Adventures in Bayhaven – Escape From The Goblin Lair by Brian Benoit is a role playing game supplement published by Roving Band of Misfits Press for use with the Hero Kids system. This is an adventure set near the publisher’s town of Bayhaven.
This is an eleven page PDF that is available from RPGNow for $2.99 but was purchased at the reduced price of $1.50 as part of the Adventures in Bayhaven Ultimate Bundle. One page is the front cover and one the front matter.
The first page is a standard one for the range describing what is needed to play, what is useful, how to use the adventure and the optional Time Units rule for the Bayhaven setting; if characters run out of time units, they either fail or do not fully succeed at the adventure.
The next page is another standard one, giving details on the location background, adventure background and adventure synopsis. There are also noted on the map of the goblin lair – this lacks full size battlemaps – and suggests using the ones from Maze of the Minotaur from Hero Forge Games if such are needed. There are also suggestions on incorporating the adventure into a goblin-themed story arc using Caravan to Rivenshore as well as The Glade of the Unicorn, the latter from Hero Forge Games.
The first encounter has a battlemap and involves the characters being attacked by goblins as they rest in the forest. This attack continues until the characters are defeated, at which point they are tied up, all their possessions removed and taken to the goblin lair.
The second encounter is to escape the goblin lair. This has a map of the lair but no individual battlemaps, as mentioned. Characters need to escape their bonds, find their missing possessions and escape the lair. There are ten encounter areas and a few traps.
The final two pages are the battlemap, which appears to be hand drawn with coloured pencils, and a larger black and white map of the goblin lair.
Adventures in Bayhaven – Escape From The Goblin Lair in Review
The PDF lacks bookmarks and is short enough that they are not needed, but would have been nice. Navigation is adequate. There are no illustrations as such, only smaller versions of the maps for the GM. Presentation is also adequate.
This is not the best adventure. For it to work, the characters have to be captured, which means they have to lose the first encounter, and so goblins are thrown at them until they eventually fail. Having to railroad characters into losing a combat is not good, and may be even worse for children.
The goblin lair is also not as well developed as it could have been. Going from battlemaps to Theatre of the Mind is also not brilliant, especially with younger children, and requiring the purchase of another supplement (albeit from a different company) to use battlemaps for the combats is quite poor, especially as those maps won’t match up with the actual cavern. An alternative is for a GM to create their own.
This is definitely not one of the better adventures from this publisher, and is possibly not worth the full price, but is okay as part of the bundle. Adventures in Bayhaven – Escape From The Goblin Lair can be found by clicking here.
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