A Review of the Role Playing Game Supplement Pages from the Lost Grimoire – Storm Spirit / Darksquall Cave

Pages from the Lost Grimoire – Storm Spirit / Darksquall Cave by Dan Coleman is a role playing game supplement published by Dan Coleman Productions for use with Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition. As such, it is covered by the Open Game License with some parts considered to be Open Game Content as a result. This is the first in a series of supplements, which have differing contents. In this case, it is a new monster and mini-adventure using it.

The supplement is available from RPGNow as a Pay What You Want supplement (the series is funded through Patreon). As well as the PDF, there are two illustrations pngs, one of the new monster, the Storm Spirit, and one of the Sparking Node, which is part of the adventure. There are also 3 maps in png format, one with a grid, one without and one for GMs. The PDF itself has nine pages, with one being the front cover, one the front matter, one a thanks to Patrons and two the Open Game License.

Storm Spirit is the first page of content and is a new monster. This is an elemental, one related to air although it isn’t a native to the elemental planes. Instead, storm spirits are created from humanoid souls who die during violent storms. The storm spirit is not evil, but that doesn’t make it safe – it is created from the dangers of the natural world after all.

The remaining three pages of content are Darksquall Cave. This is a mini adventure designed for characters of 5th to 6th level. It starts with notes on using the adventure, with a chart showing approximately how dangerous it is, from Easy to Deadly, based on number of characters in a party and their average level. If it is a Hard or Deadly encounter, it’s suggested to use it as a challenging side quest or boss fight; at easier levels as part of a series of encounters.

The location is a one room mini-dungeon containing a pool above which sparks of light are floating (the Sparking Nodes mentioned earlier). There is a puzzle for characters to solve – which can be dangerous; there are ways of doing it that are fairly safe and ways that are not – to release the storm spirit.

Pages from the Lost Grimoire – Storm Spirit / Darksquall Cave in Review

The PDF lacks bookmarks. Although they are not really needed for such a short supplement, they would have been appreciated. Navigation is okay.

The text maintains a two column format on a coloured background and no errors were noticed. There are several colour illustrations; the storm spirit, sparking node and GM’s map of the cave, all of which are in the separate png files. Having the sparking node and storm spirit to show the players is nice; having two variations of the cave map that can be used with such as virtual tabletops is useful. Presentation is excellent for a short supplement, considering the utility of the pngs as part of this.

The storm spirit itself is an interesting elemental monster, one which will challenge characters even though it isn’t evil. Having a scale at the beginning of the adventure showing the approximate difficulty is very useful; it may not be, as pointed out, entirely accurate – depending on party makeup – but it will certainly give an idea as to how challenging a party will find the encounter.

Pages from the Lost Grimoire – Storm Spirit / Darksquall Cave is an interesting and well-presented new monster and encounter utilising it, and it can be checked out for free by clicking here.