic item, gold, or miscellaneous valuables. Magic items are where the game really begins to diverge from others of its sort. Though potions are largely the same as in other games, spell scrolls can actually be used by anyone, although with a significant chance of miscasting and triggering a dark and dangerous magic effect. Finally, there are the permanent items. They use an attunement rule similar to 5th edition, but other than that diverge sharply. Rather than having set magic items with set abilities, each magic item, be it weapon, armor, cloak, necklace, whatever, has a chance of discreet or obvious properties. Obvious properties are magical abilities of obvious effect. Things that cannot be ignored, like items that enlarge their user or shoot lightning. Discreet properties, the more common type, are things that aren’t immediately obvious to an observer. An item might be indestructible and confer upon its wielder some resistances, or grant them darkvision. Each magic item may have one of these abilities, regardless of the item type, and as the character levels up, the GM has the option to allow the item in question to gain more abilities. This option is designed to keep the number of items in check while still allowing for a variety of effects the character can count on. I’m not sure how well this may work, since it still ends up granting characters a variety of magical effects at the end of the day. Still, it’s an interesting concept, somewhat akin to weapons of legacy or something similar.

There are a few other rules, underwater combat, some basic city and wilderness exploration things with encounter table examples that can be worked into full tables, but these are pretty typical of other OSR games. So… what’s the takeaway of all this?

Low Fantasy Gaming, in my opinion, does what it sets out to do, and does it rather well at that. It makes for a game with a low to mid level of magic, yet doesn’t necessarily sacrifice character power. A character can still accomplish quite a lot with the abilities given to them, and feel like a real powerhouse, and I think that the risks associated with magic are just dangerous enough to limit overuse without making it a complete gamble to cast spells. I like the overall power cap as it were, with the lack of ‘flat bonus’ magic items and the hard cap at level 12. It seems that is about the range that the original versions of fantasy roleplaying games tended to start at, and for good reason.

The format is very nice and feels professional level, and the rules themselves are cohesive enough that it feels very consistent throughout. There are a few minor awkward sections in the rules, for instance there are some mentions of situational bonuses and penalties on certain actions similar to what you’d see in a 3rd edition derived game, and those might interact oddly with the concept of advantage and disadvantage, and the reroll pool itself, at least in terms of a purely mathematical perspective. Still, the system overall is easy enough in practice, and those minor quirks don’t detract overall.

So considering the system’s price tag of free, the quality of the writing and the production value of the PDF, the flexibility of the rules and the way it really does deliver on the premise of a low fantasy environment without sacrificing the fun of character advancement, I can strongly recommend taking a look at this for anyone who’s at all interested in that genre. It’s a little bit more complex than a lot of ‘rules light’ osr games might be, but it uses that slight bump up in detail to very good effect.

Honestly, I think I’d like to see some sort of expansion or secondary booklet that goes into stronghold building and mass combat, but that might be asking too much from the system. It seems like it’d work just fine without it. I'll leave it up for you to decide, links will be just below.

Get it from the site: 

http://lowfantasygaming.com/

Get it from Lulu:

http://www.lulu.com/shop/stephen-j-grodzicki/low-fantasy-gaming/paperback/product-22909144.html

Support Low Fantasy Gaming on Patreon:

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Review - Storm King's Thunder

Storm King’s Thunder Wizards of the Coast
Released: Sept 6, 2016
List Price: $49.95 Product Page [Affiliate Link]: http://amzn.to/2dC2UXL

Hello, this is the RPG Crawler and welcome to another product review. This time I’ll be covering the Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition adventure ‘Storm King’s Thunder’. Released in late August, or early September for those who ordered it from places like Amazon, it is, as of this post, the latest of Wizards of the Coast’s adventure arcs, and actually only the second one I’ve purchased and read through, so please forgive the fact that, among the WotC stuff, I only really have the Curse of Strahd campaign to compare it to. The style of these large scale adventures means that they don’t quite line up with other products outside of the WotC range. This can be a little problematic in terms of contrasting elements with other existing products, but I’m going to give it a try.

So what is Storm King’s Thunder? I mean beyond the obvious answer of ‘An Adventure’. Storm King’s Thunder is a sweeping epic involving the player characters’ attempt to stave off a war between the Giants and the smaller races. It covers vast swaths of the Savage Frontier, an area of Faerun that has been covered in many past adventures, and includes some familiar cities. Indeed, although this adventure is stand alone, having access to prior adventures set on faerun, the sword coast adventurer’s guide, and other similar products can very much help a DM flesh out some of the more open areas of this adventure’s structure.

So let’s start with the technical details. Storm King’s Thunder is a hardcover with a suggested list price of $49.95, clocking in at 256 pages. It is designed to take characters from level 1 to slightly beyond level 10, and may be entered at 1st level, 5th level, or beyond depending on where in the adventure one picks up. It has suggested access points for parties that have started in one of the other forgotten realms adventures, and who wish to cross over into this one instead. Build quality is on par with other wotc 5th edition hardcovers I’ve purchased, perhaps a little better, in terms of how it’s held up to my initial handling during the reading for this review. The pages are the typical full colour spreads of other hardcovers in the adventure series, and the art is as wonderful as we’ve come to expect from the majority of the 5th edition products, although i will admit that the cover illustration, by Tyler Jacobson, didn’t really strike me as quite as evocative of the feel of the adventure as prior 5e adventure covers have been. That could be attributed to the complexity of the adventure over all, however.

As far as the writing goes, in terms of general quality, it’s adequate. One of my criticisms of the Curse of Strahd was that the mix of old and new sections sometimes made for inconsistent writing, and some of the segments were very sub par. In Storm King’s Thunder, I have to say that after reading it, it feels more cohesive as an adventure, despite the breadth of the content and the variations between the different adventure paths. While I wouldn’t qualify it as one of the all time greats by any stretch, I was rather pleased with the story pacing, the detail, and the descriptions throughout, as well as the variety of scenarios presented.

When I initially heard about this adventure, I was worried that the premise: a war between the giants and the rest of civilization, would make for some rather repetitive play. That is not the case at all, and there are a good mix of town sieges, dungeon crawls, general hack and slash, investigations, overland travel, and even a segment of courtly intrigue in the palace of the Storm Giants. The epic scope of the adventure really does give room for a number of play types. I did notice a handful of editorial errors, including one rather dramatic omission of an associated NPC’s name in the writeup of another NPC. I honestly would have to reread through the chapter to see if the nameless NPC referred to was even included, because I didn’t catch it on my first read through. Overall, however, there’s nothing that really detracts from enjoyment or ease of running the adventure.

Mechanically, character advancement is on a milestone basis, and while that’s not generally my favorite way of doing things, I can understand why it was followed in this particular adventure. Many times, the party will be facing challenges that may not necessarily need to be resolved through direct combat, often they will be accompanied by NPCs of greater or lesser ability, and even when there isn’t the trouble of NPCs, it’s possible that the characters may be facing large numbers of what might be called ‘xp rich’ targets. All of this kind of conspires to make it difficult for standard experience tracks to keep an even keel through the adventure. Thus the milestone method will probably make for a more satisfying progression for most groups. Similarly, giants tend to be ‘treasure rich’, and there are many times in the aventure where, rather than giving out specific items, the DM is expected to either select a fair number or roll on the random treasure tables to determine magic items in a particular hoard. Many giants often carry bags, which have additional treasure, both monetary and magical, which can quickly make a thrifty adventuring party extremely rich. I for one am glad that 5th edition doesn’t have, strictly speaking, the same magic item economy of some other recent editions, but I could still see adventurers ending up very rich indeed after all is said and done in this book.

Finally, let’s take a quick look at the adventure’s general structure. Keep in mind this is just an overview, I’ll get into the specific details afterward. The adventure starts with Annam the All-Father, head of the giant gods, shattering the Ordning that keeps all the various giant types in their place, as a reaction to the events described in the Rise of Tiamat series of adventures, which makes this not necessarily a direct sequel to said series, but definitely a related chain of events. Oddly enough, a lot about the reasoning behind the shattering of the Ordning and its eventual restoration is left deliberately vague, so that no matter how the campaign turns out, it can be restored, or remain broken… however the DM wants. Supposedly Annam was inspired by the idea that the dragons had nearly brought one of their gods into the mortal realms, and by comparison the Giants looked kind of complacent, but as I said, things beyond that are rather vague, so I like to picture it as Annam basically throwing a fit and flipping the table without any care for where the pieces land. Real mature, Annam. Honestly though, I had to look up to make sure that Annam was an actual god. And yes, yes he is. I checked Monster Mythology from 2nd edition days and he’s in there, so I guess he goes way way way back.

Anyway, back to the plot. With the Ordning sundered, suddenly giants everywhere all automatically realize that the Ordning is broke, that they don’t have to do what their superiors tell them to do, but they’re given no real indication of how to make a new Ordning and claim their new place in life. So they start going about their best guesses. Some, like the Cloud Giants and such, make great plans, while others like the Hill Giants are kinda stupid, and their plans reflect that. During this all, some mysterious new giant present at the Storm King’s court causes trouble. Someone assassinates the Storm Queen Neri, it looks like the humans have done it, The Storm King Hekaton loses his temper, goes to hunt down her killers, disappears, and leaves his youngest daughter and her sisters to vie for the throne in his absence. So you’ve got trouble in the court of the most powerful giants at the same time these lesser lords are starting to go about their own plans to claim a new place, and throughout it all the humans and demihumans are just ‘in the way’ or actively being attacked. Sucks to be small, right?

So from here on, we’ll go to a very general structure, since this is the part where serious spoilers might detract from the enjoyment of the adventure. In the first chapter, characters are brought up to level 5 through a choice of routes. They start facing the aftermath of a giant attack on the village of Nightstone, and from there are left free to travel to one of three other locations: Bryn Shander of Icewind Dale fame, Goldenfields, or Triboar. This kind of choice will happen again a few times through this adventure, making the product seem larger than it really is, while providing some solid replayability if the same DM wants to run it by the same group a few times. Regardless, in each of the three locations, they are faced with giants attacking a settlement, the number and quality varying depending on type, and are given several npcs to partially control during the town siege and its immediate aftermath. If said NPCs survive, each one then gives optional quests to the party, and these quests are WIDELY scattered across the savage frontier. It’s basically a reason to stir the characters into motion and send them chasing back and forth across the entirety of the savage frontier.

And this is where the adventure goes into sandbox territory. There’s many, many side quests and locations to visit, and the characters are expected to piece together the fact that all this stuff is going down with the giants, and if they don’t have the whole story by the end of this wandering ‘filler’ time, they meet a giant adventurer named Harshnag, who as much as tells them that they need to visit a giant temple, and escorts them to it. At this point it just struck me as a ‘power leveling move’ since this giant is mostly around to help with the fact that the characters are still seriously underpowered to fight giants at this point, but are expected to fight giants. So they mostly play the support team against big enemies, while Harshnag sits back and takes a breather when he thinks the adventurers can handle it themselves. And yeah, if I sound critical of that design, it’s because it strikes me as a somewhat ill advised design. It’s like giving the party a task to save the world and ‘Oh, by the way, Drizzt Do’urden’s gonna accompany you. Hope you don’t mind! He’ll try not to killsteal too much.’ How about not having a frost giant with magic armor and weapons show up in the first place? Or if he does, maybe have him accompany them for only a very, very short stint. Oh, true, it says that he accompanies them to the temple and that’s it, but come on! They could be halfway across the savage frontier. We could be talking about weeks worth of encounters here with this frost giant on hand. And he’ll be either be an ass by dominating the combat, or an ass by NOT doing it. I mean what’s he going to do, sit back and be like ‘nah, you guys got this’. Or ‘here, let me help you, little man’. I mean either way, it’s condescending as hell.

But anyway, Harshnag can be played well and still let the characters get their day in the sun, so to speak. He helps them enter this abandoned temple to Annam where they discover that they need to fetch an item from one of the evil giant lords. And then a damn dragon attacks. And because the dragon way outlevels the group at this point, he’s supposed to have this epic set piece battle with Harshnag while the characters escape. But honestly if you have a giant as a tank, more than a few groups are going to want to stick around and try to take the dragon on. So it actually goes into a lot of detail as to just how to make the adventurers want to leave, and ends with instructions on how to basically load them up on the train to the next destination if all else fails.

And that… is honestly the crux of my main problem with the adventure. There’s so much choice throughout it all, but because of this desire to throw a giant into it that the players can interact with, you get not only some of the worst writing in the adventure, but also some of the most forced decisions in all of the pages, and what should be this cool epic feel is in serious danger of feeling like the DM is handholding the party throughout this entire section. It’s the weakest section of the book, but not unsalvageable. It does bear mentioning, though. After the characters are forcibly removed from the temple, one way or another, they are given a choice of not three but five different giant lords that they can go after. Which means that they hve to find said giant lord, travel to their lair, and then storm it. There’s several tidbits that can be gleaned thus far that can point them in the right direction, but by and large this is a continuation of the prior miniquest section, punctuated by a single rather dangerous dungeon crawl, where the party might well be facing several giants.

Fortunately by now they will have several options for traveling, beyond the basic spells that any party might get as they ascend through the middling levels, there’s the possibility that they can learn how to ride griffons, or even receive their own airship and crew. So there is some interesting content to uncover there. They only actually have to fight one of the giant lords, before coming up with this teleportation conch that takes them to the court of the Storm Giants. This is where the adventure turns into a mess of intrigue, as the party tries to convince the current storm queen to accept their help in the face of a hostile court, navigate the intrigues of the giant lords present, all while the storm queen’s sisters and the advisor plot against them. At this point there’s two ways the party can go. They can convince the storm queen to let them find her father, and then set forth on another investigation of the savage frontier, which culminates in a rescue of the storm king Hekaton from a prison ship, and Hekaton will not immediately recognize them as saviors, so it’s possible they may have to engage in some diplomacy in the middle of a pitched battle… on a boat. If they decide instead to expose the advisor’s manipulations, or after they rescue the storm king from his prison, the advisor turns out to be a dragon, and flies off to her lair, leaving the party to then track down and assault a dragon in their lair, with or without the help of some giants.

The ending fight is suitably epic, and there’s no guarantee the party will live to see the end of it. In fact, many of the fights throughout this adventure are pretty high risk, and I’m actually pleasantly surprised by that fact. It’s entirely possible to really botch things and up the difficulty immensely if the party isn’t careful. And it’s this aspect that really lends a sort of oldschool feel to quite a bit of this adventure. As much as I criticized the ‘Giant Adventurer’ section in the middle, the ending really does ramp up into the epic fights one would expect of a war with the giants, and I think that is more than enough to redeem the weak middle section. Another thing I like is the fact that entire sections of this adventure can be taken out of the adventure itself and used as stand alone modules in another campaign entirely. Each of the evil giant forts is well designed and fleshed out, and could make its own dungeon. It’s somewhat reminiscent of the old ‘G’ series of adventures from AD&D 1st edition without being a simple rehash of them, and I can appreciate that.

One other major criticism I have of this adventure, however, is in the way that it is laid out with the various choices. Because there are parallel paths in two major sections where the characters only need to complete one of them, it’s entirely possible that a party can get through the adventure and only see about half of the content in the book. Now yes, this nonlinearity does offer the feeling of choice to the players, as well as a certain degree of replayability. But it could also mean that the players reach the end, then feel like they’ve gone through an adventure only half the size as the one that’s obviously in the DM’s hands. Sure, they could run it again with a different path, or they could do as is suggested in the back and just go back to the prior giant forts and steamroller them with their new levels and gear. But by then that’s just playing mop up rather than going on to bigger and better things. Or you know, another adventure entirely. Further, while the adventure ends at around 10th, maybe a couple levels after, what are you reasonably going to do after you’ve fought so many giants and kicked a wyrm’s butt with the help of a giant army? Anything on the mortal plane is going to feel just a little bland at that point, and at this point the sheer power that’s in the party’s hands will make it a bit of a challenge for the DM to decide ‘where to go from here’.

 So there we have it. Decent writing, some pretty epic fights, marred mainly by an ‘NPC Hero Spotlight’ middle and the idea that a substantial bit of the content in the book won’t be used in any one playthrough. Is it worth purchasing? As I said, this is only the 2nd of the 5th edition adventures I’ve purchased, the first being Curse of Strahd because I was always a HUGE fan of Ravenloft. This one, I went into with no nostalgia goggles and looking at it as an entirely new product and I have to say that I, for one, was about as impressed with it as I was with the Curse of Strahd one. It certainly delivers on the epic premise, despite its flaws. But as for whether it’s worth it for your group? It’s going to depend a lot, quite frankly, on how well they can take being partially overshadowed by an NPC for at least a small part of the adventure. That’s the main part that I think will break some groups with low tolerance for such things. Everything else is pretty much gravy.

Review - Mezhdy Rek

Mezhdy Rek Joseph Cadotte Released: Aug 03, 2016
Price: $1.95 [PDF]
Product Page [Affiliate Link]: http://www.dmsguild.com/product/190160/Mezhdy-Rek?affiliate_id=902296

Hello, this is the RPG Crawler, and welcome to a quick review of Mezhdy Rek, by Joseph Cadotte. Mezhdy Rek is an independent, low-level adventure for Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition, available through the Dungeon Master’s Guild. I was sent a review copy of this particular product. However, it lists at only a $1.95 for the pdf currently, so we’ll see if meets that bar for quality. First, the technical details. The PDF is 57 pages, including a cover page, and the adventure itself is written for a group of characters of level 1-5, with enough variety in the content to be able to start and progress anywhere through that range.

The adventure site itself consists of a town, and there are 8 different main and mini quests included, at least three major factions to play against one another, opportunities for long term character investment in the town, and a scattering of statted NPCs and minor items.

The artwork within consists of flat line drawings done in a style reminiscent of oldschool adventure art, clean and crisp classic graph maps and a few full color versions of the town map itself. I want to say that it’s overall a bit better than I’d expect from a low budget third party production, but probably needs just a smidge more refinement before reaching that next tier of higher end releases. I feel like that’s going to be a recurring theme through this review. It’s way better than expected, the art is consistently produced and looks like it belongs in the same product, which is better than the usual patchwork you get in these first module type situations.

The maps do stand out a bit, and for instance might be best put through a filter to give them a similar feel to the line art, or at the very least have their key fonts adjusted to line up more clearly. As it stands, the maps are quite clear and legible, but could use a bit of polish. The layout is a pretty standard two column layout that flows around pictures, well done and consistent throughout. The writing quality is high, but is in dire need of a copy editor. I uncovered many usage and a few grammatical errors throughout, not enough to detract from the overall flow, but enough to be quite noticeable. Maybe it’s just the fact that I used to be a copy editor and tend to notice these things, at least in other people’s works.

Anyway, I normally wouldn’t note this quite so much, but when the quality of the writing otherwise is so high, and there’s clearly been so much time devoted to fleshing out the history of the town, the backstory its citizens and so forth, then I feel like glossing over this would be a disservice. Technically set in a little town in the Forgotten Realms, the adventure is generic enough to be moved into almost any standard fantasy campaign. And indeed, it might be a little too generic, because almost nothing in the adventure really ‘lines up’ from a history or locale perspective with the forgotten realms setting.

Oh, they give some suggestions as to where to put it, such as near Thay or Zakhara, which they call Al-Qadim. And that might work, but a lot of it sounds like the authors wrote the adventure, and then tried to shoehorn it into Faerun somewhere so that they could list it on the DM’s Guild instead of via the OGL. Although now that I’ve made the point of mentioning it, I’m not going to hold that too much against them, partly because the rules for release under the DMs Guild can get a little silly, and partly because a lot of the setting issues arise because of the inclusion of a detailed history of the town itself. There’s like four pages of history of the town, covering its founding as an outpost of some unnamed empire, its rise and fall throughout the ages, until it finally comes under the watchful eyes of the Smeet family. I appreciate this, truly, although I wonder just how many players will bother with it all.

Still, this inclusion does make sense, considering just how old one of the major NPCs is, and how much of a role she played in the town’s past. It’ll also allow characters with points in history to have something to draw on. The adventure itself takes place within the town and its surroundings, and rather than having some sort of nearby dungeon site to crawl through, most of the meat of the adventure is in the intrigues and interactions among the people themselves.

When the characters arrive, a new mayor has been appointed to replace a prior one who disappeared under mysterious circumstances, and the local baron himself has only ascended after his mother died under similarly suspicious events. Throughout it all, gangs of smugglers have taken to the network of caves under the town, people and goods have been disappearing, and the local lizardfolk tribe is under growing threat from some outside force. Suffice to say that there is a LOT to do around town. In terms of factions in town, there is the corrupt mayor and the even more corrupt baron, the baron’s priest of Bane who may or may not be at odds with the baron himself, the local priestess of Lathander, and the sheriff she appointed, a pair of married bards whose competing casinos make them look like they’re more at odds than they think, and even the common folk are split over what industries to develop over the area, separating themselves into the ‘Fruits’ vs. the ‘Cows’. There’s even a local lizardfolk tribe, the Shhnn, who have a symbiotic relationship with the town and are seeking to better integrate themselves.

While this seems to pit almost every individual against another within town, it does provide a ripe area for DM improvisation and player interaction. For quests, the players can take several ways to approach them, and many have consequences depending on whether the party succeeds or fails, or even which side they decide to help. There’s even the possibility of helping the ‘villains’ of the scenario, which is an option I like seeing in a game. Further, as the characters solve certain quests, the attitude of townsfolk will change toward them, allowing them to obtain services they couldn’t before, or at a discount, and unlocking access to further quests and allies. The way that it is scaled throughout the adventure means that active characters will find their own status and regard in town going up slowly over time, rather than simply getting the town’s friendship at the end of everything.

The bulk of the quests are done in town, as I mentioned, and they present a good mix of combat, investigation, and intrigue. Furthermore, a lot of the quests have multiple approaches, so if your group is heavy on social characters, they can be accomplished in one way, whereas a combat heavy group can generally bull through them as well, albeit with much more in the way of collateral damage. The sandbox nature of the town means that the quests can be approached in almost any order, and although some are only ‘officially’ given once the characters have made a name for themselves, an observant party can already be making progress toward them from the very get go.

One thing I did note is that some quests do require you to go through the tunnels under the town, and while there’s not an official ‘map’ for most of these tunnels, the adventure provides a random generation key and encounter key so that characters who enjoy a dungeon crawl can traverse them with the DM generating the map on the fly. Further, the encounter key for the tunnels changes depending on the status of some quests, solving things like the disappearance of the prior mayor or dispersing the smuggling gangs will make traveling the tunnels safer.

There’s opportunities for the players to invest in the town’s industries, which may pay off years down the line depending on what the characters end up accomplishing in town, and there’s even an option for DMs to allow for local political involvement for the party, depending on how things go.

The need for more polish and the quirks in integrating the existing history into an existing setting notwithstanding, I think Mezhdy Rek is an outstanding adventure, especially for low level characters. The town itself is written to feel ‘alive’, the npcs are well developed and their interactions believable, and the adaptive plot points support a wide variety of playstyles. For the price it’s listed at, it’ll provide at least several sessions of play for your typical party, and then leave them with a solid base of operations from which to expand their adventures when all is said and done. I would genuinely like to see the nitpicks I had with it addressed, if only because I see a fair amount of potential here for future modules from the same team. I would definitely like to see how this author would handle a more classic site based adventure or a linked adventure path. Until next time, take care and good bye!

Review - Ultimate Intrigue

I've another review up on the Youtube channel. This time for Ultimate Intrigue, a new Pathfinder RPG accessory. You can watch it here:

If you wish to acquire it, you can get it:
From Amazon (hardback) [Affiliate Link]:
http://amzn.to/2davyCE

From Paizo (pdf and hardback):
http://paizo.com/products/btpy9j6p?Pathfinder-Roleplaying-Game-Ultimate-Intrigue