The Wayward Wyrmling Review

Warning: This is an adventure review that contains spoilers.

I remember back in the days of Old Editions Past when dragons had hard-wired personalities based on whether their scales were made from metal or simply gone over with a Crayola, with metallic dragons usually having a Good component appended to their alignment. Like most “Always X Good” monsters, this meant that if you wanted to throw them at the party you had to get “creative”, which is another way of saying using a cliche. Popular ones included a case of mistaken identity/gross misunderstanding, mind control, or just because. 4th Edition makes this easier by having most monsters be unaligned at best or changing their origins, making them easier to justify as opponents.

The Wayward Wyrmling is a level 3 adventure in the Chaos Scar written by Aeryn “Blackdirge” Rudel that tells the woeful story of an adamantine dragon hatchling who loses his mother to adventurers, only to befriend a band of kobolds while meandering about the Chaos Scar region. This might make a good Disney movie except for the part where the kobolds kidnap humans and feed them to the dragon. They also do goblins and other kobolds, but those are monsters so no one gives a fuck. The party can be thrown in the mix by either being re-hired by the dwarf that sent the first party in to fetch some scales, or retrieve the corpses of the good-for-nothing husbands that figured going into a notoriously dangerous region to fetch wood was a capital idea (I do like how if the party helps out the wives for free that they get bonus XP).

The adventure isn’t long, reaching delve proportions, but then quality over quantity is paramount when avoiding a KotS-worthy grindfest. The adventure consists of two encounters tackling kobolds doing what they do best: cower behind shit while trying to goad the party into traps or hazardous terrain, while the last encounter includes a dragon with a twist skill challenge that allows you to–mid combat no less–convince it to change sides. As a bonus if you don’t kill it (the pathological pastime of all adventurers), it can team up with you for a few levels while you tour the Chaos Scar as your personal pet dragon. This is a very well written, short adventure with a twist that’s not too predictable.

The Crawling Fane Review

A level 3 adventure for the Chaos Scar adventure path, The Crawling Fane pits the characters against a duergar named Hargash who fled his home city to avoid being killed for worshipping a bizarre, vermin-based god named Chitteruk. “Chitteruk” is in fact a made-up god created by the meteor in order to get Hargash working for it for some reason (though to be fair I’m not sure what the meteor’s overall game is, other than being a dick). The meteor sent Hargash some visions that lead him to a ruined temple formerly dedicated to Moradin, and after an undefined length of time that brings us to the present.

As always I really dig the adventure hooks. The first hook has the characters bringing back a sacred relic to one of the NPCs. Its worth quest XP but the really cool thing about it is that if you go with that one, the NPC gives you a +1 thundering warhammer right at the start to assist them. The second hook has the characters harvesting venom sacks so that another NPC can make antivenom out of them. This reminds me of one of the hooks from Stick in the Mud, where you gotta bring back mud from various bullywugs, and I think its a solid way to reward the players further for doing shit they would be anyway. The last hook doesnt come from a NPC, but instead rewards the players immediately for getting off their asses and “seizing the initiative.” Me likey.

The adventure has four encounters. Starting out within the ruined temple, Hargash uses a ritual to crack open a pit, allowing his minions (some ettercaps and centipede swarms) to scuttle out and attack the characters. After swatting them down, the rest of the adventure is a trio of sequential encounters consisting of varying combinations of insect-like monsters and duergar, that allows for no deviation. This is where I think the adventure is weakest: you dont get any choices and the party is railroaded to the adventure’s conclusion. The adventure isn’t very long so its not much of a complaint, and Aeryn does a good job making the encounters interesting via effective terrain features (ie difficult terrain, cover, and holy water that still hurts duergar).

Eyes in the Forest Review

I’m a fan of a few Chaos Scar adventures, preferring the entertaining, compact experience over that of the larger adventure modules which all too often seem like the author is trying to pack two levels worth of shit where it doesnt want to fit. I think Wizards really has something here with the whole five-ish adventure encounter model, which is something that could be easily brought to their modules simply by finding ways to break shit up with logical and narrative rest stops along the way.

Eyes in the Forest is as compact as you can get, being nothing more than an overly elaborate random encounter with an elaborate setup: the party finds a horse, a skill challenge might occur if the DM wants to pad events with more dice rolling, and the horse invariably leads them into danger. Not on purpose mind you, but on principle. This is the D&D universe and random encounters can happen en route to the fucking bar (and sometimes, they include drunk gelatinous cubes).

Thats the gist of it. One encounter with lots of goblins in a tiny ruin, and it for some reason eats up four pages of digital real estate. The layout map uses dungeon tiles which is nice, but it kind of looks like a scrambled sprite map since tree lines terminate in bizarre ways. All in all the encounter itself is okay, I just dont see why it demanded four pages. Also, dont call it a “Chaos Scar Adventure“. Its not. Its a random encounter that can literally exist anywhere.

Review: Dead by Dawn

Another Chaos Scar adventure by Aeryn “Blackdirge” Rudel? Shit yes. Dead By Dawn is intended for level 2 characters, and is (according to Aeryn‘s Facebook page) written as an homage to both Evil Dead and Night of the Living Dead. Like Penny Arcade the difference between an homage and derivative, to me, depends entirely on if I like it. Of course, this is fucking Blackdirge I’m talking about, so this adventure falls squarely into the former.

The synopsis in a nutshell is that a priest of Erathis decided to build a temple behind the King’s Wall, smack dab in the center of what amounts to a glorified monster preservation, and got his ass handed to him by Orcus-cultists (as so often happens). Erathis didnt intervene because she probably thought that the gene pool was better off this way.

I mean, it would be like having an elf try to open up an iHop in the middle of Mordor. What the hell did you think was gonna happen?

I…really cant find any negative criticism about this adventure. I guess the adventure hooks could be better? There are only two written adventure hooks, and while the first one is basically a fetch quest to get a guy for a guy, the second one works out really well since it adds continuity if you were running other adventures from Chaos Scar by having the party stumble upon ye olde adventure site. So…yeah…I got nothing.

To be honest, even if I did have anything bad to say it would be utterly eclipsed by all the pros: uses Dungeon Tiles, good descriptions, interesting terrain features, well-designed skill challenges, and a nifty new monster and magic item property. This thing delivers, and its not even complicated in design: there are like, five truly different monsters and most of it takes place in the same. Damned. ROOM. There really isnt a “dungeon” at all.

Sure, the opening bit has the party go into the temple and through a room or two, but its exposition of the best sort: SHOWING. There isnt a NPC sitting there yakking his ass off telling you whats going on, its just there, in the temple. The faded murals and shattered statues let canny players uncover its brief history as they explore the place. Even better, there’s also some hidden stuff that they can find, so they get rewarded for checking out the scenery (which is fucking awesome).

Another thing that kicks ass about this adventure is the pacing. First of all, I’m going to get into spoilers, so if you are playing in Chaos Scar do yourself a favor and stop reading. Go harass your DM to put whatever she’s running on hold and run this instead, and fuck continuity if you have to (after all, it worked for George Lucas).

It starts out slow, up until the players find the MacGuffin (aka, piece of the meteor), at which point things immediately crank up to 11: zombies start popping out of the ground numbering in the hundreds (including a zombie t-rex, which isnt fought to my dismay), and the players have to try and hold the fort until the sun rises. This is represented by three skill challenges that determine how well the party fortifies the temple and holds off two waves of undead in the interim. The party gets action spikes periodically that fit the pacing you find in other zombie-themed media.

True to good skill challenges, failure doesnt hose the party. Instead, it just means that a few zombies manage to break through before they can barricade the place, or smash through existing barricades at a random entry point (which is evocative of the source material). There arent any mechanics for nailing boards into the walls or pushing furniture in front of the doors, and I think a good chunk of the fun factor is going to depend on how well the DM can weave a narrative on the fly since the skill challenges represent both the party working and fighting off the undead (is…is that a flaw?).

Anyway, there it is. Awesome adventure. If you like this, check out Stick in the Mud and The Tainted Spiral.

The Tainted Spiral

You know what? Fuck it. Just rename this adventure path to, “Blackdirge’s Most Excellent Adventure Path,” since he’s responsible for the only two adventures that I’d bother to run (counting this one).

I like The Tainted Spiral because its got a simple, strong theme thats consistent and logical. Its short enough to entertain for an entire gaming night, which is a major selling point for me. The most important aspect, however, is that it uses lots and lots of aberrants (but no tentacles 😦 ).

Lets talk about the bad. There…isnt a whole lot that I want to complain about with the exception of the last encounter. It weighs in at almost 800 XP, with a level 4 controller and level 3 elite soldier. Yeesh. Mister Soldier has an at will that does a variable effect which can deal ongoing damage, make targets vulnerable to basically anything it does, or even the dreaded daze condition. To make matters worse it has a recharging ability that lets it do this twice per round. Pretty extreme, but the real shitter is its minor-action pulse that slaps on a save ends daze just to put a damper on your day. It can only do this twice throughout the encounter, but thats quite a bit of action control.

All that dazing seems like a bit much considering a level 1 party and a finale at that. If the party does badly on any encounter before this it could easily end as a total-party wipe.

That being said, I’m still going to run this and see how it turns about because despite this concern the rest of the adventure looks bad-ass. For starters, I like the hooks.

• One isnt really a hook so much as a kind of skill check that reveals some info about the nature of the meteor. The downer isnt that it isnt worth shit. I would grant a very small XP award for a successful Dungeoneering/Arcana check for Hook 1 as a kind of “exploration bonus”. Nothing major, mebbe like 50 XP or something. Kind of like how you get bonus XP in World of WarCraft when you find new areas. Just a minor nitpick.
• The second hook is worth a variable amount of XP in addition to a permanent discount on items purchased from the quest-herald. I like this because its a reward that isnt flat money, but definitely worth it.
• The last one is a fetch-quest. Go in, bring something back to the NPC. The best part is that you can keep fetching more shit for a smaller return, but its kinda cool. Like treasure parcels of a different color.

After that its a string of four-five encounters (including a skill challenge) in a series of tunnels. To make things clear, you start with encounter T2 and go from there. After that you kick off a navigational skill challenge to determine if the party advances to the next encounter. If you fail the DM can opt to run another combat challenge, and then have them start it all over again. Lucky for the party they only have to deal with T1 once no matter how many times they fuck up.

This is a similar approach to how I’m running the start of the third Songs of Erui adventure path, where the party has to navigate a jungle. If they fail the challenge, they advance anyway but start combat encounters with a penalty such as ongoing poison damage, or near a lot of dangerous terrain like bloodthorns or whatnot. You could do a similar thing here, where monsters start in more advantageous positions or get a surprise round against the gang. That way you can avoid having them grind skills until they eventually succeed in the unlikely situation that they suck so bad that the adventure enables Easy mode for them.

I dont want to reveal too much, but I’m going to talk a bit about two things that I enjoyed the most the encounters.
First, I like the warp crystals. They fuck with the players and boost the baddies, but they arent just another magic circle. Its a simple-yet-effective reskin of what I’ve found to be an overused terrain feature.
I was also morbidly pleased with the corpses in T4: you can use them to gain cover as well as a bonus to Athletics checks to stay afloat in the water. Thats just awesome on a disturbing level.

Honestly if you are considering running Chaos Scar I recommend this and Stick in the Mud. Thats really it. Use those two back to back and hopefully by then Aeryn will roll out something for level 2 characters (hint hint).

Den of the Slave Takers Review

The second adventure for Chaos Scar is out. The backstory to Den of the Slavetakers is pretty confusing: you have gnoll slaver(s) that are actually using their slaves for “death rituals” whatever a botched witherling is instead of selling them, a halfling packing a meteor shard that is using it to create fucked up homunculi (for some reason), and myconids that are being drawn to the shard and want to take it and destroy it…I guess. I mean, they’re taking their time on it, to be sure, but they’ll get around to it when the plot calls for it. Or not. I dunno.

So…yeah.

The default hooks are either going into the Chaos Scar to rescue captured halflings and/or being hired by a temple of Avandra to bust up Torog’s cult. Simple and straightforward, which is fine considering that the encounter composition is batshit random. There’s just no theme or sense of consistency going on here.

First, there arent gnoll slavers, there’s just one gnoll with one arm. He fancies himself the Hand of Torog, and spends his time playing watchdog during religious ceremonies (that are held I have no fucking idea where) instead of actually participating. Actually, he gets to play watchdog with a mutated arbalester that is kept chained up for no reason that is made apparent.

Second, the map looks pretty artificial, which normally wouldnt be a problem except that I dont know if its supposed to seem that way. From what I gather, its “naturally formed”…with thin walls, level floors, stairs (of all things), and doors. If its worked, I want to know how, since halfling and gnolls arent exactly known for their masonry.

See, I dont mind the squared off walls and whatnot (much easier to map by any means), its the rest of the crap that doesnt work for me. There should be more difficult terrain, uneven sections, lack of doors, and for the love of fuck where are all the slaves? Even if they’re all dead, where would they keep them? There just isnt any room for them. The entire dungeon layout looks bad, reminding me of the worst aspects of Rescue at Rivenroar and/or Keep on the Shadowfell.

Finally, the end attack where all of three myconids show up to fetch the shard is also pretty damned weak. Like, a fungus tower comes crashing against the cliff, and then a trio of shrooms clamber up and…well…dont do much. I’d have liked to see the insertion of minions or something to make it seem, I dunno, grander.

Why not have the dungeon be a lost fane of Torog that was revealed after the meteor crash, seeing as he’s an Underdark god and all? Actually, you could have just as easily gone with all myconids that are serving the shard (or something of a better level that also likes to live underground). What if gnolls were kidnapping people, and the party show up only to have most of the gnolls and slaves gone and discover that myconids erupted out of the dark and dragged everyone off? Could add a horror element to the adventure, and add some consistency to the plot (like, gnoll slavers…plural).

The general concept of Chaos Scar has be intrigued. Stick in the Mud really had me going. This? This grinds that interest to a halt, and drops a fucking bomb in my car. I have absolutely no interest to run this. Luckily Chaos Scar is designed to be very open ended so my players can skip it…or I can just rework it with my own ideas and call it something else entirely.

Stick in the Mud Review

I realize that when I like something, I dont use swear words nearly as much.

Stick in the Mud is the first official adventure for Chaos Scar. Its for level 1 characters, and actually wont provide enough XP to net a level (a bit over half, I think). There’s only about five encounters, making it a little longer than your typical delve. All in all it has this nostalgic feel of when I played Diablo 2 and went into the Den of Evil: it was sweet, short, and I got some levels and loot for my troubles.

I’m curious if Wizards is going to go this route for all their adventures, as it seems sufficient for a night of gaming (five encounters is about what I’d expect my group to plow through given 3-4 hours time), but also has the preparation advantage since the backstory isnt super complex or necessarily linked to larger events. If you have the prep time then you as a DM could link it into future adventures or other events, but if you dont then I think its great for people without a lot of time on their hands.

There are three suggested hooks to get the players going. One is for them to retrieve a staff for an ancestor of the dude that made the keep, and another gives you a cash bounty per bullywug head (the XP reward is also boosted if you kill them all). My favorite though is the second hook where a NPC asks you to scrape mud off of them and bring it back for some kind of magical experiment.
I really like how one of the quests is that a NPC wants you to bring back mud samples taken from various bullywug types. He gives you a one time payment of 30 gp for each individual monster (croaker, mucker, twitcher, and mud lord). It’ll be interesting to see how people react to this sort of immersive monster harvesting project. Also? The XP reward goes up if you collect it from all four.

Its got my interest so far, but how does the actual adventure part hold up?

The first encounter was surprisingly engaging despite its simple layout. It takes place in the ruined foundations of the keep build by the sorcerer-dude, and is a square area with lots of missing walls and debris. The missing rooms make it somewhat like a maze, which would let players use some dynamic movement and tactics. Since the outer walls are also damaged, you could approach this encounter using stealth try and net surprise, but you could also launch a pincer attack by coming in from two ways. I think that it caters to both tactical players and the ones that just want to kick in the door and start hacking…or both.

The next encounter occurs after you go underground, in a study. Its much more narrow than the ruined keep, but its underground so thats to be expected. There are a few terrain features that players can manipulate: braziers, tables, and bookshelves (oh my). The braziers can be toppled over to provide concealment, the tables can be used as cover, and the bookshelves can be…hopped onto with a…DC 20 Athletics? Whaaa?
Mind you, these shelves arent standing up, they are already knocked over. I dont know about you, but if I knock my shelves over that I could get on them extremely easily. I mean, even if I couldnt jump on top I can still fucking climb something thats barely a foot-and-a-half high. The author also makes a not to remember the -2 penalty for the mud, but I’m not sure if he’s already included it or what. The old DM screen lists a level 1 hard DC as 20, but I’d say its more of a moderate thing. I would drop the DC to 15 and then up it to 17 because of the mud.

I dont want to spoil the rest of the encounters, but the author does a good job of repeating terrain features so that players can learn what to do with them in one encounter and use it in the immediate future. Also, there is a slight mix up on monsters, so its not just a repetitive grind of bullywugs. Better yet? Unlike the first Scales of War adventure the composition makes sense. He includes narrative bits for the bullywugs, such as by having them taunt players in Primordial. Its sweet, its short, and it delivers. This is bad for me since I’m on a DMing hiatus because of school, and I really want to fucking run this.

-Fin T.T

Dungeon: The Chaos Scar

Looks like Wizards is rolling out another campaign that is about a meteor plummeting out of the sky, destroying a large amount of real estate, and attracting lots of monsters of various level and alignment ranges (mostly Unaligned through Chaotic Evil, kplzthx).

Its more or less supposed to be player driven, heavily supporting the, “Say yes,” mantra. The DM provides description and exposition, then lets the players loose to do whatever it takes to destroy the meteor. My main problem is that from what I’ve read, there isnt really any reason to do this. Sure, its gathering up an army worthy of Mordor, but they arent really doing anything. Mebbe its just a very proactive stance?

Adventures out of Chaos Scar as supposed to be ran with minimal prep time, which is good, but then most adventures are setup that way. Its also remote and modular enough to be dropped into any campaign, which is great for Points of Light buffs like myself. Normally I’d say tough shit to the crowd using prepublished campaigns (like myself) since you dont know how far spread its going to end up being, but the stated campaign goal is very simple and straighforward: get to the end and kill the meteor. So, hooray for Diablo 2-like simplicity?

I think its an interesting feat they’re attempting here. Very flexible in terms of player choice, easy to port into any campaign, but the end-game goal is given right from the start. Hrmm…well…the first adventure is out, so I guess I’ll go read that and see how it goes.

Not sure if the campaign is fully worked out, since they are accepting submissions for it.