Review #4: Heart of Darkness by Adam White

As usual, note that I bought this myself, and have no connection to the author.

It's not *bad* exactly. It's evocative, it's interesting...however, a few points not in its favor:

The Capitalized words in the background are jarring. There are quite a few grammatical mistakes scattered through the text, and unclear desritpions. Needs some editing.

44 people isn't a town, or a village, it's a hamlet.

Why does a vampire make people he kills with his bite into...ghouls? No explanation given.

He has power over various other undead....no explanation given.

Who is he and why is he so powerful? He made a pact with a shadow demon. How?

The whole story seems extremely linear and railroady. No real options for proceeding differently are given and the final situation literally has only one accepted solution.

I wanted to like this. As I said it's evocative, and a decent story. But the background isn't fleshed out enough and many aspects are given no explanation.

Overall, here are my scores:

Utility: The villain's statblock's are great. The encounters are good. I don't think the challenge rating is right either. It clocks in at a CR6 *before* you take into account its legendary abilities and special powers. And that you have to fight the danged thing, effectively, 4 times. If you do the *exactly one thing* needed to be able to win. You can use this guy...but be sure you don't mind TPK's or you have higher level PCs than suggested.

3/5

Quality: Pretty good, aside from the minor quibbles above.

4/5

Presentation: This is quite excellent. 5/5

Price: It's pretty low. Give this thing a chance but be prepared to fix some of the issues. 5/5

17/20, 4.25 rounded down.

So overall 4/5