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The Diamond Fortress $6.99
Publisher: Necromancer
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by Peter I. [Featured Reviewer] Date Added: 03/07/2007 00:00:00

The Diamond Fortress is a 51 page d20 pdf fantasy adventure. The adventure carries the designation K2, although it is an entirely standalone product from Necromancer Games. The adventure takes place in around the town of Ravenscar, where the PC are required to deal with a crystal fortress filled with horrors from the other planes. The Diamond Fortress is suitable for 4 to 6 characters of levels 11 to 13, with a good mix of spellcasters and strong warriors required.

This product comes as a single pdf file containing everything required to run the adventure. Extensive bookmarks are provided for navigating through the pdf, as well as a table of contents. While the page navigation is excellent, I wish the same could be said for the adventure. An adventure summary or plot synopsis would've gone a long way to making the adventure easier to run. As is there are a number of related, yet somewhat disjointed, paragraphs giving adventure details but no overview of the entire adventure and how it's expected to play out. Nevertheless, the rest of the presentation is excellent and professional. Artwork and maps are good, writing and editing excellent, and layout and presentation of a very high standard. Stat blocks, all included in the appendix, look good although a number of errors naturally crept in. Overall, good presentation and layout, although the organisation could be improved.

The adventure takes place in and around the small town of Ravenscar. As the PCs explore the town they are requested to investigate and eliminate a ghost, an adventure that quickly leads them into a forest of bandits and eventually to the diamond fortress as it magically appears some time after the arrival of the PCs in Ravenscar. PC will then be required to handle the fortress itself as well as its intelligent inhabitants and numerous raids on the small town of Ravenscar.

The adventure is fairly combat intensive, particularly once the PCs enter the fortress itself. There is some initial opportunity for roleplaying in the early stages of the adventure, but after that the adventure revolves around the PCs fighting their way through the adventure's two dungeon locations - the bandit forest and the diamond fortress. The bandit forest seems a bit contrived from a certain point of view, in the sense that it appears to have been stitched on to add some length to the adventure. At present it seems like a side trek to find something the PCs need for the diamond fortress, although they won't know that until the fortress actually appears. The fortress itself is a very interesting location, and holds a number of surprises for the PCs.

The encounters in the adventure are challenging, and the premise certainly interesting and fun. There's a good range of different encounter levels, some very difficult and others easy for characters of the adventure's stated levels. The monster range is good, and characters will have to contend with a good variety of attacks thrown against them. Given that the diamond fortress is constructed of crystal, the adventure maintains that theme well throughout, and includes a number of monsters and templates along those lines to support the adventure's premise.

The Diamond Fortress is a decent adventure with an interesting premise and some neat encounters and locations. It suffers, however, from the lack of organisation in places. The fortress itself is by far the best part of the adventure, and I'd be tempted to exclude the bandit lair from the adventure in favor of altering the adventure to give the diamond fortress more focus. It should be a fun adventure to run through, given the combat encounters and other challenges, but I can see it being less that satisfactory from a story point of view, particularly given the exposition of the plot to the PCs. Overall, an excellent presentation as one would expect from Necromancer games, and a decent adventure.<br><br> <b>LIKED</b>: Interesting premise, challenging and fun encounters, and very good presentation. The support material such as monsters and magic enhance the concept and premise behind the adventure well.<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: Organisation of the adventure is not the best, and in places the adventure appears a little disjointed. <br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Acceptable<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Satisfied<br>



Rating:
[3 of 5 Stars!]
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The Diamond Fortress
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