Review: “Matters of Vengeance” by Darrin Drader

Darrin Drader's Matters of Vengeance was the sixth in Wizards of the Coast's Original Adventures series, and aims to entertain a party of four 15th-level adventurers. The module makes use of some material outside of the core books, but all of the relevant information is reprinted so the DM doesn't need more than the Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide, and Monster Manual for D&D 3.0, or the Core Rules and Bestiary for Pathfinder.  While once available for free, you'll have to shell out $0.99 to get a copy of Matters of Vengeance.

Two of the fifteen pages in the .pdf are given over to maps. The first is a crude colour area map for the Village of Three Forks without any scale, followed by a better-quality sepia map showing the main adventure site. There's also two pages background story, and as it has so little relevance to the adventure I might as well just remark on the aesthetic value of the prose – it didn't move me, unless a feeling of frustration counts. To finish up on production values, proof-reading for Matters of Vengeance was extremely poor and it often felt like the writer had run out of time.

The main adventure hook focuses on Erim Holden, the last heir to an old manor, now over-run by undead. Holden is prepared to hand over a small fortune to the party in return for their services in reclaiming his family estate and paving the way to the Village of Three Forks being resettled by living folk. Matters of Vengeance does have some alternate hooks but they're much worse than the standard option and rely on the characters just looking for trouble.

I found the encounters presented in the Village of Three Forks on the way to the manor to be passable, except that they rely on reading distances from a map that doesn't have a scale, let alone a grid. I tried creating a scale for it by using the size of an object that appears on both maps, but doing so implies that this area is almost completely safe. What Drader intended is a mystery. The main site at least benefits from an adequate map, but a party with a cleric will have a very easy time getting through its dangers. Even without a cleric, the fact that the party are going to be tipped off about the kind of threat they're facing means that this should be all too easy for 15th-level adventurers. The module has no clever tactics or magical counter-measures to foil the PCs.

The concluding section doesn't save Matters of Vengeance. There's no hint of following up on my main question from the module - “Where did Erim Holden get his immense fortune?” - but Drader does think that a character from his introduction, who has up until now played no part in the adventure, might make for an interesting lead and spends a paragraph canvassing possibilities.

My rating is 1/5. You can play it with some running repairs, but even then it's Monty Hall territory. While I will include a link, my advice is to not bother downloading Matters of Vengeance – even if you wanted maps, there's better at Map-a-Week or Dyson's Delve.