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Review Summary: ‘Honor Among Thieves’ is a solid product in itself, but its high potential will be fully unwrapped if incorporated in a large-scale story. I find it a good purchase for role-players and roll-players alike.
What you get: For your US$2.99 you get a soft cover 16-page d20 adventure for 4th to 6th level characters, authored by Ree Soesbee and published by Alderac Entertainment Group. ‘Honor’ is the sixth adventure of the second run of AEG’s instant adventures (numbered 8326) that can be played in a session. It is in the weird format of a folded A4 paper that became the standard for mini-modules published both by AEG and by Fantasy Flight Games. The artwork is sparse and average, while the map in the middle is (aesthetically) fair.
Spoiler warning: stop reading here.
The story: The young daughter of a local count is kidnapped and the characters are looking for her whereabouts. Their search takes a sudden end though when a young girl darts out of a dark alley being chased by five thieves, shouting for the characters to save her because she is the kidnapped princess. Yes, the story begins from here!
The strong points: This is the story of the kidnapped princess with a twist. The princess appears at its beginning, just after the characters make their first moves to find her. In the hands of a potent GM this will totally alter the feel of the adventure, especially if the players already dedicated an hour or two of real time questioning suspects, visiting the relevant sites and contemplating on their course of action.
The continuation of the story is equally strong. The characters only have few hours of game time to bash into the celebrations taking place in the palace and outright eliminate the princess (!), which is in fact a demonic creature in disguise. Due to a misunderstanding the guards are suspicious against them, so they have to sneak into the palace through the city’s sewage system.
This part is obviously a dungeon crawl; it is not poorly designed though. The few traps presented are clever, the chain room being a prime example. Only one disappointed me and this as a matter of principle; more of that on the weak points section.
The new creature under the irrelevant name ‘Terror Fiend’ inspires dread, especially if played cleverly in combat. Many objections are raised concerning its diet (it drinks the blood and fear of nobility, so if it slaughters every single noble there what is it going to eat afterwards?), but a GM can sort this nuisance.
The magical item is a nice touch indeed. ‘The Star of Desburg’ is a medal of valour, the highest honour in the country, with an add-on. It increases the wearer’s charisma and improves his treatment in all social interactions.
The weak points: The story behind the scenario is solid, but it doesn’t lead to much more behind the need to bypass the sewage system in order to break into the castle. Of course this can be solved by ‘Honor’ becoming a part of something bigger, as already suggested.
The trap that annoyed me involves the sequence of the first letters of the words ‘ten’, ‘nine’ etc up to ‘one’. I am sorry but language-related enigmas are very poor for two reasons: a) not all players actually play in English and b) the language of a campaign world is not necessarily English. It is a fantasy world with fantastic languages, remember? Obviously it needs less than half a minute to make the change to one’s own language but again, this is a matter of principle. ‘Crypt of Lyzandred’ by TSR for Greyhawk, with all its quirks and flaws, stated ‘the riddles and puzzles (...) have been carefully chosen to avoid reliance on real-world languages for their solutions’. There was and is a reason for that.
To continue with the weak points, whatever the characters do inside the sewers, they will arrive at the castle exactly at the time the demon drops the disguise and starts slaughtering the nobles. Dramatic effect is the reason dictating this approach, but the GM must be really careful in order to make this appear natural. If the characters are too fast or too slow and they still arrive just in time, well, they will understand that the game was a set up. Not everybody likes this.
As ‘tradition’ suggests, ‘Honor’ has typos. AEG is an unbelievable company indeed in that all four d20 products I have read up to now have typos; every single one of them. By the way, what is in the sewers? Gates or grates? The map states the first (while showing grates) and the text the second.
Conclusion: ‘Honor’ is a nice exception to the previous three instant adventures I read; it is not outright bad, neither its flaws diminish its traits. It can be definitely played as a stand-alone, but has even better potential and impact if incorporated in a bigger story. The underlying theme along with the little details beg to become part of a political-conspiratorial campaign. ‘Honor’ gets a good grade indeed, even better than the one ‘The Lash of Malloc’ would have gotten, were the latter a carefully executed product. ----------------------------------------------------------
The 2011 re-examination: The idea is still clever and can throw players of balance. From the four AEG short adventures I had reviewed back in the day, this was by far the best.
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