Mike “Sly Flourish” Shea is in the final stages of a kickstarter for his latest 5E-compatible adventure book: Sly Flourish’s Fantastic Adventures: Ruins of the Grendleroot.

I’ve read a lot of it. It’s awesome.

Of course, Mike paid me to have a look at the book and help develop it, but part of the reason I said “yes” to him (and not the other offers I’ve been given) was because I was so impressed by his first Fantastic Adventures book.

That’s impressed, not in the sense of “I’ve read it and it looks good”, but as in I’ve run almost every adventure in it in my home campaign, and I consider it one of the best damn adventure books out there.

Mike gets what I want in an adventure book:

• Enough background to provide context for the adventure, but not so much that it interferes with the rest of my world-building.
• Interesting NPCs, with just enough details to make them memorable.
• Unusual locations with a touch of the (heh) fantastic!
• Unique magic items with quirks.
• Fun encounters!

It’s that last that is the important bit, but Mike manages to import enough information to make running the encounters enjoyable, while providing enough inspiration for me to go and improvise as well.

Ruins of the Grendleroot shares a few similarities with his first Fantastic Adventures book: it describes a number of short adventures around a central base. The central base has the quest-givers (which reoccur from adventure to adventure), but the adventures give a good variety of opportunities and challenges.

What’s different with Ruins is that the environment of the adventures is a little more unified: They’re set in a strange underground complex, where spires or roots of a strange substance twine everywhere – and which caused the ruination of many an underground civilisation when they first appeared. Whether they’re a mystery to be solved or to be experienced – well, I think that’ll depend on the group’s reactions to them.

It’s possibly a little less adaptable than the first Fantastic Locations book, but that’s only a mild criticism. I can still see myself using large sections of this book to fill out my home campaign. There are times I don’t want to do all the designing – and Mike gets what I need really well.

I think one of the best things an adventure can do is leave the DM considering, “And what happens next?” When the ideas in the adventure live on and shape the campaign afterwards? That’s what I want in a product – and there’s at least two of the new adventures that fit that for me.

A forgotten elven god just might be appearing in my campaign soon!