Review of "At the Heart of Evil" by K. Alex Carlsson

The Pdf can be downloaded for free from Drivethrurpg.com. This adventure is a 16 page pdf, which could have been downsized to a 10-11 page document (without the Pathfinder OGL, smaller font etc.). It is part of a "trilogy" but sadly the other two adventures haven't been released yet and I guess never will. This adventure mentions the next two in line a couple of times and gives hints, ideas and suggestions for running them.

The story: A paladin is cursed and he betrays his 5 paladin brothers in their very small castle. He summons several undead to protect the castle and then goes on a patrol with most of his minions. The PCs are lvl 6-8 adventurers who try to clear the castle and end the tyranny of the cursed paladin before he comes back with his army. The story of the other two adventures would have been: once the PCs clear the castle, the DM convinces them that leaving it would be suicide and that their best option is to stay and defend it against the soon returning cursed paladin. The third adventure would have been about searching the tower of the evil wizard, who cursed the paladin to begin with and end his terror.

The Look: The pdf is very well layed out, the art is great and the maps are easy to interpret. The language is easy to read, I didn't find many typos. It has the usual layout of: adventure background, adventure synopsis, a couple of adventure hooks and the adventure itself. Ending with an adventure conclusion, some mentions about the further adventures and two new magic items of which one is nice and the other one is quite powerfull, but the PCs only find it at the very end of the adventure (and it was probably meant to be usefull in the "next" adventure). The adventure has 24 "rooms" of which 11 has enemy encounters. There is a very bad puzzle and a couple of traps.

The Good: Would I recommend it? Yes! I can think of running it, as is without any changes and my players would enjoy it. The two hinted at, but sadly unpublished follow up adventures have nice ideas too. Overall if I needed an adventure which I can place pretty much anywhere and run pretty much anytime, this is a great little adventure. The hard work of designing it, drawing the map, choosing the monsters and the treasure has already been done. Just pick it up for free and run it. The maps and the art in itself is worth a look in my opinion.

The Bad: There isn't really any story, no real NPCs, no dialog, no roleplaying element of any kind and the conclusion of the adventure isn't obvious at least if based on the adventure alone, a good DM can fix this very easily on the fly. Sadly the one and only puzzle is very weak and not obvious at all (and it has no illustration to help).

Overall: I really like it. There is nothing special about this adventure. Go into the keep, kill everything, take the loot and that's it. Nothing too complicated. The art is great black and white, the layout is helpfull, you have everything here that is needed. You could prep this adventure with one fast readthrough and understand everything you would need instantly.

Conclusion: If you have only limited time to game and you would like to run a "quality adventure" for your party I would buy something from Wizards of the Coast or Paizo instead, but if you are looking for a free dungeon crawl, which you can use as is and prep only with a quick read through, this is (almost) as good as it gets.

At 16 pages, 13 1/4 are the adventure. This appears to be a simple enter the keep, and defeat the undead adventure.

It doesn't appear as well polished as Spindle Wood Marsh, or Gallery of Dreams, but it has some promise.

A puzzling thing: at E18 (prison cell), if the PCs rescue the woman, they will be rewarded, as her family are quite wealthy, but there is no mention of the reward. Rather incomplete.

Conclusion: for free, it's worth getting, but in my opinion, it does need more work; especially at E18 (prison cell).

Download it and fill in the gaps.

At the Heart of Evil by Headless Hydra Games

This product is 16 pages long. It starts with a cover and Credits. (2 pages)

Introduction (2 pages) This is a background to the adventure, overview and some plot hooks.

The Old Keep (11 pages) There is a map of all levels of the keep, there is a total of 12 encounters in the keep and room for some RPing even. It is mostly a fairly straight forward “dungeon crawl” where the PC's go and explore a old keep to defeat the evil that is rumored to be their.

It ends with a OGL. (1 pages)

Closing thoughts. The artwork is simple black and white, the maps are simple but well done. The encounters could be very dangerous in a couple of spots, which makes this adventure possible very hard. Or things might be very easy depending a bit on the makeup of the party. The adventure is undead heavy. Really there is two parts to this adventure and this is only the first part. I am assuming their will be a followup adventure to this free adventure for the next part. All and all this is fairly well done, there is not bookmarks or statblocks. I did have one critic, there is a woman the PC's can save and if they do they can earn a reward. Only it doesn't say what or even offer suggestions what the reward should be. I think it should have offered suggestions. The adventure could be used stand alone with out the second part fairly easy with only a few minor tweaks.

So what's my rating? Well it is free, but it is a fairly simple straight forward adventure. I recommend picking it up, but I am going to rate it with a 4 star review. A nice but pretty simple straight forward adventure that could have used a little more polish.

Trust me, I'm a Succubus.