08
Basic Game Adventures B11-12
Harvest of Chaos
(1989)
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King's Festival by Carl Sargent |
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Editing: |
Jim Lowder |
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Cover Artist: |
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Interior Artist: |
Valerie Valusek |
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Cartographer: |
Diesel |
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Typographer: |
Gaye O'Keefe |
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Keyliner: |
Stephanie Tabat |
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Queen's Harvest by Carl Sargent |
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Editing: |
Jim Lowder |
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Cover Artists: |
John and Laura Lakey |
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Interior Artist: |
Karl Waller |
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Cartographer: |
Diesel |
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Typographers: |
Angelika Lokotz and Kathleen C. MacDonald |
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Keyliner: |
Stephanie Tabat |
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A series of
adventures that run the gamut of low-level campaigning. Harvest of Chaos can be
used as a stand alone campaign, introducing new players to AD&D, or these
modules can be used to lay the foundation for a long-lasting campaign.
Memorable villains and well-placed treasures make for a fast-paced, exciting
time!
Realm Rating: 4.5/5
Dawn and
Foy, Around the Realm:
Game08 by
Ray Dyer
B11-12,
Harvest of Chaos
This game
is much longer than the others. It includes both B11 - Kings Festival and B12 -
Queens Harvest. It starts out innocently enough with a mission to rescue the
town's priest from a marauding band of Orcs but leads on to much more
interesting things.
The story
is very good and includes 4 distinct sections or quests. It is all handled in
standard dungeons, no overlands, just like all of the Realm games we've played
so far. While I loved the overall story and feel of the game it had some
serious bugs that required some programming on my part.
Things I
liked:
* The
frame & font set. By far the best I've seen in the Realms. It looked like a
recolored Savage Frontier frame.
* The
intrigue, I caught myself not trusting several individuals it turned out I
could trust, and trusted those I shouldn't have.
* Lots of
treasure, including magic, and lots of EP's.
* Some of
the traps were cool
* The land
outside the Queen's castle and its "special" inhabitant.
* The
Queen's castle gate was a very good fight, I was sweating bullets at the end
but I managed to do all of it in a single series of fights. But what was even
better was that it started giving you a chance to flee after the second battle,
which my wife took advantage of to rest and recover between bouts. When you
returned to the castle it took up where you left off, mostly... :-)
* Like in
Raven's Ruin, many of the treasures were handled as Inventory Items which could
be cashed in at the town shop. Since they don't add to your encumbrance, I held
onto them until the end so I could carry more coin!
Things I
disliked:
* Hangs.
We had continuous problems with hangs in this game. Some of them just happened
at odd moments and we just had to reboot and restart until we finally managed
to get past it. One of them was very "hard", if you let the Orc
chieftain have a combat turn the game would freeze. Pelt him with magic
missiles and arrows and make sure he dies before he gets a chance to move!
* Bugs.
There were several bugs but the most serious one was in the 3rd portion of the
game. I didn't encounter it, I suppose I did everything in the
"right" order, but my wife became stuck in the dungeon. She had all
the items she was supposed to get but whenever she went to leave, it wouldn't
let her.
I finally
had to hack the dungeon so she could leave. The others were fairly minor, like
traps that went off after your thief supposedly disarmed it.
* Lots of
text was not marked as "Once Only". Not as irritating as in Game07
(Assault on Raven's Ruin) since you don't stay in the same dungeon for an
extended period of time, but still not good. The worst was the Congratulations
text at the end of the module. It is imbedded on the final overland (where all
the games put you at the end) and it was long and tedious if you accidentally
stumble over it more than once.
* Too much
treasure (I know this was a like too!). At the end all of my characters were
down to move 3 and I still left as much behind as I carried out. More treasure
in the way of jewels and gems is better than thousands of gold I can't haul
out. Especially since there are no Vault events in the Realms (which I
understand).
* At the
end I got a chance to buy goods at a very complete shop. Unfortunately I
couldn't sell my Inventory treasure at that same shop. I ended up hacking the
overland so we could go buy stuff after the game was over.
* Gender
specific pronouns. All the Realms games do this but this one had a couple of
awkward moments. Dawn always plays all-female parties. Imagine her distaste
when a couple of "beautiful" female theives show up and she's asked
to select her most charismatic male character. Oh well.
We had a
love/hate relationship with this module. I loved the story and challenge, but
hated the bugs and hangs. This is the only Realms game I've had to hack so far,
I hope it is my last. For our next game we decided to tackle Game03 - Palace of
the Silver Princess.
Foy
:
Game08.zip
Harvest of Chaos Ray & Maureen Dyer
This
was a fun adventure. The designers combined to modules into one combined
adventure. There were a couple of bugs, both pretty important. In the mansion
basement, the module did not recognize the 2nd item we needed, so it would not
let me leave. I had to go in and "fix" this so I could continue. The
second bug came when it was suggested I go back to Stallingford and rest and
train. When I tried to leave to continue the adventure it sent me back to the
orc caves. Again I went into the design and "fixed" the problem. I
really enjoyed the plot matter and the text as usual is interesting and draws
you into the story.
Plot
Matter: 9 Artwork: 9 Hacks: 9 Text: 9
Events:
8 Originality: 9 Errors: 1 Difficulty: 5
Total
Rating: 81% Mycroft: 8
-Susan
McKinney
So
here we are again, after a successful journey through a Realm adventure. Since
I have the original P&P adventures (and even did a conversion of B11,
King's Harvest, for an April Fool's contest), I can compare them to the
originals and see what there is to see. And there's a lot. I've always enjoyed
these adventures; they are perfect learning tools for beginning players and
DMs, with lots of tips, hints, and some good dungeons to explore. Not to
mention fabulous treasures and terrifying creatures.
As
usual, Ray did a fantastic conversion, although it lacks the humour that my
conversion did (which was intentional and not at all to be taken seriously
anyway). There were a few new bits, like the weather (continuing the campaign
idea, the party moved from Autumn in Game06, Journey to the Rock, to winter in
Game08, Harvest of Chaos). Excellent decision on Ray's part. The fogwarden was
new; I don't recall ever seeing one of those before. But it was a logical
encounter, and advanced the story. However, the text in that area repeated
every time we retreated to rest.
For
those who haven't played this design yet, hurry up and do so. It's a
challenging adventure, with lots of action and some great story points. There
actually is an underlying plot; it's not just a 'hack-n-slash' festival. Ray
brings out that plot well through description, and use of artwork from the original
designs. The climactic battle was challenging, and the treasure was worth it. I
found myself more than once in a position where I had to discard some of the
goodies I had found, because I simply didn't have room to put them all. Such is
life for an adventurer. So if you go to the keep, you'll probably find a lot of
gloves, belts, boots, spears, and crossbows lying around where I left them.
Technically,
there were few problems, although the text-repetition problem I mentioned above
definitely got a bit irritating. Still, nothing and no one is perfect, so I
won't shoot Ray for this small flaw in an otherwise excellent design.
Mycroft's
module rating: 9.5 out of 10
Glen
