As the description suggests, this is an adaptable sort of scenario in which adventurers assist a seaside village against marauding humanoids, with some nicely constructed encounters. I received a copy of this product through the Gamers Helping Haiti bundle.

Realms of Arkonus: Dark Raiders of Misty Ridge is a 18 page OSRIC adventure for 6 characters of levels 4 to 6. The adventure is set in the Realms of Arkonus, but can readily be transported to any other campaign world. This product is designated as MGQ1002 and is the second adventure release from Magique Productions, the other being MGQ1001, The Forgotten Isle. Both adventures are written by Thomas J. Scott. In this adventure the town of Misty Ridge is threatened by raiders and the PCs are sent to uncover the nature of the raiders and solve the riddle of the Dark Raiders.

The product comes as a single pdf file. As with most other products for OSRIC on the market, the presentation and layout of the product should be familiar to most old school gamers. This pdf includes a fantastic front and back cover, and some excellent artwork in the interior. The sketch, by Paul Daly, of the new monster, the Sprat, is particularly good. Complete bookmarks and a table of contents are provided to allow the DM to easily navigate through this pdf. General writing, editing and organisation of the adventure is very good, and maintains the style of old school games where DMs were given as much information as they needed, but were otherwise left to their own devices. Maps are very good as well, and four well-detailed maps are given for all the various locations, wilderness and dungeon, in this adventure. Presentation-wise an excellent product with some stunning artwork.

Dark Raiders of Misty Ridge takes place in the small and quiet village of Misty Ridge. The villages has recently been raided by mysterious creatures, and the PCs are hired to investigate and put an end to this threat of pillage and killing. PCs will get the chance to be involved in some investigative work, and soon uncover the agents of the raids. Over the course of the adventure the PCs will face threats from both creatures and wilderness as they adventure on the misty cliffs that surround the area. All types of characters and classes will have fun playing this adventure, and the various scenarios are both challenging and fun.

For the most part this is a very simple adventure, but it does being simple extremely well. The exposition of the adventure is very good, and there's plenty of opportunity for the PCs to uncover the entire plot and backstory to the adventure. Too many adventures are written today where there's a fantastic backstory that PCs just never get a chance to learn. The nature and simplicity of the plot means that I'd have probably liked to have seen this adventure for lower level characters. When characters reach levels 4 to 6, I'd have expected something a little more meaty, although this would do fine for a little sidetrek. It's not a long adventure, and should be easy to play through in a couple of enjoyable sessions. The product introduces a new race and a new monster, both which will make a useful addition to the monster repertoire.

Dark Raiders of Misty Ridge can best be summarised as 'simplicity at its best'. This takes a straightforward, yet interesting, storyline, and articulately expands on it to make an enjoyable and thorough adventure combining elements of dungeon crawling, wilderness exploration and roleplaying and investigative work. There are no loose ends by the end of this adventure, although there is scope to expand the adventure beyond what is provided here and room for further adventures after the PCs have completed this one. An enjoyable adventure, very well put together, and worth a look at for any OSRIC gamer.

Dark Raiders of Misty Ridge by Thomas J. Scott is a module tailored for 1st edition games… you know the one… but designated as an OSRIC product. Set for 6 PCs of levels 4-6, it’s really suitable as a one-shot adventure for throw away characters, or for inserting on that gaming evening with the DM is caught with his pants down for something to do. Dark Raiders is more than capable of filling any gap by giving the players a fun evening.

Without spoiling the plot: the basic idea is a village in trouble from mysterious raiders who appear in the mist. The village elders send out a plea for help; the PCs answer the call. Pretty basic idea… easy to handle.

Dark Raiders has 15 pages of pertinent information (with the obligatory license tacked on the end) and four pages of maps. The entire product has a very professional look to it that rivals anything produced by TSR in the first half of the 1980s.

The module itself introduces one monster… the sprat (a magical hybrid of rat and spider), and one new race…the Skeeth (a rather nasty sharklike humanoid), and the Half-Skeeth… but stipulates that the Half-Skeeth is strictly NPC.

The first thing that captures the eye is the killer artwork on the cover. Paul Daly’s rendition of the module’s bad buy looks equally good in its original black and white form on the inside cover (the outside version was colorized by Santiago Iborra… the guy responsible for some first rate map-work in this product). The outside cover for Dark Raiders is visually appealing and brings to mind TSR products circa 1984-85 or so for their B/X modules and their second generation PC record sheets. Not my favorite era, but memory provoking nonetheless and scored serious marks with me in the quality department.

Iborra’s maps are a pleasure to behold… crisp, clean, and no mistakes that I could find. The trained eye can tell that he used some great software called AutoRealm for at least the village map. I’m assuming Iborra also did the interior illustrations, which are sharp, detailed, and non-obtrusive, yet lend to illustrating the module details well.

Scott’s manuscript is easy to read and extremely detailed (see below). He uses a DM device that I have mixed feelings about… “read boxes.” Each encounter has a text to be read to the players. I’ve seen this done well, and I’ve seen it done in horrible fashion. Gary Gygax used it tastefully in Lost Temple of Tharizdun; there are other examples in which it greatly slowed down gameplay. Fortunately, Scott’s read boxes are brief and meaningfully descriptive… he tells the players what their PCs see and that’s all. Good enough for me.

One technical detail about Scott’s prose is his habit of using short sentences to convey information; he should consider using a few more compound sentences to link pertinent info together in one sentence. As it is, his prose comes off slightly choppy and doesn’t flow well. This is just a minor detail that I’m sure he’ll work out in future releases.

Overall…

PRO: excellent artwork, mapwork, and module design. Simple concept, easily plugged into any campaign (though it’s set for Scott’s Arkonus world). Good for a short evening’s play or to introduce new players to the game with pre-generated PCs… or perhaps as a prelude to a bigger scenario.

CON: attention to detail can get repetitive and boring at times. In line with old-school philosophy, Scott should consider letting the DM handle some of the detail in future works.

WOULD I BUY THIS PRODUCT: Yes. The PDF is marked at $3, which is extremely reasonable and worth what you’re getting.

Read this review and others like it at the blog dedicated to "old-school" products: http://greatfane.blogspot.com/