Cody Lewis, of Taking 20, William Thompson, and Daniel Lewis, working as Green Feather Games, have published their first adventure on DriveThruRPG. It is a 15 page PDF, after the cover, OGL, player map, and 2 1/2 page bestiary, there are 10 pages for the adventure and half page for the DM’s map. It is PWYW, so very affordable. They also have a version of it on Roll20 for $6.99, so you don’t have to do any extra work to be ready to run it.

Since this was published under the 5e SRD they have used creature art and 5e stat blocks. After the OGL, there is a link to the SRD. I almost missed the link, which is mentioned on page 2.

This is a third level adventure for 4 to 5 players. It can be a one shot or easily fit into an established campaign. It should give 3-4 hours of play, so time wise it would be a great scenario to run at a con.

The introduction “chapter” sets the tone and has a quick synopsis, a getting started section, and 3 suggested adventure hooks. This is about a farm harassed by “something” taking a farmer’s cows. It turns out to be a nest of ankhegs that has taken over a former kobold mine. If the first adventure hook is used, there is some read aloud text. The lair is an eight “room” cavern, easily equated with a mini-dungeon.

There is a possibility for loot and unexpected findings/happenings. More than one way to deal with the boss fight is presented.

The short bestiary presents two variations on the ankheg, the queen and hatchlings.

This is a great module for a first time publication. I’m not big on modules, as I have to do so much prep to run them, that I’m usually better served doing my own thing. However, this module doesn’t have extraneous details. It is laid out in a way that is easy to use and not get tripped up on details. There is minimal read aloud text that is between two lines and offset from the margins for the other text. It is also in a variation on the font. Two places have the words “Read aloud:” before the text, and another has read before the first line. I would prefer each occurrence of read aloud text to be handled identically.

What I Liked:

• The title is instantly suggestive of more. What is it?
• Great cover art.
• Straightforward presentation of the module with focus making it easy to run.
• Coded DM map and player map.
  • They could easily be used in Roll20. (NOTE: They have a Roll20 version on the Roll20 marketplace as mentioned above.
• Bestiary
• Link to SRD
• The colored background did not impact the legibility of the text for my aging eyes.

What I’d Like To See:

• Each read aloud text presented the same way.
• The SRD link following the OGL needs to stand out more.
• There was only one thing in the text that bothered me, they used a hyphen to split the word tremorsense with the hyphen after the first ‘s’. so tremors-
  ense.
  I had to stop and make sense of the word split in a non-standard way. This was the only such hiccup.
  I have a pre-release review copy, so it may be fixed in the released version.
  • I did not notice any other typos or layout issues.

Conclusion:

I liked this module and can see myself running it, or even being a player in it. It is simple enough that one who is not into 5e could easily transform it to use in other editions, such as various OSR clones. The presentation of the material makes it easy to just pick it up and run it. I look forward to future offerings from Green Feather Games.

I am dipping my toes into 5e, as that is what most new players that don’t meet an OSR grognard first will most likely be exposed to first. At last I have read the high points of the 5e PHB, and glanced through the MM, and read the high points of the DMG. I’m in a 5e campaign that went on hiatus before the first session because of a work situation for the DM. I look forward to playing in Lost Mines of Phandelver before I make an attempt to DM 5e myself. I hope to get word that we will be starting in the next few weeks.