The infamous and much derided N2 - The Forest Oracle

"A group of  seven men approaches. They are following the road east, and are making good time, neither tarrying nor running.  Their faces are expressionless. One is dressed as a cleric of some sort, and another is dressed as a travelling drummer. The others could be peasants or serfs going from one location to another for the harvest season. Each carries some sort of weapon. It is plain they are not soldiers by their haphazard way of walking. They do not seem to be joking loudly or singing as they advance."

A paragraph to strike fear into the heart of any D&D player of a certain age.

I'll dispense with formalities for this one - this is not a review. In case you were wondering I'd give this module 1/10.  Because the cover is green.  And I rather like green.  And a couple of the interior pieces of art are ok - I guess - sort of.

 N2 The Forest Oracle was published by TSR in 1984.  The N signified the 'Novice' series, aimed at beginning players and DMs.  The 1st module in the series was N1 Against the Cult of the Reptile God, which while being an excellent adventure, was one of THE most unsuitable to have a 'Novice' tag, as it required skilled DMing and an extremely alert party in order to work! N2 was written by Carl Smith and featured cover art by Keith Parkinson, interior art by Jeff Easley, and maps by 'Diesel'. With those 3 illustrious names it's sure to be pretty..right?  Wrong.  It marks the nadir for all 3.  The cover image is laughable, the interior art mostly feels rushed, and the maps?  Well they are at least readable, however they are utterly uninspiring, and the location numbers don't even correspond to the module text!

But it was not the maps and artwork that ensured this module's place in D&D folklore. Oh no.  Glancing inside the cover at the map region map, one's attention is drawn to the map key.  Which contains not 1, but 3 grammatical mistakes and spelling errors.  There's an editor mentioned in the credits, I'm hoping she did the work for free!  Inside the module it gets no better.  From the heavy handed writing style, inclusion of irrelevant stats, omission of relevant stats, and seeming obliviousness to the most basic of AD&D rules, this module veers from one car crash to another.

And that's ignoring the absurdity of many of the encounters and the utterly dreadful descriptions, the most famous of which I have quoted above. Verbatim.  And below I have pasted the DM's blurb for this encounter:

 

 

Where to begin?  What's the point of the '% in lair' stat for this encounter?  1-6 Hit Dice? 1-6 damage with a Sword+1? No xp value?  No THAC0?  The UK modules by this time had this useful info in their encounter stats.  What armour are they wearing?  AC 7, is that Studded leather, or Leather and Shield, and if so why is their movement rate only 6'?  And then there's the bit about surprise...  absolute drivel.

So the 1st main encounter in the adventure is crap, surely it has to get better?  Erm. Nope. We move on to Evan, the Sleeping Forester, and his desperate lover, the Nymph Chloe.  Alas she cannot wake him from his enchanted slumber because he has drunk the cursed water of the lake.  So how do the party wake him?  By shaking him of course. Duh! Oh and as their reward Chloe gives them the antidote to the Lake's spell.  She had it all along!  But she was desperate?  And couldn't wake her lover? What?  And there are more problems in the stats.  Evan is listed is level 3, but has 2 Hit Dice, does 2-7 damage with his axe, but owns a Longbow and a Dagger.  At least they didn't give you his '% in lair' stat, or make up more new surprise rules for this encounter.

Next up we visit Wildwood Inn, run by Bolo the Halfling, a roguish type who is now going straight - according to the text.  And yet he is oblivious to a band of Wererats who frequent his inn, make use of secret doors to rob sleeping patrons, and despite his shady past he cannot put 2 and 2 together to work out what is happening?  And by the way, these Wererats seem to have an infinite supply of Sleep spells, despite not being spellcasters, or possessing any items which grant this ability.

The Inn is mentioned later on the in the module, but with a different name.. was Bolo so embarrassed that he changed it, or did the editor not spot that clanger either?

We are currently on Page 7, there are 25 more to go. And thus the adventure bounces from one pointless absurd location to another, with plentiful dollops of railroading, imbecilic opponents,and ridiculous situations. The writing never improves, the encounter stats remain inconsistent (an insane dwarf with Int 14, Wis 15??).  At least the boxed text is consistent - it is abysmal throughout.

As I said earlier, some of the artwork is ok.  At least these look like 'proper' Orcs.  Sadly the actual Orc encounters are just as stupid as the ones I described above.

To make matters worse, the adventure is one long clumsy railroad.  Should the party choose to deviate from the obvious tracks there are Gypsies armed with Charm spells to bring them back into line.

The Forest Oracle is a mess of a module.  My kids could write a better one, and they don't play RPGs!  It would take a DM with great skill and patience to polish this turd.  I am not that DM, thus I have never run it, and I never will.

The N series would continue with N3 Destiny of Kings and and N4 Treasure Hunt, both of which were passable, and genuine Novice adventures.  It would end with N5, Under Illefarn, which I dislike - mainly because it is set in the Forgotten Realms.  I'm just a biased old grump.

Call of Cthulhu - Dead Light: Surviving One Night Outside of Arkham

The page organisation is getting a bit silly, so it makes sense for me to start putting my reviews as general blog posts.  Maybe I should have thought of that a few years ago?  Ah well, hindsight is a wonderful thing.  And quite of a few of the characters in this scenario for Call of Cthulhu would say the say thing... if they were still alive...

Dead Light is written by Alan Bligh for Call of Cthulhu 7th edition and was published in 2013.  I'm reviewing the original release, though it has been revised and reissued as part of 'Dead Light & Other Dark Turns'.  From reading comments about the reissue, it seems some of the criticisms I have of the original release have already been addressed.  This is one of the 1st Cthulhu scenarios I ran, I dabbled with the game as a player for 4 or 5 years before I tried my hand as Keeper, and I've not looked back since then!

This version of the scenario came as an attractive 32 page booklet, adorned with a suitably spooky piece of cover art.  But when opened it is disappointing that so much of the page count feels like fluff.  Only pages 3 to 18 are specific story material, the rest consists of large full page spread for each of the NPCs, and copious notes on converting between editions of the Call of Cthulhu game, along with 3 pages of adverts.  Yes, it's padding, and that's largely because the adventure is rather short.

Dead Light centres on a stormy night in the woods outside Arkham - though it could easily be substituted for a forested location in any part of the world, as there is nothing that really ties it to Arkham.  The investigators are trying to make their way home by car, their progress being hampered by the conditions outside, such is the ferocity of the storm.  Suddenly a young girl runs into the road, and a sordid tale begins to unfold.

 The plot of Dead Light isn't particularly original, apart from the unsavoury twist at the end, but it does work - especially as an introductory scenario for relatively inexperienced Keepers and Players.  The NPC characters that are involved are varied and interesting, and kept to a suitable number making it easy for the Keeper to keep track of.  The scenario is also nicely confined to a small area - yes the storm is a well-used trope - but it does a good job of ensuring the action stays focussed.

Where Dead Light really shines is the ease with which it can be adapted, or dropped into a game at almost any time.  That's also why it works well as a campaign introduction.  The only background you need is a reason for the investigators to be travelling between 2 places - that's it!  As the main foe is not tied into the mythos, no knowledge of Lovecraft's work is needed either.  It also gets the survival horror tone just right.  The variety of NPCs, some pleasant, some gross, provides the Keeper with an ideal number of 'redshirts' with which to demonstrate the power of the Dead Light, and thus the desperate nature of their situation.  They might not shed a tear when drunken lout Jake gets consumed, but if the loveable elderly Teddy and Winifred get reduced to mush then that's altogether more disturbing.

Dead Light might be a short scenario - I've run it a few times and typically found it to last 5 to 6 hours - but it's an entertaining and exciting one.  It's also more than a little frustrating, suffering from a problem that blights far too many Call of Cthulhu scenarios - one where florid writing seems to be considered more important than general functionality.  The layout of the adventure is horribly disjointed, there's no summary, no expected event timeline, no index and no handouts - highly frustrating when so much space is wasted on adverts, conversion notes, and oversized NPC profiles. I know some of these have been corrected with the more recent release - this needed to happen.

And the reason why the edited reissue needed to happen?  As far as entertaining one shot adventures, campaign starters, or introductions for new players go, Dead Light is one of the best adventures I've come across.  The balance of NPCs and the way the tension builds as the scenario progresses are absolutely spot on.  Its story is straightforward and shocking. Perfect for a stormy night spent gaming.

RATING 8/10
A great, albeit short scenario for the best RPG in the world.  Yeah, the version I have was in desperate need of proper editing and reorganisation, but it looks like Chaosium have done that - buy the reissue :)