Crapshoot Monday: This Free Thing I Found on Itch.io…The Forest Mystery

​An adventure by Sahaak Games, level indeterminant.
Written for “D&D and Other Things” (it’s 5E)
  Hey cool, it’s a trifold, been a little while. I’ve definitely never regretted one of these. Upon this trifold is engrained an adventure where reasonably high-level PCs (not said how high, but able to fight 60hp of vine-monsters and an ent+evil spellcaster combo, at least) get employed by a local herbalist as escorts in a forest that’s getting run as a turn-by-turn outdoor dungeon on a really pretty map that you’re not allowed to show the players. Yep, another one of those.
  I have no fundamental objections to the wafer-thin premise, it’s standard but there’s nothing wrong with a forest having an evil druid and a nice cowardly NPC companion can always add spice. The druid, one MALAKAR, THE GREEN SHADOW (love it) is corrupted by…stuff…and vaguely pursues power, which is causing problems for the forest inhabitants. I’d tell you more but that it, no personality notes, no details, no location names, no backstory. The central temple where the herbalist’s flowers grow has three slots for three magic runes, so wander the forest grabbing runes and then have a final bossfight with the quantum druid+ent. Rewards are literally random mundane seeds, 1d4 goodberries, and up to 3d10 gp.
  I guess it’s time to say what I liked…uh, that’s what I mentioned, great job on the evil druid’s name and very pretty forest map. There’s also a runic math puzzle player handout, which is exactly how you want to use table handouts. Beyond that, a couple of descriptions aren’t too bad.
  What can be improved here is all of it. Of course, having less vagueness goes a long way to generating more interest too, but that’s an ironically vague solution suggestion. The forest map looks nice but there’s not any use of the branching paths half of the time, coupled with the complete lack of and random encounters you’re looking at not having any use for the potentially interesting terrain features. The very simple puzzles to recover two of the Rune McGuffins are easy enough (which is good) and can be alternately solved with sledgehammers (which is good) but the approach is all wrong…sequence goes puzzle->solution->reward->VINE ATTACK. Much better to have an ongoing fight while solutions are worked out, particularly for the linear algebra puzzle that can be brute-forced.
  The best use case for this product is probably just yanking out the two puzzles for use in other situations, if your group enjoys puzzles. My kids group loves this stuff, that handout will go over very well. The thing can be run as a one-shot, but you’re going to be pulling hard to make it interesting.
  Ergo, final rating? */***** due to dryness. Pity because there’s good efforts and artistry that went into this, just not enough focus on it being played at a gaming table. 

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