Peril in Freeport (PFRPG) PDF

This pdf is 69 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page SRD, 1 page back cover, leaving 65 pages of content, so let's check this adventure (anthology) out!

Peril in Freeport is actually a series of short adventures that build upon each other and are connected via a metaplot, each of which can be run in approximately a session -an interesting approach that has not yet been done for the City of adventure, at least to my knowledge. This being an adventure review, the following will contain massive SPOILERS. Potential players should jump to the conclusion.

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All right, Peril in Freeport's basic premise is that once, a war raged under water. In said war, a hero of the sea-elves sacrificed his life to bury a spawning ground of infernal aquatic monstrosities and entomb them forever. Now, a coven of hags is utilizing its allies and minions to kidnap people to enslave them and have them excavate said spawning ground, which has the unfortunate byproduct of rather unsubtle sea-quakes, the first of which hits Freeport in the first part of the series.

In the wake of the approaching tidal wave and the chaos that ensues, the players will have the opportunity to track and catch some wanted fugitives as well as help some common folk endangered by the tidal wave, hopefully gaining the trust of sergeant Yarrick by tracking aforementioned fugitives through a tailor's shop and finally hunt them down before they escape Freeport. I really liked the tidal wave as an environmental hazard and backdrop for this section.
In the next chapter, the PCs rescue a halfling from a floating barrel and being eaten by a giant moray eel and represents the only one who has managed to elude a merrow-attack on his erstwhile vessel, the tradewind. Hiring the PCs, he wants them to find his familiy and save them from the brute's clutches. After reaching and exploring the vessel (the PCs will have fun with creatures on the way), the PCs witness an attack by a merrow warband and hopefully track them back to their mostly submerged little base. After rescuing the folk there and finding some piece of evidence, the PCs can determine the name of a collaborator with the aquatic brutes and upon their return to Freeport, hopefully bring justice to this scoundrel.

In the wake of the close-down of the rather unpleasant Safe Passage company, the halfling Glinder Fontonry stumbles across irregularities in the ledgers (which are provided as a handout - commendable!) just as a former business associate pops up. Quick-thinking PCs might track the slave trader, confront them and via them, find an island inhabited by ogres and their hell hound pets and hopefully rescue more enslaved from the degenerate brutes.

This year's Great Hunt takes place on the high seas due to 3 different vessel being capsized by a dread tentacled horror, a fiendish giant squid. Preventing their vessel from capsizing due to sea quakes while fighting the squid. This might make for some rather interesting battle situations.

After dealing with the squid, the PCs are contacted by a nixie while lounging in a bar - after the obligatory brawl, the PCs venture out to a reef to infiltrate an aboleth-lair and kill their way through this most powerful of the coven's allies and attain a scroll that finally fits them in on the whole background story.
The final chapter has the PCs attack the ogre-staffed stronghold of the coven and finally a showdown with the hags - the last of which escapes through a portal to the spawning ground to unleash the fiendish offspring on the oceans. The PCs will be hard pressed to stop the hag while being hounded by the dread sharks and squids. One of the problems of this showdown is that we don't get any information on the positions of said creatures apart from the hag.
The pdf has the NPCs and creatures in the back, a page of sample nautical encounters, and comes with extensive maps: We get a map of the tailor shop, of the wreck of the Tradewinds, the merrow lair, the safe passage, the slaver ship, the ogre island, the ogre camp, the dame fortune, a tavern, an alchemist's shop, the aboleth's lair, the hag's lair and finally the depths. We also get 3 handouts as well as a rather half-hearted 1-page write-up of the new half-ogre race.

Conclusion:
Editing and formatting are still ok, although e.g. in the last encounter, the amount of creatures is missing from the write-up and I noticed some glitches. Layout adheres to a 2-column standard and the adventure features an used parchment background makes for a rather strange read due to the font: I don't know why, but the no-frills font feels oddly out of place in the otherwise beautiful layout. The artworks are mostly b/w and nothing special, the amount of cartography provided, though, is awesome. On the whole, I am quite torn about this module: On the one hand there are some rather interesting ideas and environmental hazards and fighting under-water is something not seen too often. On the other hand, this adventure feels like a mostly unrelated sequence of encounters held together by a rather flimsy overarching plot and fails to evoke any true sense of urgency. The foes we encounter are rather run-of-the-mill as well and for example the aquatic aberration falls a bit short of its presumed intelligence in the planning of its defense. Furthermore, the unique 3-dimensional aspects of under-water combat are largely ignored and environmental complications are mostly absent from the adventure.

In the end, I kept on reading and occasionally thinking "good idea", but my final impression was unfortunately a total "meh". The plot simply is not exciting in its narrative as the PCs essentially travel from A to B to clear out monster lairs at the behest of NPCs without the action feeling like there's anything truly at stake. The final encounter, which could have been AWESOME with information on the monsters, is rather disappointing - while the PCs should take out the BBEG and then frantically try to escape, there is no real information on the particulars of the tactical situation,, which is a major bummer. In the end, this adventure is not truly bad, as there are some nice ideas herein. It is, though also far away from being an interesting or captivating set encounters and does not feel particularly tied to Freeport or its canon and thus ultimately commits a cardinal sin - being bland. In fact, it would easily work (and possibly even better) with a generic harbor town. While I'd love to rate this higher, I still feel like had I known what to expect, I wouldn't have bought this adventure. It is just boring and the least exciting Freeport adventure I've read to date. My final verdict will be 1.5 stars due to the amount of handouts and cartography, rounded up to 2 stars for the purpose of this platform.

Endzeitgeist out.