100 Days of Halloween: DL15 Mists of Krynn

When I talk about witches and D&D one of the last places that usually comes to mind is Krynn and Dragonlance. BUT believe it or not, there are some strong connections between my witches and the first Dragonlance Trilogy.  Usually this can be summarized with me thinking that "this could use some more witches" where the "this" is the trilogy.  Witches are mentioned in the first book but that was only a tease.

So. How does DL15 Mists of Krynn fit into all of this? Glad you asked.

DL15 Mists of Krynn

PDF. 128 pages. Color covers and maps. Black & white interior. 

This book contains 12 mini-adventures (pages 2 to 100), nine discussions on various creatures and races unique to Krynn with adventure hooks or lairs, and eight NPCs. I printed the monster section out and stuck it into my Dragonlance Monstrous Compendium binder.

I am going to be upfront here and say this is not a review of the entire book, but rather just of the mini adventure The Tanglewood Keep, and I'll briefly touch on one of the NPCs, Ladonna.

The Tanglewood Keep

This adventure is a basic MacGuffin hunt, but it has some nice features about it. First off it was written by a friend of the Other Side Vince Garcia. I have featured his Quest of the Ancients RPG many times here.  Secondly, while the adventure is simple, that is its greatest strength. It is not really about the quest to find a stone, it is about getting the PCs from their home world (Greyhawk or now the Realms) to Krynn via the magic mirror in the adventure.

The characters are introduced to kender, tinker gnomes, and draconians in short order. They get the full Dragonlance introduction before the mud on their boots from their home world is even dry.  

I ran this one for my family at home and at Gen Con 2021 and in no short order they all wanted to kill poor Twil Topknot! It was a fun adventure and I am glad I got to do it.

The book itself does have an "Adventure Path" feel about it with adventures to take the characters from the 1st to 15th level. Tanglewood Keep is for adventurers of 1st to 3rd level. If you want to play in Krynn and don't want to do the War of the Lance, or do what I did and have it as a "background noise," then this is a good choice.

This adventure also introduces us to the magic-user cough*witch*cough Stevie. I'll get to her later.

Ladonna

I admire the layout of this book. Everything is rather modular with the monster/race bits fitting on a front and back page (reading the PDF) and the NPCs fitting one per page. It makes printing this out rather convenient.

Ladonna is another entry from Vince. She is a 17th-level black robe (aka evil) wizardess. But you would be forgiven if you read her entry and didn't think she was a witch. I mention her here since, well she is witchy and from Vince Carcia.

Stevie aka Sarana

In the adventure, we meet Stevie. She is a 12th-level white-robed Grey Elf wizard. Given the adventure is for characters levels 1 to 3 there is no way the PCs are going to mess with her. Her description is pretty much Krynn's Stevie Nicks. I mean she is better qualified to go get her rock than the characters are. So is Twill for that matter. But none of that is important really. What is important is the fact she is here. 

Stevie also has a not-too-coincidental resemblance to another Garcia character, this time it is Sarana from his Quest of the Ancients.  

For my run of this, I combined Stevie (grey-elf) and Sarana (human) into one character, Sarana (half-elf). Seriously if I had pulled out a witch-like character named Stevie in front of my family they never would have taken her seriously. They know who I am.  Much like the PCs, Sarana is trapped here from her own world. Unlike the PCs she has decided to remain.

War of the Witch Queens hook

At the end of the adventure Sarana/Stevie tells the group she fears the Queen is dead.

Honestly. If I never get to the other adventures these NPCs, the little adventure, and the monster pages has all made this a great choice for me. 

100 Days of Halloween: Reign of Winter

When Pathfinder wanted to introduce us to their witch class they did so with a lot of pomp, circumstance, and many great adventures. The Magnum Opus of this has to be their Adventure Path: Reign of Winter.

Once again we are taken to Irrisen and to the court of Witch Queen Elvanna. Only now her reign is at an end and she won't go quietly.  The PCs have to intervene.

Reign of Winter Adventure Path

Six adventure books, print (oop), and PDF. Full-color covers and interior art. Each book 100 pages.

First a bit about the adventure paths. Paizo created their adventure path idea largely as a means to to support  D&D 3.5 and then their Pathfinder Core RPGs. They were a direct competition the D&D Adventure League (in format anyway).  While D&D has moved on to larger hardcover adventures for 5e now, Pathfinder was still doing the Adventure paths in six or so various softcover adventures for characters 1 to 20.  

Land of Ice and Snow

Reign of Winter dealt with the Witch Queen Elvanna, daughter of Baba Yaga, and her machinations to keep control of Irrisen now that her reign of 100 years is over. There is involvement with Baba Yaga, her dancing hut, the Demon Lord Kostchtchie, The Mad Monk Rasputin, AND none other than THE Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova.  Now I have been a fan of Baba Yaga for decades, but I also am a huge fan of the whole mystery of Anastasia Romanova and whether she could have still been alive.  So all of this and add world hopping on top of it all?  Yeah! Sign me up!

While I have all of the adventures and supplementary materials in PDF, I am missing a couple of the physical books.  I did grab as many of the minis as I could.

Each adventure has an overview outline of the major events to help explain what will happen. Lots of new monsters, NPCs, great-looking maps, and more. I will say this, Paizo goes all out on these.

Each Adventure path module is released every month, so a half of a year from start to finish.

Adventure 1 (of 6): Snows of Summer

The PCs start at 1st level and should end the adventure at or around 4th level. This is the adventure that introduces them to Irrisen.  The hook is winter is moving southwards and encompassing more lands.  It is here that we learn that the Great Witch Baba Yaga has been captured and imprisoned. 

Adventure 2 (of 6): The Shackled Hut

Here the PCs must find Baba Yaga's famous hut and use it to find her. But there is an entire city filled with monsters between them and the hut. And then they have to deal with the Winter Witches. This adventure is for PCs 4th to 7th level.

Adventure 3 (of 6): Maiden, Mother, Crone

The PCs are transported around the world. They end up in another frozen wasteland of Iobaria on the far-off continent of Casmaron. Here they find three magically linked dungeons and the secrets of the Demon Lord Kostchtchie the Deathless.  
A note about Kostchtchie. Back in the late days of TSR the notion came about that Orcus was once a human. I always hated that notion. Now we get the same thing here with Kostchtchie and I like it. It works so much better for him than for Orcus.

This adventure is for PCs levels 7 to 10.

Adventure 4 (of 6): The Frozen Stars

In a true world-hopping adventure the PCs will take the Hut to Triaxus, the seventh world in Golarion’s solar system, now in the midst of its decades-long winter (of course!). Here the gain useful information on the whereabouts of Baba Yaga.

This adventure is for PCs levels 10 to 13.

Adventure 5 (of 6): Rasputin Must Die!

Now THIS is an adventure! You have to go to Baba Yaga's home world of Earth in 1918 to retrieve her and stop her captor the Mad Monk Grigori Rasputin himself. The PCs have to face him, his minions and 20th-century tech of WWI. 

I have to admit for a lot of reasons this one might be my favorite out of all six. 

This adventure is for PCs levels 13 to 15.

Adventure 6 (of 6): The Witch Queen’s Revenge

The PCs have found Baba Yaga but she is trapped in a matryoshka doll. They have to free her AND still defeat Queen Elvanna and put a new Witch Queen on the throne.

This adventure is for PCs levels 15 to 17. Leaving the last three levels for something else I guess. 

Adventure 7? Witchwar Legacy

Interestingly enough the adventure I reviewed a couple of nights ago, The Witchwar Legacy, is for characters level 17 and up. It also features contact with the Witch Queen Elvanna of Irrisen.  In fact it reads like a rough draft to this adventure. It was written by Greg A. Vaughn who wrote the Witch Queen's Revenge.  If I used this then it would need to be the new Queen of Irrisen or Baba Yaga that sends them on their way.  I am safe in saying "new Queen" because if the PCs don't defeat Elvanna in Adventure 6 they will surely be dead.

Personally, I like this plan. Given that I have an overabundance of Winter Witches I could run this independently of my War of the Witch Queens.

Maybe I'll convert the whole thing to Pathfinder 2 or D&D 5/One D&D someday and run that. There is just too much fun stuff here NOT to use.

 

100 Days of Halloween: Winter of the Witch

My search for my Winter Witch for War of the Witch Queens continues. Today's candidate comes in two flavors 4e and 5e. She gets a few extra bonuses as well.

As always I will be following my rules for these reviews.

Dungeon #162 (4e) - Winter of the Witch

PDF. 111 pages, color covers and interior art.

I am not reviewing the entire issue of Dungeon here, though I will briefly talk about the other contents. Robert J. Schwalb has two adventures here. A Scales of War Adventure Path adventure and “Depths of Madness” from the Madness trilogy. Schwalb does great work and I am sure these are both top-notch. 

Winter of the Witch is by Stephen Radney-MacFarland with illustrations by Dave Allsop, Eric Deschamps, Izzy, William O'Connor, Wayne Reynolds, Amelia Stoner, Sam Wood, and cartography by Jason A. Engle, and Sean Macdonald. 

This adventure calls the characters back to Winterhaven to the Keep on the Shadowfell. The plot is similar to what we would later see with the Night King and Winterfell in Game of Thrones. (But this was published in 2009.) Koliada is marching south with her army of Undead and winter follows after her. This could easily be tied in with the HPE series of adventures from 4e if you could find a way to slot them in. All the right elements are here it is a matter of working it out. OR it would make for a great epic-level adventure for some other D&DF 4 campaign. It is set for levels 21-30.

Personally, the adventure is fine, but the true star here is Koliada the Winter Witch. She is so much fun that I have used her in BECMI D&D and made my own D&D 5 stats for her. I also thought she might make a great Dark Lord if part of Pathfinder's Irrisen got sucked into Ravenloft as Ikkesen.  She is a standout character and one I love to keep coming back to.  The fantastic Wayne Reynolds art doesn't hurt either.

The adventure is a tight 34 pages.

Winter of the Witch (5e)

PDF. 32 pages. No art.

This conversion is from Michael "solomani" Mifsud making use of the WotC fan license to convert older products. This is a conversion of the Monsters (and just the monsters) from the Winter of the Witch adventure from Dungeon 162.

Monster stats are limited to one per page to make printing easy with the notable exceptions of our white dragon Kurikveaeri and Koliada herself.  His stats don't match mine save where we both drew from the original, but he has a some good ideas here to be sure.

The product doesn't not try to convert the whole adventure. It also doesn't claim to try to convert it all either, this is just the monsters.  For just under $2 that's not bad, but I would have liked some more. Still this is a lot of work and plenty to get me going.

--

For use in War of the Witch Queens

I can use this adventure largely as is, I would drop the Orcus involvement altogether. She is interesting enough on her own.

Why is Koliada invading now? Simple the High Witch Queen, whom even she feared, is now dead and she thinks there is no one to stop her. Even the PCs should have time trying to stop her to be honest. Regardless of how I use her, she is too interesting to NOT use.