Review of Symbaroum Adventure Pack 2

Blurb from the publisher: 'The Davokar region has a grim, horrifying past, and that which has been forgotten by most is sometimes rediscovered by the curious and the greedy. This way, struggles that were laid to rest centuries ago can come to life and cause much grief and destruction, to both Ambrians and the barbarian clans; the hunger of a few awakes the famished powers of ancient times, and the common woman, man and child has to suffer.

- More than a dozen colourful NPCs and creatures.'

What you get: Your EUR 17,99 or USD 19,99 or GBP 15,99 buys you the 60-page softcover Symbaroum Adventure Pack 2 for the Symbaroum RPG line. The pdf edition alone costs EUR 9,99 or USD 10,99 or GBP 7,99 or almost half price that of the combo deal. The electronic version is a zip file with two pdf documents. One of them contains the adventure in single page format, while the other contains it in spreads.

The publisher described the product almost fully in the blurb, so no need for me to say much more. The first adventure is 17 while the second one is 25 pages long. The six-page appendix at the end of the book provides some new rules, new artifacts, and the players' versions of the maps without any numbers and diacritics.

Spoiler warning: As much as I am not going to describe, let alone detail the adventures (which the blurb from the publisher summarized quite succinctly anyway), parts of the scenarios might be revealed while discussing the strong and less strong points of the book. If you intend to participate in these scenarios as a player, stop reading now.

The strong points: I have come to really appreciate the adventure landscape formats that Symbaroum is using, and even more so when it is mixed with more traditional elements like triggers and a time frame. The sandbox experience is retained, there is adequate information for the GM to build upon, yet there is a clear sense of urgency and enormously high stakes. Both adventures have rather standard plots; Fever of the Hunt has Chtulhian undertones, in the sense that humans are mere ants waiting to be trampled on the struggle of gods that they do not comprehend. Add to that some Conan imagery, like a temple dedicated to serpents, and you are good to go. The Bell Tolls for Kastor is a twist on the well-known 'cult tries to overtake town' premise, seeing how the cult knows that it can't hold the town forever and has to act fast. Both adventures can be finished in two sessions each, and start off rich, rewarding campaigns. The second scenario in particular has a lot of meat on it, irrespective of whether it is on the spotlight or not. When it comes to their feeling, they are a product of their dark and corrupt setting.

Even though the adventures have well-defined plots and truly exciting moments (Gidjabolgo subconsciously using Mirage without being aware of doing so is a stroke of genius, no matter how small a role it plays in the adventure), world-building continues tirelessly on the background. The heresy of the Many is particularly interesting. Not only it sheds some light on what existed before Prios was ascended to the one god worship it now is, it provides for interesting themes that can be used a lot more convincingly than the mere tangents they are in this adventure. Idem for some of the frames of the first adventure. It is very likely that the PCs will stumble on more than one dig sites. The information that can be mined from this one can be easily used elsewhere.

Physically speaking the book is of a very high quality even though it is a softcover. The fonts are rather small and the amount of text in the book is substantially more than you would have expected, with all sort of side notes and additional material. The margins are smallish, even though there is some dead space at times due to layout choices. The art is nothing sort of incredible. The image of the Templar in front of the village sends shivers up my spine every time I see it; idem for the one depicting a Spawn of Symbar.

I enjoyed how the setting got an ancient China infusion through the introduction of the repeating crossbow. I won't lie: it stroke me as weird initially, yet it actually fits Symbaroum. Were I to congratulate for good gamist design however, that would be for the Bell of Kastor, the artifact that plays a rather prominent role in the second adventure, both in theme as well as in crunch. It's always enjoyable to see that the whatchamacallit that might save the day can cause more trouble immediately afterwards, and that without the heroes ever finding out because they didn't bother enough.

The pdf is exactly how I would like a pdf to be, in line with Modiphius' releases not only for core rulebooks but for smaller products as well. Everything is right where you expect it to be, including bookmarks for the chapters. I would have also appreciated bookmarks for the subchapters, at the end of the day however the biggest of either adventures is 25 pages long. Things can be ultimately found rather easily.

The weak points: Even though they do not necessarily influence the adventures themselves and can be easily taken care of by clever GMs, there are a few instances of sloppy writing. In the first adventure, the PCs can notice how the motivations of people searching under the clay hill don't really match and that something is amiss. How can other NPCs which have just a bit of clarity, do not notice as much and do not take measures against the impending disaster?

The introduction to the second adventure is problematic, to say the least. First, the PCs must have serious vested interests in protecting this city, otherwise they wouldn't care enough to follow through the hell that is about to break loose. That's fair, I guess, yet they receive a message within a container that apparently has a locking mechanism with a code to be inserted. Great, yet I had to infer that last part; it is not described by the adventure. I had no details about how the mechanism even looks, and what the PCs can do to open it if somehow they don't want to use the right code (which they have through dreaded GM fiat, even though as a GM I can't describe to them how they can insert it). But even that, that's the second torturous step in the question 'where did the courtier know where to find the PCs?'. Where are the PCs found? This isn't a pedantic question; the PCs must reach the town in a very short period of time, before the shit hits the fan. Thus, they must be nearby, they must be available, and they must have a heavy interest to the town's continuing survival. That's straight out of the Gygaxian book of adventure design, and I, for one, am not impressed whatsoever.

The link between the two adventures is both uninspired and nonsensical. Some figures from the first adventure have found refuge in the town of the second one, meaning that the PCs can interact with them as well. Where are the time frames in all these events? How fast are things happening from the beginning of the first adventure to the start of the second one? And again, where did that courtier find the PCs to deliver them the letter that starts the adventure? Good grief, all this needs a lot work. Yet, I can't but smirk at the Hiroshima/Nagasaki principle, where you relocate the survivors of one enormous disaster to where the next sanity-reducing disaster will strike. I don't know what the designers where thinking, but if this doesn't create permanent puns and in-jokes in your campaign, I don't know what will.

I warned twice, in the reviews of both The Copper Crown: An Adventure Chronicle as well as Symbaroum Gamemaster Screen and Adventure Pack 1, that without dedicated art and iconography depicting the NPCs that the heroes will meet, a published adventure fails one of its reasons for existing: to facilitate the GM in order not to have to do basic stuff on his own so that he can concentrate on more important things. Adventure Pack 2 also fails spectacularly in that regard. Its NPCs can play very important roles, yet there is practically nothing to describe them, be it visually or with words. Some of the locations are wondrous places that the PCs are unlikely to have seen before, like a chapel devoted to the Temple of the Many, a cult/heresy linked to Prios, and it is barely described. Why would an adventure shoot itself in the foot as much? Show! Tell!

The art is and will always be gorgeous if it continues on these lines, yet it's clear to pretty much everybody who is paying attention that it is not commissioned with the adventure at hand. This hurts the product. The image that I love (the templar with his two-handed sword), has clearly nothing to do with the adventure, not to mention that it appears in bigger format in the Symbaroum Advanced Player's Guide that we will examine together shortly; the image's caption is forced, to say the least.

Finding typos in a finished product is always disappointing, even if they are limited in number. Fun fact: somebody forgot to change the header on the second adventure. The Swedish name of the adventure is hence forever recorded in the annals of Symbaroum: 'Klockan klämtar för Kastor'. Javisst, prisa Herren!

Conclusion: I am so used to Symbaroum products being top notch, that the drop in quality through the recurring omissions that plague the setting's adventures has probably left me more disappointed than I deserve to be. Both adventures in the Adventure Pack 2 are solid ones, even though they are rough around the edges and demand work from the GM that he shouldn't have really had. I doubt anybody would bat an eyelid were they a part of another, less engrossing campaign setting, and in any event, after they get the GM attention they deserve they are genuinely entertaining. I do seriously hope however that future Symbaroum adventures will address all the issues, and help the setting shine as bright as it can.

For more info on the Symbaroum Adventure Pack 2 visit the Modiphius Entertainment website at http://www.modiphius.com or Järnringen, the Swedish publisher of the original game at http://www.jarnringen.com.

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