There have been plenty of new companies starting to take advantage of the Open Gaming Licence and publish adventures for WOTC’s Dungeons & Dragons Third Edition in the last year since it was launched. Yet established publishers have also taken advantage of the terms of the Open Gaming License and released D&D scenarios alongside their own games. Amongst the first was Atlas Games, known for Ars Magica and Feng Shui, creating their Penumbra imprint specifically for the new Dungeons & Dragons game.
Their first title was Three Days To Kill, written by the last person you would expect to be authoring something for D&D. John Tynes is more known for his own company, Pagan Publishing, and its support of the classic horror RPG, Call of Cthulhu, as well as co-creating Unknown Armies with Greg Stoltze. As well as writing Three Days To Kill, Tynes also designed the cover style, which has been used in all subsequent Penumbra releases. Like the future titles in the series, Pro Fantasy Software’s Campaign Cartographer 2 was used to design the adventure’s maps and these were made available for download from the company’s web site. Overall though, the book looks perhaps a little cluttered and over-designed, which is at odds with the heavy and grainy art of Toren Atkinson, Scott Reeves and David White.
Designed for a small group of characters of levels one to three, it takes place in Deeptown, a stop in a valley on a long east-west trade route through some mountains. It is located on the shores of Shadow Lake, which is fed by the Forks and Dream rivers. The surrounding area is home to six bandits groups, all rivals and all prey upon the heavy caravan traffic. A town council whose main interests are commercial, though the trade circle made up of Deeptown’s most important businessmen has a stronger though subtle influence upon the town’s affairs, rules Deeptown.
The players come to Deeptown as part of a caravan, having provided protection for travellers looking forward to the three day long Festival Of Plenty. One of the town’s religious cults is part of the Sect of sixty, a cult that worships the diabolic, but hides behind the provision of food, joy and ribaldry, culminating in this festival. The characters, their current job over, are free to enjoy the festival or hire on as guards, but at some point they will be offered another job.
This involves a raid upon a villa in the mountains where one of the bandit lords is to meet with potential new allies that threaten Deeptown. Their new employer pays well, but also provides basic equipment and magical items. These are limited in their use, the Wand of Fireballs has a single charge remaining and there is only one Sleep Arrow. The design of Three Days To Kill is intended to create a Tom Clancy-style special ops mission in a swords and sorcery setting. Thus the Fireball Wand is a rocket launcher, the Sleep Arrow a knockout grenade, the bag of flare pebbles as flash grenades and the orb of seeing as a combined set of x-ray vision, infrared binoculars.
Three Days To Kill is geared towards the final raid, with relatively little set up. The strike is fully detailed and though tough for a beginning party, careful planning upon their part, including use of the magical items, should see them successful. In the final moments of the adventure, the bandit lord’s allies unleash something of a rather infernal nature that the party most likely is not up to dealing with. Preventing this is left for the DM to write, although a few suggestions are made as to what this could be. This aspect, as well as the political situation in Deeptown that results from the player’s actions, could perhaps have benefited from a sequel from Atlas Games. Such a sequel could also have increased the value of Three Days To Kill in the long term.
In light of Penumbra’s later releases this is perhaps a perfunctory rather than interesting adventure. The author’s intention of modelling a special ops raid in D&D is done well enough, but if the players should realise that it is so then the mood of the setting may be upset. Perhaps not the best that Penumbra has to offer, but then better things were to come with In The Belly of the Beast and The Tide of Years.
(with thanks to Roj at Wayland’s Forge)
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