A Review of Fear the Reaper, an adventure for 5e by Ammon Hansen.

Full transparency, I received a free copy of this adventure for review purposes. As usual I will rate this on four metrics: Utility, Quality, Presentation, and Price.

It’s an adventure for, it says, 3 to five PCs of 5th level.

Utility: If you need a quick one shot to drop into a travel through the woods, it is up to the task. It includes good thorough notes for raising and lowering the difficulty, interesting enemies, and , if run properly, nicely scary situations. It may take a little finesse on the DM’s part to avoid an early reveal of the villain, and to make sure the PC’s don’t take the villain out too quick, but it can be accomplished, and the module gives good notes to do so. It has a good tone for a Halloween/Horror one-shot, so perfect for this month. It’s pretty generic, so it should fit into most settings. The name of the critter can always be changed if needed, and the DM doesn’t ever have to explain what it was anyway… It also has pregenerated PCs so if you want you can just run it with them, straight out of the module, for a true one shot.

Solid 5/5

Quality: This is pretty good. It’s clearly written, entertaining, balanced but not too balanced. It’s a little cliche and oddly worded in a few spots, but nothing to seriously detract from your enjoyment.

Call it a 4/5.

Presentation: Here’s where I’d leave the pack, I guess. The presentation is professional, but not exciting, leaning on standard WoTC style and trade dress which I can’t exactly take off points for even if I’m just a little bored by it. I totally understand the perceived need to fit the mold.

5/5 since I’m being fair.:)

Price: Not too shabby. It clocks in at 2.95, and expects to be played for about 3 hours, so a dollar an hour for solid entertainment for a group at bad at all. I ought to go back and raise my prices.

5/5

This averages out to a 4.75 out of 5, so rounding up gives us a 5/5. Definitely worth buying.