Free Role Playing Game Supplement Review: GF16 – Currents of Adventure

GF16 – Currents of Adventure is a free role playing game supplement published by Adventures in Filbar. This is an adventure for a party of 6-8 starting adventurers of levels 1 to 2. The adventure is designed for the Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition game.

GF16 - Currents of AdventureThis is a thirty one page PDF which lacks bookmarks. This would at first impression seem to be longer than the average free supplement from the publisher, but this isn’t quite true. The cover is in the usual grey denoting a free supplement, with an image of the GamesFest logo in the centre. One page is an encounter hex map of the area, which would appear to have been done in Hexographer from Inkwell Ideas. Two pages have eight images, four of which are the usual stock and the other four are images created specifically for this supplement, which is unusual. One page has a photograph of the adventure being played. Fourteen pages are taken up by eight different pre-generated characters, which is where the additional length comes from.

Slightly over one page is taken up by the Player’s and DM’s Backgrounds. The players are just starting out, and haven’t passed their rite of passage, so are not going to fight a threat. Of course, they end up doing so anyway. There are eight different types of encounter on the hex map, which is of several islands, some of which are in multiple locations with differences between them. The players use a boat to get to one encounter area or another across the sea, picking up equipment on the way, as they start without much. One of the encounters is with a blue dragon; this one requires something other than combat to solve, as the dragon will quickly kill off a party of this level if they attack it. Around a third of a page is on concluding the adventure; the adventurers may be praised (probably best for a convention game) or banished from their homeland for breaking the law (they weren’t supposed to go adventuring). The latter is better if the adventure is being used to start a campaign.

A word on the module number. This is not, as might be initially though, the sixteenth supplement in the GF series, before you go looking for supplements 1-15. Although it isn’t made clear, GF16 actually refers to GamesFest 2016, this being a convention scenario.

The supplement maintains a one column layout throughout, and no errors were noticed. As mentioned, this adventure actually has art created specifically for it, which is unusual. The created art does do a better job than the usual stock images of portraying things, which isn’t surprising.

Although aimed at and having stats for D&D 5E, this shouldn’t be too difficult to adapt to other systems. The location of the adventure is not tied into a specific world; it might be in the southern part of the Lands of Calentria, even though this isn’t stated, but the area covered is quite small and it could be dropped into most tropical island areas fairly easily.

This is an interesting wilderness hex exploration, which does seem to bring up memories of the classic adventure, The Isle of Dread. This can be used as a standalone adventure, or as a campaign starter, and does a good job of both. GF16 – Currents of Adventure is free, so click here to get it.

 

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