The second review of The Hanging Garden after I actually Labyrinth Lorded it

Here is the original review in my blog http://cryptofrabies.blogspot.fi/2014/05/review-hanging-garden.html

What I noticed, adventures read differently than they play. I mean, I did like the adventure but it didn't yell awesome. But when I ran it using Labyrinth Lord for my girlfriend's Elf and her NPC crew I actually enjoyed the adventure a lot. And so did she!

The adventure was damn easy to run. I am not very experienced running pre-made adventures of other people in my games, so this was a success. I did not struggle a bit and everything went extremely smooth. And I didn't suffer those oops wait a second, I forgot there's this and you can't be there yet because moments.

+1 for the adventure being extremely simple to run.

But the adventure did need some preparation time using random table to generate those spoiler hidden. It was fun though and I think this table could be re-used later. Maybe even to re-skin those spoiler hidden into other monsters.

+1 for this neat little tool.

Also adventure hooks were damn simple. Adventurers want to adventure, right. I used two of the six rumors in one tavern (don't adventures start at tavern) when two guys were talking and arguing what is going on. Both rumors were naturally wrong but not that far off. As in something suspicious and bad is going on.

+1 for rumors here.

Hojo from Final Fantasy VII became
Erymos Elmyndmor of Hanging Gardens!

The bad professor dude wasn't described that well leaving me a lot of space. I wanted the finale not only being rolling-dice-and-hitting-stuff and wanted the professor to be someone. So I googled "fantasy professor" and chose the first what showed up. That's the picture on the left.

Then I put some Final Fantasy and j-rpg style combat music playing in background and the mood was damn prefect! The professor was so j-rpg mad fantasy scientist and those monsters were so j-rpg/Biohazard mutants. Loved the scene and combat!

And player did too. When Erymos was defeated there was a scene in Anime fashion. Dying professor in character's hand being all moody and stuff.

EPIC!

And my player left the place moody and feeling unhappy about killing the professor. Success!

I say, download this adventure (HERE) and run it for your group. Then run here and tell how it went! I am very, very curious to hear other Referees' experiences with this adventure. Because as I said, I am new to pre-mades.

So to wrap this up:

• I liked this
• Easy and simple to run
• Player liked it
• Fun monster generator

Review: The Hanging Garden

This is a 4-page version of an one-page-dungeon by Richard LeBlanc. Link to the product: http://savevsdragon.blogspot.fi/2014/05/free-oe1ebx-mini-adventure-hanging.html

The first thing to catch the eye is the picture chosen for the cover of hanged fallen grail knights. Really evocative piece of art by Arthur Rackham. But let's see what is inside...

The story of the adventure is simple. Orcs taking people captive. There's a nice 1d6 rumor table with various equally good rumors what villagers think is going on and why orcs are doing this. Also a beaming light is seen...

It is extremely easy for the characters to find the right way to the adventure location if they choose to find out what is going on. In the adventure there will be many orc encounters.

I like how in the area descriptions characters and monsters are in bold, so those are easy to spot reading the text. Unfortunately most of the rooms are a little dull. Not necessarily in a bad way, as this is quite generic fantasy adventure. But maybe that is a point, as there are also weirder monsters around and for them one full page is dedicated with random generators.

This is a simple easy to run adventure to put in any fantasy campaign. The dull-ish rooms I think are there to make the ending more horrific or weird. But there is one major problem. The adventure doesn't itself answer some big questions but those are easy for a GM to figure out himself I think. Quite clear what the light is and why the people are kidnapped. But for some reason I think the adventure lacked a grande finale.

I do understand that for one-page-dungeon the space is limited and in this 4-page version first page is a cover, two pages are the adventure and the last page is random monster generator. GM can easily use the generator to generate other types of monsters too I think what makes the generator pretty cool.

The adventure is simple, easy to run and for player characters easy to start. Mundane beginning does go somewhere not expected. Only problem might be that there is lots of fighting, even before you get to the location. The problem here is that that amount of fighting might be a little dull if the character party doesn't come up with other ways to deal with aggressive encounters. But after killing maybe even dozens of orcs you get to kill something more interesting.

For me this wasn't that gory, but I like LotFP stuff so there's not many things that shocks me anymore. Still I like how there is something weird and a little gore-y and it is not how a GM reads it but how he plays it and how the player characters react to it. With proper descriptions and setting the right mood this might be quite frightening in the end - in a gore movie way.

I like this. Not brilliant but not bad either. This is something I would most definitely run as it is feels really easy to GM. And little weird is not bad thing at all!