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N3 Destiny of Kings (1e) (1986)
 
$4.99
Average Rating:4.6 / 5
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N3 Destiny of Kings (1e) (1986)
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N3 Destiny of Kings (1e) (1986)
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
by Cosmo C. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 09/09/2020 22:00:57

I ran this adventure when it was brand new. Ended up killing my mom's character (oops!). Fun times. Honestly this is a pretty good adventure that does really feel very, very medieval. So medieval. You'll feel like you're in medieval England ("Throne of Dunador", "Fontenmore Abbey" and "The Drake & Castle Inn" are the kinds of names you'll experience here. This isn't a "monsters and wizards and magic items everywhere" Forgotten Realms experience, it's closer to a King Arthur or Swords and Sorcery where magic wielders are rare.

The players have a mystery to solve and a fairly open world experience which is rewarded with a cohesive world and a lot of fun, different and interesting (and often deadly). Also it's not really a "kill everything and win" kind of module. Another thing worth noting is that even though it says levels 1-4 (which isn't the more modern "start at 1, end at 4") what it really means is "we're liars, we claim it's is for 4-6 players levels 1-4 but if you're party isn't at least level 3 you're very, very dead"). Also this is one of the easiest modules to convert to 3.5/Pathfinder/5e I've ever come across.

I have to dock it a star because it suffers from so many of the problems common to modules of its era. The format and layout aren't great. It is very much "this is what's in this room" and lacks "these are the main people here" all in one spot for easier reference. Also many NPCs are generally reduced to combat statistics and maybe one sentence about who they are. On the plus side despite some modules created during the 80s are super sexist and/or racist, this module is not.

Another unfortunate sign of the times is that the text is extremely dense with only about a quarter of it being necessary. There is a section that describes an area of town as "Apart from Lemus and the odd porcine house pet, there is virtually nothing of interest in this area" and then continues for a very long paragraph going on and on about bakery hours and building construction materials and other irrelevent things that should probably be made up on the spot. What I'd prefer is all this wasted space be used to further develop the many low-level fighters that litter the castles or give more personality/backstory to the main NPCs. Essentially this means that unless you're a very fast reader your options are to force the players to wait every time they arrive somewhere new as you plow through mountains of unnecessarily verbose text or you have a lot of fairly boring reading homework to do before you can run this game.

This module is one of my original game group's all-time favorite modules for the 1980s/early 1990s. It is a good adventure and generally shows you a really, really good way to structure an interesting game.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
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