Adventures in Bayhaven – Heart of the Bay (Pt. 2, Shrike Incursion) 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 in the publisher’s Bayhaven setting and is the sequel to Empty Nets.
This is an 18 page PDF which 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 covering what is needed to play, what is useful to play, how to use the adventure and the optional Time Units rule. If players run out of time units they either fail the adventure or fail to fully complete it.
The next page is also standard, giving location and adventure background, a synopsis of the adventure, that this is the second in the Shrike Incursion series with the final adventure being Sunrise Over Still Water and that there is an option to play Wizard’s Tower from Hero Forge Games as an interlude.
The introductory encounter has the characters be asked for help from a water elemental who has been prevented from returning to her home plane by the shrikes. The adventure itself then consists of four encounters.
The first encounter involves searching for clues as to where the portal to the Plane of Water is and this is where the wizard’s tower could be visited. A treasure map fragment may also be found here, which are used for the, as yet unreleased, adventure, The Cave of the Black Sail Pirates. Next, the characters have to gather supplies for the submersible, followed by fixing a leak in it. Finally, they have to reopen passage to the Plane of Water whilst under attack, which is a scalable encounter. The conclusion tidies things up and characters receive a reward, if appropriate.
The rest of the supplement has various items and maps. One page has a new monster, a mini for it and a new item, the Treasure Map Fragment (this hasn’t had a card in the other adventures where it has been found so far). Another page has new boons and items, one page has a map of the Brecken Vale, showing Bayhaven and Rivenshore, one page has a battlemap drawn in what appear to be coloured pencils, one page has the handout clues from the first proper encounter and the final page has a map of Bayhaven with the relevant locations marked.
Adventures in Bayhaven – Heart of the Bay in Review
The PDF lacks bookmarks and, although not essential for the size, these would have been appreciated. Navigation is fairly poor. The text maintains a two column format and no errors were noticed. There aren’t really many illustrations, other than smaller versions of material from the end, but with monster cards, item cards, battlemaps, other maps and handouts in three different fonts, presentation is very good.
This adventure, like many from the publisher, is not combat-heavy. There is a combat encounter but there are also other types as well, which give a variety of different things to do and, if some of the optional rules from the Bayhaven setting are used, such as apprenticeships, give different characters different ways of shining. This is a nice variety of things to do.
Adventures in Bayhaven – Heart of the Bay is a decent adventure and it can be found by clicking here.
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