|
Crucible
of Freya is a d20 system adventure, designed to resemble the classic
edition's scenarios. The module says that it's a challenging adventure
for a 1st or 2nd level party. Challenging is a correct way of putting
it. 31 orcs in a well-designed and defensible keep should keep the adventurers
weary, even frightened, of full-frontal assaults.
The adventure
has a weak plot, as Tavik tries to ensure the blight of the harvest
in Fairhill for Orcus. I assume by blighting the crops that Orcus's
lackey gets to ensue death and famine, thereby strengthening his deity's
dominion, though the adventure text doesn't say this. Other then Tavik's
plan and his band of merry orcs, there's a subplot based on the keep's
old history, which if the characters avoid dropping into, is pointless
to cover-only the foolhardy would explore what frightens servants of
Orcus, and at beginning levels to boot.
The adventure
features solid details that make the non-player characters and setting
standout and allow the referee to present this detail to his or her
players as part of the story. For a generic adventure that can be placed
anywhere, having this amount of detail is odd, making it somewhat more
difficult to place if the referee's personal setting doesn't gel well
with the locations. But the detail is a welcome change to the "let's
go see what I have to show you" that some adventures seem to focus
on.
While
the follow-through on the design goals of making a challenging adventure
was nice, if excessive, it would have been nice to have the additional
story elements before the adventure proper so the referee could read
through the adventure while noting what could be altered to match the
elements.
Even with having
a three-act lost-find-assault motif going, the story's basic feel is
that of dragging the adventurers along. Some of the boxed text sections
make it seem that the party is motivated by bloodlust and not heroic
intent, even making characters feel as though they belong to some military
recon squad. I enjoyed the broad strokes that the story section tries
to paint, but it feels flat and makes the tail end of the adventure
bog down in tactics and recovery of hit points.
Other
points of contention for me as I was reading was the constant reference
to the Wizard's Amulet, the player handout downloads at their website,
and some of the boxed text was written in harder to read fonts.
It's nice
to know that this module is a continuation of the downloaded one, but
the "if blah-blah is here," knocked me out of the adventure
flow as I've not downloaded the Wizard's Amulet. Even the player's handouts
would be nice, if I wanted to waste my ink on my printer, but I know
that resource is there. I just choose not to use it. Even the font selection
on the boxed text was nice, and large, but the italic and bold sections
that tied the box text to the downloaded adventure, was hard to read
in places.
Overall,
the adventure's detail and descriptions make it stand out of the crowd;
even the brutality of the encounters is attributed to a follow-through
on the design goals of the writers. Just too much combat counting towards
the end makes the product sag slightly. The adventure is good for the
more experienced player and referee, or those who don't mind lots of
combat towards the end of their roleplaying adventures.
|
