Viridian Legacy: The Wasting of Duny Slough (PFRPG) PDF

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Life in Duny Slough has always been hard. On the frontier of land that falls within the protectorate of Mor Aldenn, Duny Slough is deep within the Spindlewood Marsh, moving deeper each season. Annually with the thawing of winter, the huts and wicker-halls of Duny Slough are rebuilt atop one of the marsh's great peat bogs. Peat is then harvested until the first frost, when the village is again abandoned, only to be rebuilt in a new location the following spring. The gleaners of Duny Slough, mostly halflings, are no strangers to hardship so deep in the Spindlewood Marsh. Regular encounters with savage lizardfolk tribes and gargantuan serpents are commonplace and there is always the threat of bog giants, witches and their familiars, hags, and worse. The gleaners endure as they always have, their peat fertilizes fields and lights hearthfires throughout the region, their way of life a delicate balance of industry and adventure.

"The Wasting of Duny Slough" is the first chapter of the Viridian Legacy Adventure Path. Viridian Legacy takes place in the world of Mor Aldenn, City of Mages. Though all the information needed to run this adventure is contained here, additional resources for the setting are available in the Mor Aldenn Setting Guide. Though this adventure can serve as a stand-alone adventure in any home campaign, its primary purpose is to introduce players to the Mor Aldenn campaign setting, and it's assumed the players and GM are interested in exploring this setting throughout the Viridian Legacy Adventure Path.

40 pages, written by Thomas Baumbach and Ron Lundeen, with a shortstory by Jason Kimble. Cover by Felipe Gaona, interior by Bruno Balixa and Carlos Torreblanca. Maps by James Hazelett.

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Excellent module, but sans player maps, bookmarks and printer-friendly version

4/5

The first installment of Headless Hydra Games' Viridian Legacy AP for the Mor Aldenn campaign setting is 40 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page SRD and 1 page advertisement, leaving us with 36 pages of content, so let's check this out!

This being an adventure-review, the following contains SPOILERS. Potential players may wish to jump to the conclusion.

All right, still here? The pdf kicks off rather interestingly, with a narrative that gives one great insight into the last days of Huansol, one of the legendary Exalted Champions, a legendary adventuring group that once were the celebrated protectors and scions of the City of Mages Mor Aldenn. If you're GM planning to run the AP, be sure to check out the FREE Viridian Legacy GM's guide, for the AP centers around the fate of said legendary group and the intelligent magic items that are their legacy. While most of the AP will be focused on Mor Aldenn (more on that in the excellent city-setting, also by Headless Hydra-games), this module is set in a more rural environment, to be precise, the peat bog harvesting town of Duny's Slough, located in the outskirts of the dreaded Spindleflow Marsh. To get the PCs to Spindleflow Marsh, multiple hooks are provided, but what are they supposed to do there?

Well, Duny Slough has had an alliance with the local kobold population of the swamp for quite a while - mutually beneficial and all, but things have changed and the changes started with a small discovery - an ancient tomb was found in the bog and opened by a group of halfling explorers. Inside rested the remains of aforementioned exalted champion and the breaching of the ancient seal alerted the legendary Wyrmmother to the potential that the cloak of one of her ancient foes might fall into the hands of others. Her spirit reached out across the swamp and when undead rose and forced them to retreat from the site. Worse, the spirit reached to one particular disgruntled hag-servant of the legendary Night Hag and touched here - inspiring a plan to send her coven to sleep never-ending and bewitching K'Tchak, kobold druid and erstwhile ally of Duny Slough's residents. Erstwhile, since he is driven by the enchantment to get the cloak of the Exalted Champion and incite his people into confrontation with the excavators and by proxy, Duny Slough. Worse, not content to let them survive, the bog hag enacts a cursed disease on the halfling explorer, sending them into a mysterious spiral of plague-ridden decline. Enter the PCs.
Duny Slough, the halfling village with its bridges, erected in the middle of the marsh in need of heroes and a full-color map as well as extensive information for researching the recent troubles. Now what the PCs don't know is that the clock is ticking down...FAST. They only have 3 days before the encampment of the remaining halflings is overrun and 6 days to prevent utter failure from striking! They better hurry along the wicker paths and towards the kobold encampment, hopefully not resorting to overt violence versus the small reptiles. If they get lured into the swamp, they'll lose precious time and indeed, each encounter has some option to gain haste points - by not pursuing fleeing foes, by not falling for a clerverly set up false path, by defeating an encounter (like an immature assassin vine or a bog ooze) in less than 3 rounds, by marching through the night etc. Depending on the Haste Points they have accumulated, the PCs will have a different situation on their hands when arriving at the tomb:

Besieged by 16 kobold marhsrunners, the encampment at the tomb could still be remaining firmly entrenched by the kobolds - or even ablaze, for K'Tchak plans to ignite the bog and smoke out the halflings. And bog fires are hard to put out... If the PCs are particularly fast, they may even have the time to talk to the halfling explorers and explore the tomb prior to the kobold siege. Speaking of interesting territory - the sludge-covered tomb is haunted by disturbing effigies that guard the place and if the PCs manage to overcome these, they may actually get their hand of the mythic cloak. Sooner or later, the PCs will find the poor shaman K'Tchak, inflicted with the same wasting sickness as the halfling gleaners and might follow him to the bog hag and perhaps determine that he's under an enchantment - to the lair of mastermind Caragma, a huge bog willow. Exploring the tunnels in the larger than life tree and vanquishing its guardians (including more bog oozes, a pugwampi, a giant leech, marshlings, flying infernal kobolds and finally, the bog hag herself. The PCs get a chance to end the plague she's conjured from her cauldron, end the threat of her sleeping sisters -well, and have a nice cliffhanger, for when the hag dies, the Night Hag herself possesses the body of the traitor bog hag and utters some cryptic revelations and threats before letting the meat puppet slump to the floor.

Having saved Duny Slough from plague and conflict with the kobolds, the PCs have thus a chance to solve the module without killing K'Tchak and his ilk before they return to Mor Aldenn to research the strange magical cloak they've found...and that's only the beginning, with two of the most powerful threats of the city watching them...waiting. For now.

The module also provides a short gazetteer of Duny Slough and stats for the new monsters featured, these being: The CR 4 Bog Hag, the CR 1/3 Flying Kobold (called Kuba) and the CR 1 Marschlings -all with beautiful b/w-artworks.

Conclusion:
Editing and formatting are top-notch, I didn't notice any glitches. The module's layout adheres to HHG's beautiful 2-column standard in full color, with the 3 also rather beautiful maps coming in full color as well. The artworks are b/w and universally belong to the higher tier of artwork-class, i.e. they are beautiful to behold. Not all is great in the area of formal criteria, though: We get no keyless maps of the adventure-locations to hand out to the players, which is a dman pity since the maps are aesthetically pleasing. The second major gripe I have with the module is that is has no bookmarks - at this length, this is simply not up to standard and makes navigation unnecessarily hard on the DM. Also, you should know that at over 50 mb, this file is not particularly tablet-friendly and that we get no printer-friendly version sans background/borders, which is yet again a minor detrimental factor.

Lack of bookmarks, no player-friendly maps, no printer-friendly version, large file size - come on, Headless Hydra Games! You can do so much better than that! This, honestly, pisses me off. Why? Because this is a great module. Seriously, it has an awesome wilderness trek, diplomacy, a unique village and a cool, iconic, exciting final dungeon as well as the cool haste-mechanics. The author-duo Ron Lundeen (of Run Amok Games fame) and Thomas Baumbach have created a stellar module that would score easy and glowing 5 stars + seal of approval, but the sloppy formal criteria make it impossible for me to give the rating that this awesome module deserves. Instead I have to grit my teeth and acknowledge all those minor gripes accumulating to the point where I can't rate this higher than 4 stars. Please, HHG, update this module. I want to give it the glowing recommendation it deserves.

Endzeitgeist out.


Contributor

Now available!


Any chance for a content breakdown?
Expected levels (is it a 1-16 levels AP)?
Expected party composition?

The description of a locale is pretty climactic, I would like to know a little more about the genre, the length of each of particular part etc.

Regards,
Ruemere


Hey Ruemere, thank you for taking an interest in our new adventure path! I can recommend checking out our two free products, the Viridian Legacy Player's Guide and GM's Guide, which should give you the answer to some of your questions.

The idea is that each chapter should give the PCs a level, so by chapter 12, they should be around level 13 and ready for the great finale.

This adventure path is centered around Mor Aldenn - the City of Mages, and is designed to give the PCs insight into this setting. They start outside the city, in a very dangerous and famous plocation called the Spindlewood Marsh, but quickly move into the city itself. During the various chapters, the PCs are also "forced" to travel to the surrounding lands in search of answers and even visit a couple of extremely fantastical locations, like a dream/ghost world and even get to do some time travel (I should probably have screamed spoiler alert here... so I hope you are thinking of running the adventure path).

The basic idea is that the PCs follow in the footsteps of the Exalted Champions, haunted by the past in the form of the Cult of the Wyrmmother. They are actually looking to find the bones of the wyrmmother, before the cult finds them... if the cult finds them, they will be able to summon the Wyrmmother who will wreck havoc on Mor Aldenn. However, there are many forces at work here, like the demi-god, Grey, and perhaps even Mor Aldenn's greatest enemy, the Night Hag.

During their adventures, the PCs unlock the mystery of the Legacy of the Exalted Champions, which are basically, a bunch of really cool intelligent items that the PCs gets to experience up close.

You wont find a chapter-by-chapter breakdown, but the GM's Guide will explain all the background information about the Exalted Champions and their past deeds, along with presenting their Legacy.

I hope you'll give it a chance.

- Axel

Liberty's Edge

bought this and past stuff. Using it with my kingmaker stuff. it fits real well where mivon is in the river kingdoms. just slide mivon over to fill in the area above galt, that if you match the maps up needs to be filled.

I am enjoying your products and hope to soon use one of the green cults cr 9 encounter on my players who just killed a green dragon right before i got the gm guide.
I hope that y'all come out with these chapters pretty quick. if this had been out 3 months ago i would have used in my starting of kingmaker from the south game. will definitely start adding these to my world though.


Thanks jjaamm, I appreciate the compliments! What any publisher and writer wants to hear is that his products are being used in games... this is what we make the work for.

I could have published this 2 months ago, but I also have a real job and this is just a hobby of mine, however, we are working hard at making chapter 2 and 3 available soon.

You should also expect a small monster book from Headless Hydra Games... soon.

- Axel


Very interesting.

I'll have a look.

Regards,
Ruemere

Contributor

ruemere wrote:

Very interesting.

I'll have a look.

Regards,
Ruemere

Please do, and let us know what you think!


And reviewed here, on DTRPG, sent to GMS magazine and submitted my review to Nerdtrek. Cheers!


Well, these days I have to think about how to best use my time, End, adding bookmarks, making a printer-friendly version, player-friendly maps and a pdf of "reasonable" size will take me much longer than its worth. Nothing, as you may know, is free. Bookmarks and player-friendly maps would cost more, and a printer-friendly pdf and a better size would have meant at least 3 more weeks of work.

Sadly, the state of 3pp is pretty bad and I can tell you that none of Headless Hydra Games' products have ever made the money back that I spent on them, so all this work I do with little to gain from it, which is absolutely fine by me, I just love it, but to expect me to make a 100% professional product, when I am a 100% amateur, is maybe not fair at all.

So, while it may piss you off that these minor things are missing, it's an absolutely necessity for me. I would gladly go the extra mile, if it was even remotely worth it, but sadly it isn't.

So, sorry to piss you off, but I'll be glad to settle for a (somewhat sour) 4-star review. In all honesty, I think you are trying to make a statement here, with your rhetoric, instead of acknowledging all the work that has actually gone into this fairly cheap product. Not many 3pp would deliver a product of this high quality, with such beautiful maps and artwork and incredible writing.

But... thanks for the review. I am glad that you liked the adventure.

Contributor

Endzeitgeist wrote:
And reviewed here, on DTRPG, sent to GMS magazine and submitted my review to Nerdtrek. Cheers!

Thanks, End, for the review!


Brekkil, I'm sorry to hear that your products are not selling that much and I'm even more sorry my rhetoric rubbed you the wrong way - I consider the "Wasting of Duny Slough" a great module only held back by the lack of bookmarks/player-friendly maps etc. I completely get that you don't do this for gain or profit and thus don't wish to/can't spend as much time on it.

The thing is, I can't use two different kinds of rating systems for "professionals" and "amateurs" (whether there is such a thing as "Professional" in 3pp is debatable) and if a given module that would otherwise be stellar has shortcomings, I feel obliged to mention them, even if I'd rather concentrate on the positive side of things.

I did write that I'd love "to write the glowing recommendation the module deserves" and content-wise I did. If anything, I did not want to kick you in the teeth, but rather motivate you to further improve and make this module truly gleam. I'm sorry it didn't work.

All the best,
EZG


I dont want another system for amateurs, because frankly, I think my products can stand there with the best of them (like paizo), but as you know products from various 3pp come in different chapes, from people who use no art, to people who use clipart and to publishers, such as myself, who ALWAYS spend a lot of money on new and beautiful artwork. Even though we are rated the same, you could give a product without artwork or one using clipart, a 5-star review. So, either you dont care that much for new art, colour covers, maps etc., or you do indeed have two standards from which you rate.

You've mentioned these things before, and if I could, I would provide these things, but I dont have the money to buy professional programs which to make my products and must therefore rely on open source programs, such as scribus.

And as far as player-friendly maps and a printer-friendly version goes, if this has become the standard then I am awfully sorry, because I certainly dont have the money for these. Some cartographers might provide a map without numbers and labels, but to make an entire book without any backgrounds, illustrations and maps, that would require much more work, as you can't just remove them, you have to make a whole new layout.

You know that I value your oppinion and all the work that you put into a review, but yes, your last section did indeed rub me the wrong way because I think it was quite unfair. I believe that this product has things that more than outweighs the few negative things about the product.

- axel


Again, I apologize if my review rubbed you the wrong way. It is still a 4-star review. Yes, the writing is 5-star level, I mentioned that.

And yes, your cartography is superb. The thing is, this superb cartography doesn't help me if I can't show it to my players without breaking immersion. As far as I know, there are layers for pdfs and when making maps, you could make the numbers/trap signs one layer of the map. 0onegames is famous for their layered maps and several other publishers do it just like that or include a numberless version of the maps at the end of their product.

And yes, I have rated clipart-books 5-stars, since it did not impede me using the book, which the lack of player-friendly maps in an adventure does. The same goes for bookmarks: I don't complain about 4-page pdfs having no bookmarks, but full-blown modules should have them. I even complained about that and rated down the Slumbering Tsar-installments that lacked them.

So no, I don't have different standards for products per se, I have different standards for TYPES of product. I'd e.g. loudly and vocally complain about monster-pdfs with bad artwork or none at all and the quality of artwork factures in my final verdict.

This is a beautiful module, but there's no print option, so I can only buy the pdf. This means I have to print it out. Which drains my printer more than it should due to the lack of a printer-friendly version. I could run it on my laptop instead, but navigation is less than optimized due to the lack of bookmarks. No matter how I try to look at it, that's a mayor flaw in my book and one I feel that impedes my enjoyment of the module. If the file was at least bookmarked, I would have grumbled about the player-friendly maps and settled for a final verdict of 4.5 and rounded up.

Perhaps a layout with layers (like the one of the Zeitgeist AP by EN Publishing) would be an option? The layout is still beautiful, but if you want, you can strip background, borders etc. and print out just text, all without having to do 2 layouts.

I still stand by my verdict and don't consider it unfair and I hope you don't take this personally. Since you seem to have taken personal offense regarding my rhetoric, I do apologize for that. It was neither my intention, nor my desire to attack you in any way.

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