This is a product you shouldn’t ignore. Read the review. No, really: Read the review. I’m not kidding.

Review Originally Posted February 12th, 2001

After Winter Dark, I’m afraid, is one of those products which – if you saw it on the shelf at your game store – you would promptly ignore. I mean, it’s got three strikes against it:

1. It’s from a company you’ve never heard of before.
2. The cover, while having a very nice picture of a dragon on it, still comes across as very amateurish in its overall composition and structure.
3. It’s a generic fantasy campaign.

Whoa! Hold on there! Don’t hit the “back” button on me quite yet! Keep reading!

After Winter Dark is, thus, one of those products which is truly fun to review, because you know that you have the chance to let people know about an outstanding product which they might otherwise miss.

So give me – and After Winter Dark — a chance to change your mind.

WEAK POINTS

Let’s get these out of the way first: Yes, the cover has a certain taint of amateurism. The interior art is reproduced too darkly. And the two maps (one of the geographical forms and the other for the sociopolitical boundaries – a nice touch, by the way) are organized numerically, while the text is organized alphabetically (making it difficult to cross-reference between them).

After Winter Dark is also only 24 pages long – which isn’t so much a fault in the grand scheme of things (because, at $5, that makes it a far better deal than the comparable product on the market, the D&D Gazetteer), as it is a fault because I want more.

Okay, those are the downers. It’s all uphill from here.

HISTORY

The After Winter Dark campaign setting is placed upon the world of Erde. The story of its creation is fairly typical in all but the details: The All Father brought the world into existence, and during the Days Before Days all creatures knew his mind – even the Great Dragon Frafnog who, today, is the only being which remembers this ancient time. Given eternity, however, the All Father grew weary of his creation and allowed the dwarves to enter it – and the dwarves did not know his mind, and their empire grew great. Some of the dwarves settled far from their brethren and lived wholly above ground, eventually becoming the thirteen tribes of man. And the Great Trees still wandered wild, and the Dragons made their nests across the world, and for three hundred centuries Erde thrived beneath the light of the sun.

Then the Goblins came – from whence, no one knows (although there are whispers of dwarves forever twisted and corrupted by the dark and evil of the deep). The terrible sorcery of the goblins made war upon the dwarfs, and the Goblin-Dwarf Wars stretched across four millennia – smashing the world of the Days Before Days into chaos. In the final days of the wars, the goblin sorcerer Ondluche worked powerful magic in an attempt to undo the dwarves – but the magic went awry, and the mind of the All Father was broken, opening gates into all of his imaginings. Thus the multiverse was born, and a host of new creatures sprang into the world. From the All Father’s purest thoughts came the Faerie, but there were also darker things – demons and orcs and, worst of all, the All Father’s Nightmare: Unklar.

The Age of Dwarves came to an end, with the great societies of both dwarf and orc smashed back into a primitive state by their self-destructive war. And thus the Age of Man began. From their “shallow roots in the distant north, the thirteen tribes of men grew.” The tribes became kingdoms, and the greatest of the kingdoms became the Empire of Aenoch. Then the Empire decayed, and the Middle Kingdoms arose in its place. This was the Age of Heroes – when “men, elves, and dwarves battled the evil remnants of the Old Empire, and heroes, like Aristobolus the White, Luther the Gallant, Daladon Half-Elven, and the monk Jaren ruled the day”.

But the Age of Heroes was doomed to end in tragedy: Sebastien Oliver I, “last of the House of Aenoch”, summoned forth the “last breath of the Days Before Days”. Using vile sorcery he summoned forth Unklar from the Paths of Umbra, and Unklar slew Sebastien and for forty years made war upon the land – bringing all the world beneath his heel: “In the last only the Kingdom of Kayomar stood alone against him and his vile folk. But in the Catalyst Wars, they too were thrown down and their last King, Robert Luther, slain, and with him, Jaren the monk. Only the Great Tree avoided Unklar’s touch for it hid in the deeps of the Eldwood, on the edge of the world. There, servants of the Oak under the ranger lord Daladon struggled on through the long years of the millennial darkness. Jaren, taken to Aufstrag, languished there for a millennium.”

Thus came about the Age of the Winter Dark – when Unklar ruled with an iron fist, and a shroud of mist obscured the sun and brought eternal winter upon the land. Then, “in the 1019th year of Unklar’s reign the Winter Dark Wars began”. Unklar’s power had waned, and his opponents gathered about the Great Tree – Aristobolus returned from the Land of Shade and Chaos, Luther from the Sea of Dreams. Jaren was freed, Dalodon half-elven and Dolgon (the last dwarven king of Grundliche Hohle) came as well. “In the 1030th year of Unklar’s reign they stole into his throne room and cast him from the plane.”

That was sixty years ago.

This, then, is the world of After Winter Dark: There is just the faintest scent of Elric here, as the Young Kingdoms begin to build anew beneath a lingering shadow upon the remnants of an ancient past.

THE WORLD TODAY

It was the history of the After Winter Dark campaign which first caught my attention. You know that something is being done right if you are immediately enraptured with era after era of a world’s history: I can easily see myself setting entire campaigns in the time of the Goblin-Dwarf Wars, the Empire of Aenoch, the Age of Heroes, the Age of Winter Dark, or the Winter Dark Wars – not to mention the Young Kingdoms which are actually detailed in this pamphlet.

After Winter Dark takes the familiar, twists it just enough to make it its own, and then adds that ineffable quality of the epic which can take the ordinary and make it exceptional. In short, I was excited — and that’s worth $5 right there.

Erde’s cosmos and calendar are described, then its people and languages, followed by the gods and divine orders, and then the guilds and other organizations of the world. Finally, the individual lands are given brief descriptions (including their Lord, Capital, History, and Modern Classification). Finally, the major geographical and terrain features of the world of Erde are described.

The actual detail of the world, although sparse (as the format would suggest), is no less exciting than the history. A few examples.

Aufstrag. “Fell Unklar, brooding in fear, roused himself and fortified his Keep. Rending the earth with his great axe he cleaved huge rifts about the Imperial castle of Old Aenoch, and with sorceries created great pools of water and pestilence to cover the rent lands. And all of Aenoch between the rivers Udunilay and Uphrates was made a swamp of fell death.” Aufstrag was once the mighty stone citadel of Unklar’s rule – “in time of years the place became a cesspool of all things vile; tunnels, great and small, fanned out beneath the halls into the rock of the world, towers and buttresses rose into the sky, and the city sprawled out over hills”. The halls of Aufstrag have fallen into decay now, but Coburg the Undying – one of Unklar’s unvanquished lieutenants – is rumored to lurk within its massive halls, plotting for the day that he will reclaim his power.

(In my opinion, Aufstrag is simply a wonderful excuse for an elaborate dungeon. And I really hope that the Troll Lords return here some day with a product which will explore its dark depths in detail.)

Grundliche Hohle. The Deep Halls, as it is known in the tongues of men, is the oldest of the dwarven realms. Unklar opened it to the darkness and slew or enslaved Angrod’s people. Eventually, though, Dolgan – the last king of Grundliche Hohle – rose up from the slave pits and helped defeat Unklar. Now the dwarves have returned here, to reclaim their ancient land.

The Shelves of Mist. “These gently rolling, forested hills, north of the Darkenfold, are home to all manner of fantastic creatures. The many creeks and small lakes lend to the banks of mist which seem to forever hang over the shelves. ‘Tis said that these hills harbor the gates of Vakhund, doorways to other worlds.”

The Detmold. “An old and dark forest. Its short thick trees grow close together and crowd the northern road. It is said that Queen Ephremere of Aachen became one with the Unicorn here.”

Even in the brief span of 24 pages, it becomes clear that what truly helps After Winer Dark excel is the attention to detail: Specifically, Stephen Chenault has crafted a world in which every detail has been dipped in the fantastic and awe-inspiring. The mountains of Erde have a history; the hills echo with the ring of magic; the rivers flow from springs of time immemorial; and the entire world seems harmonized to an ancient, evocative song. If you can take nothing else from this product, you can take the rich elements from which it has been built and use them to spice your own campaigns.

This is a world of fantasy, above all, which deserves a much more detailed presentation. But, until that happens, we will have to content ourselves with After Winter Dark.

COMMERCIAL DETAILS

A full color poster map (21” x 32”) of the world of Erde is sold separately, also for $5. It is well done for the price, and I honestly can’t imagine using After Winter Dark without owning a copy. Check it out.

After Winter Dark and the After Winter Dark Fantasy Campaign Setting 21” x 32” Map can be ordered directly from Troll Lord Games or from Wizard’s Attic. Both of these have also been packaged with the CD-ROM editions of The Fantastic Adventure, Mortality of the Green, and A Lion in the Ropes for the low price of $10. I have reviewed The Fantastic Adventure, and will be reviewing The Mortality of Green and A Lion in the Ropes in the near future.

Style: 3
Substance: 4

Grade: B+

Authors: Stephen Chenault
Company: Troll Lord Games
Line: Sword & Sorcery
Price: $5.00
ISBN: 0-9702397-0-X
Production Code: TLG 1001
Pages: 24

This campaign setting has been vastly expanded and released as After Winter Dark: The Codex of Aihrde, but there is something still incredibly appealing about the slim, 24-page version I first read 20+ years ago.

This review nearly went astray. It somehow slipped through my original archiving of these reviews and, although I recalled reading After Winter Dark, I had actually remembered NOT reviewing it. (I think because I wrote half of a never-finished review of a later Troll Lord Games campaign supplement.) It was only because a review that will be reprinted next month mentioned that I had written a review of After Winter Dark “that could be found elsewhere on this site,” that I realized something was amiss.

Thankfully, I was still able to track down a copy of the review. And here it is!

For an explanation of where these reviews came from and why you can no longer find them at RPGNet, click here.

Each Troll Lord release improves significantly upon the last. The Malady of Kings is a noteworthy, high-level D20 adventure.

Review Originally Published May 21st, 2001

PLOT

Warning: This review will contain spoilers for The Malady of Kings. Players who may find themselves playing in this adventure should not read beyond this point.

A thousand years ago, as the Catalyst Wars which would signal the beginning of the Dark Age fell upon the world, Luther Pendegrantz – guided by visions – set sail from his throne in Kayomar. His wife, Vivienne, guided by visions of her own, knew that she would never see her husband again. Luther found his way upon the Sea of Dreaming, and spent a millennium upon those fabled waters before returning to rejoin his old comrades in overthrowing fell Unklar and ending the long Winter Dark which had rested upon the world in his absence.

Unknown to Luther, however, Vivienne – his long-lost wife – had not found a peaceful death. Pining for her absent husband, she became one of the undead, haunting the royal sepulcher in which she had been quietly inurned. She remains there still, while her husband – having saved the world and been sainted as St. Luther – retired to the Isle of Blight upon the Sea of Dreaming, from which his order of paladins stands guard over the world. St. Luther has recently fallen under the foul curse of ancient enemies, and has been trapped in a sleep of deep dreams within his castle upon the Isle of Blight.

Enter the PCs: Following ancient clues discovered within the legendary Books of Jaran they track down Frieden Anhohe and the Shrine of the Gallant, the ancient crypt of the Pendegrantz family. There they discover – and disturb – the long-forgotten Vivienne. This sudden psychic disturbance summons the arch-mage Aristobolus – now half-mad, but once Luther’s companion and Vivienne’s dear friend. This in turn, brings forth Daladon Half-elf, another of Luther’s famous companions. Both Aristobolus and Daladon mourn for Vivienne’s current plight, and ask the PCs to aid them in relieving her sorrow by summoning Luther from the Isle of Blight to make peace with his wife.

From here the PCs will sail upon the mystic Dream Horn (provided by Daladon) upon the Sea of Dreaming, finding their way – at last – to the Isle of Blight. Here they will converse with a demi-god exiled from his homeland, and – at last – free Luther from his slumber.

GREAT GAMING ENVIRONMENTS

I’ve said this about every single Troll Lord product I’ve reviewed, and I’ll say it again here: They have really incredible settings. For example, in The Malady of Kings you’ve got:

The Eldwood, a subtly fantastic environment, and utterly memorable. The Eldwood is the oldest forest in the world, and its mysteries are both ancient and well-protected. What separates the Eldwood from every other “ancient forest” of generic fantasy, however, is its unique geography: Its outermost reaches are known as the Rimwald, where travel is easy, the trees are far apart, and a small number of human settlements are sprinkled throughout. As one pushes beyond the Rimwald, however, they come to the Festungwald (“festung being an old dwarf word, literally translated as ‘fortress’”) – a tangle of underbrush, younger trees, and wild animals nearly fifteen miles deep in places serving as an effective natural barrier of protection for the Eldwald, the deep woodland of the forest, with oaks which stand like “monumental buildings”. You know, its a subtle thing – but its small touches like these which distinguish the worlds and settings which are truly memorable.

The Sea of Dreaming, also known as the Dreaming Sea, is – in fact – another plane of existence which lies in coexistence with our own (and, possibly, all others). “The sea is a watery plane of chaos, each drop a physical manifestation of a dream. These droplets of the dreams and nightmares of the living creatures of past, present, and future have accumulated over the millennia to form this great ocean. They are infinite in number, and the Dreaming Sea has no bottom.”

The Isle of Wintery Dreams, built by the foul demon who ruled over the world during the Dark Age as a way of corrupting the world of dreams, the Isle of Wintery Dreams remains – inhabited by fiercesome Dream Warriors.

And, finally, the mystical Isle of Blight, where St. Luther rests and rules.

PROBLEM AREAS

When I first started reading The Malady of Kings I was somewhat concerned by the fact that this adventure – unlike Troll Lord’s others – depended very heavily upon the idiosyncratic elements of the After Winter Dark setting. I felt there was a very real possibility that the only way this adventure would be playable was if you were playing it on the World of Erde.

Fortunately, I was pleasantly surprised to discover just how easily this module could be adapted. St. Luther, for example, can be replaced with any ancient hero of your campaign world that might still be alive (and trapped in a magical sleep) – or he could even be a minor noble of some sort. The settings themselves can be transferred fairly easily – swapping villain for villain and hero for hero. The adventure as it stands is of epic proportions – building upon the central mythology of the After Winter Dark campaign setting – and you can certainly maintain that by bending the mythology of your own world. But nothing stops you from toning down the epic elements to a more manageable degree (with little more than some simple name changes).

The only element which could pose serious problems is the Sea of Dreaming. Truthfully, this can be added to any campaign world (and would, in my opinion, be a worthy addition). But it may, of course, have no position in your person cosmology. Again, this is easily worked around: Simply place the Isle of Blight somewhere on a normal ocean in your campaign world. (You only lose one small, and relatively unimportant, scene this way.)

Other than that, I only found a handful of minor problems: Chenault describes one encounter as being of EL 19. While technically accurate (the wizard in the encounter is, in fact, 19th level), it should not actually be described as such (if you were to reward the PCs for defeating the wizard, as the EL rating implies, you would do horrible things to game balance). In some places the boxed text (generally very evocative) trips over the line into poor melodrama and amateur histrionics, which is unfortunate.

The setup and adventure hooks for the adventure are also, in my opinion, underdeveloped. I would have liked a little more detail on why, specifically, the PCs should get interested enough in the passages regarding the Shrine of the Gallant in order to go looking for it. As it stands you have little to no sense for how the PCs get involved in the plot.

There are also a couple of points where you can tell this is an adventure which saw its inception as something which the author ran for his own play group (preserved, most noticeably, in areas where the plot briefly seems to follow the logic his players took, rather than the possibilities which other DMs may face).

These are minor problems, however, and do not noticeably detract from the overall quality of the adventure, or – more importantly – its usefulness.

CONCLUSION

Each new release from Troll Lord Games improves upon the last: Content, lay-out, boxed text, art, maps – the whole nine yards. If they continue along this course, it shouldn’t be long before they’re turning out material rivalling the quality of Penumbra, Green Ronin, and Necromancer.

The Malady of Kings, specifically, is an excellent adventure for 10th level characters. This is a point in a campaign where truly epic themes typically begin to creep into the game, and The Malady of Kings addresses this need perfectly.

Style: 3
Substance: 4

Authors: Stephen Chenault
Company: Troll Lord Games
Line: D20
Price: $7.00
ISBN: 0-931275-01-7
Production Code: TLG1601
Pages: 40

For an explanation of where these reviews came from and why you can no longer find them at RPGNet, click here.

Stephen Chenault designs a solid D20 module, Troll Lord’s first. Although possessed of great strengths, A Lion in the Ropes is held back by a central weakness in its design.

Review Originally Published May 21st, 2001

Warning: This review will contain spoilers for A Lion in the Ropes. Players who may find themselves playing in this adventure should not read beyond this point.

At first glance, A Lion in the Ropes is a fairly typical D&D module: PCs enter a village, the village is besieged by “something evil,” and the PCs take the necessary steps to rid the village of evil. But there are a couple of things which set it apart from its familiar brethren:

First, as with Troll Lord’s other products, A Lion in the Ropes is distinguished by its distinctive and developed setting. The village which the PCs enter is not just Generic Village #117, it is Capendu – a place given a specific history, context, and character. Some of this is accomplished through little details which make all the difference (for example, the fact that the roofs in Capendu are made of a distinctive green tile which comes from a nearby town). In other cases, it is accomplished through elements more integral to the adventure. For example, a central element in the adventure is the Church of the Four Saints. The church was built upon the ruins of a prison. In most adventures such a prison would simply be “ruined” – in the case of A Lion in the Ropes, however, the prison was specifically torn apart by the citizens in order to build the town… which is why Capendu’s structures are built of stone (unlike the other towns in the region).

Although designed for Troll Lord’s After Winter Dark campaign setting, I find that the setting elements they include in their adventures are of a quality which not only allow them to be easily incorporated into any generic fantasy world, but will enhance the world into which they are so included.

Stephen Chenault (the author) also does a nice job of interweaving multiple actions into his narrative: A lion who is mistaken for a demon, a group of undead who are actually responsible for terrorizing the town, and a band of bandits who attempts to take advantage of the chaos surrounding the murders committed by the undead. By interweaving this three-tiered dynamic into the complex supporting cast established in Capendu, Chenault manages to create a fairly compelling low level adventure.

Chenault also does a nice job of making sure that, if the PCs have an deficiencies in their skills or resources while tackling the task he’s set them, that there are ways of filling those deficiencies within the course of the adventure. At the same time, however, Chenault makes sure that there are contingencies which will allow the DM to take away the PCs’ new toys if he feels they will be overly powerful beyond the scope of the adventure.

Another point of commendation in the module’s favor is the boxed text. Although, at times, the text makes decisions for the PCs (a common mistake by module writers, but one which drives me right up the wall because it means I absolutely cannot trust the boxed text while running the adventure), it is also written very strongly – and, therefore, worth salvaging.

WEAKNESSES

Unfortunately, not everything about A Lion in the Ropes is equally commendable. The most significant, and perhaps crippling, problem is actually hinted at in Chenault’s own words:

“This mystery revolves around three separate actors. The Orinsu, the escaped lion, and the bandit, Orange-Hair. To track the movements of all three, the Referee should create a time line and allow the characters to weave in and out of it in a chaotic, albeit, realistic manner.”

Wait a minute. The referee should create a time line? If Chenault feels that the successful running of this adventure requires a time line to be established, why doesn’t he provide one?

And that pretty much sums up the source of most of my problems with this adventure: At many points it reads less like it has been designed, and more as if it had been merely outlined. To a certain extent, I feel as if Chenault became trapped by the standard concept of what “a module must be like” – and couldn’t get his ideas to function sufficiently within those constraints. A Lion in the Ropes might have risen above being merely good to something truly memorable if Chenault had followed his instincts and designed the adventure primarily around a time line of events – preferably a branching one which showed some responsiveness to multiple courses of action taken by the PCs, with specific events along each branch of the time line detailed.

CONCLUSION

That being said, A Lion in the Ropes is a solid module. If you’re looking for a memorable locale, a mystery, and undead for your low level party (the module is designed for levels 2-4), this is probably a good place to look.

Style: 3
Substance: 3

Author: Stephen Chenault
Company: Troll Lord Games
Line: D20
Price: $6.00
ISBN: 0-9702397-5-0
Production Code: TLG1401
Pages: 24

There was an ineffable quality to Troll Lord’s first modules that I really struggled to communicate in my reviews. There was, for lack of a better word, a texture to them that made them feel woven into a deeper reality. There was something magical about them that I desperately wanted to bottle up and bring to the table. But they also, as this review alludes, often had some deep issues that would have required some significant labor to polish them up and actually run them to best effect.

As a result, very few of these modules ever made it to my table. I sometimes wish that I’d run more of them. Perhaps some day I shall.

Many of these modules, including A Lion in the Ropes, have been updated several times to new editions. I haven’t checked out any of these revisions, so I can’t really comment on whether any significant changes have been made to their content or presentation. This review is strictly of the original D20 System edition.

For an explanation of where these reviews came from and why you can no longer find them at RPGNet, click here.

If you run a science fiction campaign, buy this book today. If you don’t run a science fiction campaign, then you can wait until tomorrow.

Review Originally Published May 21st, 2001

Points in Space is a generic science fiction supplement designed to provide locations and characters which might be found on your stereotypical space station. It’s written by S. John Ross, who also runs Cumberland Games – the electronic book company which has released it as the first volume in the All-Systems Library.

All right, let’s count the problems with that:

First off, generic supplements don’t work. They lack all the little background details that story-oriented people like, and they don’t have all the little numbers that delight the grognards. Everyone knows this. I know this. You know this. That strange guy in the corner of your game store knows this.

Second off, electronic books don’t work. They’re never, ever worth the money. Everyone knows this. I know this. You know this. That strange guy in the corner of your game store knows this.

So Ross was going to have an uphill battle convincing me with this one.

BUY, BUY, BUY!

And I’ll be damned if he didn’t do it. Points of Space is a fantastic product, and I’m going to tell you why:

First, S. John Ross latches onto the stereotypes of space opera. Because they’re stereotypes they can be dropped into a wide variety of science fiction settings: Anyone playing Traveller, Star Wars, Star Trek, Babylon 5, or any of the other usual suspects won’t have any problems finding a place for the material in Points in Space.

The stereotypes are the sugar-coated pill which lets the GM swallow Points in Space, but if that’s all that Ross was providing then this would be like every other generic product I’ve ever seen: Bad.

Of course, Ross doesn’t stop there. Step two is the unique depth which he manages to give to each and every one of his locales, even while he maintains the generic confines of his stereotypes. Everything in Points in Space is given a detailed history, a unique outlook, and a fascinating cast of characters. Or, to put it another way, Ross successfully creates locations which will not only fit into any campaign – they will benefit any campaign.

And if that’s all that Ross did, then Points in Space would be a solid buy. But he doesn’t stop there, either. Not content to simply give you a couple dozen well-developed locations which can be dropped into any space opera campaign, Ross then proceeds to give every location in Points in Space its own unique twist – taking something which was already invaluable and making it unforgettable.

A FEW OF MY FAVORITES

For example, there’s Q’zoon’s – the fast food restaurant of intergalactic starports. The concept, of course, can be fit onto almost any commercial space station from science fiction that you can think of. He then takes the next step of developing it – giving you a memorable cast of characters to work there, a menu of strange alien foods, etc. Then he tweaks it out: Q’zoon’s particular specialty is that they will, upon request, randomize your food request – giving you a chance to blindly sample the wide variety of alien cuisines they have available.

It’s a small thing. But it’s the difference between having your players eat in a cookie cutter restaurant, and remembering “that time we got a job in the place with the random alien food.”

Some of my other favorites:

Laxa’s Holoporn Theater. This place is absolutely hilarious. The description of alien porn left me in paroxysms of laughter, which were only heightened when Ross revealed that that very hilarity is one of the reasons Laxa’s has such a great rep among human customers.

Harcorp Medical Center. “’Franchise medicine’ recently took 7th in Spacer Times reader poll for ‘phrases that strike terror in the hearts of space travelers,’ squeaking in between ‘package tours’ at 6th and ‘explosive decompression’ at 8th.” And you thought HMOs were scary. What can I say? Ross even makes the trip to get your play group healed up after a gunfight a memorable experience.

CONCLUSION

If you run a science fiction campaign, buy this book today. If you don’t run a science fiction campaign, then you can wait until tomorrow.

Style: 5
Substance: 5

Grade: A+

Author: S. John Ross
Company: Cumberland Games
Line: All Systems
Price: $12.95
Pages: 143

You can tell this review comes from a different era as I have to go out of my way to explain that e-books are worth it.

I remain skeptical of generic RPG sourcebooks. They always seem like a good idea, but in practice they’re pretty fundamentally flawed: The designer would almost always be better off picking ANY system and including stat blocks for it. First, the book can then be sold to the fans for that game. Second, GMs who are amenable to kitbashing stuff and using it in any system will still be able to do that, too. (But with the added benefit of having stuff mechanically defined so that they can more easily ballpark it into their system of choice.)

As much as I loved this one, it doesn’t appear to have worked out, either. S. John Ross never produced any of the intended sequels.

For an explanation of where these reviews came from and why you can no longer find them at RPGNet, click here.

If I had a nickel for every time I’ve reviewed a D&D 5^th Edition Starter Set, I’d have four nickels. Which isn’t a lot, but it’s a weird that it’s happened four times.

This particular starter set is Heroes of the Borderlands, and it’s designed to introduce new players to the D&D 2024 version of the game. I’ve previously reviewed:

• D&D Starter Set (2014, featuring The Lost Mine of Phandelver)
• D&D Essentials Kit (2019, featuring Dragon of Icespire Peak)
• D&D Starter Set: Dragons of Stormwreck Isle (2022)

If you’ve read those reviews, then you know that what I’m looking for in a starter set is a complete game. I feel strongly that no one should buy a game, take it home, and then discover that it’s just a disposable advertisement for the game they should have bought in the first place.

I also feel strongly that an effective starter set desperately needs to do a superb job of introducing new Dungeon Masters to the game. When new players buy a D&D starter set, they’re expecting it to show them how to play their first roleplaying game, and the entire experience is lynchpinned on the DM. You can’t just cross your fingers and hope they’ll figure it out on their own.

Last, but not least, the introductory adventure should (a) ideally be multiple adventures and (b) show off the unique strengths of tabletop roleplaying games. If your premiere gateway product is a railroaded nightmare or makes D&D look indistinguishable from Gloomhaven, then something has gone wrong.

(You also get bonus points if you include some sort of solo play option, so that someone opening the box on Christmas morning can immediately dive in, get a little taste of what RPGs can be like, and get excited enough to gather their friends ASAP for a proper session.)

With these principles as our guiding light, I concluded that Lost Mine of Phandelver, in the 2014 Starter Set, was quite possibly the best introductory adventure ever published for D&D (in no small part because it was actually a full-blown campaign). The rulebook in that set was also notable because it included enough source material (monsters, magic items, and so forth) that it felt like a DM could continue designing and running their own adventures even after completing the included adventure. It was hampered only by the lack of character creation rules.

The Essentials Kit, in 2019, significantly improved the rulebook by including character creation, but lacked the same robust selection of monsters and magic items. The Dragon of Icespire Peak adventure was a solid entry, but also a bit of a downgrade from Lost Mine of Phandelver. Combining the Starter Set and the Essentials Kit, on the other hand, would give you a near perfect introductory set.

In 2022, Dragons of Stormwreck Isle tried to supplant both its predecessors… and failed. Character creation was gone, the rulebook was gutted, and the adventure was mediocre at best. This was a disposable and disappointing set.

In the end, Frank Menzter’s 1983 D&D Basic Set remained the reigning champion of D&D introductory sets.

Can Heroes of the Borderlands dethrone it?

OPENING THE BOX

The core content of Heroes of the Borderlands is contained in the Play Guide, which serves as the rulebook, and three adventure booklets: Keep on the Borderlands, Wilderness, and Caves of Chaos.

Then you’ve got the bling:

• 9 double-sided poster maps
• 5 glossy handouts
• Pregen character boards for a Cleric, Fighter, Rogue, and Wizard (1^st, 2^nd, and 3^rd level for each)
• Gobs and gobs of tokens (monster tokens, player tokens, terrain tokens, power tokens, hit point tokens, gem tokens, gold piece tokens)
• Background cards
• Species cards
• Magic item cards
• Spell cards
• Equipment cards
• NPC cards
• Monster cards
• A pad of Combat Tracker sheets
• A full set of dice (include 4d6 and 2d20)

It’s a lot of bling! And most of it is fully illustrated. You can definitely see where the $50 MSRP went.

RULEBOOK

In looking at the Play Guide, I think there are two key questions:

• How well does this function as an actual D&D rulebook?
• Would I want to learn D&D by reading this book?

And, obviously, these questions are pretty intertwined with each other.

Well, let’s start at the beginning: The sequencing of the Play Guide is quite poor. For example, they try to describe all the Actions in the game before they explain how Turns work, which is hopelessly confusing. And they mention D20 Tests like a dozen times before telling the reader what they are. Simple procedures are needlessly cluttered up with exceptions, and the exceptions being based on rules that don’t appear until later doesn’t help.

At a more fundamental level, the Play Guide, following the lead of the 2024 Player’s Handbook, is a glossary-based rulebook. Glossary-based rulebooks kinda suck for a multitude of reasons, but they’re particularly disastrous at teaching new players how to play a game: Instead of presenting the rules as a series of instructions, they instead decouple the mechanics and expect the reader to reassemble the procedures of play. In addition to being inherently confusing, they’re also prone to making glaring mistakes, and the Play Guide inherits a bunch of mistakes from the core rulebooks without blinking an eye.

For example, in the main text the Influence action is defined as making a Charisma check to alter a creature’s attitude. In the glossary, however, the Influence action is defined as making a monster do something you want and the monster’s attitude is now a modifier on the check. If you’re an experienced DM, this is the kind of thing that just makes you sigh and shake your head. But it’s a needless booby trap for a brand new player just trying to figure out the game.

(The rules that directly contradict each other probably also distracted you from the Influence action only being usable on monsters, not NPCs. Which is just a straight-up mistake.)

You’ll also discover that core game concepts are missing from this rulebook. Proficiency bonuses, for example, have been baked into the pregen character sheets without any explanation of what they are or where they come from.

So, would I want to learn D&D from this book?

No. It’s sloppy, poorly organized (particularly for a first-time player), and incomplete.

And how well does this function as an actual D&D rulebook? Or is this just disposable trash designed to be thrown away after playing it once?

The answer here is a bit more nuanced, because the box does, for example, include a pretty diverse array of monsters, while the adventures books, as we’ll talk about in a moment, make a couple of half-hearted attempts to encourage the would-be DM to create their own adventure content. The limited character creation rules, on the other hand, have to be a pretty large ding, and the overall vibe is definitely disposable.

Most damning for me, personally, is that if you learned the game from this rulebook and then joined a group playing with the Player’s Handbook, you’d immediately be blindsided by the missing core concepts. So it’s very limited as a stand-alone experience, but also inadequate as a pathway to learning and playing the full game. It’s just a subpar manual across the board.

THE ADVENTURES

The three adventure booklets are a lot more exciting.

A single DM can take the three adventure booklets — Wilderness, Keep on the Borderlands, and Caves of Chaos — and use them as a traditional adventure or mini-campaign. But Heroes of the Borderlands also offers a more radical proposal: You can give each adventure booklet to a different player, with each one serving as the DM whenever the PCs go to the region covered by their booklet.

This is insanely cool!

First, it’s incredible to see such a big, daring concept in a product aimed at new gamers. It really challenges the engrained expectations of the RPG hobby, and even if only one table in a hundred takes the bait and begins experimenting with shared campaign worlds and other alternative structures for organizing their campaigns, that’s still a triumph.

Second, it’s such a great way to encourage more new players to try out the role of the Dungeon Master.

I’m assuming Justice Ramin Arman, the lead designer on Heroes of the Borderlands, was the one to come up with this concept and he deserves all the kudos in the world for it. This kind of thinking — and a willingness to experiment — is vital if you’re serious about growing the hobby.

As far as the adventures themselves go, there’s a goodly amount of adventure material in each one (you can expect to run this boxed set for several sessions) and, in terms of quality, it’s solid stuff.

For each adventure booklet, you start by pulling out the poster map for the region and laying it on the table:

Then you simply ask the players, “Where do you want to go?”

In the case of the Wilderness, as seen above, the choices are:

• Trail
• Woods
• Tamarack Stand
• Fens
• Keep on the Borderlands
• Caves of Chaos

In this case, if the players choose to go to the Keep or the Caves of Chaos, you would swap to those adventure booklets (although possibly only after triggering one or more Trail encounters on the way there). Otherwise, you simply flip to the matching sub-region in the adventure booklet and run the encounters and/or locations detailed there.

Everything about this great. It’s a simple structure for a novice DM to grok and use. It empowers the players without overwhelming them. And the adventure material is lightly spiced with just enough clues, job offers, and the like to link the various regions together and give the players the opportunity to start pursuing specific goals.

(Although if they just keep pointing at stuff and saying, “Let’s go there now!”, that works, too.)

QUIBBLES

I do have a few quibbles with the adventures, though.

For starters, if you’re going to suggest that separate DMs could each take a separate adventure booklet and swap their PCs in and out, then you need to make sure that none of the booklets have spoilers for the other booklets. There aren’t too many of these, but they do crop up. Notably, several of these are actually phrased as tips or reminders: “Hey! Don’t forget the huge spoilers over in the Caves of Chaos!” Normally that would actually be good praxis, but here it’s fighting one intended use of the booklets.

The biggest misfires of Heroes of the Borderlands, in fact, are often places where it seems to be fighting with itself.

For example, the original Keep on the Borderlands adventure by Gary Gygax on which Heroes of the Borderlands is based, is, in my opinion, a brilliant introductory adventure in large part because of the moment when the PCs step into a gorge and behold the Caves of Chaos for the first time: A dozen different cave entrances line the gorge’s walls! Which one do you want to enter?

The very first action that the PCs take in the adventure is a choice. And that choice will completely reshape how the adventure plays out. It’s a moment that immediately tells a new player everything they need to know about how an RPG is supposed to work.

Initially, it seems like Heroes of the Borderlands is going to capture that same magic! “Look at this map! Just point at where you want to go!” it says. In fact, it does it three times over! Once for the Caves, again for the Wilderness, and again for the Keep!

… but then the authors immediately tell the first-time DM to take the choice away and tell the players where to go. For example, from the Caves of Chaos booklet:

Cave A functions as a tutorial with helpful sidebars. If this is your first time as the DM, encourage the players to start there.

And you can see that the intention is good: We prepped a tutorial for you!

But look at the effect it has! Instead of teaching the DM to give the players free choice, you tell them to take it away. Instead of new players having that defining moment of realizing THE CHOICE IS YOURS, their first moment in the game is instead the DM telling them what their choice will be.

First impressions matter. Wizards of the Coast has this immense privilege of being the gateway to the RPG hobby. It’s a shame that they so often prove utterly incompetent at introducing new players to the game: Not just failing to help them, but actively going out of their way to teach them the wrong things to do.

In any case, as I mentioned before, the wealth of adventure material is generally well done and supported with a plethora of poster battlemaps.

There are a few encounters that are conceptually weird: A huge forest fire that’s also surprisingly short-lived. An NPC hireling that follows video game logic (just standing around until the players click him and tell him to fight, then returning to his spawn point where the players can fetch him again). A bank that charges 10% interest per DAY. An unintentionally hilarious bit where three hobgoblins and their four goblin followers are planning to besiege a castle that has dozens of armored knights defending it.

I think my favorite along these line is: “We’ve set up a town where you can’t buy rations because we didn’t want to include rules for that, but we’re going to frame up a ‘your hungry RIGHT NOW’ encounter where you have to immediately choose which color of pine nuts you’re going to eat, and if you choose wrong you’re going to be POISONED!”

Beyond these oddities, the material in general does suffer a bit from a lack of depth. I think the intention was to make it easier for 8-year-olds to run the game (even though the box says 12+), but I’m not sure it was the right approach. In my opinion, it’s easier to run a scenario when you understand WHY stuff is happening in the scenario. So shallow material occasionally plagued by illogical nonsense tends to leave a lot of booby traps

There are other booby traps, too, like a quest to make a map with more details than the maps given to the DM (which puts the new DM in a tough spot to start improvising the necessary details) and milestone leveling guidelines in each of the adventure booklets that, as far as I can tell, are simply incompatible with each other. (Not inconsistent. Incompatible.)

But these are, as noted, quibbles and isolated incidents. Everything here is serviceable enough. It’s mostly frustrating because it’s so close to being a lot better than the “this is OK” that it ends up being.

MISSED OPPORTUNITIES

Along those same lines, there are some pretty big missed opportunities in Heroes of the Borderlands.

For example, at the end of the Wilderness book, there are eight random encounters given for each of the four sub-regions, for a total of thirty-two encounters. With just a little bit of cooking and a few hundred words, this material could have been coherently presented as an example of how to restock and expand the scenario.

Instead, it’s presented without any structure at all, and just kind of assumes that the new DM will magically know how to use random encounters.

Similarly, every cave in the Caves of Chaos book includes utterly inadequate “guidelines” for adjusting encounter difficulty. For example:

You can add monsters, such as allied Goblin Warriors, to the cave to make this scenario longer and more difficult, or you can remove some monsters to make it easier and shorter. One or two Hobgoblin Warriors might be out on a patrol elsewhere.

The new DM is given no indication of how or when or why they would want to adjust the difficulty. And if they do, for example, decide to make this lair more difficult… well, how many Goblin Warriors should they add, exactly? Two? Four? Eight? There are no encounter guidelines in this boxed set, so they’re shooting in the dark. Hope you don’t screw up and kill everybody!

Here’s another unforced error:

The characters can leave the Caves of Chaos any time they choose, provided they aren’t inside a cave or engaged in combat. If they return to a cave later, it is as they left it.

Now, I wouldn’t necessarily advise brand new DMs to run fully dynamic dungeons with enemies building fortifications, adversary rosters, restocking events between visits, and so forth. But I also wouldn’t go out of my way to tell them NOT to do that. Just because they’re not ready to take the next step, it doesn’t mean you should steer them onto the wrong path!

And if you’re going to include woefully under-documented suggestions for monsters DMs can add to the caves, why not include the idea of using those same monsters as a way of restocking the caves for future visits or brand new adventures?

BLING!

I’ve already listed all the additional bling in the Heroes of the Borderlands. The production values on this stuff is top-notch. It’s very attractive.

But I have to admit I have a bias against unnecessary knick-knacks. I understand the desire to add a lot of stuff to make the cover price seem “worth it,” but I just think it’s a bad idea in an introductory product to create the perception that, for example, you “need” an equipment card for every piece of equipment the PCs are carrying.

This is particularly true when the desire to have some physical component actually gets in the way of teaching new players how to actually play D&D.

But if you like bling, it’s very nice bling.

THE VERDICT

Spreading Heroes of the Borderlands out on the table in front of me, what’s the final verdict here?

Well, I can’t recommend the rulebook to anyone. Its primary job is to teach new players and DMs how to play the game, and it’s really bad at doing that.

I’m going to give the adventures a C+. It’s solid material and lots of it, and I have to give credit for the bits where the booklets dare to dream big. (Even when they’re simultaneously cutting the legs out from under a lot of those dreams.)

Combining these things together, I’m going to give the total package a C-. (I’d probably give it a D+, but I’m going to bump it up a notch because all the bling does add tangible value.) As a Starter Set for D&D, this mostly gets the job done, and there are places where true genius shines through, like the shared DMing duties and point-at-the-map introduction to exploration and adventure. I wish they’d fully committed to some of those ideas, spent more time teaching new DMs essential skills, and spent less time sabotaging both themselves and the new players trying to learn the game.

GRADE: C-

Lead Designer: Justice Ramin Arman
Designers: Jeremy Crawford, Ron Lundeen, Christopher Perkins, Patrick Renie

Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
Cost: $49.95
Page Count: 96

BUY NOW!

ADDITIONAL READING
Keep on the Borderlands: Factions in the Dungeon