ASC3 Review - A Murder Most Foul

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Adventure Site Contest 3 review

This adventure was submitted for consideration in Adventure Site Contest 3 being run by Ben Gibson at Coldlight Press. This is an unofficial review, which was written prior to reading (or watching) any of the official judges’ reviews. Links to the official reviews are at the bottom of the review. 

Five-star rating scale, based on both playability and interest:
*          Failing grade. The adventure doesn’t meet minimum standards of playability.
**         I could see running this, but it fails to inspire me or has significant playability issues.
***       I would consider running this.
****     I am considering running this.
*****   I want to run this. Now.

A Murder Most Foul
By Jeff Simpson, Buddyscott Entertainment Group
For Seven Voyages of Zylarthen (in reality system neutral)
Level 5+

Time to grock the adventure: 5 minutes 

Set-up:

The party discovers a secret room—doesn’t matter where—and finds the scene of a murder. The victim and both suspects—all brothers—are present. Also present is an angel, who will ask the party to render judgment on the murderer and offer a reward for doing so.

The facts are not difficult to uncover. The party is presented with a situation where one of three individuals could be condemned for the murder. They will apply their own moral calculus to render a verdict, or they may refuse to render a verdict.

To complicate the situation further, the angel, if asked, will freely tell them their reward for rendering different verdicts or no verdict.

Things I like:

Non-standard encounter! The author notes that the scenario has not been playtested, but I would love to see how it plays out at the table.

There is no correct answer. Both different characters, and players, might see the situation very differently.

Things to note:

This might provoke an alignment discussion at the table. If you hate the idea of that, stay clear.

There are already at least four other products on DriveThruRPG with the same title. Beware.

Rating:

****  A non-standard encounter to shake things up; it provides a moral dilemma and not much else.

NB: The entry was deemed not to meet the contest criteria by the official judges, though by reading of the criteria, the only one that it doesn’t meet is “At least one map”. And given that a map is a GM aid and a map would be unnecessary for this particular scenario…

Links to official judges’ reviews:

 

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