An excellent overland adventure, organized to make the GM’s task simple and the player’s experience memorable.

Original Review Posted May 21st, 2001

Before WotC’s OGL and D20 trademark license came along and allowed them to release products like A Lion in the Ropes and The Malady of Kings, Troll Lord Games was producing generic fantasy adventures. As with many products of their kind, the production values on these generic modules were weak. But in the case of Troll Lord, the modules were cheap enough to match those production values ($5), and the content itself was highly memorable (if sometimes in need of some fix-up work). These modules are now being updated to D20 (check out their website), and are – I think – worthy of your attention.

PLOT

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

One of these modules was (and is) The Mortality of Green by Stephen Chenault. Set within the Darkenfold Forest, The Mortality of Green focuses upon the Druidic Council’s efforts to recover the forest from the evil which has long possessed it. Although the task will be long and arduous, the Council is attempting to offer the denizens of Darkenfold hope by having Cornelius the White carry a sapling of the Great Tree to the woodsmen of Rangers Knot, who will plant it in a secret grove whose ground shall be sanctified. In turn, the grove (and sapling) will begin to heal the Darkenfold.

Unfortunately, deep within the forest lives a sentient tree named Gristlebones. Gristlebones is twisted, old, and corrupt. He sends one of his allies – Quagmire the Troll – to intercept Cornelius and steal the sapling. Which Quagmire does.

Enter the PCs, who stumble across the dying Cornelius – who attempts to extract an oath to recover the sapling and fulfill his failed mission. The PCs’ attempt to fulfill this oath will lead them throughout the Darkenfold as they seek to catch Quagmire before he can deliver the sapling to Gristlebones, who will corrupt its powerful magic for his own purposes.

STRENGTHS

When I was first being exposed to the adventures being produced by Troll Lord Games, I was immediately struck by the extremely memorable environments in which they were being set. All of them take place within the After Winter Dark campaign setting (which I have reviewed elsewhere on RPGNet). Despite this, however, their unique – and compelling – elements are still presented in a fashion which allows them to be inserted seamlessly into any sufficiently generic campaign world.

The Mortality of the Green, of course, is no exception to this. Stephen Chenault is very careful to present the Darkenfold in such a way that it is not simply rendered into the meaningless background noise of the stereotypical “evil forest”. The Darkenfold is given a specific character, history, and geography – playing upon familiar fantasy themes, but establishing itself as something memorable unto itself.

With his setting established, Chenault then proceeds to develop upon it an excellent overland adventure. As a general rule, I find that overland adventures generally have problems. Unlike a standard dungeon, the players are not tightly confined to a set of stone rooms – and, as a result, it’s all too easy for the PCs to simply start missing things. On the other hand, unlike scene-act structure, the overland adventure has a certain assumption of self-direction. The Mortality of the Green is also a chase adventure – in which the PCs are expected to track someone down. This provided yet another opportunity for the adventure to fall flat, because its all too easy to fall into the trap of designing such an adventure so that the entire thing will derail in the DM’s hands if a single tracking die roll (for example) is missed.

Fortunately, Chenault avoids the pitfalls – and the result renders the DM’s task simple, and the player’s experience memorable: The necessary possibilities are covered, the adventure responds with changing dynamics to the actions of the PCs, and the entirety is kept simple enough to be easily played.

Style: 3
Substance: 4

Author: Stephen Chenault
Publisher: Troll Lord Games
Line: D20
Price: $5.00
ISBN: 0-9702397-1-8
Product Code: TLG1101
Pages: 22

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

In the past few days I’ve been asked several times why I still play Dungeons & Dragons.

After all, I’ve criticized the rules, the adventures, the design, and even the company. So why am I still running and playing this game?

There are a bunch of answers to this question. In fact, part of the answer to the question is that there ARE so many answers to the question.

The most basic answer is the Arneson & Gygax designed one hell of a game,  and with the exception of the most mangled edition of the game, D&D has never drifted so far that its core gameplay has become unrecognizable. There was a time, back in the ’90s, when, so frustrated that my house rules for AD&D had become longer than the core rulebooks themselves, I did give up on D&D for a while, wandering off in pursuit of the One True Way of Gaming. I’ve since learned that there is no One True Way of Gaming, which makes it easier to appreciate D&D for what it is instead of dwelling on everything it isn’t.

Another answer is, in the words of Ryan Dancey, network externality: There are a lot more people who want to play D&D than there are people who want to play any other RPG you’d care to name. It’s just easier to recruit players for D&D and, if I’m looking for a group to play in, I’m statistically more likely to find a group playing D&D. This matters less to me than it used to: After years of running open tables, I’ve recruited a large network of players I can tap into regardless of what system I’m running. (For example, I’ve had little or no difficulty getting players for my new Mothership-based open table.) But you can never completely escape D&D’s gravity well: I’m currently setting up a Heroes of the Borderlands table for my daughter and some of her friends who are desperately interested in playing D&D for the first time. I could try to run something else for them, but I’m not going to tell a bunch of kids to NOT be excited about the game they’re already excited about.

My own familiarity with D&D and its milieu has its advantages. Not only do I like D&D-esque fantasy in general, but my immense experience prepping and running D&D adventures means that I have a very large “bag of stuff” (as Robert Conley puts it) that makes it a lot easier for me to create and improvise stuff while playing D&D.

(This can actually be a double-edged sword if you’re not careful: Yes, I have a finely honed sense of what D&D-eseque fantasy means to me. But that can also be a creative rut that makes it difficult to break out of those tropes. Even with conscious effort, it can be easy to fall back into that rut, specifically because of the comfort and confidence it affords.)

This, of course, would apply to any of the many D&D-adjacent RPGs that are out there. But as a professional RPG designer, it’s also frequently important for me to stay tuned into the industry leader. I’ve had people ask me, for example, why So You Want to Be a Game Master assumes that the reader is most likely interested in running D&D and only pivots to discussing other systems in earnest after the newbie has gotten their feet under them. And the answer, of course, is that this is just the reality of things. D&D remains not only the primary gateway to the RPG hobby, but can still be relied on as a universal touchstone. (To the degree that, when I discuss other RPGs or RPGs in general in my writing or my videos, I not infrequently get comments from people confused because they think D&D is the only RPG in existence.)

(This need to stay in-tune with the current edition of D&D can be another double-edged sword for me. I’d probably have enjoyed several of the D&D 5th Edition games I’ve run over the years more if I’d house rules them more aggressively.)

D&D’s dominance, particularly in the 3E/5E OGL era, also means that D&D is blessed with bountiful source material. For example, when I was working on The Vladaam Affair last week and needed stat blocks for the archmages of the Red Company of Magi, all I needed to do was hit up Volo’s Guide to Monsters. I’ve talked in the past about looting bestiaries and trawling published modules when doing adventure and campaign prep. It’s something that very few other games even come close to achieving.

(This is something that I wish more RPGs would try to provide in a targeted fashion. Not only do I think published adventures are essential for an RPG, but modular components designed to be plugged into prep are vital. For example, Eclipse Phase produced a supplement called NPC File 1 which was just a collection of supporting cast stat blocks. It was literally a game changer for running Eclipse Phase games, because it was so effective at speeding up prep and enabling improvisation when the players jagged off in an unexpected direction. But, unfortunately, they never released a sequel and have never updated the NPC File for 2nd Edition.)

To make a long story short (too late), I really don’t see a time in my future when D&D won’t be part of my life.

Recently, though, I have been giving some long, hard thought to my relationship as a consumer (and reviewer) of Wizard of the Coast’s official D&D books. During the November meeting of the Alexandrian Hangout Club, I was asked if I would be reviewing Forgotten Realms: Adventures in Faerun. This was a particularly interesting release because it included 50+ one-page adventures, which definitely sounds like my jam. The only problem? I flipped through the book at my local game store and saw that, like other recent releases, many of the dungeon maps aren’t properly keyed. And that was only the most obvious failure in basic adventure design. (For a deeper dive, take a peek at Questing Beast’s recent video.)

Although I came somewhat late to D&D 5th Edition (finally getting sucked in by the intriguing promise of Dragon Heist), a combination of reasonably paced releases, financial security, and professional interest made it the first time that I lived out my childhood dream of buying every official D&D book as it came out. But I think that time is coming to an end. I may still be playing and running D&D 2024, but I think this revised edition is also a great jumping off point for me.

Will I be back some day? Probably. Last time I jumped off official D&D as a consumer was back in 2008, and I was gone for a decade. I have high hopes I’ll be back sooner this time. There’s new leadership at Wizards of the Coast, and perhaps we’ll see them right the ship over there.

Or perhaps not.

But either way: Good gaming!

DISCUSSING
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 48B: The Fall of Tepal

The biggest story of the morning hours had been a mysterious fire in the Guildsmans’ District – an apartment building on Storm Street had burned to the ground in flames that witnesses reported to be a bright, phosphorescent blue (leading authorities to suspect magical arsonry).

But that news was being rapidly forgotten by the larger story sweeping across the city: An army had marched out of the Southern Desert, taken the city-state of Tepal by surprise, and sacked it.

Nasira was taken aback by the news. Learning that the news had arrived in Ptolus on three refugee ships she headed towards the docks. Speaking with passengers from the ships, however, she could discover little in the way of detail: The ships had sailed free just as the city was falling, and they could tell her nothing about the fate of her temple or the city itself once it had been taken.

At the beginning of this session, the PCs were visited by Talia and Marcus Hunter, delvers interested in exploring a section of Ghul’s Labyrinth which the PCs had previously discovered earlier in the campaign.

The Hunters are from Dark Tidings, an adventure by Monte Cook that was published back in 2009. In the original module, the PCs are hired by friends of the Hunters who want the PCs to save the Hunter expedition, which has gone missing in the Dungeons beneath Ptolus. If the PCs take the job, they’re given a full briefing on the back story, a map of the Dungeon area where the Hunters disappeared, and a list of the members of the Hunter expedition.

It’s a fun adventure and I wanted to incorporate it into the In the Shadow of the Spire campaign. One option, obviously, would be to run the scenario hook as written: The Hunter’s friends show up out of the blue and want to hire the PCs.

Instead, what I’m doing in this session is laying groundwork for the future adventure.

First, I’ve performed a campaign stitch: The Hunters aren’t going to disappear in some random section of the Dungeon. Instead, their explorations will be directly connected to the actions of the PCs. This means that I can also use Dark Tidings to answer the lingering question of what lies beyond one of the bluesteel doors in the Laboratory of the Beast. Plus, it lets me develop the Delver’s Guild and its inner workings a bit (with the delving contract), while also packaging up a unique, flavorful reward for the PCs (in the form of earning a percentage of the Hunter’s delving haul). All of which is also, conveniently, a great way to get the players invested in the fate of the Hunter party.

Second, of course, I’m setting up a reason for the PCs to be hired to save the Hunters when they go missing later in the campaign: It’s a section of Ghul’s Labyrinth they’re already familiar with, making them uniquely qualified for the job. There’s nothing wrong with random patrons popping up out of the blue to offer the PCs jobs on the basis of nothing but their reputation, but I’ve generally found it more effective when you can make things a little more personal. Not only does this make the campaign feel cohesive, it also means that the player’s choices have weight. (We tried to save the missing child at Greyson House, which led us to explore Ghul’s Labyrinth. We cleverly discovered a password which allowed us to discover the Laboratory of the Beast. We tried to sell the rare treasures we discovered there, which led to the deaths of the researchers from House Erthuo and, much later, the Hunters approaching us.)

Sometimes this sort of stuff will just organically happen during play. Sometimes, though, you need to look ahead and set things up. This doesn’t necessarily mean you need to have everything prepped ahead of time: You just need a general idea of what an upcoming scenario might look like. In this case, I’m setting up a published scenario, but we could just as easily imagine an original scenario where the only thing I really know is that (a) an adventuring party will approach the PCs and (b) will later go missing in order motivate further exploration of Ghul’s Labyrinth.

Published adventures, unfortunately, often overlook this type of groundwork. Since the author doesn’t know the particular details of your campaign, it’s easiest to have everything about the scenario arise from a tabula rasa. I think this is a mistake, though, and in my own work, as well as my work as an RPG Producer at Modiphius and Atlas Games, I emphasized the importance of including Groundwork tools that GMs could use to set up published scenarios in their own campaigns. (See Design Notes: Scenario Tools for more details on this.)

Regardless of what published adventures may do, however, as GMs I think we should always be looking fore these opportunities in our own campaigns.

In the case of the Hunters, the payoff for this groundwork would come eight sessions later., and the PCs wouldn’t actually go after the Hunters until Session 62, a full year and a half later in real time.

Sometimes you need to plant those seeds deep.

In fact, this sessions also features groundwork for a completely different adventure, with the Fall of Tepal being connected to multiple future scenarios.

Campaign Journal: Session 48C – Running the Campaign: Undead for Effect
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

IN THE SHADOW OF THE SPIRE

SESSION 48B: THE FALL OF TEPAL

January 9th, 2010
The 26th Day of Kadal in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty

With the negotiations finished at long last – and satisfied that they had made a good deal (while doing their best to protect the Hunters from the horrors of the Labyrinth and vice versa) – they headed downstairs and grabbed some newssheets.

The news was actually in the middle of a sharp shift: The biggest story of the morning hours had been a mysterious fire in the Guildsmans’ District – an apartment building on Storm Street had burned to the ground in flames that witnesses reported to be a bright, phosphorescent blue (leading authorities to suspect magical arsonry).

But that news was being rapidly forgotten by the larger story sweeping across the city: An army had marched out of the Southern Desert, taken the city-state of Tepal by surprise, and sacked it.

Nasira was taken aback by the news. Learning that the news had arrived in Ptolus on three refugee ships she headed towards the docks. Speaking with passengers from the ships, however, she could discover little in the way of detail: The ships had sailed free just as the city was falling, and they could tell her nothing about the fate of her temple or the city itself once it had been taken. Worse yet, the descriptions of the army made it clear that it was the Atapi who were responsible.

In confusion, Nasira retired to her room at the Ghostly Minstrel to meditate and pray, finding nothing in her thoughts to reconcile the sudden war-like change in the Atapi.

THE TALE OF GISSZAGGAT

Tee and Agnarr, meanwhile, were taking the crates from Mahdoth’s to the disposal site in the Temple District. Then they dumped the drakken’s body and fenced the loot they had collected from Mahdoth’s and the would-be assassins.

Ranthir, of course, spent the day studying (as was his wont).

Tor took Blue down to the Wings Falls. Riding down the long, mossy slant of Blue Street he quickly learned where it had gotten the name: The thick, watery mist cast up by the raging falls filled the air and turned it blue – in fact, blue rainbows were cast prismatically through the air.

Wings Falls itself proved to be a six-tiered step falls where the King’s Gorge narrowed into the ravine which carried the river between Midtown and the Temple District. The water sped up through the narrow pass and almost leapt over the steps of the falls. The falls took their name particularly from the uppermost step, where the water divided itself around an obelisk of harder, uneroded stone – leaping up and around it the water arched to form two “wings” that seemed to beat and dance through the air as if they would lift the entire river in flight.

While Tor frolicked in the mists, Elestra was trying to find some hint of the Haven of Gisszaggat. Following the Voice of the City she was guided to a small, worn-down shrine tucked into a nook of the Temple District.

Within the shrine she found an elderly, robed priest sitting in cross-legged prayer before a meditation flame. When she asked him of Gisszaggat, his eyes widened. “The tale of the demon Gisszaggat has been long forgotten save in a single tome.”

He told her the story: More than 700 years ago, in the days before the city had descended down from the cliffs of Oldtown, the demon Gisszaggat had risen from the caverns beneath the city. It had plagued the city and single-handedly laid siege to it. “It was written that Gisszaggat had never truly been defeated, but in pain and suffering he retreated back into the caverns beneath the Plain of Ptolus.”

“The Plain of Ptolus?”

“The vast expanse of grassland between the cliffs of the old city and the Docks by the sea.”

In other words, the area now inhabited by the Midtown and the markets and the Temple District.

Elestra thanked him, tipped him a gold, and then returned to her room. There, putting Gisszaggat far from her mind, she set herself to the task of studying an anti-poison spell from the Masks of Death that she hoped would prove effective against the corpse flowers or other deadly vegetation to be found in Alchestrin’s Tomb.

ENTERING THE TOMB OF ALCHESTRIN

They met outside the gates of the Necropolis about an hour before sunset. They were met with some suspicion by the Keepers of the Veil, but eventually allowed entry. (Although they were sternly cautioned that no one would be allowed to leave the Necropolis after sunset.)

They reached Darklock Hill and Alchestrin’s Tomb without difficulty, but as the sun set spectral howls echoed from the northern end of the Necropolis. These grew closer and more frequent as they worked, and shortly after the second moon rose they saw a torchlit procession some distance away to the west.

The plug itself turned relatively easily, but leveraging it out proved quite time-consuming. It took them the better part of half an hour to finally breach the Tomb. A twisting stair of stone curled its way down through the iron shaft into which the plug had been set.

They followed Tee down into the stygian gloom, which seemed to encroach unnaturally upon their lights.

Running the Campaign: Laying Groundwork – Campaign Journal: Session 48C
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

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.