Review - El Aprendiz de Nigromante
Skeletons!
El Aprendiz de Nigromante is a tri-fold adventure for Espadas & Espectros by ellohir. The adventure is in Spanish, but is easily translated with online tools. Players are called into action by a village worried for missing dead from a recent battle. What will they find?
What's it About?
Players come across a village that was recently attacked by an ogre, who killed many of the villagers. To make things worse, now someone has been digging up the corpses of those who died and were buried on the battlefield. They are advised to go to the inn on the edge of town, where they can find free rooms and food since the owner died in the battle with the ogre. At the inn, however, they will find evidence of bloody rituals, undead crows, skeletons, and villagers, and ultimately the apprentice necromancer responsible for all of this in the middle of a ritual to raise an undead ogre for his growing army. They will have to fight him in the midst of energy beams flying from his fingers and hope to beat him before he can raise up this ogre.
What About the Ideas?
There's some good stuff in here. I like the setup with the aftermath of a battle and the bit of mystery to start things off. I think having the villain here be an apprentice necromancer is a good idea too. He's dangerous, but also not fully in control of what he's doing. He's flawed enough to be defeatable, but not just a boring low-level enemy.
I also just love skeletons, and this has plenty of them, along with the undead crows, who are appropriately creepy.
How About the Execution?
When I started reading this, I was expecting it to be an investigation scenario, and I was a bit upset when there wasn't any real investigation. Going to the battlefield reveals a big drag mark to the south, conveniently going to inn they were already directed to, and after exploring a few rooms of the inn they'll find the apprentice necromancer in the basement.
The thing is though, that's just not what this adventure is. It's all about fighting, and it gives you plenty of that with a gauntlet of undead creatures to fight through before you get to the final combat encounter with the apprentice necromancer in the basement. And that fight is good with high stakes from the ongoing ritual and real danger with the energy beams from the necromancer.
So, ultimately, I think it executes well on what it's trying to do, even if that's not what I was expecting from it.
Art?
It makes good use of some public domain pieces from Gordy Higgins, who draws some excellent skeletons, and also has a crowdfunding campaign going on at the time I'm writing this.
I'm also a bit biased, as I'll be working with Gordy on an adventure coming out later this year, but more on that some other time.
Summary!
I'm not sure I would personally run this one with the focus on fighting, but I think it's great for what it is trying to do, and absolutely worth checking out if that's the kind of game you like to play.