The Ebon Mirror is a D&D3 D20 module put out by Atlas Games for their Penumbra line. The Ebon Mirror isn't going to be for every group, though. The party that you run it for should ideally:

know nothing about this module
be of mostly good alignments
be familiar with the D&D setting
have a variety of spells and magical items
have some NPC companions that people could play if their characters die (there is no good way to introduce a replacement PC in the middle of the adventure)
not mind a little bit of railroading (the adventure is pretty linear, and offers no support for the PCs, say, going to see Archmage Fred to ask his advice instead of continuing on their mission)
have a sense of humor

That said, though, this module was a blast to run. I should quantify that, so that you'll be properly impressed. You see, I've grown to dislike D&D over the years. D&D3 is better than old AD&D, but I still think of it as full of boring combat and ridiculously long tallies of combat modifiers. I really didn't expect to ever run it again.

This module looked like so much fun that I changed my mind. I ran a short D&D3 game just to try it out. That's pretty high praise, you see.

And afterwards? I'm glad I did. The Ebon Mirror was a lot of fun to run and my players really liked it. They were confused in the parts where they were supposed to be confused, bewildered when the module called for it, and eventually figured everything out by themselves. They enjoyed the roleplaying encounters and even developed an attachment to Carcoasn, a manic-depressive talking axe that they got stuck with early on. And while I expected them to fail in the final encounter, they actually pulled it off and succeeded in bringing about the best possible resolution.

Camping out in the woods, the party decided to bury the box with the axe in it overnight, telling Carcoasn that he had better be quiet or they wouldn't dig him back up again.
"I'll be good!" he promised.
The next morning I gave everyone Listen checks... The players started grabbing their dice, fearing an ambush.
Those who succeeded could faintly hear "Murffle. Murmur. Mello? Manymody mout mair? Murffle? Mello?"

The Ebon Mirror is obsensibly designed for a party of 8^th to 10^th level adventurers, but it scales very nicely. The opening section describes how you should adjust the various combats that the characters will encounter for lower level folks, even as low as 4^th to 5^th level. I ended up running it for a group of three 7^th level characters and it worked just fine. I never even had to fudge any of the combats; they were all intense and exciting without being a foregone conclusion one way or the other. It helped that the party's paladin had a unicorn steed, of course; "Twilight" proved instrumental in at least one encounter.

The basic premise is that the PCs are contacted by a member of the obscure religious group known as the Crucible, and asked to deliver a trunk of dangerous, cursed magical items to the head of the Crucible so that they can be destroyed safely. Naturally, things go wrong, and the short journey to the village of Shareth-en-la turns into a rather dangerous trek.

The GM will need to do a lot of prep-work for this module. The plot involves some magical effects that are determined by what sort of spells and magic items each character is using, so you should be very familiar with them. The module recommends getting a copy of each character sheet for yourself, something that I always recommend anyway. But it's almost a necessity here.

In fact, the most difficult bit may be keeping the secret parts secret. The more your players know about it, the less well the surprises and twists will work and the less fun it'll be for all concerned. I'd strongly recommend not even letting your players read the back cover of the module, as it spells out several of the surprises right there. I kind of wish that they hadn't done that, but at least I had honest players to whom I could basically say "It's called The Ebon Mirror. Please don't read anything about it," and be confident that they wouldn't.

It's not a terribly long adventure, either. There are 7 major combats, and my group ended up bypassing 3 of them through good rolls and good roleplaying. We finished the whole thing in only two five-hour sessions and everybody had a great time. There are three puzzles at the end and only the first one really stymied them for long, but that's okay- these folks are experienced gamers. If you really need to watch your gaming budget, this adventure might not be for you; while it was great fun, it did only take two to three sessions to get through a 17 dollar module. The quality and production values were very good, though. And a good GM could easily expand it by adding a few more encounters along the way to Shareth-en-la.

All in all, this module was well worth the hassle of writing up characters and running a playtest to try it. The experience has improved my opinion of D&D3 in general, since running it wasn't as much of a pain as I expected and the adventure was loads of fun. I had to stifle maniacal laughter during the first half, to avoid giving the game away. It was really entertaining.

Best module I've read in a long time. The art was very good, with appropriate pictures for almost every major scene, the sort that you can show to your players without spoiling anything. The cover art was actually done by Lee Moyer, a fellow whose work I've always admired after playing Sanctum online. The writing was entertaining and the game stats seemed fine. I never really noticed any discrepancies or mis-used rules.

There's no "dungeon" as such. The only detailed map is of the village of Shareth-en-la (headquarters of the Crucible), and it's not likely that your players will stay there for long. The encounters along the way are either involved in the plot or are there to provide atmosphere. There's none of the room-by-room exploration that some parties like, so bear that in mind.

There were a few kind of hokey bits. For example, one NPC encountered coincidentally turns out to be another NPC's son. That just seemed way too unlikely to me, and it was used to set up a very cliche'd scene. And the big secret behind the plot was nifty if not too terribly well explained (a "magical accident" is used to explain a lot of the weird events, including things like little shards of solidified smoke). But overall the module was very well done. The NPC dialogue was well written, and other than the one unlikely coincidence, everything seemed very reasonable. If your players don't mind the unlikely monsters that normally inhabit the D&D universe, they shouldn't have any problems with the plot of this module.

I give it 5 for style and 4 for substance. It may just be a short, two-session module, but it's one of the most entertaining ones I've seen. An excellent change-of-pace from the typical dungeon crawl.

SPOILERS BELOW - DM's ONLY

Everything beyond this point consists of discussion of the actual puzzles and preparations that the DM will have to make. Please don't read it if you think you'll ever end up playing through this module. You should have to highlight this stuff to see it, assuming my HTML works correctly.

The adventurers get unknowingly hurled into a mirror universe, where everything looks the same but magic works backwards and good and evil are reversed (there are holy undead and evil blink dogs, for example). Most of the early encounters are intended to mislead them into thinking that they are still in their home plane. There's a lot of prep work for the DM. In particular, the effects of the party's magic items and most of their spells will be "reversed" for most of the adventure. You need to figure out exactly what that means for every item beforehand. The module has a lot of suggestions, but it can't cover every possibility. Here are some examples that I used.

Their bag of holding spewed items out (at great speed) whenever opened. The module kind of implied that it should have become a bag of devouring, but I didn't want to include any cursed items that could theoretically kill their bearer outright.

Their boots of striding and springing became boots of dancing. They couldn't run without being forced to stop and dance. They actually put this to use later, because I said that the boots gave +10 to dance checks.

Plate mail of calling became plate mail of rapid disrobing (ie- on command it'll fly apart, leaving you in your skivvies).

A flaming sword became a sword of fire extinguishing.

A bow of true strike became a bow of perfect misses. On command it would apply -20 to your attack roll, causing the arrow to fly off in a random direction.

A traveller's cloak became a homebody's cloak. It had pockets that produced manure, a flask that could generate a cloud of hot or cold mist, and on command it could fold itself up into a tiny handkerchief for easy storage.

The magic changes can really end up having humorous effects. The first spell they cast after being "reversed" was an attempt to enlarge the paladin's unicorn steed to make him more impressive. The poor unicorn shunk down to one-quarter size and scampered off into the woods in a panic. It was a long time before he trusted the party's mage again.

PCs may well end up committing transgressions against their alignment without realizing it. Their deity won't punish them, but they might feel guilty about it anyway. Our paladin definitely felt like she needed to atone for her crimes afterwards. Bear that in mind when deciding whether or not this module is appropriate for your group. If they take that sort of thing seriously, they might feel resentful about the way that the module tries to trick them into doing the "wrong" thing.

The basic sequence of events is that the PCs get their mission (and fight off a few thugs to prove themselves) and start carrying the box of cursed items to Shareth-en-la. There are a few atmosphere encounters along the way, then they get teleported into the mirror universe without realizing it. Shortly after that, they'll encounter a goblin farm being raided by evil elves, followed by an NPC who seems like a nice guy, but who really wants them to destroy the holy undead for him. After that they'll reach Shareth-en-la and all will be revealed (possibly after another fight or two). Then it's off to the climax. Along the way, they'll likely encounter their own evil duplicates, which could be a major battle (with the PCs having a small advantage if they've figured out that the cursed items in the chest are now useful) or an interesting roleplaying exercise, or both. Then they get thrown into the "Second World," a set of metaphorical puzzles that they have to unravel to get back home.

One of the final challenges is an Anti-Sphynx who gives out answers and expects the PCs to reply with appropriate riddles. This was a lot of fun to run. She can only speak in lies. I decided ahead of time that if someone tried one of those "If you were a liar, would you say that this cloak is blue?" questions that she would reply "I have decided not to answer that." Which, of course is a lie; she really meant "I cannot answer that." And yes, one of my smart-aleck players did try that.

The mirror universe was created by a powerful half-orc sorceress in an attempt to purge her orcish blood. In a cute twist, it's her human half that's evil and her orcish half that's good. The PCs finally get the opportunity to determine which half wins by interfering with a mystical chess game. They have to make multiple Gambling checks vs DCs as high as 20. They can substitute Intelligence checks, but the DC goes up by 2 if they do. Does your party have expert gamblers? Well, mine didn't. Fortunately, by using the rules for cooperative skill checks (Player's Handbook, page 62) they were able to combine their efforts and pull it off.

One nice thing about the module is that it supports 3 different endings depending on what the PCs tried to do (or tried to do and failed). All three are acceptable endings, and all three leave some potential future plot hooks for your game. None of them involve the world being destroyed or anything overly dramatic like that.

I'm told that the end of the module bears a bit of a resemblance to an existing adventure called The Deva Spark. If your group has gone thorugh that one recently, you might want to wait a few sessions before running them through The Ebon Mirror.

This module is a lot of fun. Come on, don't you want to see the expression on your party's face when their first burning hands spell actually sets the caster's hands on fire? You know you do.

The Ebon Mirror
The Ebon Mirror Playtest Review by Frank Sronce on 07/10/02 Style: 5 (Excellent!) Substance: 4 (Meaty) the playtest was a blast Product: The Ebon Mirror Author: Keith Baker Category: RPG Company/Publisher: Atlas Games Line: Penumbra Cost: $16.95 Page count: 95 Year published: 2002 ISBN: 1-58978-010-8 SKU: AG3211 Comp copy?: yes Playtest Review by Frank Sronce on 07/10/02 Genre tags: Fantasy	The Ebon Mirror is a D&D3 D20 module put out by Atlas Games for their Penumbra line. The Ebon Mirror isn't going to be for every group, though. The party that you run it for should ideally: know nothing about this module be of mostly good alignments be familiar with the D&D setting have a variety of spells and magical items have some NPC companions that people could play if their characters die (there is no good way to introduce a replacement PC in the middle of the adventure) not mind a little bit of railroading (the adventure is pretty linear, and offers no support for the PCs, say, going to see Archmage Fred to ask his advice instead of continuing on their mission) have a sense of humor That said, though, this module was a blast to run. I should quantify that, so that you'll be properly impressed. You see, I've grown to dislike D&D over the years. D&D3 is better than old AD&D, but I still think of it as full of boring combat and ridiculously long tallies of combat modifiers. I really didn't expect to ever run it again. This module looked like so much fun that I changed my mind. I ran a short D&D3 game just to try it out. That's pretty high praise, you see. And afterwards? I'm glad I did. The Ebon Mirror was a lot of fun to run and my players really liked it. They were confused in the parts where they were supposed to be confused, bewildered when the module called for it, and eventually figured everything out by themselves. They enjoyed the roleplaying encounters and even developed an attachment to Carcoasn, a manic-depressive talking axe that they got stuck with early on. And while I expected them to fail in the final encounter, they actually pulled it off and succeeded in bringing about the best possible resolution. Camping out in the woods, the party decided to bury the box with the axe in it overnight, telling Carcoasn that he had better be quiet or they wouldn't dig him back up again. "I'll be good!" he promised. The next morning I gave everyone Listen checks... The players started grabbing their dice, fearing an ambush. Those who succeeded could faintly hear "Murffle. Murmur. Mello? Manymody mout mair? Murffle? Mello?" The Ebon Mirror is obsensibly designed for a party of 8^th to 10^th level adventurers, but it scales very nicely. The opening section describes how you should adjust the various combats that the characters will encounter for lower level folks, even as low as 4^th to 5^th level. I ended up running it for a group of three 7^th level characters and it worked just fine. I never even had to fudge any of the combats; they were all intense and exciting without being a foregone conclusion one way or the other. It helped that the party's paladin had a unicorn steed, of course; "Twilight" proved instrumental in at least one encounter. The basic premise is that the PCs are contacted by a member of the obscure religious group known as the Crucible, and asked to deliver a trunk of dangerous, cursed magical items to the head of the Crucible so that they can be destroyed safely. Naturally, things go wrong, and the short journey to the village of Shareth-en-la turns into a rather dangerous trek. The GM will need to do a lot of prep-work for this module. The plot involves some magical effects that are determined by what sort of spells and magic items each character is using, so you should be very familiar with them. The module recommends getting a copy of each character sheet for yourself, something that I always recommend anyway. But it's almost a necessity here. In fact, the most difficult bit may be keeping the secret parts secret. The more your players know about it, the less well the surprises and twists will work and the less fun it'll be for all concerned. I'd strongly recommend not even letting your players read the back cover of the module, as it spells out several of the surprises right there. I kind of wish that they hadn't done that, but at least I had honest players to whom I could basically say "It's called The Ebon Mirror. Please don't read anything about it," and be confident that they wouldn't. It's not a terribly long adventure, either. There are 7 major combats, and my group ended up bypassing 3 of them through good rolls and good roleplaying. We finished the whole thing in only two five-hour sessions and everybody had a great time. There are three puzzles at the end and only the first one really stymied them for long, but that's okay- these folks are experienced gamers. If you really need to watch your gaming budget, this adventure might not be for you; while it was great fun, it did only take two to three sessions to get through a 17 dollar module. The quality and production values were very good, though. And a good GM could easily expand it by adding a few more encounters along the way to Shareth-en-la. All in all, this module was well worth the hassle of writing up characters and running a playtest to try it. The experience has improved my opinion of D&D3 in general, since running it wasn't as much of a pain as I expected and the adventure was loads of fun. I had to stifle maniacal laughter during the first half, to avoid giving the game away. It was really entertaining. Best module I've read in a long time. The art was very good, with appropriate pictures for almost every major scene, the sort that you *can* show to your players without spoiling anything. The cover art was actually done by Lee Moyer, a fellow whose work I've always admired after playing Sanctum online. The writing was entertaining and the game stats seemed fine. I never really noticed any discrepancies or mis-used rules. There's no "dungeon" as such. The only detailed map is of the village of Shareth-en-la (headquarters of the Crucible), and it's not likely that your players will stay there for long. The encounters along the way are either involved in the plot or are there to provide atmosphere. There's none of the room-by-room exploration that some parties like, so bear that in mind. There were a few kind of hokey bits. For example, one NPC encountered coincidentally turns out to be another NPC's son. That just seemed way too unlikely to me, and it was used to set up a very cliche'd scene. And the big secret behind the plot was nifty if not too terribly well explained (a "magical accident" is used to explain a lot of the weird events, including things like little shards of solidified smoke). But overall the module was very well done. The NPC dialogue was well written, and other than the one unlikely coincidence, everything seemed very reasonable. If your players don't mind the unlikely monsters that normally inhabit the D&D universe, they shouldn't have any problems with the plot of this module. I give it 5 for style and 4 for substance. It may just be a short, two-session module, but it's one of the most entertaining ones I've seen. An excellent change-of-pace from the typical dungeon crawl. SPOILERS BELOW - DM's ONLY Everything beyond this point consists of discussion of the actual puzzles and preparations that the DM will have to make. Please don't read it if you think you'll ever end up playing through this module. You should have to highlight this stuff to see it, assuming my HTML works correctly. The adventurers get unknowingly hurled into a mirror universe, where everything looks the same but magic works backwards and good and evil are reversed (there are holy undead and evil blink dogs, for example). Most of the early encounters are intended to mislead them into thinking that they are still in their home plane. There's a lot of prep work for the DM. In particular, the effects of the party's magic items and most of their spells will be "reversed" for most of the adventure. You need to figure out exactly what that means for every item beforehand. The module has a lot of suggestions, but it can't cover every possibility. Here are some examples that I used. Their bag of holding spewed items out (at great speed) whenever opened. The module kind of implied that it should have become a bag of devouring, but I didn't want to include any cursed items that could theoretically kill their bearer outright. Their boots of striding and springing became boots of dancing. They couldn't run without being forced to stop and dance. They actually put this to use later, because I said that the boots gave +10 to dance checks. Plate mail of calling became plate mail of rapid disrobing (ie- on command it'll fly apart, leaving you in your skivvies). A flaming sword became a sword of fire extinguishing. A bow of true strike became a bow of perfect misses. On command it would apply -20 to your attack roll, causing the arrow to fly off in a random direction. A traveller's cloak became a homebody's cloak. It had pockets that produced manure, a flask that could generate a cloud of hot or cold mist, and on command it could fold itself up into a tiny handkerchief for easy storage. The magic changes can really end up having humorous effects. The first spell they cast after being "reversed" was an attempt to enlarge the paladin's unicorn steed to make him more impressive. The poor unicorn shunk down to one-quarter size and scampered off into the woods in a panic. It was a long time before he trusted the party's mage again. PCs may well end up committing transgressions against their alignment without realizing it. Their deity won't punish them, but they might feel guilty about it anyway. Our paladin definitely felt like she needed to atone for her crimes afterwards. Bear that in mind when deciding whether or not this module is appropriate for your group. If they take that sort of thing seriously, they might feel resentful about the way that the module tries to trick them into doing the "wrong" thing. The basic sequence of events is that the PCs get their mission (and fight off a few thugs to prove themselves) and start carrying the box of cursed items to Shareth-en-la. There are a few atmosphere encounters along the way, then they get teleported into the mirror universe without realizing it. Shortly after that, they'll encounter a goblin farm being raided by evil elves, followed by an NPC who seems like a nice guy, but who really wants them to destroy the holy undead for him. After that they'll reach Shareth-en-la and all will be revealed (possibly after another fight or two). Then it's off to the climax. Along the way, they'll likely encounter their own evil duplicates, which could be a major battle (with the PCs having a small advantage if they've figured out that the cursed items in the chest are now useful) or an interesting roleplaying exercise, or both. Then they get thrown into the "Second World," a set of metaphorical puzzles that they have to unravel to get back home. One of the final challenges is an Anti-Sphynx who gives out answers and expects the PCs to reply with appropriate riddles. This was a lot of fun to run. She can only speak in lies. I decided ahead of time that if someone tried one of those "If you were a liar, would you say that this cloak is blue?" questions that she would reply "I have decided not to answer that." Which, of course is a lie; she really meant "I cannot answer that." And yes, one of my smart-aleck players did try that. The mirror universe was created by a powerful half-orc sorceress in an attempt to purge her orcish blood. In a cute twist, it's her human half that's evil and her orcish half that's good. The PCs finally get the opportunity to determine which half wins by interfering with a mystical chess game. They have to make multiple Gambling checks vs DCs as high as 20. They can substitute Intelligence checks, but the DC goes up by 2 if they do. Does your party have expert gamblers? Well, mine didn't. Fortunately, by using the rules for cooperative skill checks (Player's Handbook, page 62) they were able to combine their efforts and pull it off. One nice thing about the module is that it supports 3 different endings depending on what the PCs tried to do (or tried to do and failed). All three are acceptable endings, and all three leave some potential future plot hooks for your game. None of them involve the world being destroyed or anything overly dramatic like that. I'm told that the end of the module bears a bit of a resemblance to an existing adventure called The Deva Spark. If your group has gone thorugh that one recently, you might want to wait a few sessions before running them through The Ebon Mirror. This module is a lot of fun. Come on, don't you want to see the expression on your party's face when their first burning hands spell actually sets the caster's hands on fire? You know you do.