"C'mon, Kennie, I dare you!"
The Thing In Radley Manor is one of the first adventures to use the new Action! System from Gold Rush Games. It also features d20 System stats and a convenient conversion table for translating the game between the two systems. The setting is a modern one and the d20 stats are based off of the SRD as the d20 Modern book is not available as of the time of this product or review.
The Premise:
The players are tasked with tracking down the source of crystal meth that has recently become available in their city. In the process, they will become involved in solving the mystery of a missing child and the haunting of old Radley Manor.
What Ya Get:
The Thing In Radley Manor is a nineteen page Adobe Acrobat file. You will need to have the Adobe Acrobat Reader on your computer or a similiar program capable of rendering the PDF format. The file also comes zip-compressed so you will need a program such as WinZip to uncompress the PDF before you can view it.
Cost:
The Thing In Radley Manor will cost you $2.95 USD and is available through RPGnet Mall.
Appearance:
Let me go ahead and get this out of the way first - there are seven HTML-hotlinked ads inside this product not including the full page ad at the back of it. Now, to be fair, they're small about on the line of banner ads you'd see on the web, but they're excessive in my opinion - especially in a product that I paid money for. The text is well laid-out and organized logically. The art is up to Storn Cook's usual high standards - the crude color job that was done to them is not. The colors are garish and bring back more memories of old comics rather than a modern thriller. The colored maps, however, are adequate for their purpose. One very nice touch was the inclusion of colored sidebar boxes that gave Action! or d20 system information and stats as needed on the relevant page.
The Adventure:
SPOILER WARNING: I will be discussing the plot of the adventure in this review. I am going to try to remain vague about some of it as to not completely ruin everything. If you are planning on playing in this adventure or have reason to believe that your GM will be running it, you may want to stop reading now. Nobody likes to have their fun spoiled (most people don't anyway).
There is one hiccup immediately once the adventure gets underway. we are given the adventure intro that specifically states that the police have been unable to locate the missing child.Now, you're dealing with some really dumb cops... especially when they don't decide to check out large abandoned buildings in the area. This is going to require some maneuvering by the GM to explain away or rewrite so that this contradiction doesn't occur later when an astute player brings this up. The potential plot ideas for getting the PCs involved are good however.
Anyway, the PCs will initially only be concerned with locating the source of the new "ice" that is appearing. Investigation will lead them to discover that several biker gangs are buying it from an unknown dealer and then selling it on the streets for their own profit. If they're very careful or clever, they can possibly track the dealer back to Radley Manor (this is vastly oversimplifying the actual process involved as well as the text itself). This section also clarifies the "missing bicycle" problem that I orginally thought was a flaw in the adventure after reading the introductory fiction and the adventure opening.
Next, you get three pages that detail all the children of the neighborhood as well as backgrounds and personality traits of each. This is very nice especially for GMs who really want to play up the roleplaying aspects of gathering information from superstitious children who believe that the Manor is haunted. Several of the children can give the PCs valuable information and clues for when they actually get to the Manor. Following the writeup on the children, you get five pages that detail the neighborhood, the Manor itself and the security that the gang has put in place. Unfortunately, no interior map of the manor is given. The text claims "space considerations" but I fail to see how PDF is a consideration considering how you're not having to generate your layout in specific page amounts as you would with a press. It just seems like a bit of a dodge to me. Fortunately, however, the interior of the manor is described well enough for the enterprising GM to extrapolate how things are organized inside.
The rest of the adventure gives a logical outline of how the adventure is susposed to flow and unfold that should clear up any confusion from the previous text. It also provides welcome suggestions for possible PC actions that the GM should account for as well as possible outcomes of those actions. Another very nice touch is two alternate ways of running the adventure: one of having the PCs be the neighborhood children having to deal with the bikers and the other using the actual ghostly haunting of the manor as fact rather than superstition.
Overall Impression:
The adventure itself is straightforward. Where it does shine are the numerous instances where more social characters can get the chance to shine and an emphasis on stealth rather than just shooting everything that moves. I would recommend this adventure if you have the Action! system rules and have been itching to try them out or if you want to try something a little different with d20 and can't wait for d20 Modern. The numerous ads and lack of an interior map devalue it a bit but it's still worth the $2.95 if you're willing to put a little bit of work into it.
MetalMan signing off.
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