Authors Scott Taylor and Mark Timm have done it again — an excellent 5e module for DMs has just hit my mailbox after a successful Kickstarter — Folio #3 (of 6) continues the story that began at Roslof Keep in Folio #1 and deepened with Folio #2… and the quality of the product hasn’t dipped, nor has the writing.
As with the previous two products, Folio #3 consists of three parts:
- The Roslof Keep Gazetteer — This is called the “sandbox” booklet because it gives DMs more background material, suggestions for running the adventure, a summary of the major story arcs, and additional info about The Infernal Machine, the mysterious object that continues to “feed” the dungeon beneath the keep with dangers, monsters, puzzles, and more. Twelve pages in all, but very valuable to a DM looking to really give this adventure the best chance of success.
- The Actual Adventure — this one is ROS3, it’s official title being ‘Curse of the Violet Corruption!’ This 24-page booklet contains the actual adventure (or continuation of ROS1 and ROS2, actually), complete with room descriptions, encounters, and treasure listings. Monster stats are provided with their respective locales and give just what you need to keep the action rolling, so you’ll spend less time hunting for them on other pages. The final page has the traditional blue-on-white graph paper version of the dungeon’s layout. And I should mention that the book has almost a dozen or more outstanding images that are perfect for sharing with players when a visual is needed.
- Double-sided full color cover with maps — The Folio series continues to knock it out of the park with great cover and back cover images (this one has an amazing nod to the cover of Gary Gygax’ Unearthed Arcana by Michael Wilson) , but the insides cannot be ignored. One one page is a not-to-scale map of the various areas that have been discovered since ROS1 (as well as some interesting places for DMs to wing it). On the other is the absolutely fantastic isomorphic view of the dungeon. (You can see an example of this below — this is the map from ROS1, so… SPOILERS.) These views of the dungeon are outstanding, and the one for ROS3 follows the same format with a flattened black-and-white graph paper version in one of the corners.
If you’re a DM looking for something new and fun for your players, you can’t go wrong here. The story is amazingly detailed, and these first three Folios can provide weeks, if not months, of adventuring.
But the series isn’t done yet! Folio #4 is now up on Kickstarter and has already hit its funding goals. Not only can you back for Folio #3, but you can grab the first three adventures in print or digital. Just $20 gets you digital versions of Folio #1-4. A physical copy of #4 is $15, with $25 getting you a print copy and digital copies of #1-4. Finally, there are 60 backers slots left at $100 for those who want print copies of #1-4.
You can get all the details for Folio #4 at the official Kickstarter page.
