It’s been a while since I offered a review of an adventure instead of an entire game. But in truth I’m much more interested in reading and buying adventures – they offer all the usefulness of a supplement, but with everything ready to run. And this, a DMs Guild adventure by M.T. Black and Anthony Lesink for 3rd-4th level PCs designed to take 4-6 hours, is an absolute classic. Not a classic as in a huge original – the piratey tropes are laid on thick here. Just very, very good – and a great one-shot to showcase what D&D is good at, or indeed any other TTRPG you care to run it with.

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Firstly, I should say that I have run this using D&D – at a one-shot meetup where six 3rd-level players took around 4 hours to go through it – and I’m planning to run it with Daggerheart at the Furnace convention. I’m very tempted to make it my go-to scenario for lots of fantasy systems, really, since it does some things so very well.

Oh, and there are spoilers ahead – particularly in the next bit. You can’t really discuss an adventure without them – so if you’re playing in a game of this, or want to pick it up first and read it, go ahead. At the time of writing it’s $1.95 on DM’s Guild, or available in a number of bundles.

What It Is

This is, let’s face it, a linear connection of scenes. I’ve written before about how this isn’t necessarily all that bad – as long as each scene is entertaining and has multiple ways it can be resolved. The linear nature makes this adventure quite easy to run, too, which helps.

The adventure begins with the PCs being recruited by dubious sea captain Araveene Moonlight, with a few suggested skill checks to set the fees for the voyage, to help her sail across to the Moonshae Isles. You set sail, meeting an assortment of broadly-painted crew NPCs that give the PCs plenty of roleplaying opportunities. Once you’re on the ocean, Moonlight comes clean – she’s searching for a shipwreck with a familial link, which has crashed on Storm Island. Following this revelation, a ship of manic goblins attack though. 

Upon their defeat, you find little treasure apart from a (cursed, you’ll soon discover) idol – which leads to a tremendous storm requiring some perilous skill checks. You’ll eventually make it to Storm Island, where you fight zombies on the aforementioned shipwreck before discovering that the idol they’re carrying round is the cause of all the trouble, and your heroes need to destroy it in an ancient temple on the island.

Let’s be honest, the plot is a straight line, with a couple of cunning coincidences that might raise some eyebrows if you were reading it. At the table, I’m here to tell you, it plays brilliantly – and indeed is as good a model for an effective one-shot as you’ll find. Let’s unpick a few reasons why.

Three Cool Fights

There are three combat encounters in the adventure – the goblin ship, the storm zombies on the shipwreck, and the final confrontation with a fire elemental and some mephits in the temple. Each of these is sufficiently different from a ‘standard D&D combat’ to be interesting. Fighting 20-30 goblins as they swing over to your ship is brilliant fun for 3rd level PCs, who can really cut a swathe through these much weaker opponents. The shipwreck zombies give an unpredictable battleground, with reinforcements coming (slowly) and an interesting electricity power. And finally, you don’t even have to fight the elemental in the finale – just get past it to put the cursed idol back into the altar. 

Brush Strokes NPCs

The crew of the ship is painted really well as cool little NPCs that the PCs can interact with. Each has enough of a personality that the players will want to hang out with them, and no doubt feel a sense of camaraderie with the crew. At the table, I’ll want to have little character cards for these, with a bit of (pinterest-sourced) art and name tags. 

Partly because, in a move of evil genius from the designer, these NPCs are what’s at stake when the storm hits. Fail the skill challenges to cut the sails and keep the ship safe, and some of those NPCs aren’t going to make it! This is great stake-setting, and hits the PCs where it hurts straight away – I’m definitely stealing this approach! Oh, and there’s a talking monkey who can help the PCs to realise what they’ve actually got to do with the idol if needed. None of these are hugely detailed, but they give just enough for the PCs to care about them.

Easy To Run

This is probably the best thing that the adventure has going for it. You’re going in a straight line, you’ve got multiple NPCs to keep the PCs in line, and the journey is interesting enough that somehow it doesn’t feel linear. Honestly, they should just throw M.T. Black (and Anthony Lesink, their collaborator on this) a contract for a starter set and let them be done with it.

I’m keen to adapt this to other systems, too – it showcases some stuff that feels quite different to D&D’s normal mode of play, so I’d love to see how it plays in, say, Exalted or 7th Sea. Watch this space – and I’ll blog my Daggerheart conversion here!