Grützi
Should be playing D&D instead
My first review is finished so here we go.
The other reviews will be posted in the specific threads made by Malrex, I'm gonna take a day or two more for them though
Congealed Witchdoctor is a Blathering Bastard!
By Malrex
General Structure
The overarching structure is good and easy to use/understand.
Introduction, short paragraph that summarizes what is probably going to happen/what needs to happen, Factions, Henchmen and Rumors. After that follows the Wilderness Hexcrawl in which a snake lair and the sunken/destroyed Village of Khorjen are integrated. The adventure closes with a tiny paragraph about what happens after “shit went down the drain”, meaning the group got involved. My only gripe with the structure is the way the snake lair is inserted right into the wilderness section, breaking it up in the process. I would’ve put the Snake Lair back at the end with the Village of Khorjen and leave the Wilderness stuff unbroken, though I can see it work both ways.
Layout
Malrex has done his fair share of adventures and it shows. The whole adventure is in two column format with monsters, items, rooms/places, tables and such having their own distinct style making it quite easy to scan a page and instantly see what’s what. Bullet points are used throughout making it easy to get the important parts right away. The Adventure lacks page numbers which I see as a minor issue, though not a big one.
Usability
Use at the table/in play is high for this thing. Everything is organized neatly and in a sensible fashion. NPC and Monster stats are always where they need to be, meaning they are right in the room/place description the monster is appearing in. The two rival groups are organized in two small tables which allow a DM to quickly get a grasp on them. Tables for Rumors and random encounter are easily scannable and include everything that is needed to make stuff work.
The whole thing is hyperlinked completely back and forth which makes it quite easy to jump from encounter to map and back again.
Maps
There are three maps included at the back, all full color pieces. The Wilderness map gives a good overview over the region. Slack Mackeys and the villages of Moovruj and Solunuk are given small Icons, while the Snake Lair and the Sinkhole of Khorjen are given slightly bigger icons. This allows the DM to see at one glance which numbers are “important” stuff and which numbers are merely an encounter. The Wilderness map uses slightly different hues of green to break up the monotone jungle stuff, as no map legend is given it could be hard for a DM to see what is what here… but the map is so small and well designed that this problem will hardly come up in actual play.
As a slight note, while full color is nice, printing the wilderness map in grayscale muddles up the whole thing heavily.
The snake lair map is well done, though a bit boring for my taste. IT’s basically a winding, wet tunnel with a really big snake inside.
The Sinkhole of Khorjen map looks nice in color and shitty in grayscale but is all in all a nice piece or mapmaking that’ll serve its purpose well. The whole map looks as if one sees the region from high up above, the landmarks being drawn in perspective and such. This has the great effect of instantly allowing anyone seeing the map to get a feel for the layout of the place.
General Plot
The Village of Khorjen had a big/important artefact that everyone envies them for, then their witchdoctor casts some magic and , totally unrelated to the magic thingy, the whole village comes crashing down into a giant sinkhole. This fucks up the magic and mutates everyone into a giant, stark raving blob that now wanders the ruins, being worshipped by a tribe of apes.
A Hexcrawl with 12 locations lies between the group and the village, with location 13 being the village. The hexcrawl is well done. The encounters a re interesting: quicksand, strange monsters, a bullied Jungle Giant whose pet just got killed seeking revenge against the other giants, a mad dwarf worshipping a tree infected with some crystal parasite (which helps against insects) … all well done, memorable and enough variety that it never becomes boring.
There’s a “sideplot” about a boys ghost wanting revenge on some big-ass snake hiding in its lair that is totally detached from the main plot. This is not a bad thing though as it hints at a world bigger than the PCs actions. The Ghost boy is well done, with some of the party being able to see him and others not. This will probably lead to some interesting talk for a group, the snake lair then is a pretty straight “go in and kill” situation … Though seeing as the snake is only protecting its young (eggs) there is an element of moral ambiguity that a good DM can work with. Still everyone will kill the damn snake … you know it, I know it… heck the snake knows it…poor bastard. Anyways….
The whole thing is a sandbox with a defined goal of getting the damn artefact (the prism) out of the village with enough stuff going on to keep a group happy and busy.
The biggest “flaw” of the Adventure also lies here. While the whole thing is done really well the ending… just kinda peters out. There is a tiny section about what could happen when the group has the prism, but nothing really definite. Even worse I also found it a missed chance not to include more information about what happened in the village. As the adventure stands now, a group can do nothing to help the poor souls and will also not find out anything. The magic ritual the witchdoctor casted is mentioned in the beginning and then never again. Giving the group the choice to find out about the ritual and the landslide would’ve worked well here. Maybe even some pointers on how to resolve the situation without killing the witchdoctor.
Creativity
All in all a creative and nicely done Adventure.
Random encounter are fun and memorable (and there are two tables, one for wilderness, one for Khorjen), Rumors are good with a nice mix of useful and funny (and again, each village has a rumor table) and the whole adventure manage to create a living and breathing world that has its own feel.
Language
Short, terse and on point. Background is as long as it needs to be, encounters and descriptions are likewise short and on point.
There are some small typos here and there but nothing too serious.
The other reviews will be posted in the specific threads made by Malrex, I'm gonna take a day or two more for them though
Congealed Witchdoctor is a Blathering Bastard!
By Malrex
General Structure
The overarching structure is good and easy to use/understand.
Introduction, short paragraph that summarizes what is probably going to happen/what needs to happen, Factions, Henchmen and Rumors. After that follows the Wilderness Hexcrawl in which a snake lair and the sunken/destroyed Village of Khorjen are integrated. The adventure closes with a tiny paragraph about what happens after “shit went down the drain”, meaning the group got involved. My only gripe with the structure is the way the snake lair is inserted right into the wilderness section, breaking it up in the process. I would’ve put the Snake Lair back at the end with the Village of Khorjen and leave the Wilderness stuff unbroken, though I can see it work both ways.
Layout
Malrex has done his fair share of adventures and it shows. The whole adventure is in two column format with monsters, items, rooms/places, tables and such having their own distinct style making it quite easy to scan a page and instantly see what’s what. Bullet points are used throughout making it easy to get the important parts right away. The Adventure lacks page numbers which I see as a minor issue, though not a big one.
Usability
Use at the table/in play is high for this thing. Everything is organized neatly and in a sensible fashion. NPC and Monster stats are always where they need to be, meaning they are right in the room/place description the monster is appearing in. The two rival groups are organized in two small tables which allow a DM to quickly get a grasp on them. Tables for Rumors and random encounter are easily scannable and include everything that is needed to make stuff work.
The whole thing is hyperlinked completely back and forth which makes it quite easy to jump from encounter to map and back again.
Maps
There are three maps included at the back, all full color pieces. The Wilderness map gives a good overview over the region. Slack Mackeys and the villages of Moovruj and Solunuk are given small Icons, while the Snake Lair and the Sinkhole of Khorjen are given slightly bigger icons. This allows the DM to see at one glance which numbers are “important” stuff and which numbers are merely an encounter. The Wilderness map uses slightly different hues of green to break up the monotone jungle stuff, as no map legend is given it could be hard for a DM to see what is what here… but the map is so small and well designed that this problem will hardly come up in actual play.
As a slight note, while full color is nice, printing the wilderness map in grayscale muddles up the whole thing heavily.
The snake lair map is well done, though a bit boring for my taste. IT’s basically a winding, wet tunnel with a really big snake inside.
The Sinkhole of Khorjen map looks nice in color and shitty in grayscale but is all in all a nice piece or mapmaking that’ll serve its purpose well. The whole map looks as if one sees the region from high up above, the landmarks being drawn in perspective and such. This has the great effect of instantly allowing anyone seeing the map to get a feel for the layout of the place.
General Plot
The Village of Khorjen had a big/important artefact that everyone envies them for, then their witchdoctor casts some magic and , totally unrelated to the magic thingy, the whole village comes crashing down into a giant sinkhole. This fucks up the magic and mutates everyone into a giant, stark raving blob that now wanders the ruins, being worshipped by a tribe of apes.
A Hexcrawl with 12 locations lies between the group and the village, with location 13 being the village. The hexcrawl is well done. The encounters a re interesting: quicksand, strange monsters, a bullied Jungle Giant whose pet just got killed seeking revenge against the other giants, a mad dwarf worshipping a tree infected with some crystal parasite (which helps against insects) … all well done, memorable and enough variety that it never becomes boring.
There’s a “sideplot” about a boys ghost wanting revenge on some big-ass snake hiding in its lair that is totally detached from the main plot. This is not a bad thing though as it hints at a world bigger than the PCs actions. The Ghost boy is well done, with some of the party being able to see him and others not. This will probably lead to some interesting talk for a group, the snake lair then is a pretty straight “go in and kill” situation … Though seeing as the snake is only protecting its young (eggs) there is an element of moral ambiguity that a good DM can work with. Still everyone will kill the damn snake … you know it, I know it… heck the snake knows it…poor bastard. Anyways….
The whole thing is a sandbox with a defined goal of getting the damn artefact (the prism) out of the village with enough stuff going on to keep a group happy and busy.
The biggest “flaw” of the Adventure also lies here. While the whole thing is done really well the ending… just kinda peters out. There is a tiny section about what could happen when the group has the prism, but nothing really definite. Even worse I also found it a missed chance not to include more information about what happened in the village. As the adventure stands now, a group can do nothing to help the poor souls and will also not find out anything. The magic ritual the witchdoctor casted is mentioned in the beginning and then never again. Giving the group the choice to find out about the ritual and the landslide would’ve worked well here. Maybe even some pointers on how to resolve the situation without killing the witchdoctor.
Creativity
All in all a creative and nicely done Adventure.
Random encounter are fun and memorable (and there are two tables, one for wilderness, one for Khorjen), Rumors are good with a nice mix of useful and funny (and again, each village has a rumor table) and the whole adventure manage to create a living and breathing world that has its own feel.
Language
Short, terse and on point. Background is as long as it needs to be, encounters and descriptions are likewise short and on point.
There are some small typos here and there but nothing too serious.
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