A Review of the Role Playing Game Supplement Hero Kids – Fantasy Adventure – Glade of the Unicorn

Hero Kids – Fantasy Adventure – Glade of the Unicorn by Justin Halliday is a role playing game supplement published by Hero Forge Games for use with the Hero Kids game system. Hero Kids is aimed at children from 4 to 10 years old. This is a nine encounter adventure with a difficulty rating of hard.

The PDF is available from RPGNow for $2.99. It can also be purchased at a reduced price as part of the Hero Kids – Fantasy Adventure Pack 2 Bundle and the Hero Kids – Complete Fantasy PDF Bundle, the latter being how it was bought.

This is a 33 page PDF with one page being the full colour front cover. The PDF comes in two versions, with one being a printer friendly version that lacks the parchment style page backgrounds.

As usual, the supplement starts with a list of needed items; the core rulebook, d6s, pencil and eraser and print outs of the various hero and monster cards, the encounter maps and the stand up minis.

The adventure starts with a brief overview – the players have to help a unicorn that has been injured by goblins before continuing with the adventure intro.

The players must first track the injured unicorn and speak to her. She will then tell them what she needs them to do in order to heal her wound. The unicorn is tied to the forest they are guarding, and her injury harms the forest.

The players must then go through the woods, with monster encounters along the way, and go to the two places they need to cure the unicorn, one being a magical spring and one being a ruined keep occupied by the goblins that attacked her. They must then travel back to the unicorn. Successfully healing a unicorn will give them a Boon, something mentioned in the core rules but not used in any adventure up until now.

Following the adventure are nine pages of player maps, which are larger, unlabeled versions of the GM’s maps. These cover the forest, the keep and the dungeon beneath it.

Two pages have seven monster cards and another four pages have the stand up minis and the Boon card.

Hero Kids – Fantasy Adventure – Glade of the Unicorn in Review

The PDF is well bookmarked with all the various major and minor sections indexed. Only the print out encounter maps, monster cards and minis are not linked. The book lacks a contents but navigation is on the whole above average.

There is a single black and white illustration of the unicorn in the book; other than that the only graphics are the encounter maps, monster cards and minis. These are the most important illustrations though.

The various encounters have, depending on the encounter, possibilities for combat, role playing and ability checks. Many ability checks have multiple ways of reaching the same result and the combat encounters are scalable for larger groups.

This is a less linear adventure than is usual from this publisher. There is a fixed start and a fixed end, and two major things need doing in-between, but the players can actually choose the order in which they do them. There is also a greater use of role playing, should the GM wish the players to find out information this way (younger players could perhaps just do dice rolls, if they find the role playing too tricky), where the players will need to ask questions in order to find out what they need to succeed. This is definitely one of the more challenging adventures.

This is a rather more complex adventure that is probably better aimed at older children, but it’s good to have adventures that are more challenging. Hero Kids – Fantasy Adventure – Glade of the Unicorn can be found by clicking here.