If you’re excited about The Wild Beyond the Witchlight and other Feywild adventures, Trespasses is the perfect DnD adventure for you. Trespasses is a fairly long, complicated adventure that takes people from the town of Vuckel, where several juveniles have gone missing, into a fungal compound headed by a delightfully amoral druid into a rollicking party/undead morass in the Feywild. Along the way, they encounter scores of undead fey as well as the wickedly tricksy Kitsune/Chirai. There is likely to be a ton of combat though, depending on how players want to deal with encounters, role playing, exploration, and skill challenges could also be a big part of the game.
Trespasses the document is quite a beast. It’s almost 130 pages long with over half a dozen appendices, dozens of NPCs, and quite a few magical items. The first 20 or so pages is a rough overview of what will happen in the adventure, and the bulk of the document is called the “DM’s Outline,” which is a bullet point of the adventure focusing on things you roll for and combat. If you’ve ever looked at The Monsters Know What They’re Doing web site, you’ll be familiar with the format, which focuses on tactics that the DM can use. However, if you’re used to the WotC style, which is more narrative, it does take a little bit of time to get used to. I also recommend being able to notate the outline if you’re the DM since it’s helpful to bookmark where you start and stop a session, NPCs you’ve encountered, things you’ve skipped, and things you’ve modified.
Overall, I quite liked this adventure, though there were some things that I would prefer had been done differently. For example, while I appreciated the overview at the beginning of the adventure, it seemed a bit too wordy. It is about 20 pages, and I found myself skimming it, even when I knew the background information therein was important. It just felt a little long. Likewise, the DM’s Outline wasn’t my favorite format either. It wasn’t something you could skim, and it did necessitate me coming up with my own descriptions more often than not. I can’t say I thought it was a fully successful format. And finally, though I appreciated the intent behind the encounter sheets at the end of the document, once again, I found them a bit too confusing. They’re also things you really need to print out to use effectively, so if you’re just trying to run this from your phone or iPad, it gets complicated.
However, where this adventure shines is when it’s describing a very concrete encounter/situation. For example, early in the adventure the PCs can go to Kalin’anar Salka, a splendid house owned by the half-elf Sunny Drispel. Although the overview of Kalin’anar is vague, what you need to know for the actual conversation with Drispel is succinct and easy to scan. For example, it’s easy to see what the payment for Drispel’s request would be, details he refuses to relate, details he wants to relate, and what checks you need to do to gain a more nuanced understanding of the encounter, which I did vastly prefer to the traditional narrative style. Other encounters in the document, especially combat-related ones, were similarly easy to understand and implement.
As this review indicates, Trespasses is a complex, complicated adventure, but it’s also fun, smart, and, in many places, genuinely horrifying. You have some great moments of body horror, of irrevocably changed children, of mourning and desperate parents, and of truly pitious monsters. It’s easy to run as a horror game, and it really sucks players in. Some of the NPCs are absolutely wonderful, including Runnixarrar the Circle of Spores druid and The Kitsune, though for drastically different reasons.
Basically, if you want a madcap, horrifying, and just plain awesome DnD adventure, I do absolutely recommend Trespasses. DMs will want to spend a little bit of time getting used to the format and making sure they understand all the background information, but it will be worth it in the end, and your players will love it. Totally give it a try.
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