Servants of Plague

N Wright over at Lawful Indifferent has released a brief Labyrinth Lord adventure called Servants of Plague. You can download it for free (I LOVE me some free stuff) - there's a link at the bottom of this post or, maybe better (if he tracks traffic or whatever), from the Lawful Indifferent blog itself.

Servant of Plague is a pretty good intro adventure - nothing too surprising in the setup or the setting - but a nice twist on the monsters faced. No surprise that disease plays a role in the adventure here, and the PCs might find themselves on the wrong side of a save in these confrontations. One of the diseases appears to be likely fatal unless cured pretty quickly - but that's no condemnation. It's more survivable than save or die poison, I guess.

The best part of the adventure, for me, is the notes at the end. The DM's Tips section provides some pretty standard advice (this is intended to be an introductory adventure - presumably for both the DM or the players) - but good reminders nonetheless - monster tactics, reminders of the openness of the fortress, that combats don't happen in a vacuum, etc. This is followed by "Continuing On" which gives suggestions for expanding the adventure at the fortress, reinforcing the fortress, what might have happened in the village while the PCs were gone. Every suggestion inspired possibilities for me.

This is a good brief module with some nice twists on the standard low level monsters usable virtually out of the box (um...off the printer?) with any "old school" D&D ruleset or retroclone.

Go get it here: Servants of Plague.

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Prime Requisite Games

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So I read through the adventure. It's a pretty good short diversion. The set up is okay - fear of a curse, a murder, all pretty well set up with some potential to expand the village or the background characters.

I think the adventure provides pretty reasonable challenges for lvl 5-7 characters. I wouldn't throw this at inexperienced players, though - it has the potential to be very deadly for the careless or unwary.

I really like the format of the adventure - it's kind of new-old school - reminds me of at least one old Role Aids adventure (I think) - Big Room Numbers with a line separating areas with a kind of room summary. The descriptions are concise and well written - the adventure areas are challenging - a good mix of creatures, traps and puzzles. The quality of the production is high - just a few typos (pretty common ones - alter that should be altar, became that should be become, thieve's guild that should be thieves' guild) - annoying, but not detracting from the excellent quality of this product. The art is good (and there's a lot of it), the map is good. My one complaint about the adventure is that it's very linear - everything gets funneled to the climax - but that's pretty common in short adventures. There's only so many places you can detail and so many encounters you can provide for a single session.