Where the Wheat Grows Tall is "an old school faery adventure for low level characters" from Evlyn Moreau and Camilla Greer. I backed the kickstarter as a long standing fan of Evlyn's work - see the great mileage we got from the Kobolds Art Exhibition . After significant procrastination on my part managed to organise myself and order my hardcopy from Exalted Funeral.
What this is is a point-crawl around a big site - a farm with fey presence - split into 'the farm buildings' and 'the walled field' with lots of interesting sites and monsters/NPCs for the players to puzzle out.
Cover by Evlyn Moreau
This is a neat little zine - gold print on green cover, it looks very pretty and I was hesitant for a while to unpack it and maybe damage the print but then I decided that adventures are meant to be played so here we are. I am glad I did because this is a great example of setting things out neatly for the dungeon master to give a mini-sandbox.
So what is in here:
The Polotnikovs and their Disappearance p1-2
The Noon Lady and the Midnight Maiden p3-4
Running This Adventure p5-6
Encounters p7-10
A Bestiary - p11-16
Polotnikov Family History - p17-18
The Farm - p19-43
So what is in here chunk by chunk?
The Polotnikovs and their Disappearance and the Noon Lady and the Midnight Maiden cover the set up in an efficient, easy to absorb manner with the main players described and tied to where they are to be found within the scenario. There are a few references that are unclear until you read through the whole zine but these are much more helpful when you are flipping around in-play and checking where things are and who did what when. I definitely recommend this lean towards utility at the table vs ease of reading first time.
Running This Adventure and Encounters are the frame for the adventure - with 'running the adventure providing hooks through rumours or direct quest hooks, there are some questions about the state of certain things that are for the DM to adjust to their world and - pure gold - advice on adjusting the scenario to a one-shot or if time begins to run out. This is extremely helpful and greatly appreciated on my part to have 'what can be streamlined without destroying the essence' highlighted here - I want to see more of this elsewhere.
The bestiary gives a bunch of unique fey which is always helpful to keep players on their toes when they run into new things. The noon wraith in particular terrified the players.
Cousin Svara, Noon Wraith by Evlyn Moreau
The Polotnikov Family History is useful background, helpful for the DM as it helps hang multiple NPC's wishes and thoughts - players will have to dig deliverately to get any of this.
The Farm - the heard of the module - we get a double-page spread map with 18 sites split into 'the farm buildings' and 'the field' with some guidance on 'how the field is different' including time compression and getting in or out. Each of the sites gets ~ a page with an illustration and a couple of key points. Some of these are the load-bearing pegs of the adventure - the idols, the locations to find family members, the Likho's lair - other are flavoursome like the soldiers ghost, the buried wheel which tie out to what else happened here long ago.
All told we get a nice little set up with a handful of players with their own motivations, intriguing monsters and a great little mystery to solve that works by talking to strange entities and unpicking what happened here rather than ploughing in and killing everything that moves.
I like this a lot, a great site to drop into a hex-crawl, I am glad I backed the kickstarter and I will report on a successful pair of sessions I got out of this anon. A very nice and atmospheric little adventure, tons of disquieting details to keep a party of interlopers jumpy and fey unusual enough that they were not trivially dismissed as known quantities.
[Edit] Write up of the sessions played can be found here.
For other reviews see Bones of Contention, Matthew J. Constantine or Reviews from R'lyeh.
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