"Begging your pardon, sir, my Lady wishes to speak with you. Would you be so kind as to follow me to her table?"

MetalMan's Review of "The Andwan Legacy" by 0one Roleplaying Games

The Andwan Legacy is 0one Games third offering after The Heroes and Magic Sourcebook and The Legend of the Steel General. It is an adventure for use under the Wizards of the Coast D20 license and recommended for a party of four to five adventures of fourth to fifth level.

The Premise:
The PCs are approached by a widower of a wealthy local merchant and hired to bypass the magical traps in his villa dungeon as he died recently without being able to tell her how to safely enter. She needs the money to pay for his debts and the settling of his affairs. All is not as it appears, however, as an additional complication is thrown in to complicate matters even more.

What Ya Get:
The Andwan Legacy is available as a twenty-two page Adobe Acrobat (PDF) file. In addition, three seperate "battle map" files are also provided for handling combat in the villa with miniatures if you're so inclined. You'll want to have a fast internet connection or a good chunk of time that you can tie your computer up with though if you want the "High Quality" version. You have the option of lower filesizes and I suspect that the level of compression has been increased. The files are zip-compressed so you will need a program such as WinZip to open them.

Cost: The Andwan Legacy will set you back usually $3.95 USD. 0one Games is based out of Italy and handles its currency in Lira as well as the Euro so your rate will vary depending on the exchange rate at the time of the transaction.

Appearance: 0one Games has increased the professionalism of their publications between this and The Legend of the Steel General. The main difference being the improvement of the artwork and the addition of some absolutely incredible map work. The artwork still retains its cartoonish quality that was characteristic of their previous releases but the work is far more refined and less garish to the overall look of the product. The true high point of the appearance, however, is the fully 3D rendered maps of the levels of the villa and its dungeon. Each level is rendered from a top-down perspective as well as a wonderful split-level map of the entire complex. This isn't generic CC2 or Fractal Mapper output - these appear to be scratch built and my compliments go to the cartographer, Guido Barbati.

The Adventure:
SPOILER WARNING: I will be discussing the plot of the adventure in this review. I am going to try to remain vague about some of it as to not completely ruin everything. If you are planning on playing in this adventure or have reason to believe that your GM will be running it, you may want to stop reading now. Nobody likes to have their fun spoiled (most people don't anyway).

The "widower" isn't really the person she claims to be. She is a thief that managed to poison the real Lady Andwan's husband and make it appear to be a heart attack. She then imprisoned the real Lady Andwan and is impersonating her. She replaced most of the household servants with her own thugs and unknowing commoners to continue the charade while she tried to figure out how to get to the treasure. Unfortunately, her skills weren't up to the task and she is relying on the PCs to gain entrance where she will then turn the tables on them.

What she didn't count on, however, is the intervention of an old rival of hers that has found out her scheme. He poses as an old friend of the Andwan family. He informs the PCs of the deception but, in reality, wants to do away with her and get the better of the PCs in the end so he can get the treasure for himself.

What I happened to like most about The Andwan Legacy is the conscious mix of roleplaying, puzzle-solving and combat. Each of the servants of the villa have been given brief personality sketches as well as a brief history in case you need them in play. The ultimate puzzle is one that could keep your average players occupied for awhile as they piece together the clues that will show them how to open the magically sealed vault door. There is also a goodly deal of combat depending on whose group of thugs the PCs eventually end up fighting. Especially brash parties might even be unfortunate enough to have to contend with both. Either way, the one vicious combat they will have to endure is against a very powerful stone golem.

The Andwan Legacy is not without its problems, however. It has some very minor typographical errors but nothing that really detracts from the adventure itself. The one big problem that it has is its organization. The Andwan Legacy is not a linear adventure so it is broken into seperate sections for Events and Locations. This can become confusing and it would probably be a good idea for any potential GM to print out an extra set of the villa maps to mark notes and NPC locations on to keep things coherent without too much paper flipping while hunting things down.

One of the other things that I missed in Andwan Legacy was the "where to go from here" section that is common in almost all adventures. Its stated that both the thief and/or her rival with both attempt to escape once things start going against them. They could become reoccuring villains but this isn't stated. Not that this is a serious flaw, but it does limit the adventure as written to a "one off."

Overall Impression:
The price is definately right for what you get and you get a suprising amount for $3.95. Its meatier than either the AEG or Fantasy Flight mini adventure booklets but you have to get over your paper, glue and staple fetish first. This could prove a barrier for some but its worth it ultimately as your bookshelves aren't burdened by anymore books and a cheap CD recordable disc is an easy answer to your your storage issues when you're done with it. All in all, I'd recommend The Andwan Legacy. Its premise is fresh enough and is sprinkled with a few memorable moments and puzzles to suit most gaming groups.

MetalMan signing off.