Splinters of Faith II

By Thilo Graf

The second installment of Splinters of Faith from Frog God Games is 21 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page ToC and 1 page SRD, leaving 17 pages of content – quite a bit more than in installment number 1, so let’s check it out!

This being an adventure review, it contains SPOILERS. Potential players might want to jump to the conclusion.

Still here? All righty! After acquiring the shattered sceptre of faiths, the PCs have ventured to a Dwarven settlement named Anvil Plunge to re-forge the mundane parts of the sceptre in the blessed forge. Once again, we are introduced to an aptly-written village, this time a dwarven frontier-town loosely reminiscent of a wheel in layout, including 4 connected temples in the middle of the village. Once again, the settlement feels very much alive and unique and has its own feeling of fragility – after all, the village has recently lost the second of its holy relics (the first being an adventure-spanning side-quest) and the PCs will have to investigate the theft: While the theft per se is interesting, it’s depiction in the adventure is lacklustre at best, amounting to a perception check and some knowledge: The perpetrator is a druid, wildshaped, got through some drainage and stole the artefact (an ever burning piece of coal) from the furnace while protected from flames. The adventure could have easily been made more exciting with a better investigation.

The thief, a half-orc cleric, hides in the sin-mire and this is where the adventure begins to shine, or could begin to shine: The PCs use a raft and glide through a mapped mire to find the entrance to the enemy’s lair. While the map is cool, no map for the players is provided, thus showing them that several islands contains the same creatures – a blank hex-map of the mire as a hand-out would have made this section plain awesome. Oh well, after exploring the mire (probably thanks to a DM’s hand-drawn version of the map), the PCs have to delve into partially submerged giant crayfish tunnels (a neat dungeon with over-and underwater sections), challenge the druid and return the coal to have the Scepter of Faiths re-forged.

Conclusion:

Editing and formatting are very good, though one location is missing from the wilderness map. Layout adheres to a 2-column b/w-standard and the artworks and map-qualities are high. The pdf has no bookmarks, which is a downer. This adventure provides a neat, unique village, a short investigation (that, as presented, does not deserve the name, but can easily be expanded) and a truly iconic wilderness and dungeon and this is where one of my two main gripes with this installment lies: The wilderness map. To run a free-form wilderness exploration, a DM NEEDS a map without letters denoting the hotspots and the adventure fails to provide one. The other gripe I have with this installment (and the whole series in general) is that no transition from installment I to II is provided – no wilderness, no random encounters, nothing! And the two villages are not exactly adjacent! Apart from that, this adventure provides more content, a better mood and a more iconic location to adventure in than part I, so my final rating will be 3 stars – if you’re willing to work, this might even be 4 stars for you.

Endzeitgeist out.

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