Dungeons and Dragons Adventurer Magazine Issue 10

Issue ten includes the final part of the Deadnock Mine Encounter. I really liked the first half, so I'm excited to read further.

Sage Advice

The second part of the article on movement, this time it covers Crawling, Climbing and Swimming. Jumping, including calculating just how far a character can jump, and a bit on riding, both on a mount and in a vehicle.

NPCs offers useful advice for DMs 

Character Creation

The second part of the article on Equipment, looking at some of the more obscure items and some more ready made packs.

Two more backgrounds, the Sage and the Charlatan covering more of the Pre-gens backgrounds.

Lore

Another area, the Sword Mountains and another faction, the Order of the Gauntlet.

Dice

The dice set this issue issue is a set of small metal dice.  These are great, they a nice weight to them.  

Conclusion

We are getting more part two's of articles, which is useful. Careful examination shows that these are rules and guidelines that weren't really necessary for earlier Encounters, though not in every case (I'd suggest that the NPC article would be useful far earlier for example). 

I have to keep reminding myself that the rather scattergun approach will be ironed out as pages are put into their correct order in folders.

The dice are lovely, probably justifying the issue on their own.  On the other hand the Encounter is not my favourite (see below).

Encounter Deadnock Mine part two

Last issue we left the PCs about to enter the second half of the mine, possibly riding in mine carts. What is waiting further down the line?

There is a large central cavern and several smaller caves containing goblins. These are set up as combat encounters. The main encounter is with the goblins' leader, a Nilbog and his unwilling audience. If they aren't careful, the adventurers may end up participating, so to complete their quest they need to defeat him.

And that it. The main encounter is titled Feywild Grotto, but there is no mention of the strange temporal slip that the dwarves were victims of.  This is a shame, as at a rate of one day equals one month, even an hour in here will have some noticeable effect once the PCs leave the mine.

I found this to be an underwhelming encounter, partly because I felt the first part promised much. There are always going to be bits of published adventures that individual DMs feel could be better or that don't work for their world/players/themselves, but often this is simply due to different groups finding different fun. This time there were so many missed opportunities that I'm

One issue is the lack of space. With just three pages, or six sides, there's always going to be stuff that isn't covered, and improvising mid game is an important skill for any DM. However, the way this Encounter is presented is very wasteful of space. The first side is given over to a lovely picture of some adventurers in a cave. I think this is taken from an already published book as it doesn't feature the Pre-gens. There is a brief summary of part one, which I suppose might be useful if the DM missed issue nine, otherwise, once the pages are snuggled up in an Adventures folder all nicely in order, its irrelevant.

There's a nice bit of original artwork showing the adventurers in a mine cart, emphasising the potential fun there, (and indeed they can use the cart to bypass the first group of goblins on this level) then the rest of the rather dull adventure. 

The stats for the Nilbog take up one a half sides (details of the Nilbog's spells are included, and it's nice to have them ready for use). However, the picture of the creature takes up at least half a side, a smaller picture and slight layout changes could have condensed this to one side. 

Worse to come, the back side is a repeat of the Goblin stat block from the previous issue.  Several of the Encounters have referred back to earlier stat blocks, so its not as if this couldn't have been done here.

There are other issues, such as the lack of details on using the mine cart, how fast does it go?  How easy is it to stop or redirect it?  The Feywild Grotto is described as having glowing crystals, stalagmites and wooden platforms, yet none of these are shown on the map, again, requiring DM improvisation (not in itself a bad idea, but this is supposed to be teaching new DMs, and it's quite important to the running of the adventure).

In conclusion we have a disappointing Encounter that promised much but lacked the space to develop them properly, yet two and a half sides were wasted space. I'm baffled by this, as it makes a potentially great scenario much the poorer.