The Vemora is an adventure module for the Forge: Out of Chaos roleplaying game (the core rulesbook is required for play), and is intended for novice level players. The village of Dunnerton desperately needs your heroes to bring them the Vemora, a relic with great healing powers--but your party will have to steel themselves to enter Thornburg Keep, which has lain empty of all but monstrous intruders in the decades since the plague.

This is an admirably well-written adventure: Basement Games could teach some of the big guys something about tight writing and logical thinking. The size of the module is deceptively tiny --26 pages-- but it's packed. Tidbits of extra information are scattered in appropriate spots in a script keyed to locales and specific map points in an "old-fashioned" roleplaying module. The adventure is clearly laid out, providing a beginners' staging and game familiarization area for equipping the characters, and leading through a handy healing temple, an inn, store, and blacksmith. The launch of the actual quest is well done, anticipating players' questions to a major character, and providing answers from that character's point of view.

A novice referee will find almost everything he wants in the concise area descriptions--the exception being the eight game statistics for the various monsters, which can be readily looked up in the core rules and noted down ahead of time. Sections of carefully scripted text are marked to be read aloud to players, and notes are given for exactly which game rules and skills are involved for a player in certain locations. There is an area of the adventure, the catacombs beneath the keep, which may be expanded by an interested and industrious referee, or discarded by the novice without harm to the adventure.

The interior illustrations are great, drawn in a chunky professional style with lots of black that rivals some I've seen recently in various "big market" modules and sourcebooks.

A great module to start your Forge campaign.

--Sharon Daugherty