A Fey’s Anger is a short side-trek adventure for level 4 characters written by Joe Raso.
The adventure revolves around one encounter: A gnome tinkerer tries to hire the adventurers, only to be interrupted by a pixie and her banderhobb ally. Chaos erupts in the workshop as the adventurers attempt to stop the pixie from kidnapping the gnome.
The most incredible thing about the adventure is that it has 20 pages! The backstory to the adventure is excellent, but the description takes up four pages, and then there’s more information – occasionally repeating things we already know – in the NPC descriptions, which take up another three pages.
The encounter itself spreads over several pages that describe the shop, a couple of special items found therein, and the tactics of the combatants.
The product is laid out attractively, with art deployed effectively. The map is very attractive. The adventure also includes the stat-blocks you need.
The play is sound. It presents an interesting situation and should be entertaining.
My primary issue is with the presentation: For an adventure that might only take one hour to play, there’s a lot of preparation required. It takes time to read. Then, because it’s scattered over several pages, a forgetful DM like myself may waste time flicking through the adventure to find relevant information. It’s a moderately complex encounter, as it should be, but I’d prefer a more concise presentation.
The adventure is also part one of three; the backstory certainly lends to it being part of a longer work. Presenting it all as one adventure may have been preferable. The background information should still be shorter – I prefer no more than a page of background, and preferably much less for shorter works – but at least then it’s detail would be more relevant to the play of the entire story.
Overall, A Fey’s Anger has the potential to be an entertaining diversion for your group, but be prepared to do some reading first!
Thanks so much for taking the time to write this review. Agree the back story is more extensive than one might expect for a side trek. I started out with a vision of crafting a large multi-encounter module. However the realities of time management when you have a growing family and full time job made me rethink the original scope. I decided to split the product into three parts, letting me finish something in a reasonable time frame. Once I finish all three I’ll probably create a single bundled package. Thanks again!