The Burning Plague

 


I know, I said I'd get to the first 3e Dragon Magazine, but there was a family tragedy last night, so I'm jumping to the first online adventure that WotC produced for 3e instead. But first, you'll note the map above, which is the latest Map-a-Week release, City. It's a nice little map that has plenty of uses.

So, when 3rd edition began, Wizards of the Coast produced a stack of adventures that were released online for free. The first of these came out concurrently with the new Player's Handbook. It is available here, along with the accompanying map. These adventures are also available as downloadable PDFs from DriveThru RPG, if you are so inclined, for a nominal fee of $0.99 US.

Alright, The Burning Plague is a short, 11-page adventure (plus map) for 1st-level characters that takes place in a small mining community named Duvik's Pass. The wells are poisoned and the crops are blighted, and many of the people are falling sick and are near death. The party is tasked with finding the reason for what is happening in the mines to cause this.

So, to run this module, you only need the Player's Handbook. This is good, since at this point the Player's Handbook is all there is for 3rd edition. The Dungeon Master's Guide and the Monster Manual are recommended, but not necessary. Again, that's a good thing. It would have sucked for them to release an adventure that needed rules the DMs didn't yet have access to. As it is, this adventure is playable with just the 2000 Survival Kit in the PH for DM goodies.

The adventure is short, only seven encounter areas in the mines. The plague is being caused by a 5th-level orc cleric of Gruumsh who has taken up the task of spreading the Burning Plague to human communities; Duvik's Pass is a test run, basically. And he's got some kobolds handy to help him out. Unfortunately for the PCs, these creatures are contagious, and the effects of the disease are spelled out in case PCs do contract it before the end of the adventure. Which, unfortunately, is quite likely for many PCs. Dwarf fighters have the best chances of withstanding the plague, since they have good Fortitude saves, and a higher constitution to help them with that saving throw.

For a beginning adventure, it does what it needs to do. Of course, I haven't had the chance to play this adventure yet, but it should provide an evening's entertainment for a starting group with a DM who has at least some idea of what he's doing. There is plenty of explanatory detail here to assist the DM is presenting the adventure, and all the creatures are statted out to make them usable for DMs using nothing but the Player's Handbook. The few magic items are found in the Survival Kit, as well. Traps are sufficiently described to make them easy to run (and include CRs for XP value).

So, there's an adventure to start your players on their quest to become great heroes at the expense of various nasty beasties. Check it out, and I hope you enjoy it. Tomorrow, I'll get started on that Dragon magazine review.

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