Put some effort into it and you can make this a great adventure, if the author had gone the extra mile it would have been awesome.
As I said in my Reedwater review it continues with the theme of a Strands of Fate, Ars Magic styled game. After being mightily impressed by Reedwater Campaign & Adventure I knew I was going to give unrealistic expectations for the first adventure based on the campaign- so of course, I’m disappointed, but it’s so close.
The Good -It looks great, more gorgeous NPC’s that are cool and interesting, the module expands on the Arcane Guild, briefly details a three of other Guilds, and provides the details of the criminals of Ingolstadt.
The not so Good- I wish that the specific encounters were set up to make it clear where the drama was, for example the first encounter “Nobility on the Road” which has three great NPC’s the most prominent NPC is an Archbishop (which obviously could be bad for a mage). On detailed reading, one of the NPC’s could detect lies, do free assessments and his tactics was to tag aspects without mercy while the Archbishop could inflict mental consequences to force sinners to do the right thing. It seemed that we have great characters for a short play but what was needed was some direction, basic acts, and one or two random dramatic events and that encounter could have been magic.
The meat of the adventure is a free form series of encounters based in the City of Ingolstadt, while I personally don’t like that format, I felt it really needed some skill challenges (to reveal the true villains), events (such as uncontrollable fires), and plot stress (so that the bad guys could win!) to max it out. I also felt it needed a final encounter to wrap things up.
In conclusion, while I’ve had a good whinge (because I feel that there’s real potential here), it’s still a quality product with bags of interesting NPC’s and at $5 it’s got to be worth it and while it’s on at 99 cents it’s a steal. Finally, if you are suitably impressed with this adventure and you haven’t got hold of Reedwater Campaign & Adventure do yourself a favour and buy it (also I really want to see more from Anderian Designs).
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