By Endzeitgeist

This pdf is 34 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial/ToC, 1 page SRD, leaving us with 31 pages of content, so let’s take a look!

This being an adventure-review, the following review contains SPOILERS. Potential players may wish to jump to the conclusion.

Still here? All right! If you’re familiar with “Thief in the Night”, you’ll be familiar with the backdrop of this module, since it can be run as a direct sequel to that module, though it doesn’t have to. The module thus kicks off with the PCs being hired by the city of Brdigefort’s Baron, one Tavius Mercen IV – who fills them in on the issue: The recent thefts in Bridgefort was no isolated incident – more thefts have recently happened, one particular problematic one hitting a man called Mortimer Fairgain – stealing his maps. If the PCs accept, they get a map made from the composite of the stolen maps. If they decline, the Golden Salmon Inn, where the merchant guild offers an alternate means of getting the PCs into the action. One particularity of author Cutis Baum’s writing is present in here as well would be the rather extensive boxed text – DMs looking for mostly spelled out, flavourful interactions should find them inside here. Finally, with a troupe of orcs and kobolds trying to bluff/mug the PCs, we have a third fully fleshed out way (or random encounter) to bring PCs into the module.

But back to the topic at hand: The trail leads to the so-called Forest of Mists, where the module gets sandboxy, allowing for multiple encounter areas, first of which would be the Bone Tower, which not only houses humanoids, but also a nice riddle/floor tile puzzle. The Temple of the Unknown God also has a neat puzzle -a not too difficult one about lighting torches according to some hints, and a more complex one that has light being refracted by sceptres – with a visual representation. I really liked these puzzles!

Upon their completion of ruin-exploration, they’ll encounter some wounded elves that point the PCs towards a fortress hidden in the fortress – and upon defeating these humanoids, the PCs will find a letter by one Emperor Chez’nak – the bugbear sergeant’s letter speaks of an impending attack on Bridgefort! Warning the town concludes the module for now – at least until the next module in the series. The pdf includes maps for the locations, thankfully also player-friendly maps, so kudos for that!

Conclusion:

Editing and formatting are very good, I didn’t notice any significant glitches. Layout adheres to AaW’s printer-friendly full-color two-column standard. The pdf’s artworks are ok and the pdf comes fully bookmarked.

This is an interesting module – on the one hand, we get some really cool puzzles, with visual representations etc. – which is awesome. On the other hand, the module feels strangely disjointed – there’s not much connecting the different locales/encounters – they simply happen, one after the other, with not much linking them in the context of the story, making this feel more like a series of encounters leading up to the true meat (which will come in the sequel) than a true, cohesive module. Are the encounters bad? No. But they also aren’t particularly exciting or mind-blowing – it’s essentially about humanoid-bashing and that’s about it.

Taking hostages etc. is no option and at least some guidelines/pieces of information to string the locales together would have vastly improved this module in my opinion. All in all, what remains are solid encounters more fit for scavenging than being run as a cohesive module. And that’s not a good sign. While I really love the puzzles, the rest of the module remains painfully bland and even abstract at times – the bone tower and temple are, for example, apart from the puzzles mostly not fleshed out. The puzzles per se might make this worth a look for you, but overall, as a module, I can’t recommend this. My final verdict will clock in at 2.5 stars, rounded down to 2 for the purpose of this platform.

Endzeitgeist out.

The Right to Arm Bugbears is available from:

By Endzeitgeist

This module is 24 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page ToC, 1 page SRD and 1 page advertisement, leaving us with 19 pages of content, so let’s check it out!

This being an adventure-review, the following contains SPOILERS. Potential players may wish to jump to the conclusion.

All right, still here?

Morninghaven sanatorium, constructed in the heart of the Creeping Mire, founded by the church of Mitra and headed by the prestigious Osterklieg family had for some time had its reputation decline, even as a place to lock up the criminally insane. When Baronet Wilbane Osterklieg fell from favour, his presumed sizable fortune was never found. Now, for 30 years, the sanatorium has languished in the mire, sinking slowly closer towards the unfathomable depths of the swamp. The PCs are hired to escort one Haden Ward (an incognito provided by the state) to the sanatorium and the escort mission is anything but simple – from collapsed paths to giant mosquitoes and an assault by warriors from the swamp’s bugbear-tribe, there are 3 planned encounters in addition to the random encounters-list included for the way to Mourninghaven.

At the sanatorium, the Curator Xavier Drusus and the bloodstained, masked orderlies are not particularly confidence-invoking. Unfortunately, a storm sees the PCs stranded at the sanatorium for the night (which is btw. fully mapped and described) and the night is interrupted by escaped madmen escaping from the cells and an assault from more bugbears and even a black dragon – in the chaos, the orderlies may even turn upon the PCs (they are not nice persons…). The badly wounded Drusus, with his dying breath, confesses that he was after the Osterklieg Legacy and that the catatonic madman they escorted was in fact Osterklieg’s former lieutenant, a sadistic mercenary named Harden Crestingdrake. And he’s gone.

The trail leads the PCs into the heart of the swamp, where in an old stockade the PCs get a chance to destroy the remnants of the bugbears and find out that there’s a potion to let Haden regain his memory – as well as the location of the secret stash, which is in the Black Ward – now abandoned, it’s where Osterklieg stashed incurable psychopaths. It is here that the module becomes full-blown horror in style, with Haden bugging the PCs with whispered rumours in a psychological war of attrition as they explore the partially sunk ward and battle twisted ghasts, an almost indestructible fungal creature that has evolved from Vidas Osterklieg, basidronds, a cool haunt and an allip. You get sample lines for the encounters and finally, the PCs will have to face off against Crestingdrake, now suffused by the darkness of the ward and turned into a bleeding horror.

The players may also find out about Osterklieg killing Mitran pilgrims as they find his stash and the bloodstorm spell sees an upgrade from the honourable Relics and Rituals-book.

Conclusion:

Editing and formatting are top-notch, I didn’t notice any glitches. Layout adheres to FGG’s 2-column b/w-standard and the pieces of original b/w-artwork are awesome. The pdf comes fully bookmarked with nested bookmarks. The cartography per se is nice, but we don’t get ANY key-less player-friendly maps, which is just not up to standard when compared to similar publications.

Author-duo Greg A. Vaughan and Kevin Wright has created an interesting module – the locations are iconic to the extreme and rather disturbing, conveying a profound sense of dread. By all accounts, I should love this module – “The Death of Dr. Rudolph Van Richten” is still my favourite module of all time and the locations are great. However, this module ahs major issues regarding pacing – essentially, it is very obvious in its railroading and hands the relevant information needed to progress to the players on a silver platter, without much required initiative on behalf of the players beyond “Kill X” – no research, no moodbuilding…and worse: No consequences.

The main location of the module is an unabashedly evil place that should have paladins etc. disgusted – so what if they DO want to do something about it? Not covered. Alternate ways of handling the whole thing? Not covered. The stockade feels completely cut-down and is perhaps one of the most useless locales I’ve seen in a given module for quite some time – its space should have been used to properly depict and flesh out another part of the story.

This is a sad module to review, since it DOES have all the makings of a great module and a DM with some work can make this work VERY well – as written, though, this somewhat falls behind and simply feels too short. At 19 pages, the module does not devote enough time to any of its locations to make them properly shine – instead, the PCs are shunted from location to location, stumble across hint (Go there!) upon hint (Now go there!)and end the module with a climactic encounter that is cool – but ultimately just the end of a very railroady sequence of events that lacks the gravitas the background story and exciting locales should have provided this module.

In the end, this module suffers greatly from its unnecessary brevity and its endeavour to cram too much content into the scarce few pages the module has – if it had developed one of the locations, any one really, better and cut another location or if it had 10+ more pages to develop its iconic locales, then this could have been 5 stars + seal of approval. As written, it falls painfully short of its own potential and hence, I’ll settle for a final verdict of 3 stars.

Endzeitgeist out.

Saturday Night Special 4: The Mires of Mourning is available from:

By Endzeitgeist

This module for the beginner’s version of Pathfinder is 28 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page ToC, 1 page SRD, leaving us with 24 pages of content, so let’s take a look!

This being an adventure-review, the following contains SPOILERS. Potential players should skip to the conclusion.

All right, still here? The adventurer-apprentices of the Exallizar Preparatory Academy for young adventurers have already had chances to shine (or fail) twice and the module kicks off with some friendly PvP: After 4 rounds, the sparring match is interrupted (though the DM should probably take care/specify that no one dies in this match – something the module, as written, omits), the PCs are recruited by one Ambrose Neidlum, an old man who wants the PCs to help him defend a cloister of pacifist clerics versus an onslaught of beast-men. His recruitment of the PCs includes a selection of items the PCs may choose from, which includes seeds of the curcubiters featured in the previous module as well as their caps (as shields) and special seeds that make for flaming projectiles. The headmaster immediately teleports the PCs to the monastery and there, they immediately are beset by assaults from the Noctur Gnolls and Ambrose is no help in this fight either.

Once the gnolls have been driven off, the PCs will see their first dwarf and enter the monastery complex – with the collapsed Ambrose in tow. Diran, the dward, quickly tells the PCs what the catch is – Ambrose has been cursed by the gnoll-leader Ringdocus, who, while weaker than Ambrose, has all but made the cleric useless via his sleep-deprivation curse. In order to deal with the curse, the PCs will have to deal with the recently built fort the Noctur Gnolls have erected.

The infiltration of the camp should not be too difficult, though players still should act smart – while the watch-post is sleeping, the gnoll could wake up, which has the potential of having the fort’s ballista turned upon the PCs! If they manage to take the sentry down, though, they can turn the siege-weapon upon the numerous inhabitants of the fort. In a sandboxy assault that leaves much up for the PCs to decide, they can slowly empty the fort – though response actions/more interesting responses would have been nice. Once the gnoll-leader has been defeated, the PCs can return victorious from their sojourn – but alas and alack, not even the gnoll’s mask suffices to lift the curse.

In order to save Ambrose, the PCs will have to hunt a strange creature only rarely seen and only in the autumn – a gestalt-bird called turducken. The American audience is probably chuckling now, to the non-Americans I suggest looking it up. The creature’s lair is rudimentary and rocky, the creature being a moderately tough combatant, but nothing as difficult as the Halloween-module’s bosses. Upon their return with the remains of the monster, there is a feast (of course!) and all is well – the magical flesh cures the curse and the PCs may even get some magical meat from the creature to take home.

As all BASIC-modules, this includes 4 pre-gens, advanced further from the last module as well as player-friendly versions of the maps..

Conclusion:

Editing and formatting are good, though not stellar. I noticed some minor glitches here and there, though nothing too serious. Layout adheres to AaW’s 2-column standard and the module comes fully bookmarked and with two versions, one optimized for being printer-friendly and one for screen-use.

The first two modules of the Kevin Mickelson’s series, while aimed at younger audiences, still had a lot to offer to more mature players, with especially the latter being easily modified to provide a nice module for mature players as well. The same, unfortunately, can’t be said about this one – experienced players will probably yawn at the taking of the gnoll fortress, while less experienced groups lack any guidance in the beginning PvP-situation: What happens if PCs manage to kill one another? No guidance is given. All in all a module that, while being intended as a thanksgiving-themed module, has not much going for it beyond this potential festive spirit and while not bad, can also not be considered exceptional or good. Thus, my final verdict will clock in at 2.5 stars, rounded down to 2 for the purpose of this platform, also due to its relative brevity.

Endzeitgeist out.

BASIC03: A Giving Time is available from:

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By Enzeitgeist

This mini-pdf is 3 pages long, 1/2 of a page SRD, leaving us with 2.5 pages of content, so let’s take a look!

The Ghost of Ashenwood Road comes first as a legend and then with 6 different rumors circling around the elusive being. 5 different skill-check DCs to investigate the ghost are provided and then, the DM is told what exactly is REALLY going on – which I won’t spoil here, in case players are reading this. The short story/character also comes with 5 different plot-hooks to draw the PCs in and on the last page, we get its CR 8 stats.

Conclusion:

Editing and formatting are top-notch, I didn’t notice any glitches. Layout adheres to a printer-friendly, elegant 2-column standard. The original piece of artwork deserves special mentioning, as its professional quality is something rarely seen in pdfs of this price-point. The story provided with its rumors, legend etc. make this a solid offering indeed, enough to craft a sidetrek or even a full-blown module out of and the overall quality of the writing is nice. When you take the extremely fair price into account, you can’t help but come to the conclusion that this is a) a nice first offering for the product line and b) worthy of 5 stars, with me omitting my seal of approval only since I would have loved to more skill-check etc. and the SRD on its separate page – as provided, half of the final page is the statblock, half the SRD, which results in unnecessary printer-drain by printing it out.

Endzeitgeist out.

Storm Bunny Presents: The Ghost of Ashenwood Road available from:

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By Enzeitgeist

This pdf is 16 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial/SRD, 1 page introduction,1 page back cover, leaving us with 12 pages of content, so let’s take a look!

The pdf kicks off with rules for chirurgery, which is portrayed as an unpleasant ability to modify bodies in ways they were not meant to be modified in a world where magical healing is the default. Basically, it requires the skill focus (heal)-feat or at least 5 ranks in Craft (alchemy). If you meet either prerequisites, you may learn chirurgical procedures in a way similar to spells – upon learning them, though, you can use them at will. Studying from a book or another practitioner is possible and learning from corpses is harder than from live subjects. The procedures also feature a chance that you learn an imperfect version of the respective procedure, imposing a permanent malus on your check to perform it until you manage a perfect success. These procedures do spend your kits, though. When using the madness-rules used by the Gothic Grimoire-series and first introduced in Tomes of Ancient Knowledge, these procedures might drive a recipient of the chirurgical procedures insane – a rule I suggest you drop when not using these in the context of a fantasy world where magical healing is readily available.

Now how are procedures handled rules-wise? Essentially, 3 skill-checks are required: Disable Device, Craft (Alchemy) and Heal. 3 successful checks mean a complete success, whereas two are a partial success and 1 means a failure – and there is the potential for catastrophic failures as well. Interactions with skill mastery and similar abilities as well as a lack of assistants is covered as well and beyond even that, the respective procedures have an associated synergy-skill that provides a +1 bonus to all skill-checks for every 3 ranks the practitioner has in the respective synergy skill.

A total of 11 such procedures are covered with DC, the amount of days it takes and the amount of healer-kit uses the procedure expends per ongoing day. It should also be noted that there are possibilities to reverse these respective procedures. At the very latest when reading the respective procedures, one realizes that Hippokrates would not smile upon these procedures since they indeed have a very sinister tint to them: Whereas changing the appearance might still be moderately common and neutral (though terrible things can be done with this), implanting phobias and multiple identities of your choice (including a list), enhance non-lethal damage healing, grafting vestigial or functional fins and wings, implanting suggestions, modify memories or erase memories of class abilities and similar tricks via Induce Amnesia, or get REALLY nasty. Want to implant drug reservoirs, lobotomize victims (though the repercussions of this one are not severe enough for my tastes) or even implant instant-kill-switches? Yeah, you can do that. You could of course also use these for healing purposes via the general surgery, but where’s the fun in that? "White" surgery to get rid of blindness/deafness, attribute damage and drain etc. are btw. not covered in here – while they wouldn’t fit with the theme, I maintain that more procedures in future supplements would help to make the complex subsystem more relevant.

After that, we are introduced to a beautiful full-colour one-page artwork of a new grimoire, On the Clockwork of Caterpillars, a grisly tome that includes the procedures featured in this book as well as access to two new feats as well as the pieces of information to create a variety of constructs. The Anatomical Precision-feat allows the character to use his anatomical knowledge to study foes and help criting/sneaking them. Anesthetist allows the user to improve unconsciousness-poisons or use your antidote/healer’s hits to ameliorate pain – either fast or slowly.

The final pages of the product are devoted to two new creatures – the first being the Cyberphrenic Tadpole (CR 1/3) that can invade others and telepathically manipulate those invaded by it and relay the creator’s commands – like in the Construct Codex, we get a one-page glorious full-colour artwork of the critter, easily producible as a hand-out to players. Beyond this, there is the CR 5 Cranial Dissectibot (CR 5) – essentially an operating table with saws etc. that can drill into the skulls of helpless creatures and restrain patients – a perfect companion for mad doctors who don’t want the clichéd Igor and rather make their own friends when operating.

Conclusion:

Editing and formatting are top-notch, I didn’t notice any glitches. Layout adheres to Legendary Games’ 2-column, drop-dead-gorgeous full-colour standard and the pdf comes in two versions, one slightly more printer-friendly than the other. The pdfs come fully bookmarked and the original pieces of full color artwork are legendary indeed and rank among the finest pieces one can find in any roleplaying product out there.

The Mad Doctor’s Formulary provides a complex, yet easy to grasp non-magical system for surgical procedures of the more sinister kind and offers some really nasty options. That being said, they are not perfect. Perhaps due to the brevity or for playability’s sake, the potential for relatively simple reversal of the procedures means also that the procedures lack a bit of the gravitas they otherwise would have – catching characters alive is hard enough and being subject to such an operation should have characters steaming and the mad doctor cackling – since the procedures not even require a caster-level check versus the doc’s surgical skill to be reversed, they at least in my opinion lose some of their threat-potential and "we’re screwed/what have you monster done"-mentality.

There is a second thing you should be aware of when getting this – while the rules presented herein work as a rudimentary alternative to magical healing, this is not the liberating strike for non-magical healing it could have easily been, were this a longer book with benevolent surgery included. While I won’t hold that against the pdf, I still feel that this book’s potential transcends greatly its rather tight focus.

That being said, for what it is, for its tight focus on disturbing medicine, it works exceedingly well and rating it instead as a book that makes non-magical healing valid is simply not fair. Still, a sense of a missed opportunity, at least for now, suffuses my reception of this otherwise stellar offering and hence my final decision of settling on a verdict of 4.5 stars -still rounded up to 5, but short of the seal of approval. If evil medicine only moderately interests you as a concept, I still wholeheartedly encourage you to check this out.

Endzeitgeist out.

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By Enzeitgeist

This pdf is 14 pages long, 2/3 of a page front cover, 1 page SRD/editorial, leaving us with 12 1/3pages of content, so what exactly do we get?

Well, first, let’s talk about what we DON’T get: In contrast to the very first installment of the series, the second one has found an identity wholly distinct from Raging Swan Press’ “So what’s…”-series: Instead of providing a list of short items that can be found, we get a section of 31 different items that all come with a price and many of them can be considered minor wondrous items that range from a carry around retractable podium to hold books and a mechanic toy that rolls around for some feet before starting to shriek. It should be noted that in the case of wondrous items, construction rules and information is included as well.

Another distinction is that each of the items herein comes with a story-seed for enterprising DMs. The pdf also includes items that e.g. make locating objects via the spell of the same name easier and orbs that allow you to record a message of up to 20 words, needles that thread themselves and similar curiosities, interspersed with a bland copper chain that is an utter filler – I honestly don’t get why this break from the usual format has been included – it’s neither required, nor does it feel appropriate. Even the shaving kit and gaming tiles (also rather mundane) are somewhat original in that they haven’t been done. Better yet, many items take nice twists on everyday items and even toys and could be seen as representations of items that feature in our everyday lives.

The pdf also features some tricks for DMs that are mostly useful for novices à la tracking which items you’ve already used, different magic item sources and a short discussion of Clarke’s Third law, which states that sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic and thus makes modern items possible sources of inspiration for magic items and on how to handle players treating magic like technology, which is doubly important when taking into account that many items herein might be also created via steampunk/science. Nice for novice DMs, but nothing new for me there.

Conclusion:

Editing and formatting are very good, I noticed no significant glitches. Layout adheres to SGG’s 3-column, landscape-standard and the pdf has no bookmarks, which is a pity and a minor gripe I have with this pdf – at this point, all but Bullet point-pdfs should be bookmarked.

Now this book is markedly different from the previous one and is better for it, making this pdf even a viable purchase if you already own the “Genius Guide to what’s in my Pocket” and Raging Swan’s “So what’s that Shiny Object like, anyways?”. In fact, I’d go 5 stars for this pdf, were it not for the relative brevity of the pdf (about +20 items would have been nice) and the fact that this pdf has no bookmarks. I gave the predecessor of this file 4.5 stars, but since I wrote that review, the standard has been set even higher – while this pdf one ups its predecessor, it doesn’t do so in the extent that would see me rate this the full 5 stars, so what’s a reviewer to do? In the end, I’ll rate this 4.5 stars and round up in contrast to its predecessor to drive home that this is imho the superior file.

Endzeitgeist out.

The Genius Guide to What’s In My Pocket? Part Deux is available from:

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