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

Review Originally Published May 21st, 2001

With The Tide of Years Penumbra has gone from being one of the premiere D20 companies to being THE company producing D20 supplements – and I include Wizards of the Coast in that assessment. In The Tide of Years Penumbra not only introduces a new set of production values which are better than anything else in the D20 adventure market today, they apply them to a package which offers more material, of higher quality, than almost anything else in the D20 adventure market.

In short: This is good. This is very, very good.

PLOT

In the mists of antiquity there was a mighty empire: Lagueen. Lagueen was built upon the power of the Temporal Crystal, a powerful artifact which allowed the Priests of Ras’tan to unlock the secrets of time. From the ancient past and the distant future, Lagueen was able to harvest the greatest inventions and cultural treasures.

But Lagueen was brought low when a traitorous acolyte attempted to steal the Temporal Crystal. Although thwarted in her effort by a young priest named Jonar, the thief did succeed in activating the Temporal Crystal – transporting herself, Jonar, and the Crystal into the distant future. Unfortunately, without the Crystal, the marvelous society which had been created in Lagueen quickly fell apart. As their structures slowly collapsed from disuse and lack of repair, a landslide was triggered, blocking the end of the river valley in which Lagueen lay. “The river bloated and the valley floor flooded, covering the remains of Lagueen in a shroud of murky waters.” When the thief and priest reappeared, they found themselves at the bottom of an immense lake and quickly drowned.

Enter the PCs, who are, of course, passing through the forest which has grown up around the lake in which Lagueen has sunk. They are approached by the ghost of Jonar, who wants to set things right. The reappearance of the crystal has also triggered a temporal disturbance, slowly reverting the forest to a primeval state. Jonar will lead them through the valley to recover one of the temporal shards which the empire of Lagueen used in coordination with the Temporal Crystal to power their arcane technology. He will also introduce them to a local nixie, who will be able to grant them the ability to breathe underwater.

From here, of course, the PCs must journey beneath the lake – journeying to the sunken city of Lagueen, and (most importantly) the Temple of Ras’Tan in which the Temporal Crystal now lies. The temporal shard will unlock the temple’s ancient doors, but even once they’re inside the PCs will still need to deal with the ancient temporal traps laid in Lagueen’s golden age and the subterranean monsters which have taken up residence within the temple.

Once they reach the crystal, the PCs can return it to its proper place – just moments after the thief took it from Lagueen. This, of course, changes history, which can have one of two effects on the campaign world: First, the PCs’ actions may simply create an alternate dimension in which Lagueen never fell. On the other hand, the PCs may actually change their own world (the effect of this can be minimized by keeping Lagueen as a hidden kingdom, which has deliberately decided to keep its contact with the outside world to a minimum; or you can fully embrace the cataclysmic change).

STRENGTHS

Despite the critical success of their first adventure (Three Days to Kill) and their subsequent D20 products (Thieves in the Forest and In the Belly of the Beast), Atlas Games has not been content to simply rest on their laurels and repeat their past successes. Each new Penumbra product has improved upon the last, and each has taken pains to explore new territory. And this willingness to explore, experiment, and improve has ended up paying big dividends for Atlas Games – and, more importantly, the gamers who have followed their product line.

And with The Tide of Years they’ve raised the stakes one more time: The graphical look of the adventure is better than just about anything else being put out for D20 (and that includes Wizards of the Coast). The amount of material has been doubled over their previous efforts, and the quality of that material remains as high and innovative as ever – not only presenting the adventure itself, but (in the course of that adventure) providing a number of generic resources: New monsters (compsognathus, icthyosaur, monstrous aquatic spider, and time elemental), a new god (Ras’tan, God of Time), a new clerical domain (time), new cleric spells (detect temporal disturbance, dispel temporal effect, scry the ages, hastening of age, and wellspring of youth), new traps (temporal skids and temporal lags), a new magic item (the temporal shard), and the “lost empire” of Lagueen (which, like Deeptown in Three Days to Kill, is generic enough to be slipped into almost any generic fantasy campaign – while, at the same time, being unique and distinctive enough to be a memorable element of that campaign).

WEAKNESSES

The interior artwork, while of high quality, sometimes seems to be skewed from the text. For example, an underwater pyramid is shown – but it’s not the pyramid described in the text, and the characters swimming around it are wearing strange breathing apparatus which is not part of the adventure.

I would have also liked to see Nephew play a bit more upon her time travel theme. A forest returned to the primeval state, time traps, artifacts, and elementals are certainly more than sufficient – but I felt there was still a lot of territory left unexplored.

CONCLUSION

To put it succinctly: The Tide of Years delivers. Michelle A. Brown Nephew should be rightfully proud of her inaugural gaming product, and we should count ourselves lucky to have a company like Atlas Games producing adventures like this one.

Style: 4
Substance: 5

Authors: Michelle A. Brown Nephew
Company: Atlas Games
Line: Penumbra
Price: $10.95
ISBN: 1-887801-98-7
Production Code: AG3203
Pages: 48

While it’s nice that Michelle included a minimally disruptive option for the temporal restoration of Lagueen, I really respect an adventure that’s willing to go big — world-alteringly big! — with its potential consequences. It reminds me of Death Frost Doom, which is tonally almost completely opposed to The Tide of Years, but equally memorable.

The trick, of course, is being able to actually EARN the epic consequences. That can be a very fine line to walk.

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

Three Days to Kill, the inaugural product in Atlas Games’ Penumbra line of D20/D&D supplements, was one of the best low-level modules I’ve ever read. It was one of those gaming products that make you instantly eager to call up your gaming group, roll up some characters, and get down to some serious roleplaying.

Thieves in the Forest, the second product form Penumbra, is a little less cool – but, nonetheless, a solid product that’s worthy of your consideration.

Warning: From this point forward, this review will contain spoilers for Thieves in the Forest. Players who may end up playing in this module are encouraged to stop reading now. Proceed at your own risk.

The plot of Thieves is painfully simple: The PCs are in the town of Brandon’s Bridge, which is located in a forest. There are thieves in the forest. The PCs need to track down the thieves.

That’s it. There are no twists here. No intrigues to be unraveled. No tricks up this product’s sleeves: Its called Thieves in the Forest, and that’s exactly what you get.

In general there are two reasons I’ll pick up a module: First, I may pick it up because it looks like it has some creative, intriguing ideas – or at least enough spin on some common themes to give me a unique look at something I’m already familiar with. Thieves is not that type of module. Even the slowest among us, I think, can come up with a plot like “hunt down the bad guys in the woods and kill them.”

However, the second reason I’ll pick up a module is wholly utilitarian: I don’t have enough time to do the actual grunt work of writing up an adventure, and I want somebody to do it for me.

This is the level where Thieves in the Forest is operating: John Nephew may not deliver something as clever or exciting as John Tynes’ Three Days to Kill, but he does deliver a well-executed product. With a little over a half dozen consistent and interesting encounter areas (a couple of which have some nice little twists to them), Thieves is full of all the little crunchy bits which we busy GMs don’t have time to put into practice for ourselves.

Thieves in the Forest also helps further Penumbra’s growing reputation for taking that extra little step necessary to take something typical and make it noteworthy: A full-color poster map is included of the thieves’ lair (located in the abandoned temple of a sun god) – an extremely useful tool when it comes to actually running the final assault.

So, if you’re looking for a product which will stir your imagination and set you mind racing with undreamt of possibilities… Thieves in the Forest isn’t for you.

But if you’re looking for a simple, rock solid module to run on Friday night because you’ve been working overtime all week and haven’t had even one spare minute to prepare your adventure notes… then this is precisely what the doctor ordered. Check it out.

Writer: John Nephew
Publisher: Atlas Games (Penumbra)
Price: $8.95
Page Count: 26
ISBN: 1-887801-95-2
Product Code: AG3201

This review was not originally written for RPGNet. It was most likely submitted to Pyramid Magazine. I’m uncertain why it was rejected. It might have been because Steven Marsh, the editor, was being inundated with D20-related reviews and didn’t want them drowning out the rest of the review section (although I think that was mostly a concern that cropped up later). More likely, it’s because another freelancer had already successfully submitted a review of the book. (This was the most common reason for review submissions at Pyramid to get bumped.)

In any case, the rejection happened and so it was easy enough to repurpose the review for RPGNet. As a result, you may notice that the format and length differ a bit from my other RPGNet reviews in this period.

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