The Village of Hommlet

I forgot to post this yesterday, but I got a rewards packet from the RPGA. It was sent to my parent's house (where I was living back when I regularly judged for Living Force/Living Greyhawk) a week or so back and I just hadn't gotten around to picking it up. I was expecting it to be the same old, same old. Rewards cards to open new character options in Living Forgotten Realms and some more membership cards. Considering I haven't played in an RPGA event in a couple of years I was in no rush to pick the packet up.

Imagine, if you will, my surprise at opening the envelope and seeing a shrink-wrapped 4e module inside! "The Village of Hommlet" is a reprint of ye olde Gary Gygax adventure T1: The Village of Hommlet, updated for 4e. For those of you who have never played or read through anything regarding the Temple of Elemental Evil, Hommlet was the small village laying near the temple and T1 kicked the whole adventure series off.

This new adventure is set long after heroes have cleared out the Temple of Elemental Evil, and Hommlet has been at peace all that time. But evil has a long memory, and dark forces are converging on Hommlet once again. The PCs stuble across this trouble village and must discover the secret of the evil gathering in an old moathouse. It was updated by Andy Collins and has been designed for 4th level characters.

Visually I'm impressed. It's a free product, and I can't find a UPC on it anywhere so I don't believe it was ever intended for resale. Despite that the module looks as professional as something like Keep on the Shadowfell or any of the other 4e modules, though it is primarily in black and white (not a big deal to me at all). The cover is a thin cardstock and the insides have two sets of maps printed on them. A map of the village of Hommlet, and a map of all three floors to the Inn of the Welcome Wench. Next is a 24-page booklet detailing Hommlet and the encounters. It consists of recycled black and white artwork and a lot of maps. There are 9 encounters and a couple of skill challenges detailed in this book, each with clear stat blocks from the MM. The last part of the adventure is a nice color poster-sized map, which is what really impressed me. I mean, throwing something like that into a free adventure couldn't have been cheap. This map has an enlarged copy of the ground floor of the Inn of the Welcome Wench and a large version of the map of what I believe to be the moat house (I'm still reading the adventure so I can't be sure).

This is the best reward I've ever gotten from the RPGA and I'd like to thank them. I've been thinking about getting into playing Living Forgotten Realms recently, in part because I figure I should do at least SOME playing in the campaign if I want to write for it! I'd always meant to play in it from the beginning but decided to devote more time to my family than gaming. Still, a little pick-up game every no and again wouldn't kill me!

So thank you RPGA!

End of Demented Rambling.