An Endzeitgeist.com review

The freshman offering by Tim Shorts clocks in at 28 pages, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial/ToC, 1 page advertisement, 1 page back cover, leaving us with 24 pages, laid out in 6’’ by 9’’, which means you can fit up to 24 pages on a given sheet of paper when printing this out – provided your eyes are good enough, that is.

Now, the rule-set employed here is Sword & Wizardry, the pdf assumes silver standard and the pdf assumes a skill challenge-like system more in line with new school gaming – d20 + character level + attribute bonus – simple and concise.

The pdf includes a few pieces of supplemental content: The plant blood drop can add a d8 to healing potions, but sports, oddly, no market value. Also sans market value: The new item arrow of fireball, which inflicts 1d6 damage in a 10 ft.-radius upon impact. The new spell, ward of living death, is a 5th level cleric spell that allows you to set a permanent trap (or until it’s triggered): If a creature violates the ward, it is transformed into a ghoul over a day. NO SAVE. Any living creature can be affected, which makes for a ton of questions – what about slimes, for example? Do the ghouls gain sentience? What if e.g. a dragon passes through? The spell also fails to specify which kind of “assistance” can be sued to reverse the transformation. Basically, a plot device, not a spell. Rules are not precise here. The module also introduces a new undead servitor creature, the Tvorn, who can teleport up to 40 ft. and still attack – and they get an ominous “back attack bonus” when porting behind an opponent. Pretty sure that should refer to the thief’s backstab ability and as such, should specify the level of power of the backstab.

The pdf sports, in a nice help for the referee, a 3-page table that lists XP-rewards.

All right, this is as far as I can go without diving into SPOILERS. Potential players should jump ahead to the conclusion.

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All night, only referees around? Great! So, the module requires a series of assumptions to work as written, all of which are ultimately cumbersome and detract from the appeal of the module. The first of these is that the module assumes the existence of a Harper-like global organization of good folks that stood vigilant against extraplanar intrusions. The so-called Porters of Gideon, now deemed outlaws and exiled, every known member executed. Introducing a recently vanquished global organization for the sake of background story – not the best move here. Secondly, the adventure assumes the existence of Viz, a form of condensed that allows for the casting of spells sans components or a spell slot, completely delimiting spellcasting. Yeah, not getting near my game.

The module has basically two sections: Section one is a fully mapped mini-hexcrawl with 7 locales of interest and focuses on finding a reclusive wizard’s workshop – the man is called Tergul. (Or Tergal – the names herein are pretty inconsistent.) The locations of interest in the hexcrawl include a giant skeleton, a pond that nets 3d6 (!!) pebbles of Viz and a few bandits. The dungeon that is the workshop is interesting in that Tergul was a recluse, but not evil – hence, we have an 11-room mini-dungeon that sports an annoying, warning magic mouth, and the remnants of the tragedy: You see, Tergul found a box, which serves as a gateway to a pocket-dimension of a potent demon; he opened the box and the usual bad stuff ensued. While Porters attempted to close it, they failed and were killed by the demon, who retreated back home. He locked the box once more, grieved for his slain acolytes, cursed his goddess and hid away from the demon’s minions. It is in the aftermath of these happenings that the PCs stumble into a complex, which, while not bad, falls seriously short of being remarkable in any way. The complex, compared to Tim Shorts’ later works, is bland, sports standard monsters and obstacles…and frankly, I can’t really come up with a good reason to run this. It’s not exactly bad per se, but it is painfully unremarkable.

Conclusion:

Editing and formatting are not good – neither in the formal, nor in the rules-language category. Layout adheres to a printer-friendly 1-column b/w-standard and the pdf sports a couple of decent b/w-artworks. Cartography is b/w and solid, but does not come with key-less, player-friendly versions – particularly jarring for the hexcrawl map. The pdf has no bookmarks, which constitutes a comfort-detriment.

Tim Shorts has improved significantly over the years. Knowledge Illuminates, unfortunately, is a very weak adventure, hampered by bad formatting, by requiring more lore adjustments from the referee than required and by, on a rules level, subverting a pretty basic tenet of how magic works. All in all, that would be a sensible thing to ask for, if this book actually warranted the work. For that, alas, it is too unremarkable. On the plus-side, the author offers this for a PWYW-download, but frankly, I’d strongly suggest getting any of his other works, including the free mini-manors – you’ll get infinitely more fun out of them. In spite of this being a freshman offering and PWYW, I can’t go higher than 2 stars on this one.

Endzeitgeist out.

Knowledge Illuminates is a 28 page (24 pages + 1 cover, 1 toc and 2 end pages) adventure for Swords & Wizardry complete, though it could be used with any OSR game.

This adventure is designed to be the start of a campaign or the first S&W adventure. There is quite a lot of information here in case the players want to go off exploring on their own. There is also a fairly detailed XP allocation chart in back, helpful for new GMs.

This adventure is also released under the Pay What You Want feature. So if you have some spare change and need a good starting S&W adventure then this might be exactly what you are looking for.

I came close to buying this once, but glad I waited for the PWYW version to see if it was worth buying. Most of this product is filler. In 30 pages, you have a small outdoor area with 7 locations, and a 11 room dungeon. More concisely written, it would fill up 2 pages. Indeed, some of the modules by the illustrator of this module, Digital Orc, have huge dungeons in similar amounts of pages. How? No filler.

It has a new spell, which is way overpowered for its level, as it's like animate dead (in that it creates undead), but does it to a living target.

For a low price you get a small, well-mapped and entirely playable dungeon environment, some exterior sites, a little background for the writer's campaign world and that's about your lot. Usable but unimpressive.

I have a more in-depth review of this adventure at http://knightsoftheblackbanner.blogspot.com/2012/02/knowledge-illuminates-review.html

This first (of a proposed series) of One Shot Adventures from Tim Shorts I snagged and read over lunch one day and it, along with the other two products above, have spurred me on to start prepping my own OSR game. This 15 page adventure starts with a sort of sandbox set up with a small regional map with numerous ideas and fun bits that could keep a group running around for a few sessions with a teeny bit of fleshing out by the GM. Here is where we see one of my favorite parts of the entire product. Viz. I won't give up what it is because it will be a surprise to players, but man it is a great idea. A great idea that I will be stealing, thanks Tim. ;)

Once the players progress through the adventure the enter an eleven room dungeon for a well thought out and pretty spooky adventure. The creatures are tough and scary and presented in a great, clear way. What starts out as an everyday ordinary adventure and in the end comes up as a pretty unique and interesting adventure. Heck, Tim even includes a new spell, new monster and a new magic item. Very cool.

The adventure is story driven and every thing is in place for a reason, not just for a fight or treasure. It just all makes perfect sense. This is my sort of adventure and Tim has done a great job, this is one adventure I would certainly recommend.

Knowledge Illuminates is the first module from GM Games and the kick-off for the author's One-Shot Adventure Series line. The module is written for 1st and 2nd level characters with a suggested maximum of 8 levels. Tim and Ivy were kind enough to send me a review copy, so let's get started!

Tim Shorts is a DM. I know this because I've read his module. It's always a pleasure to see a DM at work! :)

The module opens with introductory and background material, consisting of, amongst other things, an Alchemist's Doom, Marvelous Substances, a Dangerous Artifact and a Wicked, Metal Looking Demon! There are some cool ideas here, which can be expanded upon and used throughout a campaign. Some of these might readily be developed and become major focal points during the PC's careers. This material, along with several possible adventure hooks, sets the stage for the second and third parts of the module.

The adventure begins for the PC's, with an outdoor area to explore. The DM is provided with a keyed Hexmap, on a scale of 1 Hex = 1/4 Miles. A page of the module is devoted to presenting the Hexmap, which shows the features of the area, elevations and 7 keyed areas for the PC's to find. Hexcrawl time, baby!

Along with the Alchemist's Workshop they're looking for, the players will probably run into some monsters, interesting sites and find themselves some treasure, as they go about exploring the out-door area. There are opportunities for combat, as well as ways said combat might be avoided. Some of the encounters could turn a bit bloody and there's a possible encounter with an Ankheg, in particular, which I would expect to kill at least one character.

The aforementioned Alchemist's former Workshop will eventually be found and serves as the Dungeon for the adventure. It's accompanied by a map which is scaled 1 square = 5 feet. Again, a page is devoted to the presentation of the map and there is a second, smaller copy of the dungeon map on another page, which is handy and still big enough to be perfectly usable with my middle-aged eyes.

The dungeon is a short, straightforward affair, with 11 keyed areas. It's rather linear, but I think that's fine for a small dungeon. Tim gives us some traps, monsters, nasty tricks, cool dressing and a little bit of weirdness. Overall, our author makes good use of his dungeon and it should prove to be a lot of fun! Again, things are likely to get a little hairy (Undead, man! Undead!) and the players are going to have to be sharp. They will run across some magic items (some really cool arrows in particular) which should help them deal with the worst of it, if used judiciously. This section ends with a Concluding the Adventure wrap-up, which offers some suggestions for further developments.

The final and fourth section, lists new spells, creatures and magic items which the reader should find generally useful and there's some cool stuff here.

As mentioned above, the maps are by Robert Conley. For those not familiar with Mr. Conley's cartography, this means they're very, very good!

The text is two-columned and features a few drawings from The Forge Studios. Monster stats are in bluish shaded boxes and a few sections have additional advice for the DM, given in italics. I noticed one typo. I found the overall layout and design to be pleasing to my sensibilities. :)

The module instructs the DM to call for a Skill Check roll, at certain points and at the beginning of the module, Tim advises the reader to ignore these if he wishes. The DM will probably already have a way of handling this sort of thing and the usage implies, pretty much, how the Skill Check and associated Difficulty Level are to be utilized, but I would have appreciated a bit more information, regarding the author's intentions, here. A newbie DM might find himself at a loss, as to how to handle this.

The Cool, Metal-looking Demon mentioned above isn't a foe in this adventure, though he is described and his minions do show up. I still would have liked to see a Monster Block write-up for the fellow, because I like reading stats for Cool, Metal-looking Demons!

I enjoyed Knowledge Illuminates and if you're in the market for a low level/starter module, recommend picking it up! I think it'll prove to be quite fun to Run and will also be useful for ideas, inspiration and general reading pleasure! This is another PDF, which I'll be printing out. Congratulations Tim and I'm looking forward to your next release!

Knowledge Illuminates is the first in a series of One Shot Adventures from Tim Shorts (of the blog Gothridge Manor). Written for Swords & Wizardry, but usable with any of the Old School rulesets, we are presented with a semi-sandbox that serves as a very nice campaign starter.

I call it a semi-sandbox, as the area map includes only the area local to the main encounter location, and there are no population centers on that map. So the GM will need to set the players upon the road to adventure. Thankfully, Tim has provided the GM with an assortment of interesting hooks to get the players involved in the story. It's a damn interesting story too.

Nice maps, great hooks, well written adventure. It's damn close to a home run. There's always a "but": but there's a handful of typos that spellchecking on the computer won't find, but are noticeable upon reading. As this is a PDF release, correcting it shouldn't be too big a deal, and it doesn't detract from an otherwise excellent adventure.

Actually, it is almost "rules lite" in nature, as it requires role play and thinking as much as, if not more, then roll play.