The binding is good on the Hardback book so far. The printing quailty varies from very good to average. I kind of looks slightly blurry at times and occasionally the print looks like it slid a bit on print. I gave it a 3, mainly because of the print quailty. For me, I'm mainly using "OSE Old school essentials" and got this more as a reference book with that. As "The Rules Cyclodepia" covers much higher levels and OSE is Basic DnD Cleaned up.

The book is pretty cheap though (especially comparing buying an original print edition of the book, which is crazy expensive) , so whilst the print of text is a bit dodgy at times, it was worth it for me given how I'm using it.

The quality of the PDF is atrocious. It's a low quality scan that doesn't even have OCR text recognition to make the document searchable.

The print on demand is hideous. Most of the pages look like low quality compressed scans that are slightly blurry, but some of the pages are very crisp and clean.

The front and back cover are also soft and blurry with visible jpg compression artifacts around the text.

I honestly regret buying this one.

This is a great POD, the service was impeccable, fast and the quality of the print can't be faulted. Illustrations, don't and maps are as per the original and I had no issues reading and referencing it while at the table.

I dropped a star for the content, let me explain. Everyone knows this is a much beloved classic and many have great memories from playing back in the day. But myself and other people I know who have ran it will know that there is nothing much cohesive about it. It isn't an "adventure" per se, more collection of encounters and areas you could use as a toolbox for any low level games you are running. If you bought this hoping for a good way to introduce people to B/X era gaming I think you'd better suited with KotB. But if you want a nostalgia rush and more tools for your DM box then this is a brilliant little bit of D&D history to own.

Overall worth it to have on the shelf because of the great print quality.

Oriental Adventures was a huge move forward for 1st Edition AD&D, although there were some hints of the over-complication of 2E on the horizon.

Rather than use this space as a review of the game system itself, I'll speak to the quality of the scan. (I don't see a POD option.)

I purchased the PDFs to supplement my ancient rule books, largely because PDF is searchable. Throwing the old rules into Obsidian to manage the information overload is a great way to find what I'm looking for, particularly during a play session.

Unfortunately, this scan's OCR is pretty poor. The clarity of the scan is fine, and I can always figure out what should have been recognized on the text layer, but it frequently is not.

It's not likely important enough for me to try to re-recognize the text, although it's possible that my open-source tools could do a better job than Wizards did. I want to emphasize that the clarity of the scan seems top-notch.

Anyway, 4 out of 5 — quite good and very useful, but quite a lot of work to get useful text out of it.

Originally posted here: https://theotherside.timsbrannan.com/2024/02/review-module-n4-treasure-hunt.html

I knew my exploration of the Forgotten Realms would take me to new and unexpected places. I just didn't think it was going to be this soon. In my exploration of the Forgotten Realms product Moonshae, I discovered an interesting bit of knowledge. In the back of that book it mentions that Adventure Module N4 Treasure Hunt can be used with the Moonshae Islands. I later discovered that the islands in N4 were moved over to the Forgotten Realms for this purpose. So I had to switch courses and check out this module. I am really happy I did.

This module is not just an introduction module, but maybe THE introduction to the game module. Where you have an honest-to-Gary Session 0 and start with 0-Level characters in 1986. Given I am new to all things Realms, I might as well start at level 0!

N4 Treasure Hunt

by Aaron Allston, 48 pages (2 full color map pages, 36 pages of adventure, 10 pages of character profiles) black & white interiors. Art by Stephen Fabian. Cartographers: David F. "Diesel" LaForce, Stephen D. Sullivan, Bill Reuter, Stephanie Tabat. Cover art by Jeff Easley/

For this review, I am considering the PDF and Print on Demand version from DriveThruRPG/DMSGuild.

Treasure Hunt is a completely introductory adventure for players of the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st Edition game. I say "players" since I feel this adventure still requires a bit of rules savvy from the Dungeon Master, at least in terms of some of the lifts needed to work with the 0-level characters. However, reading this one nearly 40 years later, with honestly tens of thousands of hours spent on this game, there are nice gems here.

Speaking of which. I am not going to attempt to judge this adventure by the same yardstick as new Level-0 or the so-called "Funnel" adventures. That is not fair to the author nor the adventure itself. This has to judged on the merits of its time. But I will tell you this, I'd run this today, as is, with no changes to be honest.

There is a Player's Introduction and Dungeon Master's Introduction.

This is the most interesting parts for me today since they cover the rules of rolling up and playing Level-0 characters. For starters, you don't have a class yet. You are a Normal Human (or elf, or half-elf, or whatever), and you have 1d6 hit points and maybe a secondary skill. You don't even have an alignment. The plot revolves around your character, either one you make or use from the starting characters, being kidnapped by pirates, and then your pirate captors are shipwrecked and mostly all killed. Now, you are stuck in the Korinn Archipelago, later added to the north of the Moonshaes.

From here the new PCs work out an escape plan and defeat their first enemy, the last pirate.

As the players play through the challenges presented on these islands they can build up what their character does and earn some XP. They are all 500 xp away from level 1. The adventure explains that even 1st level characters have some training. A fighter at level 1 is called a Veteran. A 1st level Cleric is an Acolyte. Even thieves and magic-users have some skills at first level that 0-levels do not. Want to be a thief? Try picking that lock. Want to be a Cleric? What do you feel when you enter the Temple of the Goddess and how do you react? You won't know till the end (or near that) and you won't get there till you try.

Frankly, it is great. A fantastic set of mini-mechanics to get the story going and flowing.

The adventure itself is divided into six "episodes." And episode is a good word here since there is a bit of cinematic feel to this. It feels like Aaron Allston watched a lot of Raiders of the Lost Ark, or more to the point, Romancing the Stone. This is a good thing.

Each episode gives the new PCs something tangible to do. Defeat the pirate, stop the orcs and goblins, explore the Temple, explore the Sea King's Manor, and so on. While there is a great feel to all of this, add a bit of the Moonshaes to it, and thus some Celtic and Old Norse culture to it all, and it becomes a fun mix.

Even for the time, the adventure is a bit linear, but not in a terrible way. I mean, let's be honest, the plot is "I've been captured, now I am free, but how do I get out of here?" At the end of each episode, there is a debrief for the DM on handling anything that went amiss, tracking the character's class and alignment progression, and so on. There are even contingencies if certain NPCs are not encountered or die before they are supposed to do something. So, linear but with enough branches to keep it fresh.

Experience points are tracked all along the way, so there is a chance the characters will break the 500 XP threshold by the end of episode 5.

There are appendices on "What if Things Go Wrong" or "What if the Character Dies?" and all are handled pretty well. There are some clever Player's Maps and the map of the islands.

The character profiles in the back can be used as potential PCs or NPCs. A few are even worded to be male or female. Someone online would have screamed, "Woke!" at it, but it is presented here as just one of many options. I do feel more care was taken here to entice both male and female new players to the game.

This adventure is a good one for new players. The only thing missing here is some more guidance for new DMs. Something that B2 Keep on the Borderlands does rather well. Maybe the perfect starting trilogy is this adventure, then T1 the Village of Hommlet, and ending with B2 Keep on the Borderlands.

About the Print-on-Demand Scan

This is a print of a scanned image. So there is some fuzziness to some of the letters. It is obviously not as sharp as, say, a direct from digital print. It is still very readable. Getting the PoD and PDF will give a book you can use and be able to print out the character cards and player maps as needed.

Treasure Hunt in the Forgotten Realms

I already mentioned that the location of this adventure, the Korinn Archipelago, was dropped as right into the Moonshae Isles, which were already an addition by Douglas Niles to the Forgotten Realms, supplanting Ed Greenwood's own islands that were there. Already the Realms are evolving in front of our eyes and it is not even fully 1987 yet.

As an adventure, it is also a great start for Realms-centric characters. I had already planned to make my start in the Moonshaes, this just sets characters on the path of adventure in a different way. You didn't meet in a tavern or bar. You were captured and met your companions along the way. Something we will see again in Baldur's Gate 3 or even, to a degree, Skyrim.

The Temple of the Goddess in Episode Three can easily become a Temple to the Earth Mother / Chauntea. Lots of different Goddesses are given as example, but I thought it might be fun if the Earth Mother appears as all of them. Playing into my fascination with "the Goddess is all goddesses" motif.

Final Thoughts

If I had been smarter, I would have used this first when re-creating my Forgotten Realms characters, but as it is, this worked out fine. This is also a great new-to-me adventure for a new-to-me world. While I LOVE B2 Keep on the Borderlands, it is too closely tied to Greyhawk and the Known World for me to really adapt it over the Realms. Would it even fit in the Realms? I am sure many online users have found a home for it. Maybe one day I could as well, but for now, this is a great adventure to start with. In fact, I want to go through all the N, aka "Novice," adventures and see how they fit my needs here. But for now, I am pretty happy with this.

Thanks for this, great print, and only 2 weeks from the UK to Australia (started at 4 weeks, then 3, then the last 3 orders only 2!)

Pretty much the same as others, the town map issue. All other maps are there.

Just recently DMing again after long haitus with brand new. Your product was 1st rate!!!! Looking forward to adding more modules for my new group.

Most of the book is fine, however the maps are a joke because some of the rooms are so far down in-between the pages that the book would have to be broken to read it. This could easily have been fixed by moving the maps towards the outside of the book by a eighth or sixteenth of an inch. Also wizards of the coast has nothing to do with this or anything they has zero hand in creating, stop crediting an incompetent company that is ruining a wonderful game.

I've been running and remixing the DDAL04 Misty Fortunes and Absent Hearts adventure series of modules as a single campaign for a group of players via play by post, so certain things don't translate fully. The big thing being I forshadow the hooks for the modules ahead of time as I built the village of Orasnou for the players and the runtimes of the modules don't matter as much in PbP.

What I liked: Overall a fun short little adventure. There's a mix of roleplay (I expanded a lot on the two Vistani families in my campaign), combat, and the twist with Lela is fun.

What I didn't like: Even though it's 2 hours focused on level 3 PCs, it feels like the combat is too easy. I added way more zombies, and a few ghouls/ghasts and that helped. I also brought Alina and the wolves back from DDAL04-02 the beast because the module references wolf tracks, and then forgets about them. This felt like a copy editing error.

Overall: Pretty fun, I like the idea, I changed things up significantly to meet my needs, but most of that was particular to my campaign and not a fault of the module itself.

I ordered the multi-media bundle. This was the first item I've ordered that came as a printed book so this was the test run. I am pleased with the presentation and how the overall book came out. I will definitely choose the multi-media option (when possible) when ordering future titles.

The Rules Cyclopedia is a fantastic book that easily deserves five stars on it's own really, but the quality of the printed version is underwhelming to say the least. The text is fuzzy and while not unreadable it is definitely a pain to read for longer periods. I do not regret my purchase of the hardcover version but it's a shame.

all the rules i ever wanted in one neat package. well made easy to read i am very pleased

This book is a gold mine for the DM and it talks about unique items within the world as well as gives you quite a bit of lore in certain areas that sadly is not touched on anywhere else.

if you want to start an adventure in Grayhawk off you should probably use this module. it's a good starting adventure for your party.