Lost in the Forest of Gloom by Stew Shearer is a role playing game supplement published by Gorgon’s Breath Games for use with Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition. This is an adventure for four 4th level characters. The supplement is covered by the Open Game License and some of it is considered to be Open Game Content as a result.
This is a ten page PDF that is available from RPGNow as a Pay What You Want supplement. One page is the front cover, two the front matter, one page has two new monsters and one page is the Open Game License.
The brief introduction says that the characters will encounter a drunk and thereby find out about a treasure hoard. The adventure can be dropped into many settings.
The adventure starts with the characters witnessing a man being thrown out of the village inn. If spoken to, the man, a former bandit, explains how he and some associates operated out of a cave in a nearby forest. He fled after seeing some moving darkness; the locals confirm that people entering the forest have been known to never return.
The next place is the forest itself, where the characters may have a number of random encounters, before finally finding the cave. The cave is occupied by now-dead bandits, and what killed them is not clear. Whilst in the cave, the characters will come under attack, and will need to defeat the creatures that killed the bandits.
There is a page taken up with a handout, the journal of a bandit, that can be found and given out as a clue.
The two new monsters are Glooms, a type of undead, and Dire Wolverines.
Lost in the Forest of Gloom in Review
The PDF lacks bookmarks and, although quite short, these would have been appreciated. Navigation is fairly poor. The text maintains a two column format and a number of minor errors were noticed. There are only two illustration, both maps, one of the forest and one of the bandit’s cave.
The adventure should be easy enough to drop into many settings; all that’s really needed is a village near a forest, and that should not be hard to find. This can be used as a side quest, although any party that has anti-undead capabilities will have an advantage. The ability of the glooms to extinguish even magical light within their area of effect could otherwise be problematical.
Lost in the Forest of Gloom is a decent short adventure and can be checked out for free by clicking here.
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