An early 3rd party module for Dungeon Crawl Classics, this has a lot of potential, but is ultimately not really my bag.  David W. Fisher presents a swamp adjacent town with a storied past, and a dark secret.  Though not super fleshed out here, the town of Mistwood could be a good base of operations for some swamp and wilderness adventures.  And there is at least one follow-up to this that apparently does just that.  I haven’t read it, however.

As the name implies, this module’s focus is on trolls.  Trolls and hags, really.  Very swampy stuff.  There’s also some lizardfolk, but that’s more of a sad aside that could develop into something beyond this module, if the judge and players want to explore further.  I guess I’ll go into some spoiler territory here, as this is really meant more for judges than players.  If you’re a player and you want to get into some shenanigans with trolls and hags, I guess send your judge this way…? 

With a bit of a fairy tale nod, the leader of the town has run afoul of some hags, who’ve put a curse upon him.  That curse has tainted his child.  Sins of the father, and all that.  The curse is why the town seems to be plagued by trolls.  There’s also a magic, troll-slaying weapon…with secrets of its own.  Ultimately, there are two villains.  Four, I suppose, but two factions.  The lead troll, who is something more than a troll, and the hags.  But both villain groups are sort of hidden, meant to be revealed as the adventure goes on.  I worry that the secret behind the trolls could be more frustrating for players than anything else.  It could make for a very dramatic reveal, but it could fall very flat.  As for the hags, I’m torn.  I’m not a D&D guy.  I gather hags are pretty popular foes in D&D, but they don’t sit right with me.  This gets into things like alignment, bio-essentialism, and misogyny.  I don’t think the author is pushing any of these things.  It’s a problem I have with the concept of the hag and its usage in D&D-esque Fantasy.  All that is to say, if I ran this module, I’d be doing a good deal of tinkering.  Perhaps each hag has a vastly different personality and goal, each keeping the other in check.  The one who is sort of responsible for what eventually led to the troll curse might not be “evil.”  As for the hidden ruler of the trolls, I’m of two minds.  On the one hand, I like the embrace of villainy.  On the other, it feels unearned.  Granted, it’s all in the backstory, so the PCs may never learn about what went on in their mind, so it may not make any difference.  But I think I’d want to round out that character and make their fall into darkness make more sense.  Even if it’s just for my personal headcanon.  

When I was reading the intended climax of the module, I was thinking, “jeez, this is brutal.”  But this is intended for five to eight PCs of level four to six.  So, theoretically, the characters should be pretty strong by this point.  Also, they should be experienced adventurers.  That might make some of the twists and turns more exciting and interesting, as opposed to frustrating.  I would think, if you were to put this in a larger game, you’d want to draw connections to the group and perhaps ease into it.  Perhaps they receive letters from a relative, complaining about recent violence.  Maybe someone in the group is a devotee of Hecate, and she has directed them to this spot for some devious plan.  

While I don’t think this one is for me.  I like a lot about it and think it’s pretty well done.  I really like that there’s a focus.  No need to have a dozen different monsters that have nothing to do with what’s happening.  The lizardfolk island works more as color, potential set-up for future stories, and maybe a little bonus magic item for the final fight.  But nothing hinges on your PCs finding it.  If fighting trolls and hags in a swamp sound like fun, that’s what you get.  With a couple side-orders of family tragedy.

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