The adventure has more pros than cons, and is worth the price of admission. There are pacing and sequencing issues that can trip up an unprepared DM, but with practice, this can become a regularly scheduled halloween feature for a gaming club with rotating groups of players and DMs.

Bulette Storm

The Details

This adventure is designed for tier 1 play, (4th level characters). Setup as a side quest, you can run the entirety of Bulette Storm in a single session of play. The adventure can easily be finished in a single four hour session, depending on which encounters and components the DM wants to use (the adventure itself suggests between 3 and 5 hours). This adventure has a fairly straightforward and tight timeline. Things are happening around the characters and if they choose to dawdle or don’t hit the ground running, the consequences could be dire.

The Hook

Concord is a small town with a vibrant harvest festival that stimulates the economy and draws in neighboring towns. There have been sightings of a bulette in the area and local hunters have taken to the woods and have brought back a dead bulette as proof that the creature has been slain. The mayor isn’t so sure and would like some real adventurers to check out the situation and make sure that everything is safe..

The Rub

The town refuses to cancel their festival for any reason and they represent a ticking clock for the characters to manage. If the characters aren’t quick on their investigation or miss some essential clues, it’s very possible that any lingering traces of Bulette show up during the festival and wreck the town. The characters will have to manage their time as carefully as their hit points when running through this adventure.

The Rating

This was an easy 5 star adventure for me. It features a monster that doesn’t get a lot of play, the bulette. If the adventure sounds similar to you, you should have fun with your players by playing some very specific cello music while they are looking for the critter. It plays fast and requires some thinking but doesn’t bog the game down with trying to solve incredibly complex puzzles. I am a huge fan of this adventure. (Also, the adventure comes in 5 different formats including a fully interactive PDF version, plus a map pack).

Conclusions Bulette Storm is a fun little side quest to inject a change of pace into your game. This is a good diversion to an existing campaign or a wonderful way to jumpstart a new one. I like the adventure’s pacing and layout, and i enjoy the pacing of it. Make sure you check it out, and it’s a free adventure to add to your files. I can think of a lot of different times and places where i could use this adventure and i hope you can find something to do with it. Game On, Game Fans

Hey Game Fans, It’s friday so it’s time for us to dig into our Mystery Box and revisit one of our favorite publishers. Today we’re going to take a look at Minotaur’s Bargain, from P.B. Publishing. Written by the wonderfully talented Phil Beckwith and JVC Parry, Minotaur’s Bargain is a standalone adventure for 5th level characters It’s an easy to incorporate adventure in your campaign or a fun one shot if your players are looking for a change of pace. Let’s dig into the details, and we’ll give you our review, and our ratings (hopefully we can tell you where to find it while we’re at it).

Minotaur’s Bargain

The Details

This adventure is designed for tier 2 play, (5th level characters). Setup for a single session of play, this adventure can easily be finished in a single four hour session. It uses the Milestone method of experience points, meaning once the characters have finished this adventure, they should be level 6. This is rumored to be the first of a trilogy of similarly themed adventures, and in our opinion, if that’s the case, the next two adventures should be a grand old time.

The Hook

The local town/village that the characters are using as their homebase is threatened by a horde of marauding orcs. The town elders are unsure if there standing militia can protect the town. Brave adventurers are sent as emissaries to a local tribe of minotaurs to try and enlist their aid in the coming fight.

The Rub

Minotaurs are honorable creatures and have standards that they expect the rest of the world to meet. In order to strike the bargain with the minotaurs, the characters will have to accept his challenge and prove their worthiness. The characters are subjected to a variety of challenges and tests by the Minotaurs to prove that they are worthy. The fate of a town hangs in the balance, will your characters be able to make the Minotaur’s Bargain?

The Rating

I love adventures like this. There is a delightful change of pace from a typical dungeon crawl or monster hunt in this adventure and it challenges players and their characters to think on their feet. It’s a definite 5 star adventure, and i do hope that the wonderful craftsfolk at P.B. Publishing continue this trilogy.

Conclusions

Minotaur’s Bargain is a nice change of pace for an adventuring party. It combines a very common mistake in misunderstanding another culture and turns it into a complex challenge to earn the respect of what would be a traditional Dungeons and Dragons monster. The characters need to earn the respect and honor of the Minotaur in order to save their town, and this results in a much different dynamic for dealing with other critters in your D & D game. I like this adventure a lot (and i am a fan of the P.B. Publishing folks) and i think this adventure is broad enough to fit in a lot of different campaign settings. Check it out, Game Fans.

That’s our review of Minotaur’s Bargain, and we hope you guys take a look at it.

The Player’s Guide to the Crashing Chaos Campaign

The Player’s Guide sets out everything that a new player to the setting needs to know in order to create a character that fits the setting and has any rules changes or modifications to keep in mind when building your character. Also it’s important to keep in mind that this specific document gears players up for the Crashing Chaos Campaign. There are 8 linked adventures that comprise the Crashing Chaos Campaign, and if you plan on playing these adventures, you should consider this an essential resource for gearing up.

Campaign Prep

Pages 5 through 10 feature specific character creation details for that campaign and give you several options and ideas for creating a character that fits the campaign and gets you in the mindset of the campaign. Bear in mind that magic is astonishingly uncommon in the historical context of the setting and that while magic using characters may exist, they are far from commonplace. The other key part of this section details the available races for the setting and gives you a host of ideas and background details you can use for character creation.

For new players building characters or experienced players building new characters for this campaign, this is an absolutely essential resource to get a grip on the background elements of this campaign.

Setting Details

The last half (ish) of the book is a very broad look at the campaign setting for new players. With place names, important political organizations and other key factors, this is the information that just about every player would want to have to get familiarized with the larger campaign setting. One of the hardest parts of getting into a new campaign setting is getting acquainted with the world and the fine folks at Fantastic Reality have done an excellent job of distilling all of those details into easily digestible bits and bites of their larger world. If you’re looking to get into their campaign setting and checking the place out, this is a very solid “travel guide” style write up for places and points of interest.

Rating

It’s a 5 star product if you are looking at gearing up for playing the Crashing Chaos Campaign. I’d give it a 4 Star rating if you’re looking for some new ideas and an introduction to the larger Campaign setting.

The Crashing Chaos Campaign Guide

You can look at this document as a larger version of the Player’s Guide with a lot more of the details filled in. If you are planning on running the Crashing Chaos Campaign, you realistically need this book because it ties everything together. It fills in a lot of the scaffolding and support to pull the adventures together and gives the DM/GM everything they need to know in order to run the campaign.

Campaign Prep

This book is the campaign prep for the Crashing Chaos. Page 8 gives you the synopses of the eight adventures that comprise the campaign (and includes the suggested level ranges for each adventure in the campaign). The background information is almost identical to the information presented in the player’s guide, but there are additional details filled in.

Setting Details

The setting notes that are presented in the Player’s Guide are expanded upon and a lot more information is accessible to the DM/GM. Places are given more information and the dominant power of the region is given a full write up with much more detail. The other important details covered are major and minor npcs that are essential to the campaign.

Major NPCs are given a solid write up with major wants, needs, resources and other advice for running them as NPCs. They also have notations for the adventures they show up in and characters that are likely to experience combat have full stats. Minor NPCs have a brief bio and their likely interactions with PCs lined out, and have their key adventures noted as well. This is a big section of the book but it gets you ready for figuring out the larger forces at work. These are well written bios and prospective gaming authors could do a lot worse than studying this style of write up.

Rating

If you plan on running Crashing Chaos, it’s essential, it’s a 5 Star recommendation without reservation. If you’re curious about the world at large, or are interested in more details about the setting, it’s still a 5 star product. The only thing that detracts from its value is the NPC bios are less necessary if you aren’t playing the campaign. They are still wonderful write ups and can give you a solid look at the ideas and underlying plot elements of the setting.

Real Talk

These are good supplements for the price point and you can have a lot of fun enhancing your game prep and live play with these supplements. They can be a little tricky to implement on the fly because of what can fall out of the charts, but i definitely give them Ace ratings for prepwork. I’d love to see some more of these covering other aspects of things in fantasy gaming.

Real Talk

These are good supplements for the price point and you can have a lot of fun enhancing your game prep and live play with these supplements. They can be a little tricky to implement on the fly because of what can fall out of the charts, but i definitely give them Ace ratings for prepwork. I’d love to see some more of these covering other aspects of things in fantasy gaming.

Real Talk

It’s a fantastic sourcebook for putting together an encounter/adventure/campaign focusing on the Devils and the Nine Hells they call home. It’s full of vibrant art, detailed descriptions and usable resources for expanding your game. Ace rating all the way around, and i hope this author puts together a similar book for the Demons of the Abyss.

Hey Folks, we’re putting together another one of our mystery box series. Today we’re looking at an adventure from RPGnow, created by an independent publisher . This adventure, written by Trey Causey and published by The Hydra Cooperative, features a wonderful departure from the norm and has such a wonderfully different style. There’s a mansion in need of visiting, and the hijinks are just getting started as we explore Mortzengersturm the Mad Manticore of Prismatic Peak.

Setup

The Adventure is written for characters around level 3-4. It uses the standard rules for experience gain. Party size is of less concern than ingenuity, as some of the encounters are not appropriate for characters of this level, but can be avoided with quick thinking and smart decision making. This is an adventure that believes in the motto of “There are alternatives to fighting.”

There are a couple of hooks in this adventure depending on how you are planning on using it. The writers have a very different way of approaching setting and adventure design, and if you’re used to a more typical (or more serious) fantasy setting, this may put you off a little. I would encourage you to embrace the fun and give it a try.

The Adventure

This adventure is actually fairly straightforward and only 13 encounter areas deep. What it lacks in depth it more than makes up for it in flavor and complexity. By hook or by crook, the characters have to gain access to the Whim-Wham Stone (I kid you not), and either return it, or a sample of its energy to their employer. The Stone is currently in the possession of a wizard named Mortzengersturm, and his remote mansion is the location that the characters will have to travel to in order to secure access to the Stone. Once the characters arrive at the Mansion, something is terribly wrong, and the characters will have to figure out how to complete their mission and survive their expedition to the Mansion.

The Aftermath

The characters will have to successfully find the Stone or its energies and escape the Mansion with their lives. Depending on how they resolve the adventure, there are plenty of follow ups, including getting the Stone back to their employer, exploring the area around the Mansion, finding the potential victims of the Evil wizard, and possibly having to come back at a later time to put the Wizard down for good. As an introduction to this world, this is a wonderful starting point to get your feet wet and explore the world. I want to see more of this setting, and this adventure gives you a lot of ways to get into the larger region.

What I like about this adventure

The author has put together a wonderfully complex adventure that is short enough that you could play it in an evening, but it doesn’t feel rushed. There’s a certain pacing required to put something like this together, and the author has done a great job of putting together a different style of adventure. It still plays like dungeons and dragons, but it’s got a healthy dose of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and other equally absurd ideas. It’s odd, but it’s a good odd.

The other thing that’s very helpful for this adventure is that it includes pre generated characters. It’s perfect for a one shot (i’m not sure i would use this is an introduction to Dungeons and Dragons unless i was dealing with experienced players) and is a delight to work with. The other thing that i really like about this is that it includes a sidebar on each page that gives the DM the important things that he or she needs to know about each area. That’s a really handy tool for a new DM, and i like that the adventure has the sidebar bulletpoints to help the DM keep focused around the descriptive text. This adventure is just a different way of looking at how you can put together a Dungeons and Dragons adventure, and i am a fan of this style. It’s quirky and it’s a little off center, but it’s enjoyable without being over the top levels of whimsy. (Your mileage may vary and you may have a different tolerance for whimsy than i do)

Issues with the adventure

The only major concern i have with this adventure is that it’s greatest strength (the whimsical nature of how it’s put together) can be a detriment. If your players are straightforward concrete thinkers, this adventure may cause some trouble for them. It’s full of wordplay and puns, and it may cause problems for some players. This adventure encourages creative thinking and different approaches to handling problems. If your players aren’t the type that want to explore and try alternative solutions, this adventure may not be the thing for that group. I think it’s an absolute delight as a one shot (and use the pre-generated characters). The one critique i have is that there aren’t any text boxes to provide descriptions of rooms and encounter areas to the players, and the map is not set to a scale, so the DM is going to have to puzzle out how big things are.

Conclusions

Mortzengersturm the Mad Manticore of Prismatic Peak is a very different feel from a typical Dungeons and Dragons adventure and it’s wonderful. Encouraging creative thinking, and a mind for mischief, this adventure is a delightful romp that can give the characters an interesting change of pace. It can also be used to kick off a hell of a groovy campaign for a remarkable breath of fresh air. You aren’t likely to find anything else like it, and that’s a delightful change of pace to stave off campaign fatigue. I give this adventure 5 stars, and i enjoy Mr. Causey’s work. I am interested in perusing more of his work and i will likely be spending more time on Drivethru RPG checking him out. That’s our review of Mortzengersturm the Mad Manticore of Prismatic Peak, from Trey Causey.

Hey Folks, we’re putting together another one of our mystery box series. Today we’re looking at something a little bit different. Today we have a DM’s Guild supplement created by a community member. This supplement, written by Nerzugal, features a host of useful tools and options for a Dungeon Master. The aptly named Dungeon Master’s Toolkit has five primary resources that a Dungeon Master can utilize in his or her game. We’re going to look at this a little differently than we do with adventures, and we’re going to break down the sections and talk about what you can find in each.

Random Tables For the DM who’s looking for an outburst of random fun, the Toolkit includes a variety of random tables. There’s a random encounter table that includes a variety of creative options (my personal favorite is the Random Disaster option). Also included are 8 percentile tables for applying positive and negative quirks to magical items. With some creative dice rolls, you can create memorable magical items that your players will remember for quite a while.

Puzzles Personally i am not a fan of puzzles for a variety of reasons, but this section does include several puzzle ideas that can either be dropped directly into an adventure design or extrapolate for players who’ve encountered them before. The puzzles range in complexity from some simple number work to more complex logic puzzles. Every puzzle is diagrammed for the benefit of the Dungeon Master, and from the puzzle descriptions you should be able to create diagrams for the players.

One Shots These are short adventures that you can use to fill an evening in an existing campaign, kickstart a new one, or just show your friends how to play Dungeons and Dragons. These are nice and short adventures you can get through in a single evening and are excellent interludes to give you a break in your current campaign. Each of these one shots has a suggested level range and are generic enough that you can slot them into whatever setting you’re playing in with little effort Maps Maps can be a very handy resource for a DM looking to place an encounter (or an entire adventure). The inclusion of pre-drawn maps (with rough outlines for scale) are probably my favorite thing about this entire kit. I can take the shell of any one of these maps and fill it with an adventure of my own creation. The existence of that shell means that i have the lines that i need to color within to build the adventure, and that means that i can focus on the encounters and the things that are going into the adventure rather than worrying about drawing a map.

Dungeons The final section of this toolkit contains four complete dungeons fleshed out with encounters and treasure. They’ve each got a suggested level range and are ready to be played as is. You shouldn’t have to make any adjustments (except for figuring out where they are in your game world). Each one of these could be used in a similar manner to the One Shots, but they have a lot more going in inside each one.

What I like about this Tool Kit The Author has put a lot of resources into a small package. In 100 pages, the Author has presented a host of maps, dungeons, and one shots. With those resources alone a DM can keep his players busy for weeks or months as they prepare a larger campaign. The addition of the random tables and puzzles also gives a DM a lot of customization options for making everything feel unique. It’s an excellent resource and gives the DM a lot of places to start planning and working from.
Issues with the Toolkit I have two primary concerns with this product. First, some of the random encounters on the random encounter table either reference another random encounter table of the DM’s own devising (like a medium difficulty encounter occurs), which means that the DM has to do more prepwork to be able to use this one. Further, the random encounter table has some random encounters are vaguely defined on how they work (like a Natural Disaster strikes!). A DM may not have notes ready for what happens with a volcanic eruption in their notes. The other issue i have is that three of the dungeons don’t have maps. We’ve seen that this author knows how to put maps together and has done a fine job of doing so in earlier areas, so the lack of inclusion of maps for those dungeons seems like a glaring omission.
These are very minor issues and they don’t detract from the overall value of the toolkit as a resource for the DM. Conclusions The DM’s Toolkit is a tremendous resource for the DM who either hasn’t had enough time to plan out a session, or who’s looking for a bit of variety. The Dungeons are fully formed adventure areas for players to explore, and the One Shots can easily fill an evening to give everyone a break from the current story. The Maps are basically blank canvasses for a DM to express their creative adventure building ideas. The Puzzles are very clever and scale in complexity. Finally, i do like the ideas that can crop up from the Random Encounter tables, and you can customise magical items for days with the random effects tables. Overall, I give this resource 5 stars, and i enjoy Nerzugal’s work. The issues i have with this product are minor, and are not things that should keep this from being a very handy resource for the Dungeon Master.

Setup

The Adventure is written for characters between level 8-12. It uses the standard rules for experience gain. A small party of 8th level characters is going to probably have a hard time with this adventure, and a larger group of characters of that level is going to struggle with it, but it’s an interesting, entertaining struggle.

The hook is a fairly straightforward adventure hook, some kids have gone missing. The town knows who’s responsible. They need a party of adventurers to handle some business and make some coins for their trouble. With some easy directions, they are off and running to make some easy money off some trouble making humanoids.

The Adventure

This adventure is broken up into four primary sections, and each one features an escalating series of murderous kobolds. Each encounter area escalates in reasonable ways and each one presents a surprisingly credible threat to adventurers that you wouldn’t normally expect. Kobolds are devious, and with the right amount of time and prep work, they can be amazingly dangerous. The kobolds are up to something, and the recent disappearances are part of a larger plan at work. The characters have no idea what they’re walking into, but the money they make isn’t easy, but it’s definitely worth the effort to handle the situation before it gets more out of hand.

The Aftermath

The adventurers have stumbled into real deep trouble in this adventure, and they’ve likely created more problems than they ever expected. At the very least, an undead monstrosity has been created, and it’s loose in the world. What’s worse, it’s creator is aware of how to make more of them. This is a problem that will require some time and effort out of the party, or they can walk away and let all sorts of hell rain down on the locals. There are plenty of follow up adventures and encounters you can build out of this.

What I like about this adventure

The Author of this adventure puts on a masterclass in two key aspects. Putting together a complicated encounter area that has responsive enemies and reactive elements is a hard thing to do, and each one of these parts features an example of this. The monsters are extremely clever and act with thoughtfulness and are reactive to changes in their environment. This is an excellent example of how encounter areas like this should be assembled to provide creative and thoughtful challenges to players. (The Fact that they’re a blast is pretty awesome as well)

The Second major aspect that is superb is that this adventure takes what is normally a low level encounter (kobolds) and turns them into a credible threat for mid level adventurers. They do this by playing on the strengths of kobolds: cleverness and trap building. The kobolds also have a variety of useful allies, special members of their race, and some other very clever options at their disposal to be devastatingly dangerous to adventurers.

Issues with the adventure

I have a couple of minor concerns with this adventure. This adventure requires the DM to have an extremely firm grasp of how each encounter area triggers and what happens when. Rolling the encounters as they are written requires you to plan ahead and read, and trying to run these without planning is a recipe for disaster. Read a lot, make your notes, and understand how the parts interact with each other before you try running. The other half of that is that while the encounters themselves are fairly tightly scripted, there is room to improvise and make changes if the situation needs it.

Conclusions

Killer Kobolds is an action fueled romp that puts brave adventurers nose to nose with extremely intelligent adversaries. It’s an excellent showcase for how to put complicated encounters together and some insights into how intelligent monsters operate inside a dungeon. The complexity of it requires preparation and planning, but it’s a hell of a ride with the right foundation. Even better, it gives the adventurers clear ideas of what to do next, and a healthy respect for how dangerous even low challenge monsters can be in the right situation. I give this adventure 5 stars, and i enjoy Mr. Petrecca’s work. I am interested in perusing more of his work and i will likely be spending more time on DM’s Guild checking him out.

Setup

The Adventure is written for characters between level 4-5. It’s built intending the Milestone system of character advancement. This means that the characters need to accomplish specific goals in order to level up. The standard rules for experience gain are applicable, if the DM is more comfortable with that. A small party of 4th level characters is going to struggle with some of these encounters, and they could up victims of the house. A larger party, or more experienced characters aren’t going to struggle as hard.

There are a variety of reasonable adventure hooks to draw a party to the mansion itself, and once they’ve entered the building, the spooky starts to ratchet up quickly. This adventures plays on traditional horror story ideas and methods to provide both atmosphere and challenge. There are some rough encounters banging around in this house, and it’s staged so that characters will have to make tough decisions to move forward.

The Adventure

This adventure does a wonderful job of establishing the spooky atmosphere with vivid descriptions and some very cleverly thought out setting elements. As we expect with creepy old mansions, there are hidden passages, multiple floors, and a host of other comfortably expectable elements. There are spooky traps, hauntings, undead guardians, and a host of other fantastically appropriate challenges for a party to encounter on their way to trying to solve the mystery of what happened here, and to keep it from happening again.

The Aftermath

THe adventurers will either find the source of the haunting itself and overcome the challenge or succumb to its horror. There are a couple of lingering plot elements that will have an outcome on the adventure depending on how the characters handle their business. There’s a high likelihood that the adventurers will have to run for their lives at least once at the conclusion of this adventure.

What I like about this adventure

This adventure takes everything that’s fun about a horror movie and extrapolates it into functional game mechanics. The adventure is atmospheric (and the author has a wonderful bit of advice on setting the scene appropriately for the players with music, lighting, and some props), and it feels scary. The author has also done an excellent job of laying out the creepy setting elements and the combat encounters. DMs are going to need to read through the adventure a couple of times to get all of the moving parts straight, but they are wonderfully constructed. Treasure is clearly identified (with one exception), and the adventure does include a copy of the map you can lay out for the players. The monsters have clear tactical plans laid out and suggestions for how they are going to behave during combat.

Issues with the adventure

I only have a couple of issues with this adventure, and they are relatively minor. First, the maps that are included don’t have a scale listed, so i’m not sure if they are a 1 square equals five feet, or if it’s another measurement. The other issue that i have is that some of the loot featured on the final boss has no explanation of how it works or what value it has. Personally, i would have liked to see the Author give a rough time frame for how long he expected the adventure to take, but my rationale for that is that it’s a trend that others in the community are including with their adventures. I suspect that if you’re a fast playing group, you could finish this adventure in a single four hour setting, but i think it probably plays better if you stretch it out to two four hour sessions. Some of the recurring elements seem like they’d do better with two sessions.

Conclusions The Haunt is an atmospheric horror adventure that is full of extremely engaging setting elements and appropriate encounter choices. Nothing feels out of place or jarring to the senses. From start to finish, this feel like an interactive horror movie. It’s well paced and with the little bit of preparation you’d need (mostly grabbing monster stats out of the Monster Manual) you can very easily run this adventure. The two minor issues i saw in this do not distract from the very fun adventure presented.

I give this adventure 5 stars, and i enjoy Mr. Beckwith’s work. I am interested in perusing more of his work and i will likely be spending more time on DM’s Guild checking out P.B. Publishing.

Hey Folks, we’re putting together a first for our mystery box series. Today we’re looking at a DM’s Guild adventure created by a community member. This adventure, written by Wes Cordell, features a quintessential dungeon crawl full of traps, treasures, and a pile of spooky magic. Let’s dive into Last Flickering Light, and see what new and inventive ways we can die.

Setup

The Adventure is written for characters between level 5-10, and is expected to take about eight hours (give or take). The premise is simple enough, the adventurers are pursuing marauding humanoids and stumble across a hidden cave. The cave turns out to be a complex dungeon full of trouble and treasure, and can kill every last one of them. This adventure is heavy on puzzles and traps, so it’s going to require some pretty deliberate thinking and deductive logic. This isn’t an adventure you can barrel through, and trying will have disastrously bad outcomes.

The Adventure

Once the action kicks off, the adventurers are in for a rough day. The adventure follows a fairly straightforward linear path, with one area leading to the next. This adventure is infatuated with puzzle and traps, and while it may not seem like there’s a way out of anywhere, there are very definite solutions to the puzzles and the mischief. The adventurers have to push their way through all of these pitfalls and come face to face with the villain of the story.

The Aftermath

Realistically, this is a pass/fail adventure. Either the adventures figure out what the big evil boss is and how to deal with it permanently, or they are going to succumb to the traps and the monsters operating inside this lair. If you’re injecting this into an existing campaign, you may need to change a few names to protect the innocent, but you can use this as either the middle point of a “What’s the secret spooky Cult up to?” plotline or you can use it as a starting point for a higher level group that’s finding its way into a deep dive into the machinations of a dark god of madness.

What I like about this adventure

This adventure takes a hard look at how puzzles and traps work, and uses some interesting techniques involving lighting and other visual effects. Wes has put together an interesting array of visual imagery to engage the players, and it works at an immersive level. The dungeon feels very much like a spooky place full of things trying to kill me, and it’s a thinking adventurer’s dungeon.

The puzzles are clued up enough that most groups should be able to figure them out without blind guesses, and that’s a detail i like about puzzle heavy adventures. I personally find puzzle centric adventures to be irritating, most of the time, but this adventure avoids most of those issues.

Issues with the adventure

There are a couple of design issues i have. They fall into two main categories, layout, and plot. I’ll cover the layout issues first. The font that the author has used looks like courier new, and it’s just jarring to my eyes. The entire adventure is written in this font, and i would encourage the author to select a different font for his next caper. The more critical issue from a layout standpoint is that the map that comes with the adventure uses a ten foot square instead of a five foot square. What this means is that translating it over to a battlemat or other map surface requires a little bit of thinking, because every square in the mini map takes up four square on the playing surface. Again, a suggestion for the next time would be to add a five foot square version of the map in the back of the adventure.

The Plot has a couple of issues. The lead off to the adventure assumes a lot about what your party of adventurers are willing to do, and i can see where at least one player in any given group might start to feel railroaded. There’s a lot of things happening in the establishing shot, and it may not be how some adventurers might handle the situation. The other story element that i have a more concrete issue with is the way the final boss is handled. It’s a serious threat, complete with lair actions and a host of options to handle enemies in combat. The only directive that the adventure gives is basically, “The bad guy’s a cat playing with a bunch of mice, he probably doesn’t go for the throat.” With something this complex, i would have liked the author to give me at least an idea of how this particular monster is going to wreck people’s faces for the first couple of rounds of combat. A minor concern are some treasure elements that are listed as recipes or formulas for specific magic items, but those aren’t typically referenced in the larger D & D game environment.

Conclusions

This is a thinking adventurer’s dungeon crawl, and it rewards clever thinking and smart plays. It doesn’t pull punches and it can straight up kill an unready party. The level range swings fairly wide to allow different level groups. It even includes a lesser version of the big bad boss monster for groups between levels 5 and 7. I like the complexity of the adventure and the level of detail used in the imagery and the puzzles. I’ve said it before that puzzles are hard, and finding the right balance for puzzles is tricky.

The Layout issues that i have with this adventure are fairly straightforward, and my suggestions for fixing them will make a difference for the author the next time he puts one of these together. The plot elements are easy to handle for a DM, it just requires a little bit more research for the monsters and some story work for the introduction. You might also need to change a few names.

I give this adventure 4 stars, and i enjoy Mr. Cordell’s work. I want to see more of these. The issues that i have with this adventure do not make it unplayable, they do mean that the DM is going to have to put a little more work into it, and they may detract from the original adventure envisioned by the author.

Hey Folks, we’re putting together a first for our mystery box series. Today we’re looking at a DM’s Guild adventure created by a community member. This adventure, written by Jeff C. Stevens, features citizens in distress, a tavern bigger than it seems, and a pile of monsters. Let’s dive into Dragon’s Breath Tavern, and see what sort of mischief we can find.

Setup

The Adventure is written for characters between level 3-5, and is expected to take about four hours (give or take). The premise is simple enough, the adventurers have been traipsing around the wilderness and have just found their way back to civilization. The town they’ve found themselves in has one tavern, and everyone in town directs them that way. It’s a nice tavern and has all the comforts of home (and a few discomforts). There are several other folks at the tavern the night they arrive, and everything seems fine. However, the Tavern has a secret, and it could turn out fatal to a party of adventurers.

The Adventure

Once the action kicks off, the adventurers are in for a rough night. There are a host of potential monsters to manage and the adventure feels like a race. The party will have to manage their needs to find the monsters, save any citizens in harm’s way, and find any loose treasure. There are some interesting encounter areas to deal with, and the adventure feels very comfortable with the elements that have been added. There are some heavy encounter areas to deal with, and if you’re looking to run this adventure for your friends, i strongly encourage you to use the provided combat trackers to keep everything moving.

The Aftermath

There are a couple of different ways that this adventure can end, and if the adventurers can succeed at managing the monsters, they can do a good service to this town. The other things that this adventure offers are ideas and hooks to expand out if you want to use this adventure as a springboard for other ideas. The author has given you a lot of directions and ideas of turning this adventure into the start of a campaign, or as a touchstone for recurring villains and plots.

What I like about this adventure

The author has done an excellent job of pacing this adventure and creating situations that should make adventurers want to chase down leads and follow the adventure’s clues. It’s a dense adventure area with four distinct “levels” and encounter areas. The adventure has a premise that is both simple enough to run with and open enough that you can drop the adventure in just about anywhere. The tavern itself could easily fit into any little town anywhere, and you can use this adventure to turn a new area your characters are exploring into the start of a campaign.

There are enough other dangling plot hooks and story elements that you could easily stretch this into a more in depth story arc or campaign than you might have originally thought. This adventure does a wonderful job of pulling some horrific story points into the adventure and i’m certain that at least one of these elements will catch your players off guard.

Issues with the adventure

I had trouble coming up with a name for this section, as these aren’t necessarily problems or major defects, but they are minor quirks that i found less appealing than the other elements.I think the author has spent a decent chunk of time detailing the appearances of NPCs that don’t necessarily figure into the main story. The initial tavern patrons are described in heavy detail, and i personally don’t think that’s as critical to the plot of the adventure as other elements.

I will applaud the author for creating his own dice game, (and it’s a neat one that looks like a fun way to pass the time) but i think it’s immersive value to the story is less useful than other things that might get the characters hopping along into the plot.

Conclusions

I really enjoy this adventure and it’s had a lot of thought and preparation put into it. The maps are gorgeous, and they fit the adventure’s idea and don’t leave dangling areas that can’t be explored. (A personal pet peeve of mine is adventure maps that have rooms depicted that aren’t referenced in the adventure beyond “This area is inaccessible”). This is a wonderful adventure to drop into an existing campaign or to springboard as the second adventure for a new party. Remember, it only takes 900 experience points worth of trouble to get a brand new party to level 3, one of the suggested starting points for this adventure.

I give this adventure 5 stars, and i enjoy Mr. Stevens work. I want to see more of these. (I do appreciate the reference for one of his other adventures in this work, and that’s an interesting level of world building detail that ties these together into a cohesive story.)