Tagline: Compared to the first installment, Passage Through Shadow works even better as a basic story and premise and has solved many of the problems which flawed the first. However, there are still some significant flaws – particularly in the first of the two scenarios.

Note: This product is a module. In the following review there will quite likely be spoilers of various sorts. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Those of you reading my review of the first installment of this adventure trilogy (Darkness Revealed 1: Descent into Shadow) know that I had two main problems with it: First, although the basic conceptual idea and story were excellent they were adapted into module form in a sub-standard fashion. Second, the design principles behind the color insert sections were extremely flawed and had the potential to ruin the gaming experience if used in the manner intended. The overall product was salvageable simply because the basic conceptual idea and story were excellent – although requiring slightly more work than should be needed, you can transform what is a fairly railroaded set of adventures into an excellent set of first-condition adventures.

Darkness Revealed 2: Passage Through Shadow, happily, is an improvement. The basic conceptual idea and story remain excellent, drawing the PCs into an even higher echelon of the Trinity universe. The color sections, while still possessing some doozies, are much more reliable. And, although the first adventure still possesses some flaws, the second is really excellent.

Like the first, the value for $15.95 compared to the $20 and $30 products emerging from other publishers is fantastic. Highly recommended.

THE COLORED SECTIONS, REDUX

Okay, the weakest part of this product remains the colored sections. Designed to be handouts to the players they still possess the physical flaw of being located in the middle of vast tracts of GM-only information – meaning that only by tearing your book into pieces or by expensively color copying will you really find value here.

Fortunately, however, you’re never going to want to give these handouts to your players, so that basically solves your problem. The first color section is definitely the worse of the two, among its faults:

1. Presented as a mission briefing for the character’s new assignment it contains memos of people discussing the character’s arrival at their new assignment.

2. The entire course of the investigation is telegraphed and revealed: Basically the players know exactly where they’re supposed to be looking and, generally, what they’re supposed to be looking for. Why? Because the colored section gives briefings on all the important areas… and only the important areas. More general information, like floor plans, would be more appropriate than secret communications which should, rightfully, be discovered during gameplay.

3. A central question of the PC’s investigation should be, “Is Basel, the location of our assignment, involved in this conspiracy plot?” This is rendered into a no-brainer, however, because on pg. 13 of the handouts we read a “Huang-Marr Project Briefing” recovered from “Aesculapian databank [Basel]”.

4. Another central question is whether or not high-ranking officials are involved or not. Again, pg. 13 not only gives that away – it gives a list of names!

5. I have serious suspension-of-disbelief problems where a funeral for one of the NPCs in the first adventure is interrupted as dissidents stomp all over his grave… AND NO ACTION IS TAKEN TO STOP THEM.

The second color section errs far less (largely because the GM is instructed in the text of the adventure to reveal certain sections only at certain times during the game). The only serious problems are:

1. At the beginning of the adventure the PCs have no idea they will eventually end up on the orbital station Eyrie. For some reason, however, their briefing file contains an extensive report on the station.

WHAT HAVE THEY FIXED?

The most noticeable problem they fixed is that the adventures no longer seem too brief to consume an evening of gaming. One reason which may be trotted out for this is that this book only contains two adventures, instead of three. More essential in my mind, however, is the fact that they’ve fixed a more pressing problem: The plots are no longer railroaded. Railroaded plots take longer to explain (because you not only need to express initial conditions, but also exactly how the adventure will progress at each step), and tend to have gaping holes in their design (because they require leaps of PC intuition that, in my experience, rarely happen at the scripted moment).

The first adventure still suffers from this slightly (the most telling example being that the adventure assumes that the PCs will make no concerted effort to get in touch with their major lead at the clinic they’re visiting until he comes into work the night after they arrive), but the second avoids it completely.

So they’ve fixed my major beef with the first product, which is that the mysteries don’t operate as mysteries.

CONCLUSION

In addition to solving the problems of Descent into Darkness, Passage through Shadow has all of its strengths: A strong story, great artwork, high production values, an attention to detail, and focus on PC involvement. Not only that, but if you’re the kind of GM who likes to have your PCs operating at the highest levels of the campaign world, then the Darkness Revealed trilogy is definitely an elegant way of going there – the first volume lets the PCs into this rarefied world by a lucky break, and the second expertly develops that break into major sociopolitical importance (a key sign of how effective this volume was, is that when the PCs meet and work with the Orgotek Proxy it seems like a natural result of the events which have transpired – unlike many such cases where PC-involvement with important setting figures seems forced and artificial).

So that’s my conclusion: Although it still needs some minor work and modification, I definitely recommend it, particularly since it only costs $15.95. Excellent product.

Style: 4
Substance: 4

Author: Bruce Baugh and Richard E. Dansky
Company/Publisher: White Wolf
Cost: $15.95
Page count: 120
ISBN: 1-56504-752-4
Originally Posted: 1999/01/24

Read the review of Darkness Revealed 3: Ascent Into Light

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

As I’ve discussed in the Art of Rulings and Rules vs. Rulings?, among other places, I think it’s important that a DM not allow any interaction at the table to become purely mechanical. Partly this is just an aesthetic preference on my part (it keeps things interesting), partly it’s ideological (rules are associated for a reason), and partly it’s because specificity and detail usually leads to creative gameplay.

Traps are a key example of this. If all you can do with a trap is make a skill check to Search for it, make a skill check to Disable it, and/or take damage from it, then the trap will be fairly boring. You can try to spice that up mechanically or (and this is easier) you can spice it up by being relatively specific about how the trap works. (For example, you might end up with players scavenging the tension ropes that reset a spike trap in order to tie up their kobold prisoner. Or draining the alchemist’s fire through the nozzles of a flame trap. When they disable the pit trap do they wedge it open or use spikes to let it support their weight one at a time? The difference will matter if they end up getting chased back down that hall by ogres.)

In following this doctrine, I’ve found that it can occasionally be difficult to imagine what disarming a magical trap really looks like. I mean, if it’s just magical potential hanging in the air waiting for an alarm spell to go off, what is the rogue doing, exactly, when they make their Disable Device check? And what are they actually sensing with their Search checks?

To that end, here are a few techniques I use when thinking about magical traps.

Magical Potential: Permanent and semi-permanent magical effects will leave a very subtle “impression” on the physical world. Careful characters with great sensitivity can detect the presence of a magical field. In some cases this may be the first step in identifying how to bypass or disable the magical trap; in other cases, it may turn out that the trap can’t be disabled without something like dispel magic (but at least the rogue can figure out where it’s safe to walk and where it isn’t).

Ethereal Hooks: Ethereal hooks are attached to spell potential stored on the Ethereal Plane. When the ethereal hooks are “tugged”, they yank the spell potential back from the Ethereal Plane and the energy of the planar transition triggers the spell effect. Ethereal hooks are particularly useful for warding physical objects (i.e., traps which are triggered when you pick up an item). They can also be attached to physical tripwires. In either case, the ethereal hooks require some physical substance and can be safely dislodged if sufficient care is taken.

Spellsparks: Tiny spheres or cylinders made from small amounts of mithril and taurum (true gold). Spellsparks impact areas of spell potential and complete the casting. A typical application would be a spellspark attached to the bottom of a trigger plate: Step on the plate, the spellspark depresses and triggers a fireball. But if you can remove the spellspark, the spell potential is as harmless as a block of C4 without a detonator. (A divine variant of the spellspark is to douse a small prayer wheel in holy or unholy water.)

Smudging Sigils: This is almost always the case for things like a symbol of death, but quite a few other spell effects can also be “stored” as arcane or divine sigils using the proper techniques. You generally can’t just reach out and smear the thing (that’ll usually trigger the effect; spellcasters aren’t stupid). But if you’ve got the proper training, then you can usually identify exactly where you need to smudge the sigil to negate its effects.

Counterchanting: Spell effects with verbal components still resonate with those chants even after the casting is complete. By using proper counterchanting techniques, a character can weaken those resonances and eventually dissipate the spell effect. (This isn’t like counterspelling: The counterchanting is too slow a process to use on a spell as its being cast. It only works here because the spell is being held in a stored state.)

Concealed Material Components: In some cases, spell effects built into traps still require the material components of the spell to be present in order for the spell to be triggered. These are usually concealed in the trap somewhere. (For example, a fireball trap might have a bit of sulfur tucked away.) If you can remove the concealed material component without triggering the trap, then the trap is rendered impotent.

Arcane/Divine Focuses: Other spell-storing techniques require the presence of a physical talisman or focus. In some cases, removing the focus will cause the spell energies to dissipate harmlessly. In other cases, it will just defang the spell — which means that it could be triggered again if the focus were restored.

Bypass Passwords: Some spellcasters will intentionally build bypass passwords into their traps. If the builder was cautious, these can be quite difficult to determine. But many spellcasters will simply draw on a common lore of such phrases. In other cases, casters may not be aware of (or simply choose not to bother changing) standard bypasses built into the most common forms of certain rituals. Like Gandalf standing before the doors of Moria, characters with proper training can often run through their stock of common passwords and discover that they’ve managed to disable the trap without any real danger. (Some caution is required, however: Some trap-makers anticipate this sort of thing and will instead have the trap trigger if certain false passwords are given.)

Telepathic Completion: This is a subtle technique. The spell effect actually reaches out telepathically and sends a completion word; the power of the victim’s own thoughts will trigger the trap. (This means that characters immune to mind-affecting effects and/or telepathic communication can’t trigger the trap. This often means that undead can freely cross through the trap.) Rogues holding a proper counter-command in their thoughts while moving through the triggering zone of the trap can disrupt the delicate telepathic effect for a limited amount of time (say, 1d4 minutes), allowing others to pass through safely.

Clockwork Mechanisms: Spells can be stored inside clockwork mechanisms. Physically disabling the clockworks will disable the magical trap. Nice and simple.

Thoughts? What other techniques could we be using here?

As a final utilitarian note: I’ll only rarely include these specific details into my notes. Instead, this is just a conceptual toolkit that I can use to explain the working of any trap as it comes up during play. Similarly, I usually don’t spend time prepping the exact mechanics of how a particular pit trap works (one door or two? where are the hinges? are there hinges? what are the spikes at the bottom made out of? etc.).