I was overjoyed to see a Norscan scenario on the list for the scenario competition this year, and was particularly pleased to see it included some pregens. These are well done, full of Norscan flavour and lovely personality traits ripe for roleplaying. They also include an ogre and an ulfenewar (werewolf) which will make the party lots of fun indeed.

The setting of the adventure is also very strong, full of Norscan flavour communicated through the first half of scenario as the characters go on a very long journey northwards, from the coast into the mountainous centre. This involves random and planned encounters with various creatures and the environment itself, which really help hammer home the Norscan feel.

However, the plot itself lacks punch. The hook is clever - a village girl turned into an ice troll prompts a quest to an evil Chaos witch because she is the only one who can heal her. However, what follows is just a journey which although varied is not exactly diverting. It is also quite enormously deadly and every single fight is followed by a note on how to avoid death with fate points or fleeing. While this does help add to the harsh feel, one wonders if the adventure is in fact even possible.

Also, most PCs will expect the Chaos witch to pull a fast one on them, and indeed she does: she was the one who caused the transformation in the first place, as a way of luring the child north for a terrible ritual inside her palace. And to stop the PCs simply killing her once they suspect something (and at the same time, ensuring they WILL suspect something) she hangs a giant arrow-impervious ice wall in front of her before she starts casting.

There is a final twist to the tale in that the mother of the girl sensed the attack coming, and knowing that the Ice Wtich, her sister, needed one of her blood for a ritual, switched girls before the transformation. But nothing is actually done with this twist - it doesn't harm the ritual if the players don't stop it, and it doesn't alter the storyline.

The climax of the adventure also involves another gaming cliche. The Ice Witch's equally evil sister beating the PCs home to destroy their home village and when the PCs arrive she demands their surrender with a crossbow to their Jarl's wife's throat. Players hate that kind of thing because either they're powerless and they get hosed or because they're not powerless which means the threat isn't very interesting.

However, those criticisms aside, there's a lot of great stuff in this adventure. Fun encounters, sharp characters, good film references, nasty beasties, well-drawn NPCs (the dwarfen prisoner of the Ice Queen is a gorgeous encounter) and as mentioned, a great Norscan feel to the whole thing. But a GM will want to either resculpt the plot to be a bit less cliche at the end, or perhaps insert his own wholecloth.

What the adventure does provide though is a great set of tools for running a journey-based adventure in Norsca, including maps, hand-outs and random encounters. Since it is often plot that is the actual easy part for many GMs, a toolkit like this is still immensely useful, and I will use it for whatever I run in Norsca.