A few months back, there was a kickstarter for a book of monsters, a book of adventures and a book of spells. Who ran the kickstarter? Necromancer Games, a company that rose to prominence in the earliest days of 3E as a provider of old-school inspired adventures (“Third Edition Rules, First Edition Feel”). They went quiet during the 4E era, although part of the team went and formed Frog God Games to do even more adventures for both Pathfinder and Swords & Wizardry – the latter an excellent version of the Original D&D rules. With 5E, Necromancer Games is back. Their initial releases are just now becoming available. Of most interest to me is Quests of Doom, a collection of adventures – some new, and some converted from previous editions.
Unfortunately for my dreams of reviewing every 5E adventure, I had a small part in helping bringing the books to fruition, so I can’t properly review these adventures without even more claims of bias than normal. I can give you an overview of what they’re about though. Here’s a description of the first adventure in Quests of Doom:
The Noble Rot, by J. Collura, is an adventure for 5th-8th level characters. The theme for the adventure is “Bugs and Blobs”, and this tends towards the blob side of things. The adventure is set in an old abandoned vineyard. The adventure gives a few potential adventure hooks; the most obvious is the party just coming across it in their travels (perhaps using it to take shelter from a storm), but they might also be hired to recover a case of premium wine, learn about someone who disappeared there, or are sent there by a vision from the gods. The adventure also suggests the possibility that they’re criminals hiding out in the vineyard, which I rather like. Twenty-two rumours about the vineyard are also provided.
Yes, the vineyard had something horrible happen there. And it’s quite creepy. I’m not giving that much away when I say it concerns “oozes”. Apparently you should be careful with whom you bargain…
The adventure is primarily location-based, with very little of the adventure moving to find the players; instead, the players get to explore an abandoned house which isn’t as abandoned as they’d possibly like. There’s a fair amount of descriptive text and interesting things for the players to interact with. And yes, the players are able to discover the tragic history of the estate.
The adventure consists of 20 areas, and it is suggested that it will take one or two sessions to complete.
It is one of twelve adventures in Quests of Doom, volume 1; a second volume contains 6 additional adventures. Both are available in PDF now, and there is a limited stock of hardcover copies as well.