Any time something is offered up as a free edition or pay what you want, I'm eager to see how it actually stands, so when I took a look through this, I was pleasantly surprized.

From the beginning, there is flavor text, a simple but elegant plot hook, and a very clear destination. There's not a 15 page lead in or nonsensical world building which the players, characters, and GM will never need to know, and there's no overblown gimick to break the rules or characters later on.

It's simple, to the point, and straight forward.

From a campaign point of view, it's a short aside. This is NOT a multisession dungeon crawl or a month long scenario that will delve into the inner turmoil of some off-beat NPC. It's effectively a side-quest or a starting point for a new group... as it should be for new players or newcomers to the setting.

Nothing's branded with "pony-isms", nothing's glaringly one-sided, and nothing's broken to the degree that any RPG player from a classic setting should baulk at it. It's actually mild enough that you could drop every pony aspect at once and likely have players from half a dozen systems play through it without flinching once.

It's simply a well designed little introduction for players.

As for representing Ponyfinder? It's actually a little lackluster. It's not steeped in the mythos or culture, it's not reliant upon outside knowledge, it's not even skewed towards being pony-friendly. Heck... a pegasus could simply ignore most of the 'dungeon' and skip floors. BUT, that can be said for any character, from any system, with non-standard movement options. The downside to this is that, aside from the little village and initial plot-hook, Tower of Misery doesn't really stand out as a PONYfinder product.

It's a module for an entry level party, NOT a PONYfinder module for an entry level party. But it's good enough of a starting point that if you really felt like it, you could drop in orcs and goblins, gnolls, vampires, dwarves and bugbears and run it with a bunch of elves, halflings, and humans.

I just wish that it had a little more substance to it. [Chuckles] But, then again, not every session requires world-shattering epic battles and dillemas that strain the weak-hearted... every party has got to start somewhere.

I ran an adaptation of this with Fate Accelerated Edition rules, with three players, and they enjoyed it. (My bias is toward rules-light systems.) My impression is that it's a decent Pathfinder-style adventure, similar to Paizo's "Master of the Fallen Fortress": a standard dungeon crawl with an obvious goal, a few battles, and various rooms to loot. It's also nice to see it laid out as a structure that someone actually used, as opposed to a maze seemingly designed just to challenge adventurers.

What I don't like is that for me, there was nothing that made me think, "Everglow is a unique and interesting fantasy setting I should buy the book for," or even "That one cartoon lends itself well to a tabletop RPG adventure". The only real nod to the fact that the PCs are ponies is an area with a low ceiling, which might matter. The fact that your PCs might have wings for skipping to the upper floor isn't addressed. In fact, I don't see a mention in there of what species the tower's owner and his friends were; were they ponies or what? Does it matter? So, the adventure doesn't hook me the way it was probably meant to do, but you may still enjoy it.

review of Tower of Misery Ponyfinder scenario, written by William Kreber, Edited by Brandon West Silver Games LLC

Matthew Paluch

August 19th 2014

Introductory scenarios have specific challenges to overcome, yet not dawdle upon - Tower of Misery handles that hurdle with some grace.

The starting hook can be introduced at just about any point in many current or starting campaigns, so this is a flexible adventure that can be used by GMs not only to start a new campaign, but as a side quest somewhere in the early stages - it does not feel forced or contrived.

The flavor text is overall very well done, and I especially appreciated the immediate description of the local town and area before bombarding the reader with other matters. The material I needed first thing to set the scene was the first thing in the scenario - good design.

The treasure caught me a bit by surprise - while the very solid description of the adventures location is excellent, and has some standard encounters and treasure, there are also a few cases where clever partys might get some rarer and more valuable items I would not expect to see in an introductory adventure, but all of them require players to have either an odd skill, or beat a very high DC after taking "smart"actions. It will reward those who are not on autopilot, but the treasure balance is just fine assuming PCs do not find either of the two difficult secret rewards. I like this idea, so long as GMs don't sympathetically give it to the party without making them do the work. In fact it would be an excellent teaching tool for new players (who again, will get a fair share of loot just from doing "the basics") if the GM revealed after the adventure how they could have additional loot if they had been a bit more savvy (or spent some skill points on more diverse areas). This is a big plus for me.

My overall impression is one of simple elegance but with some teasers added for smart players, or to teach new players how to think smarter - I liked it a great deal. The combats were a little tougher than I expected, but not too bad, so I think it would work well for a larger group as well, unlike many introductory scenarios. But as one of the few scenarios I have seen for beginning characters where a well-timed Knowledge or Profession role can be used to avoid a combat or gain extra treasure, this scenario's design is definitely thinking along lines upon which I heartily agree!

I ran this over the past weekend. Everyone, including myself, was relatively new to the setting. There was some tweaking I did, but nothing major. I plan on trying to run this same adventure at a local convention because it was fun. There was a problem with a map from an earlier draft, but they fixed that and I decided to give this product another star.