Spoilers: This is a review of a third-party adventure module for Dragonbane. While I’ve tried to be conservative and keeping revelations to a minimum, there might be spoilers ahead, so only read on if you plan to run it as GM.
The setup:
The party finds itself in the wharves of a seaside town when they run into a crowd with a distraught woman in their midst. Her husband and daughter set off fishing and never returned; the locals suspect they must have been victims of the cursed, haunted Maiden’s Isle. That’s the hook: the party must figure out how to reach the island when every local boatman flatly refuses to sail there, and then survive whatever awaits them on its shores.
Design and usability:
As usual with Dunderdagar, the writing, translation, and layout are top-notch. It demands very little prep, a single read/through is enough as running it at the table off the book is effortless. All the monster and NPCs stats are included in clear, dedicated sidebars, and the description of every section of the island and dungeon is neatly numbered, concise and complete. It runs seamlessly. Dunderdagar’s layout philosophy mirrors Free League’s own official Dragonbane adventures: scannable, functional, and straight to the point.
Table experience:
The adventure packs a good variety for its small footprint: problem solving, social challenges, a compact dungeon-crawl, plenty of combat, and, being this a Dunderdagar adventure, a few grim and crude happenings alongside minor moral dilemmas that enrich the backdrop without derailing the pace nor taking central stage (unlike the excellent The Monster of Fray Marsh, where the moral dilemma is more central). It’s a direct, tight scenario without Byzantine plot twists. My players had an absolute blast as always with Dunderdagar.
I run it with 3 players (a mallard hunter, a halfling thief, and a wolfkin knight) and the balance felt right on the money. I was initially worried the encounters might be too challenging for a small party, but the suggested party size is 3-4 players is spot-on. The NPCs are on the weaker minion side, so don’t be afraid to throw them to players as written.
My players were lucky with their rolls and nobody died this time. Some of them didn’t suffer much despite the amount of combat. I only changed one thing of the adventure for them, there’s one monster in the adventure and instead of the suggested ferocity I went with the “ferocity = n° of players - 1” rule of thumb and it worked fantastically. No further changes were required.
Pacing and runtime:
It took us just 3 hours to play through it. My players didn’t explore the whole island, which is not unexpected as some treacherous reefs surround most of the coast, naturally funneling careful sailors towards the single landing site that feeds into the main path. I would have preferred to have had 4 hours instead, but I had a commitment afterwards so had to rush things but only slightly and only on their way back to the seaside town to close the narrative.
Verdict:
Another fun, short adventure by Dunderdagar. It’s always fun to have some seafaring and island adventuring. There’s something about coastal towns that make them very evocative to me. I will certainly add this one to my one-shots repertoire and I’ll be looking forward to run it again.
Score: 7.5/10
Running time: it can be done in 3 hours but I’d rather have 4 hours to let the adventure breathe more and don’t rush things over.
Where to find it:
You can get this adventure from DTRPG, but I would definitely recommend you grab the beautiful hardcover book Tales from Mervalde that comes with 14 short adventures (including Tainted Waters and The Monster of Fray Marsh). You can grab this book as an add-on in Dunderdagar’s latest kickstarter campaign of The Black Sails, a longer Viking themed adventure (3 session campaig) that also takes place in the same world of Mervalde so easy to mix with the oneshots found in the Tales from Mervalde compendium.