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Carn the Weak 04-12-07, 01:10 PM

Cormyr is a new adventure for the Realms for four level 4 characters (progressing to 7 or possibly 8 by the end). In my opinion, the high water mark for adventures recently has been EtCR and tRHoD, and unfortunately, Cormyr doesn't measure up. I'll run through some quick plusses and minuses in a spolier-free way. I'll start with the bad news: 1) The adventure is a straight dungeon crawl from beginning to end. Now I realize that the other adventures mentioned above can be seen that way as well. In tRHoD, the party does travel from one encounter to the next in a fairly straightforward way, however, there is a continual feeling that what the party is doing MATTERS. That if the party just decided not to do the tasks that there would be consequences later in the module. This just isn't present in Cormyr. You are literally just following a path and battling the monsters along the way. If the party found some way to skip 90% of the encounters in this adventure, it wouldn't matter at all (other then the fact they probably would be too low level to complete the final encounter). It feels like one random encounter after another. It is essentially a level grind since you do nothing to hurt/hinder the BBEG until the very end of the adventure. 2) There's nothing "Cormyr" about this adventure. Yes it is set near the Vast Swamp, but you don't interact with the town much, and you can literally pick this adventure up and drop it into whatever setting/location you want with minimal changes. Now, in one way that can be a plus for people who aren't interested in the Realms, but it is presented as part of a Realms super campaign yet it really does nothing that couldn't be done elsewhere. Change some names of Gods and plunk it down in a small town near a swamp anywhere. 3) Uninteresting encounter locations. The encounters are very cut and dry, nothing that any DM out there couldn't slap together in a few hours. There are a few exceptions which I will get to later. The party is going through very "standard" dungeons that are not memorable. 4) Magic Item placement is bad. Apparently this adventure was created without any input from the MIC guys. There are quite high level items thrown out early in the adventure (+2 weapons, +3 armor) that are appropriate for about 8-11th level play when the party is probably only 5th level or so. If you are familiar with Archon of Light's MIC conversion threads for tRHoD, something similar would most likely be in order for this adventure. The good news: 1) The first chapter is quite interesting. It's an interesting premise and the entire first chapter has the characters trying to figure out whats going on, and the module provides several different ways that the party can accompplish their goal, from hack-and-slash, to stealth, to diplomacy, etc. If the rest of the adventure was like the first chapter, I'd be raving about it. 2) The last section of the adventure finally has some interesting tactical situations. If the middle of the adventure could at least be this interesting then it would eliminate the "level-grind" feel of much of the adventure. 3) Party composition freedom. This adventure doesn't force the party to have certain classes present. I'm sure there are optimal groups, but it isn't the kind of adventure where the party is going to have a rough time of it without class X present. So if you are running a campaign with a strange group of characters, they should be able to get through the adventure ok. Bear in mind this is all just my opinion, and I'm sure there are people who disagree with me. However, if you are looking for a premade adventure arc (since not everyone has time to create everything from scratch) I would currently recommend either "The Red Hand of Doom" or "Expedition to Castle Ravenloft" leading into "The City of the Spider Queen". I have run all of these adventures myself and they are all top notch (SotSQ needs some small updates for 3.5, mainly the alteration of the haste spell, but nothing serious). If you altered this adventure to use the great beginning, chopped out some of the uninspired middle section, then toned down the end for characters a level lower than expected, then you could in theory finish this adventure at level 6 and use their success here as the basis for receiving the letter from Ravenloft and seque nicely into the EtCR adventure. So it could still be of some use. You may wish to reserve final judgement until November when the final part of this arc is out and you can see the entire arc from beginning to end. However, this adventure is quite self contained, so even if the other two sections are great (although I'm skeptical of the Shadowdale section since it has you defending a town against an invading army, seems pretty close to tRHoD and at very similar levels) you can probably still give this one a pass. Thanks, Carn PS - MINOR SPOILER (It mentions this on the back of the Cormyr book), since the adventurers journey to another plane in this adventure I really felt like they dropped the ball on what could have been done. If you compare this to the brief Ethereal section of CotSQ you can see how much more interesting this type of adventuring can be.