Customer Reviews

Three Days to Kill (Penumbra (D20))

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The basic premise of this adventure isn't anything unusual. It's a straightforward job for hire: stop a powerful alliance before it starts. There is no heroic quest, and no real mystery to solve (although the seeds are there for further development). What I liked is the tone and approach of this adventure. The author compares the plot to a Clancy novel, one that requires smart play to carry out a strategic assault. Of course, even with good planning, things beyond your control can still go wrong (in this case, very BAD things).

The maps and artwork are nothing special. What you will find, however, is a well-written adventure with an interesting town, a descriptive festival scenario with role-playing possibilities, politics and intrigue behind conflicting powers (mostly behind the scenes) and plenty of room for expansion.

This is one of the first adventures to use the new d20 open gaming license, and it is a nice product. Good, clear maps and an interesting though quite unoriginal plotline. Put simply, the PC's are hired by one villain to knock off his rival, who is arranging an alliance with a bunch of particularly nasty cultists. Now this is fine, if not for the fact that it has already been done (a mini-adventure card in the old City of Greyhawk box set, contains a nearly identical premise, and on only sides of a cardsheet too!)

The layout is nice, with all the stats in grey boxes, but the huge decorative sidebars eat up far too much page space for my liking. Also while the maps are very easy to use, they are computer generated, and look bad in a published product, especially the one on the inside cover of the area in which the module is set.

Despite my nit-picking, this is a decent enough adventure, and should be a lot of fun to play through, though I would not use it as an introductory adventure for those new to D&D.

As a DM who's been running a 3rd edition campaign since it came out, this adventure is one of my (and my players) favorite D20 adventures. The adventure does a great job of breaking free from the 'hack n slash' dungeon crawl genre. Characters become involved in a rich (and slightly twisted) city, a secret plot, and a GREAT surprise ending that is world-shaking and can play nicely into changing your entire campaign setting. Highly recommended by this DM.

OK the new independent D20 stuff is as good if not better than the Official Wizards Of The Coast(WOTC)stuff. I have ran this module tied in with another Penumbra release "Thieves in the forest." The adventure is simple and easy to follow it can be completed without having to redirect the players constantly. If the DM would wish to add additional complexity the storyline is open enough to allow it to tie in with a greater goal or larger campaign. Having ran "Forge of Fury" and "Sunless Citidel" from WOTC, this adventure is just as well presented and as nice to look at. I hope the open D20 system continues to draw talent as good as these folks at Penumbra.

"Three Days to Kill" is part of the Penumbra line of products by Atlas Games. Penumbra is a fitting name for the product line, as it means "A partial shadow, as in an eclipse, between regions of complete shadow and complete illumination; something existing to a lesser extent", and all the Penumbra products are D20 based Open-Game Content, utilizing the major features of the Dungeons and Dragons books. Going to Open Game Content was an excellent move by Wizards of the Coast (the current producers of all official D&D material), as it gives all the gamers a wider variety of choice when choosing modules and source book material. Atlas Games certainly know what they are doing when it comes to role-playing games, and they have made a outstanding module here.

The basic story itself is rather simple. Two local leaders of bandit gangs have been uneasily working together, while trying to find ways to shaft the other. One of them approaches the party during the "Festival of Plenty" and asks them to disrupt a meeting between his rival and an unkown organization. The PC's are given some nifty magic items and a promise of payment upon succesful completion. What sets this module apart from others is that isn't a dungeon crawl, nor does it exactly lead the players by the nose. The PC's are expected to scout out the area where the meeting will take place and find strategic ways to disrupt it, and not necessarily by killing everyone either. While one way of completing the mission is set forth in the module, there are myriad ways it could be done, all of which would lead to a different conclusion and a different set of post-adventures. If the DM plays this one right, the PC's will be kept in the dark the whole time about who the orgnization really is, and will have a rather suprising ending that can lead to all kinds of new adventures.

"Three Days to Kill" is unfortunately a little too short, but it makes up for it's brevity by the quality of the material present. A whole lot of little things add together to make one really great adventure. A "rumors" section fleshes out the location quite a bit, giving the players and the DM a feel for what the local area is really like, along with presenting a springboard for contuining the adventure. The author put a good deal of time into planning out and explaining what all the major characters are like, how they think, and how they will react in any given situation, which makes the DM's job a lot easier. There's also a neat little tidbit present with all the character's stats - instead of just listing a name, class, level, etc, there is a little blurb describing the person or creature. For example, "Modus : Fearless Leader", "Cassius : Disciplined Disciple", and my personal favorite, "Six Young Orcs : Boys Being Boys". The festival going on in the background of the story is brought to life by several small encounters listed, such as "The Pit", a place where criminals are put for festival revelers to relieve themselves on, and "I'll Kill You", a fully fleshed out drinking game that sounds like it would be a pretty good time at a real party. The artwork shown isn't anything too spectacular, but it's not bad either (certainly a lot better than the original D&D modules artwork back in the 80's - I still shudder thinking about them). The artwork has a very "sketchy" feel, which normally wouldn't be a good thing, but here it fits the tone of the module very well. The maps included (with the excpetion of the map showing the way to the meeting place of the bandit leader), are all superbly done, and are crammed full of little details.

"Three Days to Kill" is a highly recommended module. Hopefully we'll see lots more material like this from Atlas Games in the future.

This adventure is everything i would expect from Atlas games. High quality atmosphere and exciting story lines. Their grasp of the D20 rules is great and their writing talents are above the WOTC standard. This particular book will end up giving any DM several advenures in one AND an interesting base of operations for a entire campaign. Buy it and don't look back.

Not a bad little adventure. It is fairly simple, but that also makes it easy to adapt into an ongoing campaign. For example, I easily changed parts of it to fit into a much larger story. The adventure also outlines a town. It doesn't give you a lot of information about the town, but with a little work the town also will also work for more play. My players have decided to use the town as their base of operations.

OH man! If wizard are going to give out there licences they should eb careful who it goes to! The advnture needs a LOT of adjusting to get it played. This does not have sunless citadels play out of the box approach. Its is a disorganised rmbling...and they call it a "Module". The items are inaccurate, they have missed an awful lot of the rules and most of all the adventur...[is not fun]