Legacy and Virtue is a D&D Adventurers League-legal adventure for level 1-4 characters by Alan Patrick that premiered at GameHoleCon 2018. This is an adventure that makes me very happy. It’s a dungeon crawl, but one with enough attention to detail to allow the players to find interesting features in each room, provide opportunities for combat and a little role-playing as well. The adventurers are sent into a cave complex to deal with an owlbear that has been ravaging the area, but there’s more to find in the depths than just a crazed monstrosity!
It’s written as a 2+2 adventure; that is, the main adventure takes 2 hours, but there are two bonus objectives that each take one hour to play that expand upon the content. Your milelage may vary as to the length of the bonus content. This adventure takes a non-standard approach to the bonus content: instead of placing it in appendices, it integrates it into the main adventure. Certain rooms only have encounters if you’re using the bonus content.
Basically, the heroes can explore until they run out of dungeon to explore or time runs out. Timing this adventure is more challenging than more linear designs. I love the dungeon, but I’m unsure how it works when you don’t use the bonus content, as the rooms are still there, just without the monsters. It is possible to complete the main objective very quickly – the DM needs to pay attention to pacing.
In theory, this adventure is written with the Season 8 format. In practice, it doesn’t read that way. For the most part, it reads like an earlier season adventure. There are nods to the new format, but the Call to Action gets rid of the clumsiness of the format entirely, just giving important information in dot points and providing enjoyable role-playing opportunities. The introduction doesn’t include the unnatural styling of “What do they know” which has hindered that so much, although that format does appear in the main text of the adventure, but it tends to make more sense when it’s used.
One aspect that doesn’t work so well is putting most of the NPC descriptions in the appendix, rather than in sidebars in the main text. If you only skim over these entries, you could easily miss important information as it isn’t called out elsewhere in the text. As a note, I like having the NPC appendix be a reminder of who is in the adventure, rather than being necessary for play.
The dungeon itself is very well done, with a variety of encounters to challenge the party. I feel it may leave a few too many questions unanswered. It’s tricky: it’s nice leaving things open for a sequel, but, especially when using the bonus content, the story may feel unfinished. There’s no real boss monster fight at the end to provide punctuation – you just run out of places to explore without a solution to what you’ve found. In addition, a few doors may stay locked and not allow the party to fully explore given poor checks (or no one skilled with lockpicks in the party).
As to be expected from an Alan Patrick adventure, some of the encounters are unsettling. The environment appears to be the legacy of a necromancer, and it shows.
Overall, this is an entertaining adventure, providing a good range of encounters and some fine opportunities for dungeon-delving. Highly recommended!
When I ran this adventure recently, I used my Dwarven Forge terrain pieces to illustrate it. Here are a few photos of play:
