Megan Robertson's page

The cardstock screen is a robust heavy-duty one, a full four panels. The 'player side' has a beautiful painting of Lake-Town spreading across all four panels with a couple of marauding seagulls that look about ready to fly out around your ears! The 'loremaster side' is jam-packed with useful tables and vital page references to the core rules, with evidence of thought having gone in to the selection and arrangement of tables - should come in handy when running a game.

The sourcebook contains heaps of information about Lake-Town and should also prove useful should the characters visit there - which, as it's a major settlement (at least as far as Men are concerned) in the region of Middle Earth in which the game is initially set, should be quite a frequent event. Now you'll have the resources to cope with their visits.

Opening with an exerpt from a letter written by no less than Glóin son of Gróin which paints a vivid picture of a burgeoning township teeming with trade, it begins with a rundown of the various districts and what is to be found there. This is followed by some ideas of things to do when visiting, built around the Fellowship Phase concept from the rules. There's a note about money, relating the more abstract concept of Treasure as given in the core rules to actual coinage for those who prefer a more tangible wealth. A extensive discourse on the main annual festival, Dragontide, which includes a prestigious archery contest (for which the rules are given) follows: if any of your characters fancies his skill with the longbow, encourage them to participate at least once.

The centrefold of the book is devoted to a detailed image/plan of Lake-Town with many important features labelled: this is a visual treat as well as very informative for those who want to know their way around.

The next section looks at the flora and fauna of the surrounding marshland. Plants are described realistically, and many are worth collecting as they have in-game effects. Going botanising is one of the activities suggested for a Fellowship Phase spent here. The fauna, however, are hostile monsters in the main, and if the characters meet them they are likely to be in for a brawl. It might have been interesting to include a few mundane plants and animals, the ones of interest when preparing food perhaps, as this can make a place really come alive.

Finally, should you really be taken with the place, you are provided with the resources you need to create local characters, the Men of the Lake heroic culture. There's an example (who despite being a Man of the Lake is actually a lady, and very handy with her bow!) complete with description, illustration and character sheet; and there's a blank character sheet for anyone fancying a character from here.

Overall, this is a useful addition to knowledge of the area as well as a handy play-aid.

This product consists of seven quite loosely linked adventures, that can be run singly or linked as a campaign. perhaps to kickstart your adventures and provide a framework around which your own can be hung. The introduction gives a clear overview of what is there, and shows how to fit them in to the fairly leisurely pace of adventuring assumed for The One Ring campaigns (with an option for speeding things up a little if preferred). Whilst adventures, of course, fall into the Adventuring Phase, some suggestions are made for interspersing Fellowship Phases and for what the characters might wish to do during them; of particular use should you be planning to build a campaign around these adventures.

The first four adventures are suitable for relatively inexperienced adventurers whilst the last three are best tackled by more seasoned ones. The adventures provide plenty of scope for exploration of the area, with the first involving Lake-Town and Mirkwood, the next four west of the forest and the last two in Dale and areas to the north of the Lonely Mountain. And of course, there are opportunities to meet Elves!

The adventures encapsulate the 'feel' of Middle-Earth well, with the themes of travel and of meeting the rich panoply of the inhabitants of the land embedded into them. The measured cadence of the game mechanics are also reflected in the very way the adventures are written: it's not just a plotline with the mechanics of this particular ruleset bolted on, they have been made integral to the way in which the adventures are presented.

By their nature, the adventures serve as a good introduction to the setting, giving characters a chance to explore and get to know the region as well as to complete discrete tasks and build relationships with the locals. Each adventure is well-structured, presenting opportunities for the characters to choose their own responses to each situation or event whilst providing support for the Lorekeeper (GM) in coping with the characters' actions. Except for one combat-oriented adventure, fights are quite infrequent but ferocious when they occur.

The high standard of presentation makes the book a delight to read, with apposite illustrations and clear maps in the style introduced in the core rulebooks. Plans for those places that warrant them are clear but fit in with the overall appearance of the book.

Overall it's a delightful introduction to adventuring in Middle Earth and well worth a look.

In a deliberate - and charming - attempt to recreate an early 'dungeon delve' style of adventure, this opens with a neat background for how the dungeon came to be, followed by several 'hooks' from which you can select the one most likely to entice the characters to go visit.

Now, I am not a great fan of the 'puzzle/trap' dungeon, but this one at least has an excellent reason for being there and the various traps within have been carefully thought through both in terms of challenge and as being plausible given the fantasy technology and magic available to the builders. It provides a good work-out for skills, wits and the sword-arm and - provided your players enjoy this style of dungeon - should prove for an entertaining evening or two around your game table. Most of the challenges are deadly: make sure you have healing magic a-plenty, and perhaps some characters in reserve. Likewise characters capable of discerning and disabling traps are essential.

Everything is well laid out, with all the information that you need to hand in each room's description. Both Dungeons & Dragons and Pathfinder RPG stats are provided, with the 'monster' information hyperlinked in an appendix (better if you are running using a laptop than if you have printed the adventure out...). The descriptions themselves are excellent - indeed, this is a dungeon you could pretty much pick up and run even though, like any game, it would benefit if you at least have time to read through it before play.

The attempt to recreate the classic crawl of old has resulted in the creation of a modern classic of this style of dungeon. Enjoy...

This adventure follows on directly from Snow White Part 1, and realistically could not be run in any other way. I suppose you could say that the characters have been called in as trouble-shooters owing to the adventurers previously hired as security having made such a mess of things, but it seems a little forced. In any case, if you like this reskinning of a classic fairy tale concept, you really, really want to run Part 1, so go do that then come back!

It opens with a lot of detail on the Haunted Forest, into which the characters must venture. This is quite sandboxy, they can roam quite freely and there are several 'encounter locations' that they will come across. It's a chilly place, and there is some good advice about using the weather as an adversary, as well as some fine 'Achemist's Journal' notes about the flora and fauna of the place - unfortunately the wizard/alchemist who wrote them was assiduous about keeping the forest and its resources a secret so even if you do have naturalist characters they are unlikely to have read the journal. There are some fascinating plants there: for example the pomum which looks just like an apple to all but the most knowledgeable eye but causes a deep sleep in any mammal that consumes one! There are comprehensive 'wandering monster' tables as well, so you can present a mix of new encounters along with more typical ones.

Each of the locations is a delight too, with a whimsical air and plenty for the characters to do in each one. Often, the most successful outcomes do not involve fighting, but there's ample opportunities for anyone looking for a good brawl to find one. Eventually, the characters ought to discover the location of the missing princess (who is, of course, asleep) but in some ways the fun has only just begun, as they now have to return her safely to Castle Morsain and sort everything out there!

Quite a lot of effort has gone into ensuring that you have resources to deal with whatever approach the characters come up with for dealing with irate royalty and scheming nobles, giving ample opportunity for combat and particularly intrigue as they attempt to set things to rights. There is also the delightfully embarassing possibility of the princess having fallen madly in love with one of the characters along the way...

Overall, the Snow White adventure is a true joy and delight and well worth a look if you like to mix a little whimsey and a touch of classic fairy stories into standard fantasy adventuring. Beautifully presented and well resourced with hyperlinked stat blocks, maps and more, the two parts of this adventure are worthy of consideration.

This adventure presents some interesting quirks, and is best run for a group of characters who have already become well-known in the area through particpation on earlier adventures.

It begins with some unseasonal bad weather, storms so severe that waterborne traffic has ceased. Although it doesn't suggest this, if you are running this as part of a campaign set in and around Rybalka, you might want to have the bad weather start during the previous adventure rather than suddenly announce that it's stormy. When an experienced sea captain shows up dead, his battered corpse tied to a shipping crate and floating into the harbour, the characters are asked to investigate...

The adventure starts rather slowly although there is an interesting scene involving a potentially-hostile mob - and which occasions the presentation of ways in which you can handle a mob scene. One suggestion is to handle them as a swarm, dispersing when they reach a notional 'zero hit points' (although no damage is actually taken, unless someone starts a brawl).

Eventually, things get moving and the characters are in for some rough times at sea... and it is not plain sailing once they reach their destination, either. There are a few dangers and opportunities to gain information and items that may help along the way, and characters need to be wary: attacking first and asking questions later may leave them in the dark about what is going on.

Once they reach the end of their quest, the characters are faced with a number of potentially deadly traps and encounters. Finding their way to their ultimate goal will not be easy... but there are some delights along the way. The outcome is not clear, although there are quite a few suggestions about what could follow.

Presentation on the whole is at adventureaweek.com's usual high standard, although (particularly in the latter stages) there are long blocks of text with the crucial mechanical bits not very well highlighted; GMs will find that prior study is necessary tp run this adventure effectively. A comprehensive Encounter Index is provided, hyperlinked from the main adventure text and providing stats for both Dungeons & Dragons and Pathfinder rulesets.

Overall, this is a curious adventure. It has the potential to establish the characters as potent adventurers, advancing their reputation and renown far beyond what earlier adventures in this series might have gained them, yet it feels a bit nebulous and less satisfying and does not reach quite the heights of most of adventureaweek.com's work: guess I've been spoiled by their excellence in other works. The underlying concept is good, it falls down somewhat in the execution. Still, it could prove an interesting and quite different mission for an adaptable party - provided that they don't get too seasick in all the storms!