Crapshoot Monday: This Free Thing I Found on Itch.io…Mistborn of the Thorn Isles

An island hexcrawl by Lord Gwydion, levels 3-6
Written for BECMI
  Well by golly Miss Molly, we have us a proper product with real levels and an actual system target. Appendix N Jam looks to have produced some slightly-better-than-average adventures, I dig it. I also love the public domain aurora borealis painting for the cover. Hrm, you think the guy running Coldlight Press likes Arctic lights? Anyway, we have a nice four-page little ‘zine-scale single-column hexcrawl. Everything looks nice and simple, with clean tables, a clear map (tiny 1.5mi hex scale), and no extra muss or fuss. Sometimes you just need to convey the ideas, dudes.
   Those ideas aren’t going to surprise you despite the “A shocking twist…” bit of copy on the cover. Your players find a centuries-old treasure map that leads to the titular Thorn Isles, a nice misty subarctic locale haunted by the titular Mistborn, undead ghostly mist-people who reenact pagan sacrifices every moonlit night. There’s one heck of an awesome magical artifact available in the Staff of the Sun as our reward. Added complications are a pirate crew encountered en media res “where ever the group lands” and the ghosts wanting to sacrifice PCs on a handy local Wicker Man or at the Standing Stones.
   Off to what I liked, we have some very cool flavor on this chilly bleak island. There’s a neat thing with the Mistborn; they are standard incorporeal undead, only harmed by magic, normally, but they also have a custom ability called “Misty Touch” which is a save vs. paralysis or become a fellow mist-ghost for 1d6 hours. That’s pretty nifty and will give us some flexibility in how the whole environment gets interacted with. Encounters are well-mixed, the end artifact was cool, and it all feels about right for suggested levels. There’s a 24-hour schedule of moonrises and mist that should help the suffering DM track time, that’s great.  Easy to run, simple and fun.
   There’s not a lot obvious at first in what can be improved. Beyond, of course, the vile sin committed in the previously mentioned Encounter 1. A compounded pair of sins, actually, we have a Quantum Ogre-style encounter where the pirates are met wherever the PCs first land, and then there’s also a dynamic situation that was frozen in amber, said pirates are chasing a random woman from…somewhere…and so of course there’s a “choice” to help the pirates (?) or rescue the woman. There’s also some kind of situation where you’re supposed to be able to challenge the pirate captain for control of the crew but I guess that’s something we just mind-read. Terrible, terrible encounter, and so very easy to fix with just having the pirate ship or a wrecked pirate crew wandering around. You have a map, use it brother. It’s a real pity that’s such a woofer because the rest is all solid.
   Okay, just breathe. Your best use case is to either fix the pirate railroad or jettison it completely and then otherwise just enjoy playing a fun little adventure. “Treasure map reward” is pretty common and this thing is a very nice reward even beyond the suggested levels. Individual elements to steal include the Mistborn and the map. Good deal.
   Final Rating? ***/***** for a useful, interesting, and very flavorful little adventure booklet ideal for treasure map use in your ongoing game or a one-shot. Just ignore the first encounter and you’re good as gold.

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