Free Role Playing Game Supplement Review: FA3 – Darkwood Forest

FA3 – Darkwood Forest is a free role playing game supplement published by Adventures in Filbar. It’s intended for use with the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons and AD&D 2nd Edition rules, but it should be compatible with most d20 systems with a little work. The FA series of supplements cover various non-urban encounter areas. This particular one covers another forest which, like FA2 – Springwood Forest, is located not that far from the Village of Tomore, the village being detailed in another supplement (both supplements also being available for free). Unlike the sylvan setting of Springwood Forest, Darkwood is, as the name suggests, rather more dangerous.

The PDF has 15 pages and isn’t bookmarked. The front page is the Adventures in Filbar logo. One page has a hex map of the forest and a map of a cave system at one encounter area. Two pages have stock photographs intended to illustrate the forest, although they don’t have precisely what they are intended to illustrate described; this must be inferred from the text. Two and a half more pages are taken up by Player Background, DM’s Background, rumours about the forest that can be discovered in Tomore and a wandering monster table. The rest of the supplement details five encounter areas in the forest.

Each encounter area has a description of it and, where relevant, any other locations within the area itself. A couple of the areas are single location; the others are more complex, one being mapped out. There is a possible expansion planned at one of the encounter areas, but this is not written at this point. Notably, one of the locations covered is essentially duplicated in the next FA supplement, FA4 – Clover Island.

This supplement works reasonably well as a small, stand alone forested area that could be dropped into a campaign world. The forest is, on the whole, too dangerous for low level characters if they encounter most of the monsters that live there. Stats are given for the monsters, and there are standard descriptions of some items, which would need converting to another system if needed. These only form a small part of the supplement; most fantasy settings will have similar creatures, so this should not be too great a problem. There are, as usual, a few minor errors in the text and it could do with a bit more polish. Other than that, FA3 – Darkwood Forest is a perfectly decent small wilderness setting. Click here to download it for free.