The Inside Scoop on Gaming

Thieves in the Forest bills itself as an introductory adventure, pitching itself as “beginner-friendly“ on the back cover. It is a fairly basic adventure in which the heroes hunt down and (hopefully) vanquish a band of thieves that have been terrorizing the local community. But, as we should all know, it’s not the premise that makes an adventure good or not, but the execution of that premise.

I had really hoped to fully playtest this adventure before reviewing it, but things did not work out that way. So, I will take the position of a GM who is preparing to use this adventure, but has not actually run it yet. Additionally, as this pitches itself as “beginner-friendly,” I will assume that I am not an experienced GM and will be looking for advice. I will do my best to not give too much away, but I make no guarantees, so players should proceed at their own risk. Now that you know where I’m coming from, let us begin!

Let’s look at the physical components. The book itself is 24 pages long. That’s not a lot of material for $9, though I’ve seen worse. However, the inside covers have pretty clean, very functional maps on them, and the booklet comes with playing maps for the Temple of the Sun God for those of you with miniatures. With all that taken into account, this adventure comes off as a decent value. I really do like the play maps, though non-miniature users won’t find much value in them. I don’t like the internal art, however. It’s just a matter of personal taste, but that did detract some from my experience with this adventure.

The adventure itself starts with the adventurers entering the town of Brandon’s Bridge. The adventure gives the GM an opening section to read that encourages the players to go to the local tavern. The section on Brandon‘s Bridge gives a little information on the town, and gives very brief descriptions of the aforementioned inn and a few other establishments. Let’s use the inn as an example. You get the names of the tavern owners, a description of the food available, and prices for rooms. I had hoped for some visual aides to assist GMs in describing the look and feel of the inn to the players, but there isn’t any. And the other places in town get almost no description. I was hoping for more descriptions of the town so that I could describe it to the players, but that isn’t here. At some point the players are to be directed to the home of Alberic the money changer, where a merchant who was recently attacked by the thieves is recovering from his wounds. This merchant sends the players off into the surrounding forest to track down the bandits.

At the beginning of the section on Ralfert Forest, the GM is given a note that many of the encounters in the forest are too strong for a first-level party. Thus, the GM is encouraged to run the encounters so that the players don’t get their characters killed off unnecessarily. Reading the encounter descriptions, I can see how a straight-up fight with most of them would likely result in the characters all getting killed. Most of the descriptions do give some advice on making the encounter less deadly, and some also include decent role-playing tips to give the encounters some character. Not too bad, though I personally would weaken some of the encounters, just in case.

Last, we have the actual lair of the thieves, which is in an abandoned temple. This is mostly a straight-up fight, and if the players don’t bother with tactics, they will likely get wiped out. This section of the adventure is the best-written, and it’s easy to figure out how to run the thieves based on the descriptions given. Because the thieves are sort of spread throughout both levels of the temple, you can make the combats easier or harder by varying the amount of time it takes for bandits to respond to trouble. Thus, if the players are having a hard time with the couple of watchmen, just make it take longer for the other thieves to awaken and join the fight. If the watchmen are dispatched with ease, make the other thieves more alert and prepared. That said, I do think that some of the encounters are, once again, too tough, and this time there’s really no way to deal with it except for cutting down on the number of thieves or encouraging the players to retreat (and giving them a means to do so) if things get too hairy. Watch out for the crypt, and the encounter with the thieves’ leader. Those are both rather nasty encounters.

To wrap up, this adventure has strengths and weaknesses that balance out pretty evenly, in my opinion. I doesn’t meet it’s stated goal of being “beginner-friendly,” as not enough description is given to let a new GM know how to properly roleplay most of the characters in the adventure. Also, a new GM isn’t necessarily going to know how to tweak encounters to make them most appropriate for her players, so just telling me to “be careful” isn’t going to do much good if I’m not sure how to do that. Bottom line, it’s a very serviceable, if rather average, beginning adventure for a new campaign, but it fails in its goal of being easy to use for a new GM.

Thieves in the Forest
Thieves in the Forest Capsule Review by Aaron Thorne on 25/05/02 Style: 3 (Average) Substance: 3 (Average) An average adventure to start a new campaign, but not for the newbie gamemaster. Product: Thieves in the Forest Author: John Nephew Category: RPG Company/Publisher: Atlas Games Line: Penumbra Cost: $8.95 Page count: 24 Year published: 2000 ISBN: 1-887801-95-2 SKU: AG3201 Comp copy?: yes Capsule Review by Aaron Thorne on 25/05/02 Genre tags: Fantasy	Thieves in the Forest bills itself as an introductory adventure, pitching itself as “beginner-friendly“ on the back cover. It is a fairly basic adventure in which the heroes hunt down and (hopefully) vanquish a band of thieves that have been terrorizing the local community. But, as we should all know, it’s not the premise that makes an adventure good or not, but the execution of that premise. I had really hoped to fully playtest this adventure before reviewing it, but things did not work out that way. So, I will take the position of a GM who is preparing to use this adventure, but has not actually run it yet. Additionally, as this pitches itself as “beginner-friendly,” I will assume that I am not an experienced GM and will be looking for advice. I will do my best to not give too much away, but I make no guarantees, so players should proceed at their own risk. Now that you know where I’m coming from, let us begin! Let’s look at the physical components. The book itself is 24 pages long. That’s not a lot of material for $9, though I’ve seen worse. However, the inside covers have pretty clean, very functional maps on them, and the booklet comes with playing maps for the Temple of the Sun God for those of you with miniatures. With all that taken into account, this adventure comes off as a decent value. I really do like the play maps, though non-miniature users won’t find much value in them. I don’t like the internal art, however. It’s just a matter of personal taste, but that did detract some from my experience with this adventure. The adventure itself starts with the adventurers entering the town of Brandon’s Bridge. The adventure gives the GM an opening section to read that encourages the players to go to the local tavern. The section on Brandon‘s Bridge gives a little information on the town, and gives very brief descriptions of the aforementioned inn and a few other establishments. Let’s use the inn as an example. You get the names of the tavern owners, a description of the food available, and prices for rooms. I had hoped for some visual aides to assist GMs in describing the look and feel of the inn to the players, but there isn’t any. And the other places in town get almost no description. I was hoping for more descriptions of the town so that I could describe it to the players, but that isn’t here. At some point the players are to be directed to the home of Alberic the money changer, where a merchant who was recently attacked by the thieves is recovering from his wounds. This merchant sends the players off into the surrounding forest to track down the bandits. At the beginning of the section on Ralfert Forest, the GM is given a note that many of the encounters in the forest are too strong for a first-level party. Thus, the GM is encouraged to run the encounters so that the players don’t get their characters killed off unnecessarily. Reading the encounter descriptions, I can see how a straight-up fight with most of them would likely result in the characters all getting killed. Most of the descriptions do give some advice on making the encounter less deadly, and some also include decent role-playing tips to give the encounters some character. Not too bad, though I personally would weaken some of the encounters, just in case. Last, we have the actual lair of the thieves, which is in an abandoned temple. This is mostly a straight-up fight, and if the players don’t bother with tactics, they will likely get wiped out. This section of the adventure is the best-written, and it’s easy to figure out how to run the thieves based on the descriptions given. Because the thieves are sort of spread throughout both levels of the temple, you can make the combats easier or harder by varying the amount of time it takes for bandits to respond to trouble. Thus, if the players are having a hard time with the couple of watchmen, just make it take longer for the other thieves to awaken and join the fight. If the watchmen are dispatched with ease, make the other thieves more alert and prepared. That said, I do think that some of the encounters are, once again, too tough, and this time there’s really no way to deal with it except for cutting down on the number of thieves or encouraging the players to retreat (and giving them a means to do so) if things get too hairy. Watch out for the crypt, and the encounter with the thieves’ leader. Those are both rather nasty encounters. To wrap up, this adventure has strengths and weaknesses that balance out pretty evenly, in my opinion. I doesn’t meet it’s stated goal of being “beginner-friendly,” as not enough description is given to let a new GM know how to properly roleplay most of the characters in the adventure. Also, a new GM isn’t necessarily going to know how to tweak encounters to make them most appropriate for her players, so just telling me to “be careful” isn’t going to do much good if I’m not sure how to do that. Bottom line, it’s a very serviceable, if rather average, beginning adventure for a new campaign, but it fails in its goal of being easy to use for a new GM.