Dan Hass has been one of the most prolific of the 3rd-party publishers, releasing – at this point – over 25 titles for the 5E game. Although I’ve reviewed some of his early works, I haven’t been following much of his more recent work. However, he’s just released another eight titles, so I felt it was time to go and have a look at the first of his new series, the Drow Conspiracy, which was released a little earlier as Pay What You Want on DriveThruRPG.

Drow Necromancy is an 8-page pdf, which consists of a cover page, a contents page, and six pages of the adventure. The formatting is primitive, and there is little art. I know I talk about this a lot, but it really needs an editor. There are basic errors in the text that should have been caught during proof-reading.

Farjvad is community that has been carved out of the forest at point where a couple of trade routes converge on a navigable river. The relative security and economics have allowed it to prosper over the past century. It is rather progressive feudal community lead by a hereditary noble who’s title is “Major”.

Unusually, there are no maps in the adventure. To be fair, it doesn’t really need them, but instead it has links to suitable maps – generally samples or free artwork hosted on other sites. It feels very odd.

The adventure is very short: only five encounters. The adventure wants to begin with a bang: the PCs are attacked by aquatic zombies whilst on a ferry! However, there’s something about the set-up that doesn’t make sense. You see, the background has the characters buying goods in town – presumably they’ve been staying there – and there have been many zombie attacks over the past few months. Somehow, the PCs are unaware of the attacks, even though they’ve decided to start a life of adventure! Hmm…

I don’t know about you, but if people were being taken by zombies to a nearby set of ruins, I’d do something about it. Even if the zombies are only attacking travellers, surely word of the attacks would discourage people trading with Farjvad? The attacks are a good idea, but the implications haven’t been thought through.

The rest of the adventure has the PCs reach the ruins, get attacked by cultists, find a trap, then attack the boss – who tries to flee. It’s all very simple. There’s a fair amount of advice for the beginning DM, which I find distracting, but others may find useful.

Honestly? It’s entirely too basic for my taste. Some nice ideas, but not enough meat.