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[PFRPG] At the Heart of Evil
by Man T. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 06/06/2019 07:55:51

Review of "At the Heart of Evil" by K. Alex Carlsson

The Pdf can be downloaded for free from Drivethrurpg.com. This adventure is a 16 page pdf, which could have been downsized to a 10-11 page document (without the Pathfinder OGL, smaller font etc.). It is part of a "trilogy" but sadly the other two adventures haven't been released yet and I guess never will. This adventure mentions the next two in line a couple of times and gives hints, ideas and suggestions for running them.

The story: A paladin is cursed and he betrays his 5 paladin brothers in their very small castle. He summons several undead to protect the castle and then goes on a patrol with most of his minions. The PCs are lvl 6-8 adventurers who try to clear the castle and end the tyranny of the cursed paladin before he comes back with his army. The story of the other two adventures would have been: once the PCs clear the castle, the DM convinces them that leaving it would be suicide and that their best option is to stay and defend it against the soon returning cursed paladin. The third adventure would have been about searching the tower of the evil wizard, who cursed the paladin to begin with and end his terror.

The Look: The pdf is very well layed out, the art is great and the maps are easy to interpret. The language is easy to read, I didn't find many typos. It has the usual layout of: adventure background, adventure synopsis, a couple of adventure hooks and the adventure itself. Ending with an adventure conclusion, some mentions about the further adventures and two new magic items of which one is nice and the other one is quite powerfull, but the PCs only find it at the very end of the adventure (and it was probably meant to be usefull in the "next" adventure). The adventure has 24 "rooms" of which 11 has enemy encounters. There is a very bad puzzle and a couple of traps.

The Good: Would I recommend it? Yes! I can think of running it, as is without any changes and my players would enjoy it. The two hinted at, but sadly unpublished follow up adventures have nice ideas too. Overall if I needed an adventure which I can place pretty much anywhere and run pretty much anytime, this is a great little adventure. The hard work of designing it, drawing the map, choosing the monsters and the treasure has already been done. Just pick it up for free and run it. The maps and the art in itself is worth a look in my opinion.

The Bad: There isn't really any story, no real NPCs, no dialog, no roleplaying element of any kind and the conclusion of the adventure isn't obvious at least if based on the adventure alone, a good DM can fix this very easily on the fly. Sadly the one and only puzzle is very weak and not obvious at all (and it has no illustration to help).

Overall: I really like it. There is nothing special about this adventure. Go into the keep, kill everything, take the loot and that's it. Nothing too complicated. The art is great black and white, the layout is helpfull, you have everything here that is needed. You could prep this adventure with one fast readthrough and understand everything you would need instantly.

Conclusion: If you have only limited time to game and you would like to run a "quality adventure" for your party I would buy something from Wizards of the Coast or Paizo instead, but if you are looking for a free dungeon crawl, which you can use as is and prep only with a quick read through, this is (almost) as good as it gets.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
[PFRPG] At the Heart of Evil
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HHG Free Clip Art 3
by Bryan H. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 01/24/2018 10:14:22

It's a ruined tower, exactly like the preview. Image comes in a high quality, high resolution format.



Rating:
[3 of 5 Stars!]
HHG Free Clip Art 3
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HHG Free Clip Art 4
by Bryan H. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 01/24/2018 08:35:36

Ornamental discs aren't something that everyone is going to need, but even just used as a background for other art it's not bad.



Rating:
[3 of 5 Stars!]
HHG Free Clip Art 4
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HHG Free Clip Art 2
by Bryan H. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 01/24/2018 08:34:38

While I haven't had a use for the zombie rat yet, the art is just too good to not grab. Now I'm looking for excuses to use zombie rats!



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
HHG Free Clip Art 2
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HHG Free Clip Art 1
by Bryan H. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 01/24/2018 08:33:14

Hard to argue with the price. Excellent image provided, looks exactly like the preview.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
HHG Free Clip Art 1
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Headless Hydra Clip Art 2
by Thomas C. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 05/31/2013 12:23:59

Fantastic art. Dead Goblin games is glad to have included this in our latest module, "The Slaver Caves of Dorden". Well done..this is an awesome illustration.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Headless Hydra Clip Art 2
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[PFRPG] The Wasting of Duny Slough
by Thilo G. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 01/21/2013 08:56:31

The first installment of Headless Hydra Games' Viridian Legacy AP for the Mor Aldenn campaign setting is 40 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page SRD and 1 page advertisement, leaving us with 36 pages of content, so let's check this out!

This being an adventure-review, the following contains SPOILERS. Potential players may wish to jump to the conclusion.

All right, still here? The pdf kicks off rather interestingly, with a narrative that gives one great insight into the last days of Huansol, one of the legendary Exalted Champions, a legendary adventuring group that once were the celebrated protectors and scions of the City of Mages Mor Aldenn. If you're GM planning to run the AP, be sure to check out the FREE Viridian Legacy GM's guide, for the AP centers around the fate of said legendary group and the intelligent magic items that are their legacy. While most of the AP will be focused on Mor Aldenn (more on that in the excellent city-setting, also by Headless Hydra-games), this module is set in a more rural environment, to be precise, the peat bog harvesting town of Duny's Slough, located in the outskirts of the dreaded Spindleflow Marsh. To get the PCs to Spindleflow Marsh, multiple hooks are provided, but what are they supposed to do there?

Well, Duny Slough has had an alliance with the local kobold population of the swamp for quite a while - mutually beneficial and all, but things have changed and the changes started with a small discovery - an ancient tomb was found in the bog and opened by a group of halfling explorers. Inside rested the remains of aforementioned exalted champion and the breaching of the ancient seal alerted the legendary Wyrmmother to the potential that the cloak of one of her ancient foes might fall into the hands of others. Her spirit reached out across the swamp and when undead rose and forced them to retreat from the site. Worse, the spirit reached to one particular disgruntled hag-servant of the legendary Night Hag and touched here - inspiring a plan to send her coven to sleep never-ending and bewitching K'Tchak, kobold druid and erstwhile ally of Duny Slough's residents. Erstwhile, since he is driven by the enchantment to get the cloak of the Exalted Champion and incite his people into confrontation with the excavators and by proxy, Duny Slough. Worse, not content to let them survive, the bog hag enacts a cursed disease on the halfling explorer, sending them into a mysterious spiral of plague-ridden decline. Enter the PCs.

Duny Slough, the halfling village with its bridges, erected in the middle of the marsh in need of heroes and a full-color map as well as extensive information for researching the recent troubles. Now what the PCs don't know is that the clock is ticking down...FAST. They only have 3 days before the encampment of the remaining halflings is overrun and 6 days to prevent utter failure from striking! They better hurry along the wicker paths and towards the kobold encampment, hopefully not resorting to overt violence versus the small reptiles. If they get lured into the swamp, they'll lose precious time and indeed, each encounter has some option to gain haste points - by not pursuing fleeing foes, by not falling for a clerverly set up false path, by defeating an encounter (like an immature assassin vine or a bog ooze) in less than 3 rounds, by marching through the night etc. Depending on the Haste Points they have accumulated, the PCs will have a different situation on their hands when arriving at the tomb: Besieged by 16 kobold marhsrunners, the encampment at the tomb could still be remaining firmly entrenched by the kobolds - or even ablaze, for K'Tchak plans to ignite the bog and smoke out the halflings. And bog fires are hard to put out... If the PCs are particularly fast, they may even have the time to talk to the halfling explorers and explore the tomb prior to the kobold siege. Speaking of interesting territory - the sludge-covered tomb is haunted by disturbing effigies that guard the place and if the PCs manage to overcome these, they may actually get their hand of the mythic cloak. Sooner or later, the PCs will find the poor shaman K'Tchak, inflicted with the same wasting sickness as the halfling gleaners and might follow him to the bog hag and perhaps determine that he's under an enchantment - to the lair of mastermind Caragma, a huge bog willow. Exploring the tunnels in the larger than life tree and vanquishing its guardians (including more bog oozes, a pugwampi, a giant leech, marshlings, flying infernal kobolds and finally, the bog hag herself. The PCs get a chance to end the plague she's conjured from her cauldron, end the threat of her sleeping sisters -well, and have a nice cliffhanger, for when the hag dies, the Night Hag herself possesses the body of the traitor bog hag and utters some cryptic revelations and threats before letting the meat puppet slump to the floor.

Having saved Duny Slough from plague and conflict with the kobolds, the PCs have thus a chance to solve the module without killing K'Tchak and his ilk before they return to Mor Aldenn to research the strange magical cloak they've found...and that's only the beginning, with two of the most powerful threats of the city watching them...waiting. For now.

The module also provides a short gazetteer of Duny Slough and stats for the new monsters featured, these being: The CR 4 Bog Hag, the CR 1/3 Flying Kobold (called Kuba) and the CR 1 Marschlings -all with beautiful b/w-artworks.

Conclusion: Editing and formatting are top-notch, I didn't notice any glitches. The module's layout adheres to HHG's beautiful 2-column standard in full color, with the 3 also rather beautiful maps coming in full color as well. The artworks are b/w and universally belong to the higher tier of artwork-class, i.e. they are beautiful to behold. Not all is great in the area of formal criteria, though: We get no keyless maps of the adventure-locations to hand out to the players, which is a dman pity since the maps are aesthetically pleasing. The second major gripe I have with the module is that is has no bookmarks - at this length, this is simply not up to standard and makes navigation unnecessarily hard on the DM. Also, you should know that at over 50 mb, this file is not particularly tablet-friendly and that we get no printer-friendly version sans background/borders, which is yet again a minor detrimental factor.

Lack of bookmarks, no player-friendly maps, no printer-friendly version, large file size - come on, Headless Hydra Games! You can do so much better than that! This, honestly, pisses me off. Why? Because this is a great module. Seriously, it has an awesome wilderness trek, diplomacy, a unique village and a cool, iconic, exciting final dungeon as well as the cool haste-mechanics. The author-duo Ron Lundeen (of Run Amok Games fame) and Thomas Baumbach have created a stellar module that would score easy and glowing 5 stars + seal of approval, but the sloppy formal criteria make it impossible for me to give the rating that this awesome module deserves. Instead I have to grit my teeth and acknowledge all those minor gripes accumulating to the point where I can't rate this higher than 4 stars. Please, HHG, update this module. I want to give it the glowing recommendation it deserves.

Endzeitgeist out.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
[PFRPG] The Wasting of Duny Slough
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[PFRPG] Libris Monstrous, Vol 1
by Thilo G. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 12/21/2012 09:59:01

This pdf is 25 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page foreword, 1 page SRD, 1 page advertisement, leaving us with 20 pages of content, so let's check this out!

This monster-pdf has an interesting concept - one monster for each type of creature, so let's take a look! -Demon,Baphomian (CR 11): Bovine-skull-headed demons with greater rage. Could have used some rage powers in my opinion, but its write-up specifies at least that they often take barbarian class levels. Also nice: This beast comes with sample treasure.

-Dinosaur, Saurolophus (CR 5): Aquatic bipedal dinosaur, comes with animal companion stats, but sans signature ability.

-Dinosaur, Styracosaurus (CR 7): Quadruped huge dinosaur with protective spikes and also animal companion info.

-Carnelain Dragon (CR 3, 7, 11 and 16): 8-legged, wingless, orange lesser dragons whose breath weapon deals non-lethal starvation damage and str-damage. The great wyrm gets a cool deadly cloud but their artwork inspires less than awe.

-Giant Earwig (CR 1): Powerful pincers and sickening spittle make these cool. The CR 3 Earwig Swarm lacks a signature ability - come on, why not give them a body-invasion-type trick? That's why they're called Earwigs, aren't they? (And yes, scientifically they don't do that - come on, this is fantasy!) And the cool side, we also get information on other earwigs of varying sizes.

-Triune Giants (CR 12): Thought ettins were bad? These giants have three arms, three heads and three elephant-like legs and come with sample treasure and a short list of bag contents.

-Bloodstone Golems (CR 9): Essentially stone golems charged with negative energy and death throes. Ok, I guess. They come with means of construction and a sample treasure as well.

-Horada (aka Pyromancer Scarab) (CR 7): Immense beetles with cascading fire emanations and a searing hot carapace? Yes please! The first beast in the book that really excites me.

-Lililapai (CR 8): These Lilypad fey are another winner: Froglike humanoids with poisonous tongues and the ability to turn those kissed into frogs, these beings make for cool tricksters and twists of the "Frog Prince"-myth. The entry also comes with full stats for Fey Frogs, but these latter stats omit the CR-rating.

-Fans of Lycanthropes get the werecrocodile and it hits a pet-peeve of mine. I HATE, with a FIERY PASSION, Lycanthropes sans signature abilities. How hard is it to slap an additional power n their bite? Increased threat range? Barrel-rolls? Something like this? I am aware that the standard lycanthrope-build does not necessarily need these, but come on! At least we get stats for both human and hybrid form.

-Lyskar (CR 6): Also called Matron Ghouls, these undead come with stench, a signature ghoulish plague and the ability to use disguise self. But not at which CL the effect works. Nor is there any information on whether the ability masks the nauseating aura of stench. Lame since essentially their twist is thwarted by the lack of information (and said twist has been done a gazillion times....)

-Ooze, Molten (CR 6): Burning ooze that may erupt when slain. Nice one, though "burning ooze" has also been done a couple of times.

-Sanguine Naga (CR 10): These nagas come with negative energy affinity and the power to drain victims of their blood to power their metamagic. Now this one is interesting in that it makes for a great "false vampire"-set-up in an investigation scenario. Neat idea and sound signature abilities.

-Rust Vine Creeper (CR 4): Metal-detecting creepers that rust your equipment. Nice and a cool alternative to rust monsters!

Conclusion: Editing and formatting are very good, I didn't notice any significant glitches. Layout adheres to HHG's two-column layout and can be considered beautiful. Each monster gets its own artwork and the artworks can be considered passable for the price-point, though not up to the stellar art we usually get to see in HHG-products. A MAYOR downside for this pdf is the lack of bookmarks - at this length, they are not optional, but expected and required.

This offering of monsters can be deemed solid in almost every way: The ideas run the gamut from lame to neat and 3 of the creatures herein can be considered definite winners. However, there also are multiple creatures whose themes have been done multiple times - and unfortunately, some of them have been done better. Multiple creatures also lack unique signature abilities, which is monster-design-wise a big no-go in my book and adding minor glitches like the Lyskar's unspecified disguise are problems. This is an ok purchase, but with the lack of bookmarks and aforementioned problems, I feel I can't go higher than 2.5 stars on this one, rounding up to 3 due to the low price.

Endzeitgeist out.



Rating:
[3 of 5 Stars!]
[PFRPG] Libris Monstrous, Vol 1
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[PFRPG] At the Heart of Evil
by Stephen Y. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 11/22/2012 06:13:30

At 16 pages, 13 1/4 are the adventure. This appears to be a simple enter the keep, and defeat the undead adventure.

It doesn't appear as well polished as Spindle Wood Marsh, or Gallery of Dreams, but it has some promise.

A puzzling thing: at E18 (prison cell), if the PCs rescue the woman, they will be rewarded, as her family are quite wealthy, but there is no mention of the reward. Rather incomplete.

Conclusion: for free, it's worth getting, but in my opinion, it does need more work; especially at E18 (prison cell).

Download it and fill in the gaps.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
[PFRPG] At the Heart of Evil
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[PFRPG] Death in the Spindlewood Marsh
by Stephen Y. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 11/22/2012 05:55:10

An 11 page scenario/adventure, of which 6 is the adventure/scenario.

The pages include how to scale and expand the adventure, there is also one page detailing some unpleasant diseases.

A very informative and enjoyable swampy/marshy adventure. Yet another excellent Headless Hydra adventure.

Well worth obtaining.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
[PFRPG] Death in the Spindlewood Marsh
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[PFRPG] Gallery of Dreams
by Stephen Y. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 11/22/2012 05:45:33

A 7 page PDF with 3 1/2 pages as the scenario/adventure, but those few pages are enlightening.

I found it a very interesting read. The end/reward, can lead to further adventures.

Well recommended.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
[PFRPG] Gallery of Dreams
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[PFRPG] The Ruins
by Stephen Y. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 11/22/2012 05:33:03

An enjoyable short scenario at 7 1/2 pages out of 11. The artwork is good, and the maps nicely laid out with keys.

I found the front cover rather inviting to explore the adventure/scenario.

And considering it's free as well, all I can say is go for it.

Definitely recommended.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
[PFRPG] The Ruins
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[PFRPG] Viridian Legacy GM's Guide
by Alan H. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 10/18/2012 16:01:32

Detailed background with rich cultural detail and fey colour.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
[PFRPG] Viridian Legacy GM's Guide
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Forgotten Foes Clip Art 9
by Dale M. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 10/11/2012 10:20:09

The artwork is ok greyscale artwork. This pack is one of my least favorite of the Forgotten Foes line. However, the License is quality and you get ALOT of artwork for the price. So I would call it worth it.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
Forgotten Foes Clip Art 9
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Forgotten Foes Clip Art 1
by Dale M. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 10/11/2012 10:17:11

The artwork is great B/W inked images with greyscale shading. The License is quality. You get ALOT of artwork for the price. A definite buy, in my opinion.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Forgotten Foes Clip Art 1
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