As I look over any of 0one's mapsets, adventure ideas always begin to stir... so, here is the first in a line that takes some of their 'Black and White' line of game-ready tiles and battlemaps and presents you with an adventure tailored to that location.

The location in question is the White Wyvern Inn, situated with an eye to the travelling (and adventuring) community about a day's journey from anywhere... you pick a suitable place in your campaign world. The adventure is not just based in the inn, it is built around the very fabric of the place, and provides opportunities for those who wish to exercise their brains and their role-playing abilities, as well as their sword-arms.

The work begins with some extensive background, some of which can be explained to the characters as events unfold, some of which they might find out for themselves... and some of which they may never know, but which make for a rich experience as you use the whole to good effect as the game proceeds.

It is left to you to arrange for the characters to be in the White Wyvern Inn. Perhaps they're 'passing trade' or they may have been sent for deliberately... because the landlord has a bit of a problem. A ghost that haunts the taproom, playing the organ and entertaining the patrons, even acting as bouncer when people get a bit rowdy. But it has a disquieting habit of possessing someone mid-evening and declaiming a monologue in their voice, leaving them unharmed it is fair to say, but not everyone is happy about it and so the landlord has decided that the spook must go. Can the characters help?

Naturally, there's plenty else going on, even if the task of discovering how to ensure that the ghost goes to its rest was not enough. There's a whole cast of well-detailed characters each with their own distinct personality, agenda and set actions for the night - picking their way through what everyone is up to will provide plenty to keep your characters busy, never mind attending to their ghost-busting duties. Some may attack, some will try to enlist the characters' aid in their own schemes... and should you wish to make this an integral part of an ongoing campaign, rather than a one-night stand, much can be used to foreshadow further adventures.

The Inn itself naturally plays a starring role, and is described in loving detail, and referencing the original mapset if you have it. There's a decent-size map for the GM to work from, and if you like lots of floorplans and battlemaps to put in front of your players you can either get the original White Wyvern Inn set or don't buy this at all but get the Spirit of the White Wyvern Game Pack instead: adventure, maps, tokens and more.

After all this, background and maps and room descriptions and all, we actually reach the adventure itself. On page 8, there it is, the 'read aloud' text to introduce the characters to what you have in store for them - must be one of the longest introductions I've read in a long time! Once launched by their arrival, events move at a cracking pace with plenty of detail about what the NPCs are doing and how they will react to whatever the characters get up to. Everything is presented in two parts - there are the 'location' based events that will take place whenever the characters go to the stated location, and the 'timed' sequence of events that will take place at the appropriate time wherever the characters have got to... all melding together to create a vivid alternate reality that should come to life around your characters.

It's a cracking little location-based adventure with a lot crammed in, full of excitement. Drop this in somewhere suitable, tweak events a little to fit your own campaign, and it could become a momentous and memorable part of the story you and your players are creating together.

Return to The Spirit of the White Wyvern page.

Reviewed: 24 December 2011