Customer Reviews

Cormyr: The Tearing of the Weave (Dungeons & Dragons d20 3.5 Fantasy Roleplaying, Forgotten Realms Supplement)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

WARNING: CONTAINS SPOILERS!!!

The new Forgotten Realms adventure, Cormyr: The Tearing of the Weave, has a neat underlying premise. The heroes are called in to investigate a newly-dedicated Temple of Mystra. Their investigations lead them from the Temple, into the Vast Swamp, and from there into the Plane of Shadow, where they confront minion of Shar and Cyric who are allied in an effort to tear a whole in Mystra's Weave over the Vast Swamp. The heroes must not only stop the evil doers from succeeding, but also perhaps help a down-on-its luck tribe of lizardfolk, and rescue intended sacrifice victims along the way. In this respect, it is not a disappointment. If you are familiar with the history of Faerun, and more specifically between Shar and Mystra, and between Cyric and Mystra, you have a good foundation to run (or play in) this adventure. If you don't? That's where the critique begins.

What's the motive? Why be a hero here other than to walk through an adventure and risk life and limb? The problem here, as it is with A LOT of Wizards adventures is that they are all modified dungeon crawls with little roleplaying, and through that, little character development. Yes, character advancement - you climb levels, but not character development.

Heck, you really don't even get into the heart of "why rip a hole in the weave" beyond to give Shar her own little swamp on the face of Faerun, nor "how the hole is being made," aside from "bellows" and "sacrifices."

I particularly don't like the new model of separating out encounters into another section of the book. It seems wasted space and a means to build in more pages and jack up the price. (I paid full price for this at my FLGS. If you are interested in buying it, I recommend Amazon.com or some other means to get it at a serious discount.) Moreover, you find yourself constantly flipping between the descriptive text and the matching encounter to simply keep track of where the characters are at and what's going on. Frustrating.

Also, no table of contents? I know this is a pretty straight forward adventure. It is a dungeon crawl afterall. But a table of contents is one page, or even half a page, and helps the reader see the organization. So, why not?

The new templates are "nice," but nothing to sing about. Dragon magazine has printed better. (See Issue 322 for the Shade Racial Class Level Progression.) Still, the Dark is a nice go-between from "normal" to "shade". The magic items are minimal. And there are no new monsters to fawn over.

In the end, there are interesting sights and interesting foes to encounter. Wizards did not break from its mold in building this adventure. There is no cutting edge new dynamics, nor underlying twist that makes you revel in the mastery of design. All in all, it's not a disappointment. But it's also nothing to write home about.

I mostly enjoyed this product. On the down side, the book does get a bit confusing due to the new encounter format. For those unfamiliar, all the tactical details of an encounter are listed seperately on another page than the general description and details of the area concerned. Meaning, you have to flip back and forth some to get the true measure of what is going on. The encounter format is not all bad though, it is fairly streamlined, containing all the pertainent info you need to run the particular combat. Also, due to the somewhat chaotic layout of the rift (the climax area of the adventure), it feels less organized than the other sites.
On the plus side, the encounters themselves are imaginative, with interesting opponents, obstacles, complications, and possible developments. While your characters aren't likely to leave a lot of recurring villians, they do pick up pieces of a puzzle along the way and visit interesting places.
I would recomment this product for those you can overlook the problems mentioned in the first paragraph.

I was very disappointed with this book. It has little to do with Cormyr. Even if you're focused on setting a game in Cormyr you can skip purchasing this book. You'll get nothing in the way of useful source material. The adventure has one or two interesting parts, but you can definitely do better by writing your own. This book also seems to focus on a new style that comes off as focusing more on the fights than the story. I found important information scattered about the book and it was often difficult to make it fit together.

I was hoping for a book that was at least partly a sourcebook, something like The Shining South (which I highly recommend). Cormyr is simply a long adventure, one that is not particularly well-organized. All five authors are Realms superstars - I will admit to buying anything with Bruce Cordell's name on it, and the story is okay, but a bit fractured. (SPOILER ALERT) The action takes PCs from a phony temple of Mystra (actually a scam by the clergy of Shar) to the Vast Swamp to the Plane of Shadow. The adventure can be followed immediately by Shadowdale: The Scouring of the Land, and then Anauroch: The Empire of Shade (I have not read these two yet).
My main gripes are thus:
1. The only information about Cormyr above and beyond what is presented in the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting is limited to just over four pages in the appendix.
2. I don't like the "tactical encounter format". Why list them all separately? Why can't the tactical encounters be integrated into the body of the adventure? It would certainly make for less page-flipping by the DM.

As a Realms buff, I need this volume on my shelf, but I don't plan on running it for my players.

The plot to this adventure is a good one that is unfortunately hampered by two problems. First, the italicized descriptions placed at the beginning of most locations are for the most part horrendously bland and poorly written. This can obviously be fixed by a creative DM but surely after paying for this book you shouldn't have to. The second problem is the abundance of errors that plague the text. I can accept a few typos in a book but in the first chapter alone there were a half dozen or so glaring mistakes (the most obvious of which is on a handout of all things) A map that you are supposed to give the players tells them that a certain landmark lies to the west while the map clearly shows it to the east. Again, not an unfixable error but annoying nonetheless.
The thing that I like the most is the use of what they call "tactical encounters". A specific page is set aside for each location that is likely to see combat, presenting NPC and Monster stats, a mini-map showing locations and possible tactics that will be used. At the end of the day I would say that if you don't mind spending the time fixing things and paying attention to poor writing, the adventure itself is well worth playing through if for no other reason that to segue nicely into the superior Shadowdale adventure.

I have now played through this entire adventure as the DM. The reason I bought it in the first place is that I love the Forgotten Realms and am a college student, so no time to write my own. I have heard many people say that it is underwhelming or not enough new material. Let me say this...So what. It is beautifully written by 5 amazing authors who all contributed to the design of the story. If you constantly follow the Forgotten Realms story, this adventure and the 2 follow-ups will fit in nice between the events of certain novels. Also, the encounters are challenging, very customizable, and quite suitable for any play group.

As I said before, I have finished this adventure with 1 play group and am halfway with another. If you want new stuff, write it yourself or add any of the hundreds of items and classes other FR books add. I personally went and rewrote many of the major NPCs stat blocks using Champions of Ruin and Lost Empires.

Finally, remember that the story in the adventure is incomplete. To the players, they will feel like they have survived (or not survived...3 or 4 times in my party's case) something huge. My players absolutly clammored for more and the second book in the series releases later this month.

If you like the F.R. and need a precon adventure, look no further.

"Cormyr: The Tearing of the Weave" is an excellent addition for the serious D&D enthusiast. Both to the DM and players this book reveals one of the greatest Forgotten Realms storylines players can participate in.

This books has its good points and its bad points. As for the good points it does explain about Cormyr it more detail then the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting book. But the bad point is that its has the many adventures for this book all the way through the book instead of have it at the back of the book and a little more detail about Cormyr and its major characters would of been more helpful.

As a DM, sometimes I find it hard to come up with material for an entire campaign all at once. This book takes care of that problem; it provides a streamlined adventure designed to take a group of characters from level 4 to level 7 or so. The italicised room descriptions hearken back to the days of AD&D, and the Tactical Encounter blocks make combat quick, without missing any details. Cormyr: Tearing of the Weave is set in the Faerun, one of the oldest campaign settings for D&D, but with little effort it can be transplanted straight to Eberron, Greyhawk, or any homebrew campaign world.

Good product. As always with WotC, retail price is steep but this one is worth it - especially if you are a fan of Faerun.
Well done, deep plot, good illustrations - all in all, nice installment in this super campaign.