Hero Kids – Fantasy Adventure – Mines of Martek by Justin Halliday is a role playing game supplement published by Hero Forge Games for use with the Hero Kids role playing game system. Hero Kids is aimed at children from age 4 to age 10. This is a seven encounter adventure with a hard difficulty rating.
The PDF is available from RPGNow for $2.99 and is also available at a reduced price as part of the Hero Kids – Starter Fantasy PDF Bundle, the Hero Kids – Fantasy Adventure Pack 1 and the Hero Kids – Complete Fantasy PDF Bundle, the last being how it was purchased. The adventure is also included in the compilation supplement, Hero Kids – Fantasy Adventure Compendium, which is available as a print on demand softcover book.
The PDF is the version reviewed. It has 24 pages of which one is the full colour front cover and is in landscape format. The PDF comes in two versions, one of which is a printer friendly version that lacks the parchment page backgrounds.
The adventure begins with a list of what is required to play; the core rulebook, d6s, pencil, eraser and printouts of monster and hero cards, the encounter maps and stand up minis. This is followed by the standard background for the Brecken Vale setting, a brief overview of the adventure and the players’ introduction.
There are seven encounters for the adventure itself. The characters are asked to go and look for some miners who have disappeared in a recently re-opened mine. Each encounter has a GM’s map of the location, a description of the encounter and various features. These include ability tests of different types and combat encounters. The players need to find the missing miners and rescue them, as well as defeat various monsters.
Following the adventure are seven pages of larger, unlabelled versions of the GM’s maps for printing out, one page with three monster cards and a final page with monster tokens.
Hero Kids – Fantasy Adventure – Mines of Martek in Review
The PDF is well bookmarked with every section of the adventure linked, although it lacks a table of contents. The various encounter maps, monster cards and minis are not bookmarked, but they are intended to be printed off so bookmarks are not really needed.
The text has a two column format and seemed free of errors. The black and white maps and illustrations on the monster cards and stand up minis are the only illustrations; this is enough even if more would have been nice.
The various encounters themselves are flexible in their nature. Where ability tests need to be performed, there are usually several different ways of achieving the same result. The combat encounters can also be scaled, with more monsters if there are more characters.
The adventure itself is quite linear in nature, but it is aimed at younger players and linear definitely helps there. It is quite straightforward but that doesn’t mean that it can’t be challenging.
Hero Kids – Fantasy Adventure – Mines of Martek is another nice adventure for Hero Kids and it can be found by clicking here.
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