Campaign Kits: What Lies in the Shadows Under the Trees by Kalyna Conrad is a role playing game supplement published by Fat Goblin Games for use with the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. As such, it is covered by the Open Game License and some parts are considered to be Open Game Content as a result. This is a collection of ten short adventures suitable for a range of levels.
This is a 26 page PDF that is available from DriveThruRPG for [$3.95] but was purchased at a greatly reduced price as part of a special bundle. Two pages are the front cover and rear covers, one the front matter, one the Open Game License and one an ad for other supplements.
The Introduction has a single page and functions as a table of contents, with the ten adventures listed, as well as having brief summaries of these.
The adventures themselves are all quite short. They range from dealing with the burial site of an evil fey to (not) rescuing a damsel in distress, a dryad who is rather unhappy with some loggers to helping some brownies whose home has been overrun by fire drakes. Each of the adventures has a forest, fey or woodland theme to it. Many follow a fairly similar outline – find the problem and kill it. Some of the adventures may be stumbled across during travel and others may see the characters actually hired.
There are six appendices at the back that have the creature stats for some of the adventures.
Campaign Kits: What Lies in the Shadows Under the Trees in Review
The PDF is bookmarked with the adventures linked, and one appendix, but not the Introduction or other appendices. The Introduction is also hyperlinked, but also only links the first appendix. Navigation is good, but it could be better. The text maintains a two column colour format and appeared to be free of errors. There are a number of colour illustrations; they do not appear to be custom but they are relevant.
Presumably to keep the page count down, instead of including the, admittedly lengthy, Pathfinder stat blocks, there are statements as to which Pathfinder bestiary contains the monster. It would have been nice if these had been hyperlinked to d20PFSRD or the Pathfinder SRD as a slight bonus to comfort. In addition, having the included stats for each adventure tucked away at the rear is also a bit of a comfort detriment. These are not major, but it does mean that organising stats beforehand is definitely recommended.
The adventures are more single side encounters that characters could come across. None is really in depth, and there isn’t a huge variation in their type, but these are intended more to be used as sidetreks and, with the stated preparation, they can function quite nicely as such. Not so much adventures as larger, more complex encounters, with several different parts. Campaign Kits: What Lies in the Shadows Under the Trees is a nice collection of sidetreks to have on hand and it can be found by clicking here.
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