Review 40 - Black Wyrm of Brandonsford
As I've mentioned before, the best kind of adventure is the "Interesting Town with Lots of Fun Stuff to Uncover Nearby" variety. This week I'm going to talk about a very highly praised adventure, and I have already come to the conclusion that it deserves every bit of praise that it gets.
This adventure was originally written for Basic Fantasy, and is entirely the work of Chance Dudinack. The basic premise is that the PCs arrive at a remote town on the edge of a forest that is currently being terrorized by a dragon. Due to the reduced human activity in the forest, many fae creatures are becoming more active, including a small band of goblins who seek to establish a new kingdom.
I ran this for my group using Cairn 2e, and the adventure has already been converted to this system-- the notes are posted on the Cairn website
Getting it to the Table
One of the key features of this adventure is how brief the text is while still presenting a potential GM with a very involved situation in and around the town of Brandonsford. The entire thing comes in at 19 pages, including the title page and two maps. It's also an impressive feat of concise writing that the entire chain of events leading to the situation in the forest is detailed in only four paragraphs, taking up only half of a page, leaving the rest for adventure hooks and rumors.
Next, we get details about the titular town itself, which admittedly was a little bit too concise for me. The town is described only in terms of its NPCs, who are all given a short section with information about their appearance, attitudes, and game details (quests, goods for sale, etc). There is no map of the town provided, and little general information about the town apart from the brief description in the background. If a GM ended up needing more information to answer players' questions, some improvisation would be required; however, this isn't a huge deal because I think most of us know what sort of stuff you'd find in a fantasy adventure game village. There are two minor side quests included in the town section, both of which immediately hooked my players and filled up a few sessions as we resolved them. They had a particularly fun time planning how to catch the invisible clurichaun who steals beer from the cellar of one of the inns every night!
The next section is the place that PCs will probably spend the most time in-- the woods. One minor gripe is that the map is all the way at the front, but that's fixable. Another is that it's not entirely clear what travel through the woods is supposed to be like. On the map, there is a scale that reads "1 inch = 1/2 mile", which is already kind of a pain because then you have to get the ruler out. This is referenced on the random encounter table for the woods, which says that you should roll for an encounter (2 in 6 chance) for every mile traveled. The reason this doesn't work for me is that you don't really get any indication of how long traveling through the woods is supposed to take. Also missing are descriptions of the general features of the woods-- is it dense, primeval forest? Light with lots of game trails? Anything like that would have helped indicate what travel would be like.
My solution ended up being pretty simple-- I converted it to Cairn. The 2e update uses a pointcrawl method for wilderness travel, and this was a perfect candidate for taking a map and following the procedure to turn it into a pointcrawl which would fit nicely with the new rules. It took a little bit more preparation, but it was worth it in the end because I was able to run the wilderness section pretty seamlessly as a result.
Special mention goes to the barrow mound in the forest-- this was a great little dungeon with looping paths, dangerous encounters, and plenty of interactivity. Some of the most memorable moments from the adventure occurred in here, particularly those involving a metal pot and a floating skull.
What Worked?
- Nice and concise. I'm frankly astonished that such a solid adventure is contained in so few pages. My group must have spent at least seven sessions exploring the woods and following hooks and trying to unravel the mystery, and there probably could have been a few more if a chance encounter with the dragon while making their way through the woods did not end in a near TPK!
- Engaging NPCs and situations. You get a very brief snippet of all of the people in town, but it was very easy for the players to get a sense of their personalities and the relationships between them.
- Great little dungeon! Fun stuff, no notes. Lots of things that make noise, and lots of things that are attracted to said noise.
What Didn't Work?
- I would have liked a little more consistent layout in the different areas of the adventure. I think this would have made it easier to quickly reference information if you knew exactly where to look for it in each section. The bullet point sections were definitely easy to parse, but since the town was laid out differently than the woods which was laid out differently from the barrow mound, it ended up with a lot of paging around. However, this is just a quality of life issue, and I would still rate this as being incredibly simple to pick up and play, and I would strongly recommend any aspiring GM to add this to their repertoire.
Final Thoughts
This is one of my favorite adventures that I have run thus far, and I will definitely be coming back to it in the future with different systems. It lends itself well to a group that is inquisitive, with plenty of locales to poke around.
You can get The Black Wyrm of Brandonsford on drivethru. Thanks for reading!