The Sting of Death drops the ball a notch for Plain Brown Wrapper Games, whom follows the Promise of Purgatory with slightly above average effort.

The String of Death is multi-part adventure that you can integrate into your campaign over several sessions or several months. It seems that one of the most haneous evil beings ever created has managed to find its way into the mortal well again after it was assumed it was destroyed in the 6th century. Just as with their first adventure, the books is broken down into scenes followed by a very hefty supply of NPCs, maps and suggestive ideas.

The thing that is not included is a tight summary at the beginning and again, the lack of any bookmarks.

For the DM

You will have to read through the adventure very well considering there?s no summary at the beginning or end. Though The Sting of Death does seem to notice its lack of a summation, and provides more detailed overviews of the chapter as you get further in the adventure.

Once you figure out what its about, and have some way of keeping track of what is on what page, you will find a good series of plots for your PCs. The adventure starts off with a simple bank robbery, moves on to some revelations about a secret cult, and then your PCs will eventually get to make a great little road trip to our favorite evil town in Eastern Europe, Transylvania. I can really see myself running this adventure to begin a story arch after the major arch we?re running now is finished.

There is also a really good amount of box text that once again allows your PCs to do some mystery solving on their own without box text leading them from point A to point B.

Just about every NPC has some type of background points in this adventure. However, with so many NPCs at one time and so many personalities I found it a bit too overly done. You will probably want to pick and choose which NPC backgrounds you will actually role play out.

The Iron Word

A decent adventure from Plain Brown Wrapping games, it is somewhat hurt by a bit too much detail. It is, however, well written and your PCs will enjoy the mystery solving, bad guy fighting and change in sceneries from their usual home town.

I am really disappointed in no bookmarks in this type of adventure. The adventure is purposely designed to be something you flip through, to give the PCs the maximum choice. However, with no device to help one navigate, it becomes tedious. <br><br> <b>LIKED</b>: - nice puzzle/myster solving

• good setup of the adventure and nice pacing
• good detail on the major npcs<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: - too much detail on minor npcs
• no bookmarks and weak summaries <br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Acceptable<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Satisfied<br>

The Sting of Death by Plain Brown Wrapper Games is an extensive adventure module for Mutants and Masterminds (2nd Edition). The product includes three versions of the adventure, two full-color (one normal, one landscape) and a printer friendly version (which still weighs in at 98-pages, 95 after you drop the cover and OGL).

The core plot of the adventure arc is that the powerful evil supernatural being known as Death?s Sting, thought killed in the 6th century, is about to return to the mortal world, as his cult has long predicted. The adventure has a nice progression starting with a bank robbery, into dealing with a cult and its summoned demons and finally a trip to Transylvania to prevent the return of Death?s Sting to the mortal world.

The adventure is broken down into seven chapters with an aftermath suggesting further adventures. The scenario follows a nice build up of danger and the GM is provided with advice to keep the game moving and on the plot while allowing deviance from the script presented. An interesting choice by the writer was to give the GM the option of including personalized members of the various innocent bystanders, police and mooks (cultists, time traveling Nazi super soldiers) encountered. These are highly detailed character descriptions giving full game statistics and personalities to otherwise faceless minions. An interesting design choice to allow more roleplaying opportunities then is usual for this genre.

The adventure is scaled for a standard group for four Power Level 10 heroes, the introduction says that it is easy to scale up or down but simply adding more mooks (as is the suggestion for the bank raid) does not a challenge for supers make. The later chapters lack even suggestions that basic to adjust for differing power levels leaving the GM on his own for that. So, a GM will have to look at each encounter and balance it against his team as best he can.

The adventure is supported by color maps, character illustration and a huge cast (everything from bank tellers to a cabal of Rumanian officers who lead the coup establishing the Greater Union of Transylvania) but it does not hang together as well as it should. Even if you do not use the adventure as written there are enough characters here that could be used as villains, mooks and background elements in your game world with only a few changes. However, if you are interested in pitting your superteam against occult horrors and cultists, this might be the adventure for you. <br><br> <b>LIKED</b>: Lots of fully described characters, mostly non-superpowered.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Acceptable<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Satisfied<br>