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AL 5: Stars in the Darkness [DCC] $7.00
Average Rating:5.0 / 5
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AL 5: Stars in the Darkness [DCC]
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AL 5: Stars in the Darkness [DCC]
Publisher: Purple Duck Games
by Tim C. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 08/12/2014 21:53:54

I have run this adventure twice, and it was equally crazy, and substantially different, both times.

This adventure does a great job bringing a cosmic feel -- stars disappearing, Luck is waning -- to an old-school dungeon crawl.

It's well-written, inventive, and the encounters challenged my players. Good stuff!



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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AL 5: Stars in the Darkness [DCC]
Publisher: Purple Duck Games
by Thilo G. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 06/24/2013 03:55:42

An Endzeitgeist.com review

The fifth module/adventure location for the Dungeon Crawl Classics-system, now released by Purple Duck Games and penned by Daniel J. Bishop, is 38 pages long, 1 page front cover, 2 pages SRD, 1/2 a page advertisement, leaving us with 34 1/2 pages of content, so let's take a look!

This being a review of an adventure-sandbox-locale, this review contains SPOILERS. Potential players will wish to jump to the conclusion.

All right, still here? The world is suffering - the pdf kicks off with a list of 30 different entries that align a lucky star to each birth augur - why? Because the skies are in turmoil. One by one, the lucky stars are vanishing from the skies - and the PC's luck is starting to suffer. In order to reclaim their luck, the PCs will have to undertake a journey into a conceptual space - think rabbit-hole, the transcendent journey throughout space and time into a space below the celestial tree, where a complex at the juncture of places and times not only holds the dread secret behind the disappearance of stars.

As the PCs may find out via visions and interactions, there once was a race of progenitors for elves, tasked with guarding and shepherding the stars - these winged beings have since degenerated, via the fell influence of a dread being as well as a vile drug - fully statted, of course. The PCs will have to combat the massive opposition awaiting them. Thankfully, they will have some support via a second, fully statted party that doubles as replacement characters - heroes from another world and time of the Praexi race - weird and alien, yet coincidentally speaking the same languages.

In order to truly liberate the stars that are being consumed, the PCs will have to brave bridges of the infinity of stars and defeat an indestructible dwarven incarnation of the true culprit - essentially a sentient black hole, complete with directional gravity that makes for one of the coolest show-downs I've seen in quite a while. The pdf also features full maps of the dungeon, both for GMs and player-friendly versions of the maps.

Conclusion:

Editing and formatting are top-notch, I didn't notice any glitches. Layout adheres to an elegant, printer-friendly 2-column b/w-standard with plenty of original pieces of b/w-artwork, with especially the depictions of the iconic locales being awesome and not something I expected in this product. The pdf unfortunately lacks bookmarks, which is imho a mayor comfort-detriment at this length.

Daniel J. Bishop has once again created a glorious supplement with iconic, weird and awesome foes, brimming with imaginative imagery - and were it not for the missing bookmarks, I'd immediately settle for a final verdict of 5 stars + seal of approval. Due to the lack of bookmarks, though, I'll omit my seal of approval and still recommend this wholeheartedly also for DMs of other systems, if only for idea-scavenging.

Endzeitgeist out.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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AL 5: Stars in the Darkness [DCC]
Publisher: Purple Duck Games
by erik f. t. t. [Featured Reviewer]
Date Added: 04/28/2013 20:17:35

Generally speaking, if I take the time to review it, its because I like the product. Still, after a while, much of it gets to seem familiar. Stars in the Darkness is NOT familiar. There is no deja vu. There is only awesome. Fresh, new, and lethal as all hell. I want to be a player in Stars in the Darkness, and if I survive to the end there will be epic stories to tell. If my character falls, it will be an epic death.

Let me give you the blurb, just to set the stage:

"In millennia past, the ancestors of the elves protected the stars as they followed their courses, for there are wolves in the outer dark. Yet what manner of creature would dare to consume stars as though they were sheep in the field? And what has become of the ancient starherds who once stopped such monsters? For such a monster is back - Urstah, the Star-Drinker. Stars are disappearing from the night sky, and with the loss of those stars, luck is being drained from the world. Your luck. Dare you enter the caverns, face the star-drinker, and release the stars in darkness?

Stars in the Darkness is a DCC adventure designed for four to eight, third level characters, that can easily be dropped into your campaign. In it, characters seek to stop an ancient evil from arising, with possibly devastating effects should they fail. This is our largest, and most epic, adventure for DCC to date."

This most certainly is epic. It is one of those rare adventures that you need to read through three times, write in the margins and use a highlighter, not because it's confusing, but because there is a lot of cool shit going on and you'd want to make sure your players get the full experience.

I want to be a player in Stars in the Darkeness. I want to cross the Bridge Over Infinity, Fight a Mormung and flee from... no, that would give too much away. This is too good to spoil, and I feel like it may be spoiled for me, as I so want to play in this adventure.

Seriously, I can give no greater compliment than I would love to be a player in a campaign where Stars in the Darkness would be there for us. Waiting for us.

Daniel Bishop you done did good. Fucking good. I owe you a beer :)



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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