I am a fan of the Hellboy comic and of the d20 RPG that was inspired by it (and pulp action in general). And I was excited about the the fact that there are going to be published adventures written for it. But I was disappointed by what I bought. I find this product short and lack luster. I bought the PDF for $5 and found out that it is 12 pages...including the cover, the page with legal boilerplate, and one page with a brief introduction that explains that Cannister 7 is meant to be part of a series of adventuers. This adventure (or the outline of this adventure) is covered over the other 9 pages.

In very broad strokes: The heroes are sent to collect a dangerous McGuffin in Berlin. And one or two groups intervene to try and steal the McGuffin from the heroes by force.

Things Canister 7 does well:The layout & graphics are proffesionally done and have actual Hellboy art inside from the comics. Good and good. Though the mission is very simple, the authors think about the likely choices/responses the heroes are going to make. And provides outlines for how the adversaries will react to those choices. The heroes won't necessarily be railroaded into specific situations. Good.

Things that are missing: There are zero maps provided. Yuck. Where the action takes place will varry by PC choices, but maps of a sasfehouse, a warehouse and a roadside would all be very useful. Can a GM figure this out on their own? Sure. But if I'm buying an adventure I expect to be able to prep and run it with minimal elaboration on my part. There is also zero boxed text or sample dialogue offered for the adversaries. (?!?) Double yuck. The villians might as well come as 2 dimensional cut outs from cental casting. The only potentially interesting people for the PCs to talk with are the 5 NPCs provided for the "hand off" of the McGuffin. And it says that their "face" would love to exchange two or three sentences and then vamoose. Many PCs won't interact with the only NPCs who have anything resembling a personality. Finally there are no stats. You are sent to the Hellboy book to access stats there for the generic opposition.

What I think this really is: a useful outline to prompt a GM to create their own 1-3 hour adventure from.

I pay $5 for PCI's Arcanis adventures which make for an interesting comparison. Arcanis adventures run around 30 pages, run over 4-8 hours, have maps, colorful indivual NPCs (with box text or bullet points for info and how they share it) and stats for unique enemies. They don't have the groovy graphic design and layout...but as a GM I find them an excellent value. For $5 I don't think this is a good value despite recycled Hellboy art. I hope Nightfall Games puts more meat on the bones of the next instalment.