Review: "Primrose Path" by Owen K.C. Stephens

Welcome back to the Original Adventures series reviews.  This time I'm reviewing another Owen K.C. Stephens adventure, Primrose Path.  The module was distributed by Wizards of the Coast for the D&D 3.5 line, but it should be useful with Pathfinder and other D20 games with some conversion.  As the image says, Stephens is aiming to challenge four 6th-level characters.

Primrose Path is very short.  It's a mere seven pages, including a handsome site map, and the adventure proper takes up only three pages.  The balance is a lengthy background, and I can't help suspecting that Stephens initially submitted the work as a brief for a lengthier (and probably not free) module.  Supporting this hunch is the fact that nobody in the scenario is really walking a "Primrose Path" of dalliance and indulgence.  Even the villains are industrious and clean-living!

The background provided didn't really ring true to me.  Stephens is aiming to set up his scenario around a regular tribute of religious significance.  That's fine, but he informs the DM that a small town of almost a thousand people do not have a temple to their patron deity.  Really?  It's not a major task with the mechanics of the adventure to add a small church to Holtston, where the action begins, but as Primrose Path is half background one would hope for something well thought-out.  More positively, I did find the description of the main villain to be pretty good and I could see that character being lifted from this module for other purposes.

Turning to the adventure, Stephens leaves it up to the DM to get the party to Holtston and then introduces the characters to the problem with a somewhat hackneyed scene of a youth being entrusted with a death mission by his tearful elders.  It's up to the party to intervene and help young Elten Harper to deliver a wagonload of goods to a temple, travelling across a hundred miles of forested country.  Or they could just ask him for directions and do it themselves, opening up the possibility of pocketing the gold offered as payment in advance and making off with the goods that the dupes of Holtston have handed over.

More heroic PCs are rewarded with a couple of encounters.  It's a stretch to say that this is really an adventure, as the hundred mile trek only merits two and a half set-pieces with not so much as a nod to wandering monsters, geographical hazards, or weather.  The map mentioned above sees next to no use, being the setting for an optional encounter and having most of its areas written off as "contain[ing] nothing of interest".  This is a waste, to say the least, as the denizens of the lair are intelligent and capable of preparing a defence of their home and treasure.  Similarly, the rationale for the PCs making it to this encounter is dubious: although Stephens puts it mechanically within the expected party's powers, the players might well write off the task as impossible and not even try - and that's a big problem when the lion's share of the adventure treasure is in the optional area.

All in all, Primrose Path isn't so much bad as incomplete.  It's not my place to apologise for Stephens, but it seems likely that he left off parts of this project to make time for more lucrative endeavours.  My rating is 1/5, as I really think that the material presented needs substantial development to really be playable.  On the bright side, the components provided are worth a look.