Madness in Freeport (SotDL) by William Simoni is a role playing game supplement published by Schwalb Entertainment for use with Shadow of the Demon Lord. This is the final adventure in the Freeport Trilogy and is intended for Master level characters.
This is a 48 page PDF that is available from DriveThruRPG for [$4.19], as a softcover print on demand book for [$20.18] or as both PDF and softcover for [$20.18]. It is also available in printed form from sites such as Amazon. The PDF comes in two versions, one with and one without page backgrounds. The PDF is the version reviewed although it was purchased at the reduced price of $3.35 during a sale. Two pages are the front and rear covers, one page is the front matter, one page the Table of Contents, one page is handouts, one page is an illustration and one page is an ad for the Freeport Companion.
The first page explains that this is the final adventure in the Freeport Trilogy and is aimed at Master characters and gives some background. An overview explains that the adventure is in four parts and should happen over about three days. After foiling Drac’s plans in Terror in Freeport (if they didn’t foil them, well the characters are most likely dead) Drac has made out that his dupe was the leader of the Brotherhood of the Yellow Sign and the characters have been invited to the Grand Lighthouse Ball at his house where they are to be honoured for what they did.
Part I: The Grand Lighthouse Ball is a social gathering at the Sea Lord’s palace, which is mapped. There are explanations of the honours that characters will be given and a timetable of events. Then the characters are free to mingle with the guests and attempt to gain information. Much of this section is descriptions and stats of the major NPCs the characters will encounter, the information that they know and what they are after. This is largely a role playing chapter; there are a couple of events, one of which involves an NPC trying to induce the characters to kill Drac (a bad idea; it’s what he wants) and another with a prophet of Yig giving some cryptic clues as to something that is needed to stop the Unspeakable One and the Brotherhood.
Part II: Black Dog’s Games has the characters looking for the sunken Temple of Yig to as it holds an artefact that can be used against the Brotherhood. This leads them to a dead pirate, known as Black Dog, who found the entry to the temple within the caves in which he stored his still-lost treasure. They will need to find the caves and go through them to reach the temple’s entry.
Part III: The Sunken Temple of Yig has the characters exploring the temple. Although sunken, magic has kept it free of water. It is still inhabited by its former, now dead, priests, who are not necessarily aggressive and will sometimes help. The characters must find three relics in order to acquire the specific item that they came for. There is an option to expand the adventure, if desired, into exploring the ruins of Valossa.
Part IV: Milton’s Folly is the final part of the adventure. The characters will head to the lighthouse in order to stop the plots of the Brotherhood. The lighthouse will be used to project the Yellow Sign over the city. It’s not actually mentioned what will happen if the characters fail. Of course, if they fail, they will be dead.
Aftermath has the characters – if alive and victorious – in the position of having saved Freeport, but it will look more as if they simply murdered the Sea Lord. So a fast exit from the lighthouse before anyone arrives is probably best. There are some ideas for further adventures in the city.
Appendix I: The Jade Serpent of Yig has details on this dangerous and powerful relic.
Madness in Freeport (SotDL) in Review
The PDF lacks bookmarks and these would definitely have been useful. The Table of Contents is decently thorough. Navigation is poor. The text maintains a two column full colour format and there was one noticeable error; the four parts of the book use Roman numerals in the parts themselves but numbers in the Table of Contents. There are a lot of colour, and probably custom, illustrations. Presentation is very good.
In the Freeport Companion there is reference to the Great Green Fire which swept through Freeport after the events of the Freeport Trilogy. This fire is not mentioned at all in the trilogy, not even in the Aftermath, so it is totally unclear as to what it was. Perhaps it is explained in the Pirate’s Guide to Freeport. It certainly isn’t stated to happen in this book. The overall feel from this trilogy and the Freeport Companion is that the Pirate’s Guide to Freeport is very definitely needed in order to fully use it.
The adventure is in some ways a bit odd. Part I is a social gathering where characters are supposed to get the information they need to move on from the guests – who are fully statted out, even though combat is not intended and if it happens the characters will get crushed. The next two parts are a combination of dungeon crawl with, in Part III, a “find the items” mission. The final part is simply going through the lighthouse and stopping the cultists at the end. This gives a bit of a disjointed feel to the adventure; the first part is a totally different type of adventure to the rest.
The trilogy as a whole also has a rather different feel to typical Shadow of the Demon Lord adventures/campaigns, which tend to be built around a number of briefly fleshed out very short adventures resulting in a campaign that tends to be shorter than any of the supplements in the Freeport Trilogy. The trilogy as a whole is decent enough, but it doesn’t quite have the same feel to it as the rest of the Urth setting, probably because Freeport was really designed for a more typical fantasy setting. Madness in Freeport (SotDL) wraps up the trilogy and it can be found by clicking here.
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