King of the Trollhaunt Warrens: Adventure P1 (D&D Adventure) (Paperback)

by Richard Baker (Author), Logan Bonner (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
A D&D Adventure for 11th-level characters.

Designed to take characters from 11th to 14th level, this adventure pits the heroes against a variety of horrible monsters and fiendish foes as they seek to thwart the evil machinations of the denizens of the Trollhaunt Warrens.

This adventure can be run as a stand-alone adventure or as Part One of a three-part series of adventures that spans 10 levels of gameplay.

About the Author
RICHARD BAKER has worked as a game designer since 1991. A former officer in the US Navy, he has written or contributed to more than 70 game products, including the rules for both 3rd and 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons and Axis & Allies Miniatures. Rich is also the author of eight Forgotten Realms novels, including the New York Times bestseller Condemnation.

LOGAN BONNER works as a game designer for Wizards of the Coast, Inc. His professional RPG credits include City of Stormreach, Dungeonscape, and the Magic Item Compendium.

Product Details

• Paperback: 96 pages
• Publisher: Wizards of the Coast; Pap/Pstr edition (October 21, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786949287
• ISBN-13: 978-0786949281
• Product Dimensions: 11.2 x 9.2 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Note: Gift-wrapping is not available for this item.
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #143,346 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fun mix of tactical encounters and changes of scenery., October 22, 2008

By	Jaime Leivers "jleivers" (New York,NY United States) - See all my reviews

I'm editing this review. I've run half of the adventure so far. The plot of Trollhaunt Warrens is really well done. It was written by Richard Baker one of the author's of "Red Hand of Doom" which is in my opinion the best module ever written. Only problem is there's a lack of characters with depth in the story. That part is up to you.

This adventure has plot, encounters, and tactical fun. It's pretty long and basically split up into three parts. Each one taking probably 3 sessions. I'd estimate 45 hours to finish.

SPOILERS -- please don't read unless you're a DM - I'm still not giving everything away though.
A large group of trolls under the leadership of one who obtained a powerful artifact are growing in strength. The story starts out with some trolls throwing the head of a prince over a wall saying "Ha ha, your hero is nothing we will soon own all of this land!". The city sends for help, the party intercepts the message, and responds.

They head to the Warrens and slog through the caverns with all sorts of interesting encounters. In the Warrens are several factions vying for power or bullied into servitude. We all know evil turns against evil at the drop of a hat. There's even a black dragon who is allied with the trolls. They can fight it or avoid fighting and negotiate with a skill challenge.

Killing the troll leader is just the first step as trolls do not so easily die. The town gets attacked by more enemies. Creatures riding manticores bring "death from above" as they strike the middle of town from the air. I always enjoy defending towns. I will leave out a major spoiler but the party has to quickly return to the troll warren.

After a second major enemy battle they must pursue another enemy through a door into the feywild, awesome. The last part of the adventure takes place in the feywild against all manner of alien creatures native to the feywild; from briar hags to tree blights to quicklings to feymire crocodiles. There is some exploring of the alien world that is the feywild and one more climactic battle that ends the adventure.

There are multiple interesting encounters. There's one I think it's called the "Death Spiral" in a cavern where there are a series of progressively higher platforms like a gigantic spiral staircase. On the levels there is a Galeb Duhr that can push players down the levels. There are lots like that, they are just playing with the tactical possibilities, it's great. Each encounter is set up to explore a different tactical twist. Not every single one is perfect but some are really fun. There are several big bad evil guys and even some recurring ones ;)hint hint.

The module is similar to all WOTC and TSR adventures and has little to no role-playing. This adventure is basically fight after fight. The locations change from in a dungeon to a city and back to the dungeon and then in the feywild. It would be nice if some of the characters in the town had more built out goals and motivations. My players wound up not caring a bit about the town or anyone in it, but that could be because they are all unaligned.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great Adventure, but hard to make maps for table play, February 11, 2009

By	Mark Twain (North Carolina) - See all my reviews

As the previous posters said, the module is extremely combat heavy, but the combats are very cool and varied, so no problem there. As for the maps, the best current option is to scan them from the book or download them from WotC. If you've got the time to wait, artists online will undoubtedly post their own renditions of the maps for download, but that might take months.

If only WotC would allow printing of tactical scale maps from DDI, which would be the best service they could provide through the medium aside from the Character Builder.

6 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars unplayable?, November 6, 2008

By	Michael Schwartz "Hannibal Barca" (Florida) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Great story...but the adventure is loaded with encounters which are basically impossible to recreate with a hand-drawn battle grid. The caverns are awkwardly shaped so dungeon tiles are not really an option either; plus the terrain features would be hard to create with tiles. You would have to be an artist to recreate the terrain of these encounters and it would take hours to to do so. We all know how important maps are for combat in 4e. The terrain is also important for things like cover and concealment. The only solution would be to scan each encounter map and enlarge it which is a pain in the a$$. A published adventure shouldn't require that much extra work. The adventure comes with only one large map which has VERY limited use.