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I've now played through all 3 of the Scarthey solo adventures for 5e and can comfortable say that Companionable Darkness was both my personal favourite and probably objectively the best entry in the series.
Companionable Darkness has the most fully realised story in the series as well as a number of NPCs for the PC to interact with. The story itself was engaging and started off a little grey before moving into more traditional black-and-white good-vs-evil territory. I also really enjoyed the more detailed entries and the fact that it felt like this time out the backstory of the adventure was more than tangentially linked to the University Of The Arcane.
I enjoyed Companionable Darkness and would definitely recommend it but there were 2 minor issues that I felt should have been caught in the editing or proof-reading stages:
- Entry 53 is formatted incorrectly. It starts off mid-sentence and then at the end of the text block you find the missing text from the beginning of the dialogue.
- Entry 38 tells you to make a DC 13 Wisdom save then offers you two choices neither of which are affected by the outcome of the save.
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Creator Reply: |
Thank you for the feedback and we're glad you enjoyed it. We'll do what we can to fix those errors.
Thanks again! |
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After playing through Death Queen And The Life Stone I was optimistic about the next solo adventure in the series hoping it would build on and improve on my prior experience. That's not quite what I got here but in fairness that's because the creators decided to try something really different that some players will probably find more appealing, unfortunately in my case it wasn't really what I was looking for.
Forest Of Secrets breaks from the traditional mold of linear solo quests where the narrative is driven by branching player choices and instead replaces that mechanic with a randomly generated map. The big upside in this is that it drastically increases the replay value of the adventure and means multiple play throughs can yield significantly different experiences. The downside is that there is effectively no linear narrative. All the key story beats happen in the first entry and the final encounter, in between the start and the end there is efffectively no change or development in the story.
For players interested in a solo play experience similar to a 'quest' style dungeon board game this adventure will probably be right up their alley and very satisfying. For players hoping for more of a story-based or RPG style experience this adventure may fall a bit flat.
Objectively well designed, just not my cup of tea.
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Creator Reply: |
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Although Death Queen And The Life Stone was a fairly short adventure I did really enjoy it.
The randomness of die-rolling meant it did take me multiple tries to successfully complete the adventure, not due to poor choices or an overly high difficulty level but due to being overwhelmed twice by relatively low CR encounters (the joys of a single first level character I suppose). Overall the art and descriptive text made this feel like a fairly immersive experience and it definitely had me looking forward to the next adventure in the series.
I do have a few minor suggestions if the creators are checking on on these reviews:
- Entry 42 asks the player to make a History or Religion check but assigns no target number to the roll
- Action economy can really slant the difficulty of some of the encounters. Entries 29, 33 and 38 your opponents are all fairly soft and squishy but their damage output means they can potentially take out the PC in one round if they both hit. Entry 34 (and therefore also 45) conversely are painfully easy if you have the item/companion from Entry 26. It might sound boring but from a balance point of view all these encounters might have been better balanced had the number of opponents been reduced, but the opponents hit points been increased. Just my opinion though.
Overall for under $3 it definitely felt like I got my money's worth and I enjoyed my brief time in Scarthey.
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Creator Reply: |
Thanks for the rating, and we'll certainly consider your feedback. |
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Well writen, thematic, and incredibly immersive. I'm genuinely amazed that an adventure of this quality could be written in only 18 pages.
The writing style not only provides great descriptions for the players but really helps the DM get into the mood and 'feel' of the adventure's setting.
My player's found the mix of problem solving and combat encounters enjoyable and stayed fully engaged all the way through.
Thanks very much for providing an incredibly fun time for me and 4 of my friends.
Since publishing this initial review I have review the series thus far over at my blog. Please take a moment to check it out https://worlds-in-conflict.blogspot.com/2019/08/review-requiem-of-wings-series.html
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First up; why didn't Merle Rasmussen write more D&D content back in the day? Ghost Of Lion Castle and Quagmire were excellent and Lathan's Gold is really good.
Once again like Ghost Of Lion Castle, Lathan's Gold is a fun solo adventure that uses some slightly different mechanics to give the player a unique experience. Other than a missing image the quality of my scan was pretty good and I had no issues reading the entries or making out the art.
I think the only thing that made this a 4 star product for me as opposed to a 5 star product is all the extra record keeping. Having a ships crew to track and use for some people may add a fun extra layer to their game but I prefer my solo adventures to be really mechanically basic and simple. But for some people the thing I didn't enjoy here will actually be a huge plus.
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If you're looking for a neatly organized summary of some of the pertinent placement of people in the original adventure this could be handy. But in my opinion calling it a 'conversion' guide is a bit overstating it.
The monster conversion section is just a bibliography of where to find the monsters used in other WOTC products, The random encounter charts are basically a re-hash of what is in the original adventure as is the intorudcution and summary at the start. None of the unique items found in I10 have their language or format updated for 5e and are merely listed towards the end of this booklet.
Basically the 2 key features of this booklet are the summary of where to find certain NPCs and assigning DC ratings to some challenges through the adventure.
If you're an experienced 5e DM you definitely don't need this at all but if cutting an hour or two out of your prep time to run I10 as a 5e adventure is worth $2 to you it's certainly not overpriced for what you'll get.
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Creator Reply: |
Thank you for your feedback. I am working on a 2nd version of it and I agree with many of your comment.
The guide was not created to fully replace the original adventure but to allow your to run it in balanced CR in a 5e D&D game, so in that sense it was intended very differently from what you were looking for.
Still, I am confident it will save you lots of conversion work to run this interesting game in your Ravenloft game :)
Cheers! |
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First Blush is the perfect way for a new player and a new DM to start off with D&D.
The structure of the adventure ensures that a new player will have a variety of different game experiences and opportunities. The authors also hit a real sweet spot for DMs by providing a pile of detail and NPC direction and motivation to keep an inexperienced DM on track while being open enough to give a more experienced DM room to customize and navigate.
This adventure does what it sets out to extremely well and I think would be a great introduction to D&D for any new player and/or DM.
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I purchased the POD softcover and have to say I was extreme;y pleased with what I got. The scan was crisp and high quality and really took me back flipping through all the old artwork.
Although the game shows it's age a bit it's not as bad as some sci-fi games/books/movies in that more than 30 years after initial publication none of the componenets feel out of place. I'm not typically a huge fan of percentile based systems but I also have to say that in my five sessions so far the game plays smoothly nd isn't bogged down by the trend that percentile games seem to have of starting characters being...sub-optimal.
I really enjoyed this trip down memory lane and can probably see more Star Frontiers in my future.
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I have a really hard time addressing Mithos Manor objectively bercause my main issues with it may simply stem from it being part 1 in a 3 part story where the other 2 parts don't exist yet. Sort of reminds me of early impressions of Village Of Hommlet from back in the day (before the rest of Temple Of Elemental Evil came out). Anyway, here we go.
THE GOOD
-The artwork and cartography is excellent, to be honest my decision to back the initial Kickstarter was based entirely on the visual appeal of this book
-Mechanically there is a lot of additional material here put towards world-building. The book is laid out with the first half being an adventure module and the second half being new; monsters, magic items, feat, and more
-The adventure itself is a roughly 50/50 split of roleplaying and social interaction and then combat so there's something here for multiple styles of play
THE BAD
-As much work as has been put into mechanically filling out the world it feels like a lot of details are missing on the social interaction side. It's made repeatedly clear that the PCs are not in their original place/time but there's not enough information given about the world they find themselves in to fill out some potential NPC reactions to player questions. This feels like what I touched on at the start may be addressed as the series continues but as a stand alone it's a bit underwhelming
-The way the story is laid out the PCs feel more like passengers or witnesses rather than active participants to the events going on. For some groups this might be a non-issue but for my players it doesn't match their preferred style of play.
-As a customer who bought the POD at release, I wish those editting errors and correction to one of the monster stat blocks had been caught before my copy was printed and shipped out.
Overall I'm hopeful that the next installment in the series will fix my first issue with the book and depending on how the story takes shape my second point may also become less relevant in the context of the larger series.
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I've been a fan of solo adventures and gamebooks for many (too many?) years and Ghost Of Lion Castle is one of the most fun and satisfying solo adventures I've played.
First up I really love the aesthetic and layout of the castle itself. This is one of those things that in my opinion older fantasy modules that weren't trying to feel as grounded or serious did really well. This is a structure that would never exist in the real world and that makes it feel even more fantastic. The mechanic of having most of the fights be determined by random monster tables is great, and means that on a replay you can't really min/max or choose what order to address challenges in.
The quality of my scan was really good and now that I've printed and coil bound my copy I can't wait to explore Lion Castle all over again.
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I purchased and printed Flint's Axe and Knight's Sword at the same time and I have to say unless you're a huge fan of the dwarves of Krynn give this one a pass, Knight's Sword is objectively a much better adventure.
THE GOOD
Again this is one of the better scans of the old TSR product and looks great.
If you want more information on Flint Fireforge's family there's some really good content to be had in here.
THE BAD
Other than using Flint Fireforge's name repeatedly and having a Minotaur Wizard as one of the NPCs nothing about this adventure feels native to the world of Krynn. The adventure is a largely generic fetch-quest happening in a small, generic underground setting. The Tyin (the creature on the cover) is effectively the big-bad of the adventure and once again does not feel connected to Dragonlance/Krynn in any way, in fact the monster looks and feels more like something that belongs in a Gamma World game.
Overall if you want a short dungeon crawl or further information on Flint Fireforge this is descent value for the money but if you wanted something that feels more thematically linked to the world of the Dragonlance novels I would give this one a pass.
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Knight's Sword is by no means a perfect adventure but it gets far more right than it does wrong and I definitely found it to be one of the higher quality scans of the old TSR material.
THE GOOD
It's an adventure for new characters (not the heroes of the lance) and is nowhere near as 'on rails' as the original Dragonlance modules. Enough time is spend on description and atmosphere to make the players really feel like they're adventuring in Krynn and not just some generic fantasy world. And I found the tie-in to the original novels rewarding for fans without being heavy handed or excluding non-fans.
THE BAD
The main villain in many ways does just seem like a copy/paste version of a character from the novels rather than feeling truly original. The opening chapter of the adventure not only encourages but forces the DM to split the party, at which point one character is cast as the star of the adventure and the other PCs are their supporting cast. When I run this adventure I will probably collapse the first section into a narrative rather than a role-play portion. The Death Machine is made out to be a big deal but ultimately has no impact on the adventure.
I'm really looking forward to running this adventure but I definitely see myself cutting the content down to a one-session-one-shot rather than dragging it out.
Overall a good idea, executed well, but it feels unnecessarily padded out in places.
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