Hell yeah, it does!
The 5e adventure is designed for 4-6 tier 1 characters. I'd say it's appropriate for levels 1-3. Personally I think it'd be a great adventure to kick off a campaign. It's written by Mike Pike and Levi Combs. Throughout the adventure we are treated to work by some PX staples like Ed Bickford, JE Shields, and Cheese Hasselberger, among others.
Unlike previous adventures, Sister Saren starts out with a two page comic that sets up the adventure. The settlement of Crow's Rest is on the edge of the hinterlands. Years ago, to deal with a bandit problem, local priests used a portal found in nearby ruins to summon demons to take care of the bandits. Unfortunately, the demons kept entering the mortal realm until there were a thousand roaming the wilderness. The clergy decided the only way to take care of the problem was to bind the fiends into a pure vessel (the titular Sister Saren). The Sister was partitioned into three parts and embalmed. The clerics took these parts and hid them in various places in the valley. Eventually the parts started decomposing and releasing the demons throughout the valley. The players enter the valley for one reason or another and are recruited by the top priest recruits them to enact a plan he thinks will stop the demons. Though she was accused of witchcraft, Sister Saren was a total innocent and of the priests, at least two have dark hearts. These details and plots allow Levi and Mike to craft a great nunsploitation tale, set against a sandbox background.
They adventure starts with the characters meeting Albrecht, the main priest, in the village of Crow's Rest. There are a lot of roleplay and investigation opportunities here. The characters also have many hexes they can explore, some with specific sites and others ready to be fleshed out by the DM. Handy charts like "Special Locations" and and wandering monster table help with the latter. There are also eight of unique named demons in the adventure. They are presented with a brief encounter idea in a chart early on and fully statted at the end of the book. I LOVE unique fiends and the adventure presents some very cool ones. The great thing about unique fiends is they can be quite memorable without having ridiculously high challenge ratings.
A great feature of the locations players explore is that a DM could just pluck them out and use them in other scenarios. The party will find the lake, no dubbed the Black Lake, has become an unnatural portal to a shadow realm. In this shadow realm the characters will find a dark reflection of the world and Sister Saren's body. There's also a giant skeleton they can face.
Characters can discover the stone circle where the demonic ritual took place. There are also portal ruins. One of my new favorite NPC's, Zig the Ogre Hermit can be found here. If the party befriend him they gain a valuable ally (especially when the investigate the library ruins).
The adventure contains a fully fleshed out goblin warren. The home of the Blackhearts, many of the goblins are enthralled by Sadum, one of the ritual clerics, who's fully turned to the darkness. He has Saren's heart and is prepping the goblins to raid Crow's Rest. There is a faction of goblins that oppose him and the party can play these groups off one another. The warrens are fully fleshed out with a few nice maps and multiple detailed locations. This is the largest subsection of the adventure (taking up 11 of the 60 pdf pages). There are stealth, combat, and roleplaying opportunities here. This section, more than any other, could easily be transported to most games.
The next detailed location is the library ruins (the second most detailed location). Again we are presented with a map with keyed locations. These ruins (along with the portal ones) are connected to an ancient group of planar conjurers. Saren's head can be found among the ruins as well as the body of remorseful cleric Tepin. Zig's cousins can also be found among the ruins and though the party can fight them, there's potential for them to become allies.
There are several ways the adventure can end. Saren can be destroyed, rejoined, or exorcised. Each of will lead to different outcomes. There's also Sadum and the goblins to deal with. Do the party side with him and raze the village or will they stop him (or help the Blackheart Rebellion). Do the party seek to learn more about the ancient conjurers? The adventure can have serious repercussions on your campaign and that makes it more meaningful in my eyes. Hell, even if the party exorcise the poor sister and banish the demons, they've made eternal enemies with the unique fiends.
As far as crunchy bits the adventure gives us three magic items (two of which are unique tomes) and 32 new stat blocks (goblins, demons, ogres, and clergy).
PX Games packed so much great content into this one. It's an excellent adventure as is. There's a great mix of classic rpg tropes and grindhouse-inspired weirdness. Additionally you can cannibalize it and use it over and over. I highly recommend picking this one up when it's released to the public. This weekend I'll do my regular Planet X Games adventure post and discuss how to incorporate this into WotC's traditional campaign settings.
I'm gonna have to check this out
ReplyDelete