Today we are looking at Final Torch #3 – Shards of the Frozen North World by Ross Mahler. This is a mini-setting and hexcrawl including three adventures for levels 1-10. It takes place in a particularly cold corner of the world of Lethalia (bit on the nose, innit?) and also has a starting town, rules for frostbite, a buncha new monsters, treasure, etc etc. How can you have a third final torch?
We start, as is the custom, with a hexcrawl. There are 156 hexes and a whopping 43, or more than 1:4, are keyed. There are a lot of very good ones and some that are really just an entrance to the network of tunnels that runs under the region. But the good ones vastly outweigh the meh ones. For example:
There’s an awful lot of gameplay packed into that one hex. Enough to sustain several sessions. Even though they are not all as fruitful as this one, they typically have an interesting situation to interact with and a tie to one or more of the other hexes. So there’s quite a lot of potential energy to keep the flywheel of your campaign spinning.
Instead of rumors we are given “local legends” that are interesting but a bit general. “Once each full moon, a great bell appears from nowhere. Those brave enough to ring it are forever changed, but no one agrees whether its gifts are blessings”. That’s neat but it doesn’t lead the PCs to anywhere specific. Which is strange because a relevant hex is listed in each of the legends but if you hand them out as-is, its difficult to make the connection between the legend and the location. In my experience you have to beat the players over the head with leads. And although the hexes are interconnected, in many cases there’s not much drawing the party to them. Hex 8214, for example, has corpses with journals leading to the crypt of an ancient king. But I would add a rumor that takes them to that hex. Something like, “Sven said he had found the location of Hrimvald’s crypt, but he went missing right around the spider nests” or whatever. In fact, if I were running this setting I would go through the hexes and make my own rumor table that leads to those with the most gameplay potential and provides some additional direction (in the geographical sense).
Speaking of that interconnectedness, all of the connections are very clear and cross-referenced. Some of the notes are a bit strange (a location with treasure guarded by a level 10 undead is noted as a “good early hex”) but for the most part it’s incredibly useful and easy to navigate. There are a few places where I wish things were fleshed out a tad more, but this would be a good template to follow if you’re planning to publish your own hexcrawl. The author clearly sweat the details on usability and Final Torch #3 shines in that regard.
Following the hexcrawl is a description of the village of Wintermere. Besides a cast of colorful NPCs there is a real focus on usability here, both in terms of conveying information well and also making sure that information is relevant to the PCs and to the game. Just about everyone has an adventure hook of some kind, or something else. Not a lot of words wasted on lore or background unless it can be used at the table. We do get a few words on the appearance and attitude of each NPC. It’s brief, but enough for the GM to riff on.
Which is not to say that it’s dry, because there is still a lot of flavor here. We have dueling monks with identical religions save for the color of caribou they worship and an enchanted snowman selling adventuring gear (but not torches because they’ll melt him). This town section is focused, and provides the GM just what they need to keep things rolling without much else.
It’s a bit optimistic to call this a level 1-10 adventure. The adventures only go up to level 5 and there isn’t enough material in the hexmap to support the amount of adventuring you need to reach those lofty heights. And I’m not saying you need to have pre-written adventures to cover that entire range, but in order to make that claim I think you should include something substantial in each level range. So you’ll need to pad this out quite a bit with adventure sites from other sources, especially at higher levels.
Speaking of adventures, the first is called “Halo Fish Lake” for levels 1-2. It gives the PCs a rescue mission to recover three brothers around a frozen lake. Of course there are hazards, obstacles and monsters along the way, as a well as the ever-present threat of frostbite. Every 15 minutes the GM rolls a check for each brother to see if their condition worsens.
The map presents the adventure as a point crawl, but it’s not really clear how navigation is supposed to work. There’s no description of the starting area, where it would be crucial to drop some clues or visible points of interest that the PCs follow up on. So the GM is going to have to lay down some breadcrumbs to lead the PCs from one point to another. There’s some risk it will turn into a railroad because there aren’t any choices presented to the party about where they will go. A better structure might have been to start the PCs at the fishing hut, with tracks or other clues that lead to each of the brothers. Or at least some information like “Gustav likes to fish on the west side of the lake, but you have to be careful not to spook the bears”.
Each of the brothers is facing a different threat – the aforementioned bear, thin ice, and a crafty troll. The bear is likely to be a fight and the ice will probably be resolved with some DEX checks. At least the troll should be an interesting encounter with some interesting dynamic elements. The other two don’t require much in the way of creativity to resolve in a happy way. Halo Fish Lake is described as a “mini adventure” but even so, it feels a bit undercooked and is missing some important details.
Next up is “Knocking Deep”, a short crawl through a dwarven mine that’s been infested with strange monsters. It is, ostensibly, for levels 2-3 but also provides some guidance on using it up to level 7 by changing the goals from “investigate” to “kill the BBEG”. It could be a site that is visited multiple times.
The setup is that some metal has gone missing from the mine and the party needs to find out where it’s going. Turns out, some subterranean monsters called “Tommyknockers” are stealing it to feed it to their… god? I’m not really clear what their relationship is to the “Ore-Heart” that dwells in the mine, only that they must keep feeding it to keep it from going on a rampage.
The bulk of the dungeon will be traversing some obstacles and environmental hazards (falling icicles, stuck portcullises, etc) while uncovering bits of exposition that explain the situation. No specific area or interaction really stands out, but looking at this location in those terms sort of misses the forest for the trees. The Ore-Heart is a regional-level threat and not something that the PCs will be able to tackle right way (level 16!) and has some weaknesses that they will be able exploit given some preparation and time. Nor will they probably understand the full implications of the situation. Clearing out the mine of “bad guys” will probably make things worse as the now hungry Ore-Hearts goes marauding across the tundra.
The gameplay supported by “Knocking Deep” should, if used properly, support multiple visits and several sessions of play as the PCs suss out what’s really going on in the mine and enlist some aid in dealing with the problem. Running it as a straight dungeon crawl would be a waste, but it will require some planning on the GM’s part to utilize it well.
The third adventure is “Excavation Site” for levels 4-5. Picture H.P. Lovecraft’s “At the Mountains of Madness” but the Elder Things are the aliens from John Carpenter’s The Thing. A group of archaeologists ask the PCs to find survivors from the missing dig team and also recover their research. In this case, the dig team encountered a supernatural doppelganger alien thing called a “Bodythief” frozen in ice and it started killing everyone with the intention of stealing someone’s identity and making its way towards civilization.
Like “Halo Fish Lake”, the location is presented as a pointcrawl and the exact same criticism about navigation applies. Which is to say, there’s no obvious way for the PCs to be led from one place to the next. There’s even an observation tower but no guidance on what is visible from the top. Yes, the GM can figure that out but hey, as long as you’re writing an adventure, write the whole thing.
This might be a moot point because it’s pretty clear the party is intended to go from location to location in order. It’s structured like the stories that inspired it – clues are dribbled out until a confrontation with the unknown as suspension and tensions build. Eventually the total horror of the scenario is revealed during the showdown with the monster. Things might play out a little differently if the Bodythief somehow manages to isolate and kill one of the PCs but it would take some serious machinations on the GM’s part to pull that off. So in order to get the most out of this, the GM will really need to play up the paranoia aspects. There are a couple of very nice tables for creepy landmarks and paranoia events to draw from. Even though the adventure suggests using them in only one area, I would probably be more liberal with their application.
I know it’s not technically possible for a setting that exists outside of any real chronology to have anachronisms but this adventure certainly seems to try as it struggles against the level of technology and societal advancement assumed by Shadowdark RPG. There’s a lovely watercolor cover page where the featured character is wearing an orange parka that looks straight out of a North Face catalog. The entire idea of research teams on an archaeological expedition strains credulity in a setting as dangerous and resource-constrained as what is implied here. Who’s bankrolling this expedition? And why would this find be notable in a world already filled with magical creatures around every corner? Stories like “At The Mountains of Madness” work because people that live in our world encounter something that is completely outside of what they believe is possible. Everyone in the world of Shadowdark probably knows a guy that knows a guy that has been turned into a newt by a bog witch or eaten by a sentient mushroom or whatever. So I think the scenario won’t have the intended impact. Might fit better with something like Mothership.
The book closes with a bunch of adventure seeds including a list of treasures with their respective lore and locations. Great stuff for running a campaign. And that’s the greatest strength of this book – it goes above and beyond in supporting the GM to run a compelling regional setting and to keep things moving from session to session. There will be no excuse for your players to be wondering about where they should go next, except to decide between multiple enticing options.
But I do wish the adventures were a little stronger. You’ll probably want to grab some of your favorite ice and snow-themed adventures to sprinkle in and fill out the setting. But the structure here is very solid, usability is probably as good and as I’ve ever seen and Final Torch #3 sets a high bar for Shadowdark hexcrawls.
On a scale of 2-12, Shards of the Frozen North gets 9 stingbats.
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