| Burned to the Ground | |
| by Wes Lewis | |
| Alcritas’ Review | |
“Fire, Walk With Me”
— That scary Bob fella from Twin Peaks
Burned To The Ground, by Wes Lewis (stoatgod@hotmail.com) tells the story of a small town in Exile, named Timberfall, which has been burned down (hence the title.) Finding out what happened, and solving the problem is where your party comes in.
Burned consists of a series of short encounters strung together until the final resolution. Independently, each encounter works well enough on it’s own. One of the first, the Goblin mine, even exceeds par by quite a bit, and is most probably the highlight of the scenario. Others, such as the Nephlim Shaman’s cave, don’t quite live up to their predecessor’s stature, but still are competently designed and executed. Nothing feels too out of place, everything is quite solid.
Unfortunately, as a whole, Burned doesn’t come off as well. The scenario is sniffing around a mystery or horror genre, yet that is never translated to the player. You’ll find yourself smushing goblins, smashing giants, fighting a werewolf, and a shade here and there. Unfortunately, this all comes off as disjointed while you’re playing the scenario. An atmosphere of mystery or horror is desperately needed to make this scenario fly, it never comes close to achieving one. Each individual part works fine, but strung together they feel like artificially justified (when justified at all) busywork, whose sole purpose is to make the scenario longer. There’s never any real sense of terror, despite the scenario’s aspirations, which only leaves the mystery element of the plot to carry the scenario, it fails. The mystery essentially resolves itself as such — at first, you’re given the mystery. Then, at the very end, it’s all resolved in a nice bundle for you. If Burned were a movie, the first ten minutes would establish a riddle, then the next hour and a half would be a Ahnuld kill fest (with the main villain changing every twenty minutes) until the last ten minutes, when the latest villain would just blurt out the answer. That’s not the kind of movie I enjoy seeing. Put bluntly, Burned To The Ground is a unit whose value is far less than the sum of its parts. Worth playing, but not worth putting in the permanent folder.
Burned To The Ground is designed for beginner level parties, and is rated PG.
My score — 6.5
— Alcritas