TFT Adventure: The Sewers Of Redpoint

I've posted several reviews of the Legends of the Ancient World (LotAW) adventures, published by Dark City Games. Some, like The Dark Vale, have been very appealing, both from an aesthetic and practical point of view. Aesthetic, in that my tastes run towards minimalism, both in art and in roleplaying accessory design. Practical, in that all of the LotAW adventures are created for pre-programmed play, thus theoretically minimizing the required preparation time, and permitting small group and solitary play.

The Sewers of Redpoint is yet another adventure in the LotAW adventure line. LotAW, for those of you who may be unfamiliar with it, is a retroclone of an earlier, and now out-of-print game system know as The Fantasy Trip. The Sewers of Redpoint is a pre-programmed adventure, similar to the Microquests published for TFT, and includes a handy, coded map, that allows the referee to graphically follow the player's progress through the adventure.

The hook for the adventure is straight-forward. The child-avatar of the Church of the Sun-God has been kidnapped by cultists. The players descend into the Sewers of Redpoint to save the child-avatar, before he is sacrificed to an eldritch evil in some hideous ceremony.

Like the other adventures in the LotAW line, this is a 32 page pre-programmed adventure: the players move from paragraph to paragraph within the adventure, making choices along the way that lead them in different directions within the sewers. And like most pre-programmed adventures, there is little room for deviation from the programmed script.

Of all of the LotAW adventures, this is my second favorite, after The Dark Vale. Any adventure, like The Sewers of Redpoint, that includes cultists, black ceremonies intended to raise eldritch evils, and multiple plot-lines, is a winner in my books. I also like the handy referee's map at the back of the adventure, which militates against one of the weaknesses of this format: the difficulty in advance preparation by the referee, given the structure of a pre-programmed adventure.

What the LotAW adventures suffer from most is the price. At $12.95, this is expensive, notwithstanding the addition of a playing board and counters. To compare, some are purchasing the new 4E Red Box at Amazom.com for $13, and that comes in a sturdy box with a greater variety of accessories. And Raggi's Hammer of the God, for the Lamentations Of The Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplaying game, which has garnered early, favorable reviews, is priced at $10.

I can recommend The Sewers of Redpoint adventure to those of you who enjoy the LotAW game system, and don't mind paying a little extra for a related adventure.