The Wizard’s Egg is an OGL product set in an arcane-punk setting; I wouldn’t be entirely surprised if you could easily adapt it to Eberron. It’s an adventure for level 1 characters, which begins with the characters in their office, waiting for someone to hire them. Does it feel like the start of a noir novel? Absolutely!

There’s a lot of background in the adventure; it takes about ten pages before all the introductory material, including the mission briefing, are out of the way, and the party can get to trying to sabotage something in the egg-shaped building belonging to a wizard – the “wizard’s egg” of the title. Most of the background is used to explain the world, as a world of magic-as-technology is not standard for D&D. For my tastes, there’s too much background, but I tend to like fewer background details than most.

With that task, “sabotage”, it’s apparent that the adventure assumes a more morally-grey world than is common in many heroic D&D tales.

There’s a lot of descriptive boxed text. In the opening stages, not much happens between each set of text, so the players might be sitting there waiting for you to read it all before they can act meaningfully. Strangely, the last location before the Egg is a tavern where, in theory, the characters can gather some last information before they enter their destination. However, there’s very little information provided here. It feels odd.

The Egg itself is made up of ten encounter areas over six pages of text; a nice isomorphic map of the location is provided on a seventh page. It’s a good choice of map to represent the egg.

The locations in the Egg provide a nice range of encounters; they’re combat-light, but there’s a lot to explore. I’m particularly fond of a riddling-elemental, and there’s a definite touch of whimsy to this encounter, something I very much enjoy.

The final section of the adventure, where the characters must flee the Egg, is a bit odd. The details of how to run it seem to be entirely in two (large) sidebars rather than the main text. It uses a “skill challenge” framework, but I found the text quite confusing. The adventure has had a tendency to be overwritten before, but here it comes into full fruition – where I want and need clear, simple instructions, this is anything but!

The layout is good, as is, for the most part, the editing (although a stray “Wizard’s of the Coast” seems to have eluded the proof-reader’s attention). The maps are nicely realised and very clear, but the art could be better.

Overall, the invention in this adventure stands it in good stead. It tends towards being overwritten, but the main adventure holds a lot of interest. Recommended.