Review - The Drakenfall Faire
Mayhem at the Faire
The Drakenfall Faire is a 16-page adventure for Perils & Princesses written by Destiny Howell with art by Ryan Lynch of Outrider Creative, who also published the adventure. Players find themselves exploring a faire, only to have things descend into chaos with some magical dragons.
What's It About?
Players are visiting the annual dragon fair at the town of Drakenfall, known for its traditions of dragon slaying. After a short introductory scene with a misbehaving origami dragon, they will be free to explore the faire with various carnival games, such as a maze, a dunking booth, a spicy food eating contest, fighting a dragon-slaying knight with an arm tied behind his back, or a storytelling competition. Tokens earned from the games may be used to buy a variety of fun magic items, and there's also some interesting little random encounters to sprinkle around their time exploring the faire. When the GM decides it's time, a gnome will attempt to set off flying origami dragons for an event, but instead accidentally enchant three stone dragons that will go about the faire causing chaos until the players find a way to deal with them.
Let's Talk About the Ideas!
There's some good stuff in here! It's got solid world building setting up this dragonslaying-obsessed culture and their faire, and the various carnival games are fun chances for the players to take part in some lower-stakes fun. One place it really shines is the magic items, there's some great stuff in there:
Granny Bachmann’s Miracle Elixir: A disgusting mixture of herbs and vegetables that cures any one Ailment. Once taken, you reek like rotten garlic for 24 hours. Bottle has d4 uses.
Artisan Perfume: A small vial of fine perfume with a sweet and alluring scent. When worn, roll any GRACE tests to be charming with advantage for one hour (or until the scent is washed off). The scent from the perfume also attracts any insects and animals in the area. Vial has d4 uses.
I personally love the haughty knight fighting with an arm tied behind his back. In particular, he will refuse to untie his arm, even once the dragons start causing problems, unless the players can convince him otherwise.
The dragons are also great, each with a distinct personality and set of things they'll try to do once they get started. One is greedy for treasure, one is hungry for food, and the other just wants a fight. All good stuff.
What About the Execution?
I struggle a bit as an OSR-head about the elements of this that feels pre-programmed. There's a scene that will play out in the beginning, a scene that will eventually happen with the dragons, and then two options for how that gets resolved--either the players defeat the dragons or the kingdom's knights eventually ride in to stop them. But, if I take a step back from my personal playstyle preferences on that, there's not actually a problem with any of this. Sure, there's some scenes that are destined to happen, but there's nothing prescribed about how either scene has to be resolved, and the part in between exploring the fair is also wide open. I think one of the real strength's of Destiny's writing, both here and in other Perils & Princesses projects, like Sweet Revenge is actually this mix of OSR-style structure, which plays to how Perils & Princesses is written, with some elements of more scene-based character-focused writing you might expect from other games. Coming into this with an open mind, there's actually a lot to appreciate here.
Apart from that, everything else is super solid. The NPCs are well described, succinct but enough information for how to portray them. There's a good random generator for faire denizens the players might run into. The random encounters for the faire are fun diversions. The magic items are choice. And, as noted above, there's no preplanned solutions for anything. You've got some basic information about the personality of the dragons and what they'll try to do, but it's wide open for the players to figure out how to deal with it all.
My one other quibble would be the faire games. There's some that are really good, such as the maze, which functions a bit like a skill challenge, requiring a number of successes, but leaves itself open to how players will find advantages to solve the maze faster. But others are just one or more ability checks, and I'd like to have seen a more consistent open-endedness in how the various games were written. But, even that wouldn't be too much of a challenge for a good GM.
Art?
I absolutely love Ryan's art. So much. It's like a mid-century storybook style, the kind I grew up with in a bunch of books my mom gave me from her childhood, but more whimsical and still managing to feel modern. Perils & Princesses shines in its mechanics and writing, but so much of the overall vibe comes from the art and design that Ryan uses to present it.
So good!
Summary!
There's some very good stuff in here, absolutely worth checking out, particularly if you haven't played Perils & Princesses before. I really need to write more about that game itself at some point, but it's one of my favorites right now. This would be an excellent introduction to the game. It will also tie into an upcoming bigger adventure on Kickstarter, which I'm sure will be worth picking up as well based on everything else I've seen from this team.
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!