The Inside Scoop on Gaming

This review is full of spoilers, so do not continue if you may play this adventure.

Appearance

The cover art by Jeff Easley is decent, and actually shows more characters than the standard four adventurers. This time we get to see Ember ad the bard, but Lidda makes an appearance too. The interior art is by Dennis Cramer and is decent.

Layout

The adventure is divided up into a series of parts, much like acts in a play. The adventure is essentially a two-act play with various scenes in each act. The PCs go from scene to scene (in whatever order they wish) in each act. The encounters in specific scenes are preset, and the PCs only have control over the order of events. They can skip events, but every event plays out the same way.

The statistics for the opponents are put at the end of the adventure, along with the description of a new creature, the wyst, an extraplanar ambulatory wormlike creature. In general, I don't see a huge demand for such creatures, so I would have liked to have a more interesting creature appear.

The adventure flowchart (showing the acts and scenes) is on the last page and is an invaluable aid for the adventure. The maps on the front and back covers round out the adventure.

One big problem with the layout is the large amount of white space in the adventure. At least a page and a half of the adventure is pure white space, which is remarkable in a 32 page adventure. It's even more remarkable considering there was 10 pages of material (in a much larger font) released as a supplement on WOTC's webpage.

Plot

The adventure is structured around the town of Brindinford, a town of 5000 inhabitants. A power-mad mind flayer (Ghaerleth Axom) who has been exiled from his home city for summoning demons is attempting to take over the town. He enlists the aid of much of the underworld in the town, from wererats to an alienist cult of sorcerers. Eventually he manages to take control of duke, and declares martial law in the city with the aid of summoned demons. The PCs destroy some of Axom's lesser axioms in the first act. Unfortunately, this is the pretext he uses to declare martial law in the city. In the second act, the PCs must ally with whatever elements of the city they can find to defeat Axom and banish the demons.

Part of the problem with this plot is the main villain. Ghaerleth Axom doesn't seem to have much of a plan. What is his long-term plan if the PCs fail?

We know that he was exiled from his home city for attempting to summon demons and he wishes to found a new illithid empire. The text also says he decided "to set his sights on a great challenge: the infiltration of a human town on the world's surface."

Unfortunately, his takeover as described in the module is a lot more conspicuous than infiltration. He has demons traveling the streets and hellfire in Pelor's temple. It's not like a town dominated by demons is going to be easy to conceal from the rest of the country.

It also isn't immediately obvious that he can create a new illithid empire by using demons. The demons will inevitably seize power for themselves and destroy Axom. I think the demons were a poor design decision. They don't really fit with the whole mind flayer domination idea. Far too blatant. I can only assume they appear because James Wyatt likes facing his players with fiends and much simpler moral choices.

It almost seems like the whole thing is a test for Axom to see if he can do it. That isn't made very clear in the text, and there doesn't seem to be much to do after the adventure ends. If the PCs fail, other heroes will eventually come and destroy the demon-infested town. If they succeed, they are left with extremely weak suggestions for extending the adventure.

Another problem is that the adventure is pretty linear. The PCs can go through the scenes in differing order, but the scenes don't change at all and are pretty scripted. Many of them work on the principle that the PCs appear right as some evil-doers work their evilness, which gets a little stale the fifth time around.

Specific Elements

Although the main plot is pretty weak, many specific elements of the adventure are quite clever.

The wererats make good use of the bell tower and should frustrate the PCs greatly. The idea of an alien dry-land squid is also a good one and should surprise the players.

The alienist cult of sorcerers is also excellent. I like that their hideout is a bookshop. It's clear that this is a dig at New Age bookstores and their hippie adherents. In that sense, it's a cheap shot, but it is pretty easily ignored. (One could also interpret this as a dig at evangelical Christians and their bookstores, but I doubt Wyatt meant it that way since he is one.) A good extension might have the alien forces invade Brindinford when the cult is destroyed, and I don't understand why this obvious hook isn't mentioned at the end.

The grimlocks don't make much sense in the city. It's pretty unlikely that a band of evil cannibals could lie undiscovered for long in Southspur. As the bodies pile up, the city would have to do something. On the other hand, their leader is a grimlock assassin who fights in her own magically created darkness, which works well as a concept.

It was refreshing to see the alley ambush. It's always nice to see an encounter where the goal of the PCs is only to get out alive, since the opponents outclass them. I would have liked to see mention of doors opening into the alley, because it is an obvious way for heroes to escape their attackers.

One major problem is the paladins of Hieronymous. Those Who Hear attempt to take care of them, but the characters can rescue at least on f them, Torea. Unfortunately, no statistics on Torea are provided, even though she is an obvious ally for the PCs. She also doesn't appear later, even though the paladins of Hieronymous are obvious enemies of the demons. This element just disappears, and is almost certainly a glaring fault of the editing process.

The second part of the adventure is more promising. The PCs have to figure out themselves what to do and gather their own allies. Unfortunately, there isn't much detail on this in the main adventure. The web enhancement has more information and makes this actually playable. Without the web enhancement, there would be a lot more work for the DM.

Web Enhancement

A web enhancement to the Speaker in Dreams is available on the internet here. It is 10 pages (in a much larger font) of supplementary material for the adventure. A little less than half of the material should have been in the main product. The descriptions on the town sections is very useful to the DM, especially for the second act of the adventure. In addition, the description of the thieves guild members is almost mandatory for that section. If the layout had been a little better, it probably could have been. It's good to see it anyway. The rest of the material is supplementary, covering a medusa and additional guard and town encounters.

Conclusions

The adventure was over-written by at least 50 percent, as stated by James Wyatt on his website. Unfortunately, I think that too much was cut and the result is not coherent, even with the web supplement. The adventure doesn't really hold together that well. I think that many of the elements of the adventure are good, but some work is required to make the adventure make sense.

This adventure isn't as good as the previous two offerings, and is probably skippable unless you really want to play a city-based adventure with demons, or some of the encounters really spark your interest.