A Review of the Role Playing Game Supplement 5E Halloween Mini-Dungeon: The Horror of Ochre Grove

5E Halloween Mini-Dungeon: The Horror of Ochre Grove by Justin Andrew Mason is a role playing game supplement published by AAW Games for use with Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition. This is an adventure for 3-4 PCs of levels 6-8 and is also available in a version for Pathfinder.

This is available from DriveThruRPG as a 5-page PDF for $1.99, as two print on demand cards for $2.99 or as both PDF and cards for $3.99. The PDF is the version reviewed although it was received for free as a special offer.

This mini-dungeon is not a dungeon but a series of encounters outdoors. The first page has a colour half page map of the area. This is followed by around a page and a half of backstory. The owner of a local distillery killed the owner of another when he was unable to otherwise force him out of business. Now, the dead man’s mistress, who is not what she seems, has raised the murdered man as a wraith and is taking revenge on the killer and his family. The characters have to follow series of encounters, hopefully rescuing all the members of the murderer’s family – all but him are innocent of the crime – and stopping a demon summoning ritual from being completed.

5E Halloween Mini-Dungeon: The Horror of Ochre Grove in Review

The PDF lacks bookmarks and, at four pages, doesn’t need them. Navigation is fine. As with other mini-dungeons published by AAW, space is saved by not including any game stats. Instead, there are links to the relevant pages on 5th Edition SRD. This does mean that, absent an internet connection, more material will need printing out or referencing from books. The text maintains a two-column full colour format and appeared to be almost free of errors. There is a single colour illustration plus the full colour map. Presentation is good but it’s a shame that there isn’t a player friendly version of the map.

This is a short adventure that can be easily dropped into most settings, changing the name of the village if needed. The village could be one that characters happen to be passing through when events kick off, making it a small side quest. There’s also a branch in the plot, which is interesting for such a short adventure; investigating one branch will probably result in a death in the other, and splitting up could cause characters to be overmatched. 5E Halloween Mini-Dungeon: The Horror of Ochre Grove is a nice little side adventure and it can be found by clicking here.