Quite the Pickle is a collection of four, linked one-hour adventures set in the town of Saltmarsh. All revolve around a local tavern, the Snapping Line, which employs two dwarven brothers with a secret. The adventures are for level 5 to 10 characters, and though optimised for a party of level 8 characters, containing scaling notes for other levels.
The first two adventures feature tournaments (darts and cards), the third involves elements of a murder and mystery, while the last requires the party to save a drowning dwarf from underwater while sharks are in the area!
There is a lot to like about the adventures, as they have a good cast of characters and some engaging situations. I particularly like the puzzle in the third scenario, which brings together several fantastic elements to create a challenging situation.
However, I have some caveats.
The first is that the scenarios feel more like Tier 1 situations rather than Tier 2. This is a minor point, but there was a certain level of disconnect.
The second is that of overwriting. Each scenario takes five to seven pages to describe. Now, this text does not feel as repetitive as that of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, which I recently reviewed, but for one-hour scenarios, this is a lot of text.
If you read the Area Information section to the right, you will see what I mean.
This section needs to be brief and easy-to-reference; providing elements that the DM can quickly weave into their descriptions. “Smells. Cooked fish, other foods and alcohol” would be sufficient.
As it is, the DM needs to read too much text and try to work out what is relevant. This tends to be an ongoing problem with all the scenarios – a little more ruthless editing would have gone a long way.
The third comes from the structure of the third scenario, which is also the most interesting. A wizard has been murdered, leaving behind a magical curse that ensnares the inhabitants of the inn.
The situation is brilliant, and if the adventure only focused on that, you would have a winner. Unfortunately, the scenario also tries to provide a short murder investigation.
As a result, the characters’ attention immediately focuses on the problem of “who is the murderer?” And so, when the murder investigation turns into a dead-end, the players are left wondering what they have been doing.
Now, this is a lot of negative feedback about the product, and I want to stress that I find the descriptions of non-player characters laudable and the scenarios fascinating. I can see a good grasp of the fantastic on display here, and it contains numerous things to amaze and engage players. There are many imaginative flourishes, and I value that greatly.
However, I believe that slightly tightening the text would work wonders, as well as clarifying the course of each scenario’s events – something I occasionally found tricky to discern.
Overall, Quite the Pickle shows a lot of promise and has plenty of ideas that a DM can use to entertain your players, although you may need to do some work to run the scenarios it contains.