The second adventure in Dan Hass’s Drow Conspiracy Epic is The Drow Outpost, available as a 7 page PDF from DriveThruRPG for $3. This is almost certainly overpriced.
After the cover and the contents, you’re left with a page of introductory text explaining the product, then two-and-a-quarter pages of adventure followed by a simple (linear) dungeon map. Incredibly, the adventure almost feels packed for a Dan Hass adventure – it contains eight encounters! Admittedly, some of them are very basic. Here’s the text of Location 4: The Slime:
Running the encounter. A DC15 passive Nature recognizes green slime (DMG p.105) clinging to the ceiling. Otherwise the lead PC suffers from an attack of the green slime.
The proof-reading is poor, the layout likewise, and there is a lack of descriptive text. The adventure apparently subscribes to the minimalist approach to adventure design, but I think it takes it too far. There’s little here to hook the imagination. Trap. Trap. Monster. Trap. Monster.
Did I say eight encounters? In fact, there are only seven: the tunnel entrance is keyed as #2, but has no separate entry. It’s just a tunnel. Admittedly, it’s a very special tunnel: it runs from the bottom of a (full) pool and is totally dry! How? I have no idea. The text doesn’t say.
Honestly, this is not a good adventure. There’s little content, and what content it has is of dubious quality. I’d far rather see the adventures in this series put into one document and then edited thoroughly. At that point, there might be enough material to warrant their purchase.
I was a bit sad to read this. I want to run a couple players (with a couple NPC tag-a-longs) through a few adventures to get them to level 3 before I start them in the Out of the Abyss campaign book. This line of adventures just screamed a good introduction of getting the players in a good position to start that campaign.
I don’t suppose you have any suggestions on a few adventures that are thematically similar bringing characters from 1 to 3? There are a large amount of one off adventures out there I could use. I just thought it would be neat to have a lvl 1 to 3 mini-campaign of sorts wrapped in a nice little bow for me. 🙂 I’d settle for just a few solid, fun adventures we can run through before we begin the campaign though… hehe.