The Inside Scoop on Gaming



	Disclaimer I: I have seen in reviews that the content had "spoiler" ascribed to it. I feel that if you are reading a review, you invite that upon yourself. If you don't want "spoilers," why would you read a review of a product you do not own? I will not use the phrase of "Contains Spoilers" in my reviews, if you want a non-biased review that doesn't reveal content-look elsewhere. Disclaimer II: The majority of this review is opinion; your actual enjoyment of this product should vary accordingly.

	"... Soon after the [characters] find the scroll, they begin to hear drums in the jungle. They seem to come from all directions and, in fact, are the sign that the Hachita tribe, whose scouts saw the [characters] enter the place, are ready to attack. Any [characters] looking out the windows or upper levels of the castle note tribesmen conveging on the place. Within [ten] minutes, they begin moving into hte outer bailey, then into the castle proper, killing anyone not of their tribe that they find. ..." (p. 32, 1.)

WARNING SHOT: ... 51 of those tribesmen (Warrior 1) attack. In a first level adventure, that's almost nuts. And if the encounter starts to go poorly for the characters, another set of tribesmen attack, though this new group's target is the Hachita. This adventure, needless to say, can be very deadly, but then, I'm ahead of myself.

The Root of All Evil is a first level Kingdom of Kalamar adventure. Other than the catchy title and single artifact item, this adventure has nothing to do with the acquisition of wealth. The adventure, if played by its self and not in its designed trilogy format, plays like a travelogue of several neat adventure locales for adventurers to visit during their sojourns in KoK. It seems that the adventure goal was to showcase areas that could be vital adventuring points on a map, as this module's "hunt the wizard" plot is flat and poorly linked together. The basic premise of Root of All Evil is that the player characters have a requested investigation into the validity of a fallen star and its legendary mithral core. In the process the characters learn that an artifact of evil is being forged out of the mithral, a deadly powerful coin. The characters must then travel quickly to find another person to forge an equally powerful good coin, but the location of this other artificer is tricky to get to at best. (There's this abandoned castle, and warring tribes thing in a jungle to the south that the party must go to get this guy, after stopping at a larger city to save some books and gather the information that leads to the jungle.) Root of All Evil seems best suited for the click-click-click crowd of computer gaming, as the adventure is weakly tied together around gathering items for other non-player characters and having limited interaction with them. There are also plenty of "cut scenes" where the party stands around watching other non-player characters do things and spout villainous one-liners, only to be cut short if they decide to act. Overall, the design of this adventure weakens its opportunities of great roleplay, and with its focus on where items and non-player characters are more so than the player characters makes this a tough solitary adventure to run. I assume that taken as a linked series of adventure that the ranging hither-and-dale travelogue evens out at the trilogy's conclusion. 1 Changed "PCs" to "characters," and spelled out the number 10.

The Root of All Evil

1 Changed "PCs" to "characters," and spelled out the number 10.