CCC-GARY-06 The Death Beneath the Roots is meant to be the final of a Tier 1 trilogy, where the characters discover the source of the strange plants that have been mutating and animating the corpses of Aetherglen’s villagers. In the first part of the trilogy, the characters were presented with the situation. In the second part of the trilogy, they travelled through the forest to find the great Gulthias tree which was the source of all of the strangeness.
In this part, the characters descend into the elven city beneath the tree’s roots, to discover… a hole leading further down.
Yes, that’s right, this isn’t a trilogy, despite what the introductory text says. It’s instead a six-part adventure. However, parts 4-6 are for level 5+ characters, so most players won’t be able to immediately continue with it. You find a hole and then go away, ignoring the plight of the village, and come back many months later!
Smart planning, this isn’t.
What makes this joke even worse is that nothing of interest happens in the adventure. You fight zombies, skeletons and vegepygmies… and that’s it. You learn nothing about what’s going on. That the elven city is deserted? You learnt that last adventure. The content of this adventure would fit in under three pages if formatted more concisely. The encounters are fine and entertaining as far as they go – their simplicity makes them easy to run, at least – but the adventure is strictly linear, and you come away from it thinking that the last two adventures have been plot-free and an utter waste of time.
You want to know how not to plot an ongoing series? This is it.
It’s better written than the previous part, but that’s mainly due to the lack of ambition. The final encounter seems to be lifted from the previous adventure – an ogre zombie guarding a hole. There’s creepy imagery and interesting combat set-ups, and if more attention had been given to story progression, I’d quite like it.
However, there wasn’t, and the result of that is a disastrous waste of time. This gets my very worst rating: Avoid.