Review - A Sliver of Evidence
Let's Solve a Mystery!
A Sliver of Evidence is a 16-page adventure for Cairn by Karly Anders. It's an investigative site-based adventure packing a lot into a small package. Let's check it out!
What's it About?
The adventure is set in a 9-room house. The party is brought in to investigate the owner of the house after she was arrested when screams were repeatedly heard from the house. But the Council has yet to find any evidence of crimes. In the house, players can learn the owner, Toula, is actually a werewolf, part of a long family line, who hasn't actually been committing any crimes, but has been locking herself up before each transformation to avoid hurting anyone. A long the way, they'll experience a supremely weird house full of strange monsters, magic items, and interactive features.
Let's Talk About the Ideas?
So Good! The adventure has a juicy plot to dig into with the werewolf and her family, there's a bunch of creative new monsters, and the house is such a fun location to explore. Each room brings something new to interact or play with: a statue that can heal you or turn you into a werewolf; a living tree; a giant caterpillar soaking in a hot tub whos molted skin can bring the dead to life; a living tree with a cool sword. There's so much here! The magic items in particular shine to me, but it's all good, and I can see players having a good time puzzling things out as they explore the place.
What About the Execution?
This is the hardest one of these sections to write since I started this new series of reviews. On the one hand, everything that is present in the adventure is perfect. The NPCs are good, the magic items are good, the maps are good, the interactivity is good, the player agency is good, the layout is good, the information design is good. All of it is good.
My issue comes with what's not present. The main thing to me is that the adventure hints at time pressure on the players, but doesn't make it concrete. Theoretically, the woman who's in prison can turn into a werewolf and cause trouble and her family can also become involved as they can now find the house they were banished from before. But, it's all presented as things that you as the Warden can decide if they should happen or not. For me, if I was running this, I would want a timeline tied to the dungeon exploration cycle so that there's concrete time pressure and it's not just up to me to throw those things in there. But I've also run games like Monster of the Week without strict time records and with a toolbox of threats the GM can pull in as needed, and presentation like this works just fine in that context. So, I don't feel like I can really knock this presentation here when I know it would work for some GMs and, presumably, worked for the author when running this adventure. For folks like me, it's not like it's difficult to write up a timeline and tie it into the dungeon turns.
I didn't mention it anywhere else yet, but the digital presentation is also great. I really appreciate the booklet-formatted file in addition to the pages and spreads files.
Art?
Wow.
I feel like I should have more to say given how good the art is, but it's just so good.
Just look at this map!
Summary
It's good, and you should check it out. Lot's packed in here for a fun session of investigation, and the items players can walk out of this place with would continue to keep things interesting for sessions to come after.
This is part of my new and improved series of reviews where I'll be focusing each week on something that was recently released for free on Itch.io. I'll be making a point to pay the creators for what I review (when they accept payments), and you can help support that by chipping in a few bucks on Ko-Fi. Thanks for reading!