This is an introductory module for levels 1-3 set in the world of Monte Cook's Arcanus Unearthed and The Diamond Throne. While the text on the back suggests great complexity of plot, it's actually fairly simple. The Jaran trade guild hires the PCs to retrieve a bandit-stolen book which holds clues to an ancient artifact. The PCs locate bandit spies in a dungeon and use their information to find the bandit camp, which happens to be in a second dungeon. The only real complexity is that one NPC is working for both sides, and that the Jaran motivations are obscured (from the GM as well as the players, unfortunately). The module also lays out the mining town of Gahanis in some detail, in the hopes that the GM will use it as an ongoing base of operations. This is the best part of the module: good general information ornamented with some excellent cultural detail. In the sibbecai quarter, all the houses are built to accommodate giant guests; it's too much trouble to open and close those huge doors all the time, so they keep them open all day and hang leather curtains for privacy. There are some minor flaws: the town map could be better labeled (what are those unmarked rectangles near the lake?) and the layout is deucedly strange, with the market as far away from the caravan staging area as possible. But it's mostly good material and quite usable. The scenario itself is more problematic. It has some strong points--the visual impact of both dungeons is striking, there's a nice bit of Call of Cthulhu-inspired detail work in the first dungeon, and several NPCs are well drawn. But too many bits did not stand up to contact with the players. I had three basic problems running this module: (1) A lot of material was missing. The Blue Knight, a major adversary, has neither a home base nor an adequate explanation of what she's trying to accomplish, just vague hints. The PCs might naturally try to track down the sapphire-tipped daggers she leaves in her victims--good luck! The module treats her purely as a plot convenience. I have no sense that she actually exists at all. The McGuffin mind-controls people, but there is no hint as to what it is trying to accomplish with them. The bandit camp lacks very basic information: a head-count of the bandits would be nice (we are only told "Half of them are shown in the encounter key, the other half are out patrolling or raiding," but presumably that doesn't apply to leader types?) Also, they manage somehow to take dozens of horses in and out through a hillside secret door and still require a DC30 spot check for the PCs to find it! They are clearly meant to be encountered only as a static dungeon setup--there is no provision (though, annoyingly, there is mention) that the PCs might scout or raid rather than just dungeon-busting. Perhaps the unkindest cut of all: the bandits have a piece of paper "which lists the names of three spies in Gahanis." D'you suppose they might tell the GM what those names are? Everything starts to feel very fake after a while. The NPCs simply aren't worked out enough to seem like people. (2) Some things flatly don't make sense. In the first dungeon, a lair is reached by descending a knotted rope. The rope is concealed at the top of the shaft. The PCs naturally concluded that the foe (which cannot fly or climb) must be outside the lair; but it's actually inside. This kind of false deduction happened a lot, and it was infuriating; I had to be constantly vetting every detail to make sure it made sense. The bandit horses are another example. I was shocked to encounter so many horses with no mention anywhere of horse tracks. A major NPC makes a habit of multi-day trips out to bandit HQ, on foot, by himself. No one has noticed; nothing has eaten him. Another NPC exists only to jump out and attack the PCs and die; she doesn't even have a name, for heaven's sake, much less any info for when the PCs question her. (Arcanus Unearthed is generous with the margin between dropped and dead, too. Figure on lots of prisoners. And don't forget that the "Creature Loresight" ability can milk a lot of information out of a dead NPC.) (3) While the actual combat of the module is remarkably easy--the easiest I've yet seen, in fact--the scenario is way over the heads of the PCs conceptually. It is not much use detailing Gahanis if the PCs will have to flee it permanently at the end of the module because they have made outrageously high-end enemies. There are total party kills tossed off in the text. If the PCs get a permit to explore dungeon #1 the Jaran "may" kill them for failing to keep their interest secret. Um, "may"? Under what circumstances, and how do they do it? I can't just kill all the PCs by fiat (and actually would hate to kill them at all for such a borderline mistake, if it is a mistake). It's also strongly implied that after the PCs complete their mission the Jaran should kill them. I think the author of this section had been seeing too many films noir. Basically, the module assumes that you can just shove the PCs down the main line: they won't investigate clues except for the one set you want them to investigate, they won't enlist other people, they won't question prisoners (even though the module contains a location which casts interrogation magic on anyone you put in it--what did they think the PCs would do with that?!) and when an NPC is supposed to confront the PCs and then get away, the PCs will passively let that happen. I don't know where module-writers find these players. I've never been able to find any myself. It's runnable, and I might even weakly recommend it for the Gahanis writeup and some nice visual and political detail. But it's unnecessarily hard to run; be prepared to do a lot of work vetting and extending it so that it will survive contact with real PCs. And be prepared for complaints that it's not really a suitable mission for first-level characters, even though (as it turns out) they will go through all of the combat like a hot knife through butter--at least mine did. Back to Table of Contents -- Game! # 9 To Game! List of Issues To MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2004 by George Phillies. This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com