Review of Menagerie of Exiles

Blurb from the publisher: 'The pirates speak of a rich treasure hidden in an ancient and ruined temple guarded by some fell beast. They even speak of giving you a share of the booty and slaves they've already taken aboard if you help them rid the world of the monster guarding the treasure. There's silver to be won here.

Their ship, the Sultan's Pleasure, is swift and sturdy, a proper predator hunting the fat merchantmen of Europe, but spend a few days with the crew and you'll soon notice things are not quite right. Talk of a strange disease among the crew, the Captain's obsession with a map he refuses to show anyone, and the wild tales of demons and madness from the captives begin to draw a picture of larger stakes than mere treasure and threats greater than a lone monster lurking in the wilderness. Shifting personalities lead to shifting alliances. Who can you trust? And what secrets are the pirates keeping from you?'

What you get: Your EUR 13 or equivalent will buy you both the print as well as the pdf version of Menagerie of Exiles, a 32-page, black-and-white softcover with full-colour covers in A5 format for the Lamentations of the Flame Princess game line.

The pdf can be purchased alone for EUR 6,30.

Spoiler warning: As much as I am not going to describe, let alone detail the adventure, parts of the scenario might be revealed while discussing its strong and less strong points. If you intend to enjoy it as a player, stop reading now.

Contents: Menagerie of Exiles starts off as a fantasy pirate adventure that can be placed anywhere on the globe. It nominally takes place in the Mediterranean, namely on a pirate ship and in a village that looks like a leper colony. It is mostly plot-based; interaction with the locations and NPCs will reveal that many of the pirates are not what they seem to be, with a major reversal concerning the treasure's nature and the motives of those seeking it. At its conclusion, the adventure comes out as Cthulhian with strong elements of personal horror. If you have watched Conspiracy from Star Trek TNG, you can understand what you are heading into.

The strong points: Everybody dabbling in LotFP knows that an adventure's basic premise is always going to be twisted one way or the other. I admit however that I didn't expect that. The book does a very good job of setting a scenery with Muslim adventurers, a Mediterranean age of piracy, treasures, maritime illnesses and what have you, only to deviously turn the plot into a horrific affair of parasitic mind control. Add an alien-looking contraption (hint: it's really alien, and it's really advanced technology), and it's pretty clear that the genre you start in is not the genre you will finish in. The change between genres happens insidiously, gradually, in ways that are respectful to the era-related aspect. In most likelihood one or more PCs will be lost to the parasites, a case in which the players that lost them will play brand new characters. That is already a meta-gaming giveaway that something is seriously amiss, it doesn't however spoil the ambience of the adventure.

The adventure can be easily inserted in any campaign, and is in fact a fully autonomous medley. Following its conclusion the characters can continue on their (not so) merry ways afterwards. All the characters need to do at the beginning is to come into contact with pirates, be it in a friendly or in an adversarial way, and at some point side with them under the premise of more loot.

The adventure is initially static, and is based on a mystery. There is investigation and a fair amount of connecting the dots during the sea travels. There are tables on events that break the monotony of a lonely ship sailing towards its destination, as well as a one-pager for the GM to add historical realism into the scenario. Some of the facts sound quaint (e.g. pirates wearing eye-patches in order to constantly have one eye adjusted to darkness and fight effectively below deck), even if they are not real however they feel convincing.

There is a twist on the twist, and I found it to be as weird as it is rewarding. First, there is not one but two alien factions. Second, the aliens can be reasoned with and have real intelligence and motivations. This isn't yet another 'take over the world' plot; the aliens are genuinely interested in their own affairs, and do not want to be on Earth. The characters can legitimately be persuaded to do the bidding of the first faction before being persuaded against it by the second faction. This doesn't mean that things are any less horrific when they violently interact with the PCs. On the other hand, this adventures is not the penis and anus extravaganza that Towers Two was. If anything, it is rather tame.

The pdf is of an excellent quality. Its bookmarks go three levels deep. The table of contents has live links, while its images can be extracted and shown to your players when needed. The artwork is simple, yet it's what the adventure needs.

The weak points: I liked the premise, I liked the switch, at the end of the day however people are more likely to remember the change of pace as opposed to how great or memorable the adventure was. It is ok, it is not however a gaming milestone.

That having been said, there are a few things the adventure could have done better. You can encounter ships, but there is no crunchy way to engage in naval combat. Stats are scarce; if the PCs and the mariners of their ship combat any hostiles you will have to duplicate the stats of your own ship's sailors. In other words, you will be fighting hordes of clones. The tunnels at the end of the adventure are obviously an afterthought; don't get giddy about a standard crawl. There is no real closure or potential hooks at the adventure's conclusion. This is rather bizarre, seeing how the characters may find themselves in a totally alien world. Granted, its ambit could have never covered something as grandiose as that, but not getting a couple of bullet points or suggestions about what adventures to run afterwards leaves a sour taste in the mouth.

Would it have been too much to precise the character levels the adventure aims towards? The opponents' hit dice point towards a low, but not that low a count. Unless adventures rely fully on diplomacy and eschew rolls completely, it's only fair to expect an indication of what works better.

Conclusion: Menagerie of Exiles is not one of LotFP's ultra-gonzo adventures shock-and-awe adventures where you will remember the dicks long after you have forgotten the plot. It is a solid creepy adventure with a twist, that wouldn't have surprised me that much if it had been published under the Pulp Cthulhu brand. In many ways, this is what weird fantasy is about.

For more info on Menagerie of Exiles and Lamentations of the Flame Princess, visit its website at http://www.lotfp.com.

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