Gears of Ruin: When it Bombs, it Bombs.
Previously in Chatty’s game
Our heroes are sent on a gnomish airship to act as security for crucial peace talks to end an 8 year-long global conflict between sentient machines and numerous factions of the dying world of Sikkara. As negotiations start, a portal bomb goes off on the ship, summoning a rampaging demon. At the same time one group of negotiators falls on the other one and all hell breaks loose. Our heroes eventually prevail, identifying the son of their patron as the ring leader of the operation. Now comes the time of finding the other bombs on board before the ship explodes.
The Plan
Our last D&D session wasn’t one for the books. Caugt in the home stretch of seminar season, I found myself prepping the game just a few hours before the actual game (as in, right before). My plan was to have the whole game session revolve around a Skill Challenge-like scene where the remaining bombs would be searched for, found and potentially deactivated or triggered by PCs.
I also put a “timer” on the game in that every minute that passed saw an increasing % chance of having one of those chaos-driven bombs explode. Whenever a bomb exploded (whatever the trigger was), some monster from the elemental chaos would spew out.
This time, I chose Slaads from The Plane Below (graciously offered by Wizards of the Coast) because I wanted to weave a sub-story about them taking an interest in the party and how their eradication (or prevailing) could affect the upcoming collapse of the multiverse. (The Plane Below offers many great roleplaying leads for the Slaads’ unfathomable view of worlds and events).
Lastly, if the last bomb exploded, the ship would collapse and crash on the jagged mountains a few thousand feet down.
I chose a series of elite slaads and a few chaos larva swarms. The idea was that one or 2 bombs would likely explode on the ship while the others would be saved making the fight not too hard or long…
I mean, what were the chances of all 3 elite monsters being on the board at the same time right? Right?
(Cue ominous music)
The joys of being an Instigator
The game started with the PCs searching for bombs and getting the gnome crew to help out. Franky informed his adventuring partners that the gnome privateers were also slavers as he found one of the “secret” cargo holds full of naked humanoids natives to Sikarra. When that secret got out, the gnome captain tried to activate his “Screw that we’re leaving!” teleportation device that would return all feyborne (ship included) back to the Feywild, leaving behind (and in the air) everything else.
That is… until Franky broke the mechanism that activated it and kicked the captain’s butt out of the encounter.
As the party were looking around, one bomb went off (by random die roll) near Mike’s Monk. Summoning a White Slaad and 2 swarms of Chaos Larva. Fighting started. During that time, Franky and Yan checked the runes glowing on the young viscount at the origin of all this trouble and found that it was an enchantment that would open a gigantic portal to the Elemental Chaos upon his death.
Franky tried to deactivate them (mini-skill challenge based on Arcana) and eventually failed one roll. I gave him a choice of loosing his turn or succeeding in deactivating the gate-portal yet letting one summoned entity through, critically wounding the young antagonist (Alien style). Franky chose to let another beasty in.
Now here’s where one of my natural DMing style (instigator/psychodrama) played against me. You see, I could have picked any elemental/demonic creature that would have made the fight more interesting… but I often feel the urge to put into play as many adventure elements I prepared as I can. So instead I chose the next monster that would appear had another bomb exploded and popped another, elite Slaad on the battlegrid.
Then at a later point, since gnomes were supposedly searching the ship, I had a Gnome crew member shout to Franky (who had more or less taken control of the damaged ship) “We found another bomb sir”
Franky: Throw it overboard
Gnome: Are you sure?
Franky (Busy figuring his next move): Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Now in one of those classic cases where the DM gets stuck with an internal story he hasn’t shared with the players yet, I didn’t quite know what to do with a non-adventuring NPC handling an unstable chaos-laced explosive device… so I rolled a Saving throw for the poor schmuck and failed. So he exploded on deck (Grey’s Anatomy season finale style), bringing the 3rd elite monster on deck in a situation where the frustration of some had started rising sharply.
Franky: WTF man, I thought they could help us!
It tumbles down all around us
Needless to say that the next 2 hours were long and frustrated to many. The session was fraught with bad rolls, emotional outbursts and analysis paralysis. As the evening progressed, I could see frustration spread around the table.
Sadly I too was irritated and like many males I was stonewalling the whole group for juvenile reasons. I had forgotten the cardinal rule of “bring back the fun” whatever the cost and I even lashed out against the use of the iTouch as a 4e enabler at the game table, a sure sign that things were going down the drain fast.
At that point, I knew I had hit bottom and some of it was my fault. I tried to do what I could to salvage the game and I had one of the 3 Slaads go after the last bomb. All slaads had hinted that they could perceive the various ways this conflict could go, the ship blowing up at their hands being the most likely one.
This created a chase between the slaad and 2 of the 6 PCs (The Monk and the Warden) and ended up with one PC sitting on the ticking bomb, daring the monster to make a move. It included a nice mini-roleplaying scene where the Slaad had the bomb in its claws and was convinced by the warden to put it down and walk away because “the universe might be a more interesting place if they were allowed to live and kill the Slaad’s patron instead”.
At that time, it was well passed 11h00 PM and all the Slaad were still alive. So they conceded defeat (The bomb had been deactivated) and jumped off the ship ending the game in a rather brutal way.
Post Mortem
It has been a long time since I left a game with such a feeling of unsatisfaction. I know that there were many factors that lead to such a ‘meh’ sessions. First and foremost being that bad sessions happens and we need to accept them. The hasty preparation, putting all my prepared pieces in game at the same time (where they weren’t supposed to) was one too. The the lack of communication among players to coordinate their strategy better was another. Outburst and interpersonal conflict also corrupts the underlying social dynamic of a group.
All things that have been addressed or will be by open communications with the others.
Finally, I’m now convinced that our preferred style of play: short roleplay/story scenes followed by elaborate tactical combats may no longer be supported by the duration of our play sessions (2h30-3h30, every 2 weeks) and upper paragon play, at least not without hacking encounter math like monster Hit Points and Damage.
I checked my old posts, 2 years ago I was complaining that we could only manage 2 roleplaying scenes and 2 combat encounters per evening… now we barely manage one of each…also, I’m now getting direct feedback from players that they are no longer as satisfied with the game experience. Some long for the time we played 3.5, others are annoyed at the length of combat (finally!) while others are unsatisfied with the performance of their PCs.
That’s crucial feedback that require discussion and action in the near time.
And I’m sick and tired of trying to “fix this”, I’m currently unhappy with our 4e games but was at a loss about turning things around until mid-week.
…and when it’s all said and done, an unhappy Dungeon Master is the surefire sign of a dying campaign/gaming group.
So for tonight’s game I’ve created one last adventure plan (using a combat-light model) to see the mini campaign to a good stopping point somewhere in the next 2 sessions or so. I’m also going to discuss this with the players, maybe even let tempers flare a bit to let the accumulated steam out. My goal is to go home with a revised list of player motivations and expectations so I can come back for a new proposal (new campaign model, new game, who knows?) for the next season.
Stay tuned, tonight’s game is called: “Here’s 250 000 gp, now go take back your city”.
D&D Trivia Archive May 2010
On Twitter, I give out little tidbits about D&D history as I know it or experienced it. This means I might not always be right, but at least it’s interesting. You can challenge me on twitter or by email.
Here’s the May 2010 D&D trivia archive.
- Even the greatest DMs, such as Monte Cook, fail to keep it all straight sometimes. Ask him, and he’ll tell ya. Relax and enjoy.
- My understanding–D&D R&D DMs identify minions as such in some way. The assumption: skilled combatants can identify mooks.
- Minions had higher HP, near PC at-will damage, at one stage. Development shaped the 1-HP minion for easier tracking.
- D&D trivia tells us that trolls always follow string because they know every string ends in meat.
- D&D trivia also tells us you can only make chewing gum from troll flesh. Tastes like chicken.
- My defiling design for Dark Sun was meant to be as (or more) tempting as the force’s dark side. Hope the final version still is.
- The convention previews of Dark Sun might not be the final version. The books are just wrapping up preprint production.
- I helped make the crazy D&D editing test @loganbonner took to hire on at WotC, and I helped evaluate those tests.
- When @loganbonner started, I was happy a new person (like me!) entered the industry. Weird we both got laid off the same day.
- Aside: @gregbilsland is another new game-industry person.
- Eric Holmes, the author of the the first D&D “blue box” basic set, passed away on 3/20 at age 80. http://bit.ly/cmD2K0
- 3e Monster CRs (as much art as science) are still in 4e. The design team just decided to use “level” as the 4e word.
- Level was the default for anything related to level for powers, items, and monsters. Smart choice IMO, and one I wasn’t part of.
- The powers of 4e were in the earliest playtest I was in (early 2006?), but I wasn’t there at the beginning.
- Powers evolved from Heinsoo crazy (6d12? Really?) to the versions you see today. The early mandate was to push limits on design.
- FYI, Heinsoo crazy refers to wild-man designer Rob Heinsoo, and his sort of design crazy ain’t a bad thing in early stages.
- The Ki power source was going to be home for classes such as the ninja, samurai, and so on. Then @aquelajames and others realized we were about to isolate those classes.
- The team decided that the monk, samurai, ninja, and so on, could occupy neat spaces in other power sources, such as the psi monk.
- Or that it’s possible that those classes already exist. @aquelajames didn’t want another Oriental Adventures.
- I doubt you’ll see a whole book just about Eastern fighting techniques. It’ll be integrated with a D&D spin.
- Monsters evolved to be simple to run and easy to design for flavor. R&D intentionally ditched the PC-like 3e design framework.
- It’s a mistake to rely on play feedback only from extremely sharp players. They outperform normal players, skewing perceptions.
- The initial 4e Monster Manual draft had more fluff. It was cut, I guess, to fit more stats. But monster powers alone are often evocative.
- I’ve had players attest to the evocativeness of monster powers. One even asked me to tone down the evil critters.
- Each good player power was similarly designed to tell its story with mechanics and brief flavor. Is it enough fluff? IMO, yes.
- Many D&D R&Ders boggled at brand policy, but D&D and MtG worlds are kept strictly apart. Lorwyn campaign for D&D? Made of win!
- 3e D&D crit confirmation rolls had obscure mathematical reasons, but we R&Ders and players saw it as post-crit denial. No fun.
- 4e was also built to better control PC and monster crit ranges.
- A discussion was had in D&D R&D whether the revenant would be a bloodline, like the dhampyr by @brianrjames. I still think so.
- The view that won out, based on desire to do revenant minis, was that the revenant should be a unique Medium race.
- The D&D world is not our world. Some aesthetic choices were made based on that idea. Take the assassin. The invoker, too.
My RPG DNA: Part 3: The Oughts, D&D 3.X
Inspired by Rob Donaghue’s gaming DNA post, I decided to share my gaming history first with the early 80′s (with the 1st edition of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons) and then with the bipolar crunchy/fluffy 90′s with GURPS.
Now let’s start the decade where one polyhedral was chosen to rule them all.
A New Era…
Shortly after my 28th birthday party, I sat in my living room with the D&D 3rd Edition Player’s Handbook in my hands. After a decade away from Trolls, Drow, Mindflayers and other Gygaxian-branded fantasy tropes, I felt the strong pull to return to the world of D&D. However, remembering my attempt at re-reading the 2e Player’s Handbook back in 1998, I expected the book to be really bad…
…Instead I discovered one of the best written, most enticing role playing game book I had read in ages (surpassing my then favorites BESM and Gurps Wizard). It wasn’t long before I purchased all core books. My pleasure at reading the D&D 3.0 books only expanded from there and to this day, Monte Cook’s Dungeon Master Guide remains one of the RPG books I enjoyed reading the most (in fact, all but the 2e DMGs have a permanent space in my small gaming shelf).
D&D 3e fixed pretty much all the things that drove me away 10 years before. Gone were the subsystems, disparate XP charts and most of the annoyances I felt with AD&D 1e.
I was back baby!
I rapidly set out to create my first 3.0 campaign with my players of the time: Math, Yan, Nick (Babounne), JeeEff and Stef. Franky joined us early on while playing The Sunless Citadel. The campaign was a mix of homebrewed and published adventures that culminated in playing the first chapter of the adaptation of Gary Gygax’s Against the Giants where the players led 300 orcs to attack a host of giants and ogres.
I even made paper tokens for every damn participants in that fight! It.was.Epic!
The End of the Honeymoon
The game eventually crashed at around the 10th level when I realized that I had lost control of the power of magic items in the campaign, had no strong plot arcs and handed the campaign over to Nicolas who shocked us to the core by showing us what the system could do in the hands of a merciless (but, it pains me to admit, fair) DM.
Never again do I want to be hated by a whole city because of dopplegangers nor have to fight said shapeshifters in full darkness! Nicolas showed us the darker side of 3e and we didn’t like it at all.
Reboot!
At about the time that (my) Nico was born (early 2002), we started our longest ever campaign where we played through the entirety of Monte Cook’s Return to the Temple of the Elemental Evil. While we enjoyed it immensely, it forevermore burnt some of us on long dungeon crawls (You spend 10 levels of experience in 4 different dungeons).
That campaign also saw us transition from D&D 3.0 to 3.5 right in the last third of that super adventure, where an innocuous Horned Devil became the campaign’s de facto uber-bad guy by getting boosted beyond the player’s ability to deal with it. He ended up being a cool recurring villain.
Eric joined us during this campaign while Nick and Jee Eff moved out of town. Nicolas went to Sweden (you’re still there right? he he he) while Jee moved to Quebec City.
You are not as good as you think you are
Shortly after the birth of my daughter Rory in 2003, I realized that up until now, I had been depending solely on my natural skills and experience as a DM to drive the game along with my friends’ good faith and enthusiasm. I had no grand ideas about player motivations yet, much less the 5 stages of a RPG group, Tropes or even the Rule of Cool .
At that time, about 25% of sessions bombed and I often found myself thinking about quitting RPGs right after a given night where we ended up arguing too much or where the whole thing fell flat. After some of my now trademarked over-analysis, I realized that I had reached that point in my DMing career where I thought I had learned everything there was to learn about the craft.
Turns out that like black belts in Judo, I had just dirtied my belt enough to start learning the true teachings of the art. I started observing more and actively sought to improve my DMing. We worked out some form of social contract that made our lives easier and we had a great streak of awesome games.
In 2005 the Dungeon Master Guide II came out at exactly the right time and exploded into my brain, starting a chain reaction that eventually brought me here to this website today. To this day it remains one of the most influential GMing books I’ve read.
We played that second campaign until level 17 or so… where the game more or less collapsed due to overlong fights dominated by save or dies and inevitable intra-party pressures from such long campaigns with the same PCs.
The Up and Downs
After 2 full campaigns of vanilla D&D 3.X, we were looking for something new and exciting while staying within D&D’s sweet spot of lvl 5-12. In August 2006 we started an Iron Heroes campaign that lasted about 6 months and included some incredibly cool The Truman Show tropes that blew my players brains out.
Iron Heroes was this high action, low magic d20 variant written by a certain Mike Mearls. It was loads of fun! We played some awesome action-driven games such as a full dungeon crawl underwater, with silent PCs using sign language!
After that, with the publication of Monte Cook’s incredible Ptolus, I tried to merge Iron Heroes with new city setting, which failed miserably by painting myself in a corner with too many house rules to maintain a gaming world I could manage in my head.
We rebooted the campaign again and it finally managed to work after a false start, leading us one last time through D&D 3.5′s sweet spot and culminating in the destruction of my 20 year old homebrewed game world. During that time, Mike, the last member of our current group, joined us.
By then (summer of 2008), we were all ready to switch to 4e. The idiosyncrasies of 3.5 weren’t compensated by any sense of newness brought by alternative settings/rule set or accessory book anymore (including the awesome Book of Nine Swords). We were ready for some fundamental changes and 4e was here to take us to the next experience.
The Sands of Time
Another change was brought about as the 1st decade of the new millennium came to an end. The ought years saw most of us go from our mid-twenties to mid/late thirties (2 of us are over 40 now). Our relationship to the game changed progressively and so had our motivations. Real life (i.e. mortgages, kids and pot-bellies) caught up with many of us and we’re still adjusting… with predictable impact on game attendances and expectations.
Philosophical aside: I often say that the 30s is that period of your life where you absolutely have to deal with crap from your past before it crashes into today’s crap so that you can have a fair chance at a crap-free future.
The feeling that a new crossroads in our gaming is nearing looms strong in my mind.I don’t know if I’ll outright post about it, but it sure has started leaking on my Twitter account.
How about you? How has the d20 years affected your gaming and personal life. I know that the last 10 years have been a coming of age for many of the 1980 and 90′s geek kids. Tell us how your story went!
The Green Menace
I think it’s pretty much common knowledge by this point that gaming is the root of all evil and the seed from which will grow a beautiful sapling of pure evil that will blossom into a mighty oak of malevolence. Its acorns will be capable of corrupting small animals (particularly squirrels) to achieve its goal of discovering the cruelest possible way to achieve photosynthesis. This are common fact. What we don’t know is why plants have chosen this particular vector of infection. Perhaps seeds of evil twirling happily to the ground weren’t cutting it, and there was a board meeting and they decided, “hoom, hom perhaps we should try subverting the minds of the human children to achieve the cruelest photosynthesis”. A more troubling question – where they are finding Objective-C coders to weave their fell iPhone apps?
Fellow gamers, we need to take a stand. We face nothing less than green, leafy Sauron. Instead of fear and eternal darkness, he now uses the power of Moore’s Law and the uncanny ability for the modern gamer to look at a beautiful game from two years ago to say “meh”. He sets us against each other when we play Nerd Poker or when we rules-lawyer, fighting endlessly over minutiae. We are distracted from the real threat.
Who are the people that run the companies that make the games that we so cherish? How many of them are not mammals? How can you be sure?
Look for individuals who you never see in the dark. If you are in a dark office and someone is using one of those full-spectrum lamps to treat their Seasonal Affective disorder, do not be fooled! They are simply having lunch. Also look for obvious Freudian slips in the names of their companies, products, and gaming materials. For example, Green Ronin Publishing — obviously a freaking vegetable garden. The people who developed the Druid class in 4e? Well, they’re either a tree or they’re hugging one. And there’s a reason all the green creatures in Magic: The Gathering are all the biggest in the game – they’re clearly compensating for something. A lack of humanity.
I know writing this article has outed me, but I could keep silent and serve the Green Masters no longer. For as long as I still live and have not had a mind-control beet jammed into my medulla oblongata, I will continue to report and tell the truth to any who will hear. My only hope is that my Persuasion skill is high enough, and that one day we will feast upon the salad that was our Enemy.
VIVE LA RESISTANCE!
(Photo courtesy Neil Hughley, a true patriot.)
Monster Manual 3 Interview with Greg Bilsland
The Monster Manual 3 is due for release in just a few short days. We had the opportunity to ask Greg Bilsland, Wizards of the Coast’s designer and lead editor for the Monster Manual 3, five questions related to the release of the MM3.
Let’s dive right into the questions.
Critical Hits: With the Monster Manual 2 we saw changes to the design of Solos and Minions. What sort of design changes were behind the MM3?
Greg Bilsland: Monster Manual 3 has some significant changes to monster accuracy and damage. We decided during the development process to look at whether monsters were threatening PCs. We concluded that PCs were, in many cases, killing monsters so fast that the monsters were not challenging the characters. To that effect, we increased monster damage output by about 30-40%.
We also took a look at monster accuracy. We reexamined the various roles and ended up adjusting brute accuracy back to baseline. We felt that this change would enable DMs to use brutes below the PCs’ level more effectively. Artillery, controller, and soldier accuracy also got a slight adjustment. [Read the rest of this article]
Critical Bits for the week ending 2010-06-06
- RT @HighmoonMedia: Sweet! RT @gameplaywright: #TheBones Blog Carnival. http://ht.ly/1SsYb #
- RT @HighmoonMedia: [New Post] The Start-of-Summer Sale: 50% Off, June 1-30 http://bit.ly/a3xJEF #
- RT @DriveThruRPG: Exclusive to DriveThruRPG! RT @AdamantEnt: Launch Day! #ICONSrpg is now available in PDF! http://is.gd/cyk5z #
- RT @LorienGreen: Spiel des Jahres nominees announced for 2010! http://bit.ly/bxYAPw #
- RT @io9: A new ThunderCats series is coming in 2011. Rowr. http://io9.com/5553508/ #
- The Fantastic Monsters of Monster Manual 2: The Finale by @wyattsalazar http://is.gd/cBvGW #
- Reviewer @linnaeus looks at "The Perilous Secrets of Wilford Manor" adventure module by @neuroglyph http://bit.ly/aIIGrZ #
- Monster Manual 3 in the wild, a list of monsters and more: http://is.gd/cDFPv #
DDI Customers: Check Your Credit Card
If you’re a subscriber to Dungeons & Dragons Insider, you may want to check your credit card statement from the past few months for fraudulent charges. According to the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the e-commerce servicer Digital River (which handles the payment processing for DDI) was recently hacked, leading to possible leak of the personal information of almost 200,00 customers. The Star Tribune states:
The Eden Prairie company obtained a secret court order last month to block Eric Porat of Brooklyn from selling, destroying, altering or distributing purloined data on nearly 200,000 individuals. Digital River suspects that the information was stolen by hackers in New Delhi, India, possibly with help from a contractor working for Digital River.
According to a poster on RPG.net, the customer service line for Digital River assures the breach did not involve DDI subscribers. However, it is still a good idea to double-check your statements just in case. Exploring Digital River’s website seemingly yields no information about the breach at all, so the extent of the damage might not yet be known, or the company may be trying to keep a tight lid on it.
Digital River’s security guarantee states:
- You pay nothing if any unauthorized charges are made to your card as a result of shopping with us.
- Every software download is 100% virus free.
- All information that you provide while shopping is encrypted so no one can access or use personal information in an unauthorized manner.
And if you believe you have been the victim of unauthorized charges, you can try and access your account through Digital River’s order support page or contact customer service.
Review: “The Perilous Secrets of Wilford Manor”
Overview
The Perilous Secrets of Wilford Manor is a PDF-only adventure from Neuroglyph Games for 1st—3rd level Dungeons & Dragons Fourth Edition characters. It begins when a well-liked noble asks the PCs to find his son, which the adventure suggests should be an old friend of the PCs, whether they also know each other or not. The trail leads to a small town, then on to an old manor, where they come in contact with an obscure sect, and beyond.
This is fundamental D&D – aside, perhaps, from the oblique inclusion of the Shadowfell, renamed the Shadowmoor here for licensing purposes – which is a good thing in an introductory adventure, I think, and the first installment of an adventure path. The requirement that the PCs be friends of the missing noble will chafe some players, but it does serve to tie the PCs together without being complete cliché, which is a boon to novice DMs and players alike.
Like most published adventures, Wilford Manor is almost linear, and there are a couple instances of blatant railroading. This is the way of published adventures, and all my wishing will do little to change them, but I always consider the linearity a bit of a shame. You should grit your teeth and let the players know, up front, what the deal is to minimize frustration and confusion.
Encounters
The combat encounters are solidly designed. In the early going, they are straightforward brawls, with some possibility of ambush or the party being attacked from two sides, but no terrain features more complex than difficult terrain. As the adventure continues, terrain features become more important and more interesting, and a couple of fights even offer terrain that result in optional, secondary objectives that change the state of the battlefield. Less appealingly, several encounters include soldiers and elites – but, thankfully, no elite soldiers – that are two or three levels above the party’s level. That loud popping sound? Yeah, that’s ChattyDM‘s head exploding. I would strongly suggest that DMs modify these fights to decrease the likelihood of grind. I’d rather the encounters changed gears faster, but on the whole Wilford Manor provides a good introduction to 4e combat. Experienced groups will likely find the early fights rather boring and repetitive, though.
Level aside, I do like the design of the original opponents in Wilford Manor. The major faction features a thematic power that is tactically interesting and encourages movement during play (although I believe I have seen it used before). The elites have enough powers to remain fresh for a long time (one has a statblock nearly a page long), and their damage is kept at the low end of the scale for their level, so they shouldn’t mop the floor with the PCs in a hurry. A couple of original artillery seem rather controller-like to me, but that’s a minor quibble.
I mention original designs because, unlike Goodman Games’ 4e modules, for example, Wilford Manor does not try to reinvent the wheel: a couple encounters refer to statblocks in the Monster Manual. One fight does call on creatures from two locations in the MM, unfortunately (although they are only a few pages apart), so a DM will have to do some scanning and printing or some flipping back and forth during play for this fight.
All three of the included skill challenges suit the situation where they are presented, are interesting conceptually and work well with a variety of skills (although defenders may end up as furniture once or twice). Sure, skill challenges should be run with a focus on actions, not skills, but it’s hard to hand-hold new DMs through that in text. I would be even more effusive about the skill challenges than the combat encounters if it wasn’t for one fatal flaw.
Sadly, not a single skill challenge result matters one whit if you follow the text of the module. Only the colour will varies between success and failure, and that only marginally. The one, minor exception is the very first skill challenge, where failure forces them to take on a second skill challenge (bonus XPs!) which, in turn, could cost a few healing surges. The second skill challenge is immediately followed by an opportunity for an extended rest – which also comes directly after the first skill challenge if the party succeeds – though, neutralizing that consequence. The final skill challenge, which is near the end of the module, adds a little interstitial scene if the PCs succeed, but nothing of consequence changes. Perhaps there will be consequences later in the adventure path, but there is no indication of that here and it’s unimportant if this module is run independent of the rest of the path.
Format
This PDF-only product’s layout is in landscape format so it is easy to run directly from a laptop. It also works well when printed out, since the layout, with a couple notable exceptions, is clean and printer-friendly. This is only spoiled by headers and sidebars that have a faux-parchment (or sandstone?) background texture and a similar texture on the borders of the page in the encounter layouts (Wilford Manor follows the WotC precedent of placing encounters at the end of the adventure, with each encounter receiving its own a one- or two-page spread). While the encounter layout is much more printer-friendly than WotC’s, it’s still enough to be a pain in the wallet.
For me, the most annoying thing about this product is an apparent lack of external proofreading. I don’t think there is a single page that is typo-free, and many pages are marred by two or three typos. There is even a case of identical read-aloud text in back-to-back encounters. I didn’t go through the statblocks with a fine-toothed comb, but I doubt they got away scott-free. While a few typos here and there are (lamentably) par for the course in RPG products, The Perilous Secrets of Wilford Manor far exceeds even this level, and the typos are a major nuisance. Competent proofreading, even for free, is easy to find, and this is inexcusable.
Bottom Line
The bottom line on The Perilous Secrets of Wilford Manor is hard to draw. A couple of its flaws are hard for a new DM to work around, especially with the skill challenges, but the content is the sort of solid, fundamental stuff a new DM should try to learn from. An experienced DM who can handle the bumps in the road is liable to think, “I could have come up with this.” I think, at the end of the day, I can only recommend it to experienced DMs that are looking for an adventure path that (it looks like) will focus on play in the Shadowmoor/fell and Feyweald/wild and DMs who are pressed for time, but feel comfortable making a handful of necessary tweaks. At a minimum, Wilford Manor is an impressive enough effort that I will be keeping an eye on future Neuroglyph Games adventures.
Review: “Dragon Age: Awakening”
WARNING: This review is written primarily for people who have finished Dragon Age: Origins. Consequently, there may be a couple spoilers. Consider yourselves warned! [Read the rest of this article]
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