Originally posted here: https://theotherside.timsbrannan.com/2024/07/adventure-week-mosidian-temple.html

Here is another one I have been waiting for for a bit. The Mosidian Temple is from David Flor of Darklight Interactive. With this you actually get three products. There is the The Mosidian Temple, OSRIC version, the "Developer's Cut", and the original 1983 version.

The Mosidian Temple

by David Flor, 50 pages, color covers, black & white interior art. Art and maps from David Flor, Dean Spencer, and Dyson Logos.

So, there is a lot to love about this adventure. First, I LOVE that it is an update of something David wrote in 1983. I wish I had saved some of my adventures from then.

• Regular & Developer Editions
• Original 1983 Edition

You don't need all three to run the adventures, but the original and the developer's cut are so much fun.

The adventure is a dungeon crawl, pure and simple. Don't go looking for deep plots or characters; that is a "feature" and not a "bug." There is a background here that is reminiscent of B1 In Search of the Unknown and T1 Villiage of Hommlet. An ancient temple, set up by some former adventurers, falls into ruins. A Macguffin hunt. Evil cults. There is nothing new here but that is fine, in fact that is great.

Like all good adventures of the 1980s, this one features new monsters, new magic, and plenty of interesting locales.

Monsters are given brief stats with notes to their page numbers in the Monster Manual. Not 100% sure that is fine with the OGL, but that is just me nickpicking. There are a LOT of monsters here too. This adventure will challenge the characters. It is listed for character levels 6 to 10, and I believe it.

Half the fun of this adventure is reading the original version and the developer notes.

The regular and developer editions are currently $5.99, and the Original 1983 edition is PWYW. So the price is quite good really.

How I Plan to Use This

Not quite sure just yet. It has a lot of potential but mostly it is just a fun adventure. No plot, no over arching narrative, just rolling dice like it is 1983. And honestly, what more do you need?

Originally posted here: https://theotherside.timsbrannan.com/2024/07/adventure-week-mosidian-temple.html

Here is another one I have been waiting for for a bit. The Mosidian Temple is from David Flor of Darklight Interactive. With this you actually get three products. There is the The Mosidian Temple, OSRIC version, the "Developer's Cut", and the original 1983 version.

The Mosidian Temple

by David Flor, 50 pages, color covers, black & white interior art. Art and maps from David Flor, Dean Spencer, and Dyson Logos.

So, there is a lot to love about this adventure. First, I LOVE that it is an update of something David wrote in 1983. I wish I had saved some of my adventures from then.

• Regular & Developer Editions
• Original 1983 Edition

You don't need all three to run the adventures, but the original and the developer's cut are so much fun.

The adventure is a dungeon crawl, pure and simple. Don't go looking for deep plots or characters; that is a "feature" and not a "bug." There is a background here that is reminiscent of B1 In Search of the Unknown and T1 Villiage of Hommlet. An ancient temple, set up by some former adventurers, falls into ruins. A Macguffin hunt. Evil cults. There is nothing new here but that is fine, in fact that is great.

Like all good adventures of the 1980s, this one features new monsters, new magic, and plenty of interesting locales.

Monsters are given brief stats with notes to their page numbers in the Monster Manual. Not 100% sure that is fine with the OGL, but that is just me nickpicking. There are a LOT of monsters here too. This adventure will challenge the characters. It is listed for character levels 6 to 10, and I believe it.

Half the fun of this adventure is reading the original version and the developer notes.

The regular and developer editions are currently $5.99, and the Original 1983 edition is PWYW. So the price is quite good really.

How I Plan to Use This

Not quite sure just yet. It has a lot of potential but mostly it is just a fun adventure. No plot, no over arching narrative, just rolling dice like it is 1983. And honestly, what more do you need?

I backed this on kickstarter and my group had a blast playing through it. It was absolutely worth the cost and I definitely recomend it as a great oneshot for any group's game night !!

A Night In Seyvoth Manor is labelled as a "challenge adventure" on it's cover. I wasn't sure what that meant but was very happy to find out that it's structured a lot like the older tournament modules in that it has a time limit and a scoring system to measure a group's success (or failure).

The titular Seyvoth Manor is basically a villain's haunted house that has two recently abducted innocents that the party is trying to recover before they are lost forever.

The adventure has a lot going for it and depending on what you value different DMs may find appeal in different aspects. As I mentioned at the start I really do enjoy running groups though tournament style modules as it creates a different dynamic for the players and can create that rare example of D&D play where player's can feel like they're "winning". As a big movie and horror fan I also really liked all the subtle (and not so subtle) references to classics of the genre spread throughout the adventure. The adventure contains a number of breakout boxes labelled 'trivia' that will lay out those references so you will understand all of them even if you don't immediately pick them up on your own. The room maps are brilliant, in addition to being graphically appealing if you purchase the PDF they could easily be blown up into battle maps if your preferred play-style includes miniatures. The challenges vary from room-to-room and the mix of problem solving and combat encounters should appeal to almost everyone. Overall I think most groups would enjoy this adventure and find it challenging and fun in equal measure.

Having said all of that I did have a few issues with the adventure. First up on page 3 of the adventure it references "Several different types of cards are included in this adventure", the cards are in fact not included but are required to play the adventure. The cards are available either as a PDF or as a physical purchase to be bought separately. The PDF is a great offering from the author but in my case (I live in Canada) the physical cards were cost prohibitive as the two options would have cost me $40 or $50 each factoring in shipping and exchange. If you're good with the PDFs this is a non issue. My other major issue was that I made the mistake of only purchasing the print version of the adventure, the adventure contains 17 separate maps of the rooms and grounds around Seyvoth Manor but does not include 1 map showing the entirety of the manor. What this means is that each small map includes notations on where it links to the next map (or maps) in sequence but the text is very small in some cases and without the ability to increase the size (as I would be able to with the PDF) it's a bit hard for me to piece together. My final issue with the adventure is minor but other than the maps and the cover the adventure contains no art. For many players and DMs this will be a non-issue but for me personally I always find art helps set the mood and immerse me in the setting.

Overall I would still recommend A Night In Seyvoth Manor but I would strongly recommend buying the PDF rather than the print version as that would somewhat address my maps issue.

A Night in Seyvoth Manor is an adventure for 6th level characters written by David Flor. The adventure plays as a giant mashup of classic monster movies as the players venture into a large old manor and attempt to tame its horrors.

Spoilers follow. If you are planning on being a player, read no further, just know you should pick this up for your DM.

The adventure is an adaptation from David’s 4th Edition adventure of the same name, and it serves as an incredibly dangerous dungeon for those not prepared. Not only is it particularly deadly, it also has a points-scoring system and a real-world timer, making it perfect for tournament play at a convention. If you’re incorporating it into your normal campaign, there’s no need to score the adventure, but beware of the danger your players face.

Two girls have gone missing. As the players approach the large house, they have no idea what lays inside.

Players have exactly four real-world hours to find the girls before they are transformed into terrible monsters. This puts the players on their toes, and also works to fit right into a single game night.

Every place in this manor has a tactical map for it, meaning you’ll get to see, in detail, every bit of this place. From the entrance in the courtyard to the library, laboratory and grand ballroom it’s all there. As the book points out, just because it’s a tactical map doesn’t mean there WILL be a fight in every room, but it will keep players on their toes, leaving them guessing where the next threat is coming from.

The book also features small sidebars explaining the inspiration behind many different locations and creatures, which can help you determine how you will present each area.

So, let’s look at the adventure!

I’m not going to spoil many of the details here. Each room is carefully laid out, with a ton of detail and interesting choices to make. The graveyard features a haunting scene which descends into chaos as you are attacked by both a ghost and a Graveyard Golem. I’ve been wanting to do an encounter with a Graveyard Golem for a while, ever since seeing the one by Reaper, so this is the perfect opportunity, and a beautiful and terrifying encounter.

Encounters with werewolves and grotesque carrion golems follow. In the laboratory, you find a massive body stitched together, but missing its brain. On the shelf are rows of brains. Choosing the correct one will provide you with a Frankenstein’s Monster-like ally. Choosing the wrong one will cause it to awaken, turn violent, and fight the players. The way you figure out the right one is quite ingenious.

As you venture through the manor, you learn of its history and tragic downfall, leading to the final confrontation with Count Syvoth himself.

The adventure contains a ton of cards as well. Tons of new magic items to find within the house, rumors (both reliable and unreliable) as to what lies within the house, and even a deck of cards for a small mini-game to find your way through the hedge maze on the grounds of the manor.

I definitely recommend picking this adventure up. It’s the perfect adventure for a single session to really get the feeling of a classic monster movie.

This adventure needs a major overhaul to even be playable. I ran two sessions of this and found it rampant with flaws and the curious "unknown" circumstances that there is no way the players can possibly solve (like which brain is the "correct" brain). My group got frustrated and bored with the campaign and left the mansion. The Eladrin Wizard actually burned the mansion to the ground after they left. If you want a 4E haunted mansion, this may be a good start- but be prepared to make a lot of changes.

Although designed as a kill-or-cure, single-session, Fourth Edition D&D scenario, this finely-crafted product could be easily adapted for other systems, or elements extracted for use elsewhere, as there are some excellent ideas within this (rather more than "just a") haunted house. Maps, created with Profantasy's "Campaign Cartographer 3" software, show all the areas of interest, and include scale grids, so it's possible to copy, paste and rescale these for use as printable tabletop floor plans direct from the PDF file. This is useful, as a few have writing too small and unclear on a "normal size" printout page from the PDF alone. (A separate RAR file of maps is provided too, but that of course needs different software to open and use.) An overall map of the Manor and its nearby surroundings, and maybe some elevation drawings of the house in the PDF file would have been helpful to give a better idea of how the individual areas fitted together, albeit given the generally "episodic" nature of this tournament-style package as intended, that perhaps matters less.

Unless the party is lucky, including with dice-rolls, completing the whole as laid-out here inside four real-time hours of gaming will be quite a challenge, so the DM might need to be ready to tweak things a little "on the fly" in places, for which thorough preparation would be essential. Overall though, this is a splendid adventure, and Darklight Interactive are to be highly commended for it, especially the astonishing reality that it's free!

This is a fantastic product that has a bit of everything in it. it captures a feeling of isolation as well as an atmosphere of real terror. the players of this adventure will never know what hit them, and i intend to run this adventure as a Dread game in modern times which should be equally lethal. i love the "nods" to some of the great works and films of horror, which means the writers loved what they were doing when they wrote this supplement. a fantastic presentation and an overall great job which will translate well to the table with your players.

Note: I have not run this adventure. My review is based on reading through the content.

This is an exceptional adventure for what it is: a Fourthcore and classic tournament styled adventure provided by a third-party publisher (and for free!). This style of adventure places an emphasis on attempting to complete an adventure where traps, puzzles, and random elements can create failure. Fans of that genre should be pleased. In addition, the adventure has so many interesting bits that even those who do not care for the exact style should be able to mine its contents for cool ideas to use in their own style of adventures.

The writing and production quality are both superior to those typically found in third-party products. While we can pick nits, overall it is clear that effort and skill have been applied here to create a great experience for the DM reading through the content and for the players that will experience the adventure. Writing is strong, formatting is clean and legible, monsters and traps are well constructed and fun, etc. A really neat aspect is how the author places Trivia sidebars sharing how real-world history and games have influenced the writing of the adventure. It shows how the author cares for the DM and for gaming history.

There are some fun, if gamist, concepts for various encounters. For example, a deck is used during a maze to determine progress. Random treasure cards are used. Rumor cards are provided and have a label as to how reliable the information might be. The location of some adventure components can vary with play. These aspects resemble old RPGA tournament adventures. Similarly, there are cases where the adventure can feel a bit thin. For example, an NPC where there could be interesting interaction, but the adventure really focuses on a particular item being provided. It makes the NPC into a puzzle rather than a social interaction. There is a reason for it, but it fits a particular play style and could probably please more audiences. That said, it isn't a big deal and a DM can change this very easily.

I'll leave lethality and game play to another reviewer. A quick perusal shows some tough monsters - some seem overly challenging for an adventure that must be completed in 4 hours. However, it will take actual play to confirm this. And, because scoring is the drive, it may not be a bad thing if players can't easily complete the adventure.

The flavor of this side-trek is phenominal. It sets up the party to have a long-lasting relationship that could be quite useful with an NPC that can fit in any campaign setting. While the NPC is not well fleshed out, it doesn't need to be, any DM can handle that task to make the NPC anything they want.

The encounters offer dynamic challenges, not just static combat, they use environmental features well and provide noncombat challenges as well as combat-only solutions.

The monsters are quite good, they follow a reasonable theme and are well suited for level. The only deficiency is that the one elite monster only deals standard damage. It has a few more tricks than a standard, but given that an elite represents two standard monsters, it should have the ability to do damage like two standard monsters beyond the first round. This is easily fixed by any DM.

All in all, this is a very entertaining side-trek that can be used as-is or adapted to anyone's setting with little effort.

Full disclosure: I'm The Angry DM, the one being blamed for inspiring this. But it was a throwaway remark on Twitter. Darklight Interactive took one random remark about rats drinking potions and turned it into an exciting and engaging delve with interesting, unique monsters and terrain features. This little side-trek is a great distraction to drop into a city (maybe to liven up a shopping trip between adventures, or perhaps the party comes seeking an alchemist's help as part of a larger quest, or perhaps this is even the way a party of neophyte adventurers come together). The layout, formatting, and maps are high quality and show the typical pride that Darklight Interactive puts into all of their products.

At $0.99, this is well worth the purchase. Seriously, DMs, drop it in your little folder of stuff to pull out when you don't know what to do next or when you have an hour or two to waste playing D&D, or keep it for that night when some of the players are running late and you don't want to let the party make too much headway in the main quest without them. It is also a great trek to rip apart and pillage for strange monsters with a magical twist (need something for Eberron) and gloppy, goopy toxic terrain effects that would be perfect for some crazy Artificer's ruined lair. I shouldn't have to tell you how valuable a side quest like this is.

Wow! This is a big, exciting, complex adventure, well-designed and well-presented in almost every way. Author David Flor has covered all the bases, providing several different ways for the PCs to get involved. The maps are well done, though there is no other interior art. Although the production values aren’t quite up to those of the big publishing houses like Wizards of the Coast and Paizo, the storyline and other content easily match the quality of modules from those publishers. Just about the only way to make this product better would be to include printable miniatures-scale maps.

I've picked up David Flor's work before and this is another example of not just high professionalism in product design, but of his knowledge of what a game master needs in game design. The maps are awesome, the combats explicit in the way tactics can unfold, lots of great options to tie players to the plot instead of just railroading them through, and the way he packages the huge amounts of information to run an impressive adventure location makes a lot of sense.

I'm already planning how to incorporate this into my game. :)

Originally posted at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2012/03/14/tabletop-review-map-pack-m2-the-ring-of-stones/

This map pack from Darklight Interactive shows a simple ring of stones, eight in all, that surround a small clearing in the woods. It is designed to be a focal point for an upcoming campaign setting. The center of the clearing appears to be an altar. Even without the campaign, this map holds a lot of promise as both a hook and an interesting area map for any fantasy tabletop game.

The main file in this download is a 28 page PDF and the 13 page map is presented once in color and once in black & white. Convenient 1″ grid lines are provided on both maps. Included with the download is a compressed .RAR file with four 50 DPI .JPG images: two color and two black & white, one with and one without gridlines.

The color PDF prints out fairly well and produces a 23″ square map when assembled. Even though the black and white pages are described as “desaturated greyscale” it doesn’t print out nearly as well. A little more optimization for black and white printing would have gone a long way. A higher-resolution fully assembled map would be helpful for those that would prefer to have their map printed professionally. Even bumping up the resolution to 72 or better yet 100 DPI would make the map useful for virtual table tops. Because the PDF is password protected, an enterprising GM couldn’t use software to stitch a higher-resolution map from the individual map pages.

The Ring of stones map is a small (100′) area map that has a lot of potential, but it really only suited for printing in color and assembling by hand for table-top use. That limits this download quite a bit and while the price is reasonable, I’d only recommend this map if you were going to use it as a focal point for your players.

Third Party Vendor’s takes on 4th edition adventures continues to outdo the corporate counter parts. Endless Winter is another strong showing, delivering a title that is far from frigid in the creative department.

Endless Winter establishes itself by beginning with a highly creative skill challenge and slowly ramps up the action dial as the adventure proceeds. An unnatural cold has taken over the land and the party must investigate the source and find the militia men who went to investigate.

Throughout the 43 pages, the writers have one of the most balanced efforts I have seen in 4th edition adventure of producing role playing opportunities, skill challenges and combat. Fans of thinking tactical encounters will be impressed with several sets of creatures that have the option of not being battled.

The layout of Winter is clean, crisp and highlights the well lined artwork. Most combats have an urgent sense of tactical design and require a bit of thinking and preplanning. This is easily an adventure that an unprepared party can TPK.

For the Dungeon Master The writers utilize the environment very well. Thick mounds of snow, ice and wind conditions will all hamper your party in creative ways.

The Iron Word Endless Winter is a fine adventure, really showing off what an adventure can do without tossing out enemy after enemy.