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Graeme Morris

Autor/a de UK2: The Sentinel

10 obres 372 Membres 3 Ressenyes

Sèrie

Obres de Graeme Morris

UK2: The Sentinel (1984) 58 exemplars
UK4: When a Star Falls (1984) 58 exemplars
UK3: The Gauntlet (1984) 57 exemplars
UK5: Eye of the Serpent (1984) 41 exemplars
X8: Drums on Fire Mountain (1985) 40 exemplars
CM6: Where Chaos Reigns (1985) 35 exemplars
B10: Night's Dark Terror (1986) 34 exemplars
Up the Garden Path [Expert] (1986) 2 exemplars

Etiquetat

Coneixement comú

Gènere
male
Nacionalitat
UK

Membres

Ressenyes

An exemplar wilderness adventure (verging on the scope of a campaign to be honest), featuring an amazing start and a multitude of side-threads, as well as a solid plot with many hues of atmosphere ranging from the grim urban to sword & sorcery and lost civilization), all packed in 50 pages. Absolutely recommended, it can support months of play.
 
Marcat
Athotep | Sep 26, 2020 |
This is one of the few D&D modules I've played many times with different sets of players. It's a good one, with a mini-wilderness campaign which has made it into my campaign world map.
1 vota
Marcat
questbird | Feb 4, 2017 |
CM6: Where Chaos Reigns is a high level adventure for use with the Dungeons & Dragons rule set aimed at characters between 17th and 19th level. High level adventures for D&D are, in general, difficult to design even when the designer knows the group of PCs for whom he is preparing the adventure. While most groups of low-level characters are very similar, and most groups of mid-level characters fall into a fairly predictable range, groups of high-level characters can vary so wildly in composition and capability that what would be a cake-walk for one group could very well be instant death for another. For a commercial designer, who knows his output will be used by widely varied parties of high level characters, the job of designing an appropriate adventure is almost impossible. The problem is further compounded by the stunning power level that most high level groups of D&D characters have at their beck and call. Anything significant enough to threaten them, or even just get their notice, is likely to have widespread implications for the entire world they inhabit.

Saddled with this difficult, if not impossible task, Graeme Morris dodges them both by having the adventures all take place in an alternate reality, and by making the bulk of the adventure as vague and malleable as possible. The end result is an uneven, but generally serviceable adventure sequence that still needs a lot of work from the DM to flesh out into something memorable.

The basic framework of the adventure involves transporting the PCs from their home plane to various critical points in the history of an alternate reality called Aelos. Aelos is afflicted by a technologically oriented race called the Oards, who have figured out how to master time travel, and have sent many of their number back in time to try to manipulate history and inhibit the "normal" development of magic so that their technologically-based culture can dominate the world of Aelos. The Immortals associated with Aelos decided that this is not a state of affairs they favor, but cannot (for unexplained reasons) intercede directly, instead transporting the PCs into the action so they can set Aelosian history on the "correct" course towards magical knowledge.

The Oards make a decent villain, but they seem somewhat underpowered for the level of the PCs. They are also supposed to be hidden through much of the adventure, using impenetrable holographic projectors to disguise themselves, only revealing their true forms if they die. As a result, while the PCs are likely to know the Oards are up to something, there doesn't seem to be any really good ways for them to find out who they are, or why they are doing what they are doing. The Oard equipment, being technological in nature, is supposed to be mysterious, but it functions mostly like regular D&D magical items, which is a disappointment. The equipment is also explicitly made non-usable by the PCs, which, to me, is something of a cop out. Introducing technology could have resulted in a situation in which all kinds of bizarre devices are introduced that the PCs could puzzle out by trial and error, resulting in interesting game play. Instead, the bad guys carry the equivalent of wands of magic missile and fireball that become inert in the PCs hands.

The adventure itself is split into five subadventures, each taking place at a different point in Aelosian history. Once the PCs defeat the Oard threat in a particular time period, they are herded to the next in a somewhat railroady manner (they get an "irresistible impulse to leave"). Each individual adventure is only laid out in broad details: the DM is given the Oard plan, a catalogue of the opposition, and usually a series of events that will take place during the PCs sojourn in the era. All of the mini-adventures have some sort of encounter area that is detailed to some extent, although most are fairly vague (for example, in Island of Sorcerers, the magical school The Bibliotheca is described as having challenges in each successive room that would test the arcane skills of progressively more powerful arcane casters. But the adventure doesn't actually tell the DM what those challenges are. Some of the mini-adventures have encounters that are essentially large masses of low-level opponents. This is fine in an adventure in which the mass combat system is going to be used (as in Blood and Iron, the third part of the adventure), but in others it simply bogs the game down. Having high level PCs fight a horde of massed opponents sounds fun in theory, but in practice it often grinds down to a long night of tedious dice rolling.

The five mini-adventures are a mixed bag. The first, In the Beginning, takes place in the Aelosian stone-age, as elves and humans battle ten foot tall cavemen who ride rocs and mastodons and keep saber-tooth tigers as pets. The PCs have to convince the human and elvish villages to pay attention to them in the face of the impending invasion of giant mammals and birds. The end result of successfully completing this portion of the adventure is that the ents gift the elves with the first Tree of Life (the assumed campaign setting material in the Dungeons & Dragons set is conspicuously on display in this module). The adventure mostly involves slugging it out with a collection of brute force type opponents - there is little that is subtle here.

The second part, Forge of Power, puts the PCs on a quest to make sure the dwarves are gifted with the first Forge of Power. The PCs are actually the response to a prophecy, and are greeted as such. The adventure seems somewhat promising in its set-up, possibly leading to a situation in which the characters would have to convince a misguided villain to change his ways. Instead, the payoff is still more of a slugfest, just this time the opponents are slightly different.

The third part, Blood and Iron, is where the module gets more interesting. In this section, the PCs must organize the last outpost of humans, elves, dwarves , and the newly discovered halflings and fight the armies of an invading empire backed by the Oards. The actual warfare, run using the mass combat system, is less important than rallying the various factions to the cause, each of which is suspicious and distrustful of the others. The PCs, assuming they kept some of the knick-knacks they acquired in the first two sections, will be recognized, millennia later as the "Heroes of Wood and Fire", which makes their job somewhat easier. Overall, this is one of the best parts of the overall adventure, but remains somewhat vague even still (scant attention is given to fleshing out the motivations of the various human factions, for example, meaning the DM will have to fill in the details for the PCs to be able to negotiate with them).

The fourth section, Island of Sorcerers, moves the PCs to an island college of magic. This section is interesting because the PCs will (hopefully) discover that the Oards have begun impersonating some of the staff, leading to the questions of who is the enemy and who is merely a bystander. Oddly, despite the fact that the legend of the PCs persisted for millennia in the pre-literacy world, a few thousand years of literacy later results in the PCs having been completely forgotten. Eventually the PCs must confront hypnotized opponents as well, making it difficult for them (assuming they decide not to kill them off and instead try to capture them). Overall, this section has the most potential, but suffers the most from the vagueness problem that runs throughout the module: to make the Bibliotheca complete, the DM will have to put in a fair amount of work.

Finally, the PCs confront the Oards on their home turf in The Entropy Bubble. This part of the adventure is fairly straightforward. The Oards are there for the killing, and the PCs have to wade in and get it done. Much of the adventure of this part of the module is accomplished via random encounter, with only a handful of preset encounter areas. As the finale for the series of adventures, it is something of a disappointment. One odd thematic element of the adventure is that the Oards seem quite ordered (to the point of having a Spartan and sterile culture), whereas the PCs seem to be tasked mostly to do little more than break things the Oards have assembled. One wonders, at this point, exactly who is making Chaos reign here. (I know, in the Dungeons & Dragons rules, the terms Chaotic and Lawful mean "evil" and "good" rather than their normal meanings, but I still wonder).

Like I said at the outset, designing high level adventures is difficult. The fact that this effort is even adequate is actually something of a triumph. The basic idea of a conflict between magic and technology through time is quite good, especially since the PCs are in the position of being essentially anti-technological Luddites, which is somewhat unusual. Unfortunately, the execution of some pretty good ideas is somewhat less than well-done, resulting in a module that is no more than average.
… (més)
1 vota
Marcat
StormRaven | Jun 8, 2009 |

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Autors associats

Phil Gallagher Production
Jeff Anderson Cover artist
Mike Brunton Proofreading
Tim Sell Illustrator
Geoff Wingate Cartography
Carole Morris Proofreading

Estadístiques

Obres
10
Membres
372
Popularitat
#64,810
Valoració
4.1
Ressenyes
3
ISBN
13
Llengües
1

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