Horror at Dagger Rock

By Thilo Graf

This pdf by Sagaworks Studios contains 74 pages, 1 page front cover, 1 page back cover, 1 page OGL, 1 page credits that leaves 70 pages of chock-full with adventure.

The adventure features 6 adventure hooks and several maps for almost every location imaginable:

5 small maps of houses in the adventure, 1 player’s map of the town Relford without any annoying letters. Very nice. Furthermore, we also get 2 pages of DM-maps.

The adventure per se, a dark tale about a cult with a nod towards Lovecraft county, highly detailed and can be described as a sandbox-style free-form investigation followed by a hardcore dungeon crawl that is very atmospheric and expects players to use both their brain and their common sense to defeat the obstacles they’ll face.

The investigation works fine, due to the excruciating attention to detail that has been given to the NPCs – even wives and children have their own names, every entry features DCs to glean information in addition to the massive 1 page rumor table.

The adventure also features MASSIVE handouts for players: A 4 page journal, 2 One-page letters, 1 One-page missive and 1 One-page crude map. This should be standard.

We also get 2 new monsters, one of which is a template.

The quality of the prose is high and the atmosphere evoked makes the adventure a nice read.

The writing is very concise and offers the DM the tools to pace the investigation and modify the difficulty/pace. Make no mistake: This adventure cannot be run spontaneously and should be carefully read and prepared, it’s too densely packed with information and fluff to be glanced over.

My only criticism is the lack of interior art, which would cost one star.

Conclusion:

As mentioned above, I’d normally detract one star due to the lack of interior art. However, the adventure is tightly and intelligently written and: It’s for free! It’s a large, high-quality adventure and it’s for free. If you are somewhat into old-school gaming or like horror, check it out.