Avg. Review: details

The third adventure in the D&D game series, created to take players from level 1 through 20, can really be used as a stand-alone adventure.  Designed with level five players in mind, the story makes use of two new concepts added to the D&D game via the Dungeon Master’s handbook – a site-based and event-based campaign.  The first concept, site-based, is not so new of a concept.  It’s basically designing an adventure to be specific to a special local.  In the case of this story, the city of Brindinford and its annual street fair provides the setting to kick the story off.  Gone are the dripping stalagmites, musty corridors and evil creatures that live in the dark (well, most of them anyway).  Instead, exotic food, entertainment and a variety of townsfolk from all walks of life are present.  Any of your players who are more interested in showing off their charismatic skills will welcome the change of pace. 

The second concept, the event-based adventure, is a little more complex.  Without giving away details of the actual story, an event-based story’s map is not decided by which room the players’ enter, but rather, the actions that your players’ make.  Inside the booklet, the main map that the DM will follow is actually a flowchart of how the story will progress depending on what your players do.  This is much more interesting approach because you allow your group to decide which path that they take.  Instead of leading them by the nose, they determine their own fate by the actions that they take.  This takes some pressure of the DM in that respect. 

However, one of the drawbacks to this type of campaign is that the group may not make a decision that follows closely to the flowchart.  If the players choose to decide upon an action not listed in the book, then it’s the DM’s job to get them to a place where he can go back and follow the process from there.  This can be extra work upon the DM.  If you’re quick on your feet and have read the adventure well before the game, this won’t be much of a problem.  Otherwise, it can get tricky. 

Since the players do have more access to supplies and places to rest/heal up, the author has provided some more challenging NPCs and monsters to throw at your party.  Based upon the creatures previewed, they can not only limit your character ability to overcome the circumstances in the adventure, but can flat out destroy the group if they’re not careful.  I would strongly encourage that you would remind your players to seek rest or medical help in-between scenes.  Of course, if you’re also interested in eliminating a few ‘problem’ characters, this should provide you with some ample opportunities! 

I never had the chance to run this with my group, but the material alone for the city and NPCs are worth the price of the book in itself.  Even if you don’t use the adventure, there’s enough material here to flesh out your very own town without any difficulties.  It’s nice to see the folks from Wizards to come up with an adventure that doesn’t have your players begging for a little bit of sunlight or fresh air.  However, after this adventure, they might wish that they stayed underground.

--Gary, Wizard's Keep staff