The Breaking of Forstor Nagar is a 46-page adventure from Rite Publishing for 8th-level characters. It’s a real curiosity: it has absolutely fantastic imagery, good backstory, and enthralling situations, wrapped up in a package of major set-pieces that looks like it’d work best in 4E!
This doesn’t mean that it won’t be fun to play, but it does mean that it stands aside from the bulk of how 5E adventures are currently being written at present. This isn’t a big exploration adventure. It’s a linear plot, where the players are plunged into different situations and need to navigate their way through them as best they can.
The adventure’s setting is fantastic: a great city carved from ice. The city is under attack from the Hungering Legion, an army of damned men, and the players need to find an NPC and rescue him from the doomed city. From the initial scenes of a fireboat hurtling towards the city, to the final escape from the crumbling city, the adventure is full of spectacle.
Unfortunately, the formatting and editing of the adventure are indifferent. The monster stat blocks have the greatest number of issues, with the use of several font sizes not quite working – if you use two font sizes in one line, you’re probably doing it wrong. I’m quite amused by this spelling error: “A creature that couches the remorhaz… takes 10 (3d6) fire damage” – it took me a few moments for me to realise it should have been “touches” rather than “couches”. Page breaks are occasionally in awkward positions, and one section of text is centred instead of justified – yes, the formatting really needs some work. There are a lot of grammatical errors in the text, so another editing pass would have helped.
The adventure’s biggest flaw is its linear structure. There’s no overall map of the city, just a number of encounter areas. As a result, the DM is on his or her own if the players try to deviate from the plot.
Ultimately, I really like the adventure’s ambition, but I really wish the production had shown a little more care. The product has good art and is (mostly) nicely presented, but the numerous errors in the text and formatting detract from what is an entertaining – if difficult – adventure.