A 14 page (plus cover, credits, and game license) booklet detailing a magical well in the wilderness. The idea is fairly original, although it's intended as no more than brief encounter to throw at your players, rather than a full adventure. Some encounter seeds are provided, along with stats for two of the residents, although it's unlikely any encounter would be heavy on combat unless your PCs really insist on it (it's not like there's any treasure to be looted, for instance). If they do insist, there are three different versions of the NPCs for varying levels of game, and some ideas at the end to make it tougher.

The layout is bland, although the one piece of art isn't bad. On the whole, pretty good for a dollar.

Drop Zones is another hybrid project by a publisher testing the traditional categories of Dungeons and Dragons accessories. DragonWing Games new product can best be described as an extended plot hook. And although the purposeful lack of direction makes the product feel shallow in places, there is a simplistic grace to Drop Zones – Well of the Twice Born that Dungeon Masters will mildly enjoy.

Well of the Twice Born presents the readers with the setting of a druid’s shrine and then explains the circumstances for that shrine. A number of hooks are included to lead PCs to the shrine and interactions between the PCs and the shrines protectors, the twice born, are presented.

What Twice Born does really well is write a simple story. The descriptions are short and warm. The story is detailed enough to follow and understand. The area feels like it has a lot of promise for a skilled DM. Unfortunately, things are too simple. Whereas the writer seemed to be going for a place DMs can drop into any campaign, something DMs covet, there is too little material provided for an average or novice DM. At 17 pages for a single plot hook, one would expect a couple of well designed NPCs or a stronger tie in with the natural realm. At best, I was hoping to find a comprehensive write up of exactly what makes a twice born so twice born.

For the Dungeon Master This is a well written PDF, and I find the premise useable if you add more detail to the story and tweak the twiceborn a bit.

The Iron Word Drop Zones: The Well of the Twice Born is a nice attempt at creating an easy to use product for Dungeon Masters, and just falls short of that goal. Instead of providing too much, as often modules do, it instead provides too little. And just too little enough to create that inkling of frustration that appears when you see a rumor fall out of exhaustion two feet from the finish line. It will be interesting to see the next Drop Zones product to see if they put a little more boost in it.

What’s the dollar value of an idea?

The above question is what popped into my head after I finished reading Well of the Twice Born. If you had an idea, and just jotted it down with maybe a bit of exposition and an illustration, how much could you sell that for? The question is a topical one, because that seems to be the case here.

As a quick overview, this PDF is seventeen pages long (including the title/credits page, and two pages for the OGL), and has full bookmarks, which is a plus. There’s almost no artwork to speak of – the only picture here is that same one you saw on the product page. That’s reproduced in the PDF as well as being included separately as a JPG file. Beyond that, and a company or product line logo, there’s no illustrations here to be found.

Well of the Twice Born is a Drop Zone Encounter, a location that can be dropped with minimal fuss into your campaign setting. In this case, the location is a well with religious significance. Long ago, a druid met the Goddess of Nature here, and built an altar to her on the spot, along with a magical well that would awaken animals that drank from it. Over time, this collection of animals – calling themselves the Clan of the Twice-Born – became the keepers of the site, protecting it from despoilers.

There is more here than what I’ve just described, but make no mistake, this product is almost all fluff text fleshing out the above material. There’s the longer version of the history, several different adventure ideas, what the site looks like, the basic structure and combat tactics of the Twice-Born animals, and a few other ideas for how to use this, among other narrative additions. On the mechanical side of things, while this is a 3.5 OGL product, there’s honestly very little new material here. A table of members of the Twice-Born is fairly edition-neutral, as it just lists various animals and their Hit Dice and hit points. Likewise, two members of the Twice-Born are given stats (in fact, they’re given several different stat blocks, depending on what specific animal you want them to be) but they’re just normal animals that have been awakened. There’s only one other NPC stat block here (the ghost of the original druid), meaning that the total crunch here isn’t just fairly lacking, but what is there is nothing original.

My overall feeling towards this product was ultimately one of disappointment, because while the basic premise isn’t a bad one, very little was done to really flesh it out. The author seems content to toss out a collection of possibilities for things that could be done with this encounter, but all of the heavy lifting is left to the GM. Moreover, there’s a lot that could have been done here, but wasn’t. Why isn’t there a detailed map of the location that can be used for a 5x5 ft. tactical area? You could have a listing for various traps and things that the animal guardians have created. Why don’t we get stats on the magic well itself? It sounds like possibly a minor artifact, so that wouldn’t be hard to create. How about giving us definitive stats for several characters, rather than several possible stat blocks for just a couple, and outlying specifically what they do in case of a fight. How about having some new feats, spells, or magic items specific to animals? I’m not the sort of person who’s happy with nothing but long lists of new crunch, but having even a tiny bit of new crunch is a good selling point for an OGL product. As it was, this product really felt like it wanted to be edition-neutral with how vague and undefined it acted in regards to game mechanics for most things – it either should have gone in that direction totally, or committed itself more fully to its OGL leanings.

As it stands now, the Well of the Twice Born is just an idea with a few pages of exposition and some stat blocks to help round things out. It’s not bad, but it really felt incomplete for how much more could have been done, but wasn’t. Still, if you don’t mind fleshing out more of the specifics yourself, and can run with what you’re given, this may be the idea you’ve been looking for.