Game
05
Basic
Game Adventure B6
The Veiled Society
(1984)
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by David Cook |
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Editor: |
Anne C. Gray |
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Graphic Designer: |
Ruth Hoyer |
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Cover Artist: |
Steve Chappell |
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Interior Artist: |
Jim Roslof |
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Paper Sculptor: |
Dennis Kauth |
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The Realm Review:
The classic murder
mystery adventure of the original D&D line up. The paper cut-outs that came
with this module were a boon to early miniatures players, and really helped the
DM add to the sense of a crowded city street. "The Veiled Society"
also pulled out all the stops in an attempt to divide the party and get PCs to
attack one another, a very interesting situation with some equally interesting
possible repercussions. The mystery unfolds well and allows the party to bring
down a very powerful enemy, practically by means of their role-playing ability
alone.
Realm Rating: 4/5
...Download Game05 at the Magic
Mirror...
Read the
Adventurer's Journal
Dawn and Foy, Around
the Realm:
Game05 by Ray Dyer
B6, The Veiled Society
This is another short
game for low level characters.
It takes place in a
very large city at the center of the Realms and is mostly a murder mystery.
There is plenty of political intrigue and you get the feeling through the whole
module that things are much bigger than yourself.
This module gives you
the impression of free will, with lots of question events but it is mostly a
cover for a very linear story. My wife and I chose very different answers to
some of the questions but we ended up having all the same encounters.
Things I liked:
* The illusion of
people crowding the streets. A wall set I hadn't seen before puts people on the
streets as you explore the city.
* I liked the taverns.
Each one had its own feel. They were handled as questions events, not tavern
events, so it was easy to know if you had heard all the rumors.
* The story was very
good. I stayed up way too late and ran through the whole thing in a single
sitting.
* A couple of the
fights were very exciting (especially if you used your spells up earlier).
Things I didn't like:
* The font was very
bad. It was hard to see highlighted words and it was impossible to tell when a
character had enough EPs to advance. Game06's font & frame were ugly but
this one actually detracted from my game enjoyment.
* No place to rest.
You basically play the entire game all in one day. I ended up casting every
single magical and clerical spell I had memorized and used up every scroll and
potion of healing trying to finish the game. Of course that made the game more
exciting...
* A couple of story
threads were left hanging and sometimes things happened that made you want to
scratch your head and wonder what THAT was all about.
* One of the fights
puts enemy monsters in blocked off rooms with no way to get at them.
This one was good.
Overall, we liked it and got plenty of new treasure although not much magic to
replace the stuff we had to use. We then decided to get back to the suggested
order of play and moved our new improved characters over to Game07 - B10,
Assault on Raven's Ruin.
Foy
Other Collected
reviews on Game 05:
Another stellar effort
by Ray Dyer, beautifully capturing the essence of the original module.
Specularum really comes to life in this design, with dozens of individual
shops, lots of busy taverns and inns, and of course, a nasty criminal society
determined to make the PCs lives miserable.
The adventure can best
be described as 'Sam Spade meets the Godfather.' The Veiled Society is an
organized crime society similar the Mafia or the Yakuza today. And the PCs get
to play detective, trying to solve the mystery of a haunted basement in which
some very down-to-earth things are happening. It's a challenge, but an
entertaining one. The clues are there, and so are some chase scenes, a full-blown
riot, and a secret hideout with mazes of twisty little passages for the PCs to
chase the bad guys in.
I played this
adventure after running through the Journey to the Rock, on the suggestion of
Jenlar Temlin, the wizard's servant from the first adventure. He told me to go
to Specularum, where we could be trained and advance in level. So I ventured
into the edge of the Eastlands, but next I'll be heading downstream to explore
Raven's Ruin. My PCs are up to 3rd and 4th level by now, but that's
okay. It will give us an advantage over the goblins we're supposed to fight
there.
So Ray scores high in
the artistic portion of the judging. Now for the technical marks. High scores
from all except the Romanian judge, who thought there were enough spelling mistakes
to drop Ray's score down. But it's not enough to deny Ray the first-place marks
he so richly deserves. The hacks were excellent, articularly the crowded
streets and the flaming marketplace after the riots. I can't comment on the
music, since I still can't hear any music or sound effects with UA. I hope (and
pray) that this unfortunate situation will change when I get my new computer a
week before Christmas.
So for those who
haven't played this design, hurry up. Don't forget to download the patch from the
Realm website; the design has some bugs, and the patch cleans most of them up.
Mycroft Module Rating:
9.5 out of 10
Glen
D/L game00 and game05
(veiled society) so far pretty nifty.
The Veiled Society is
sweet, but I noticed a few minor bugs here and there. Not really bugs per say
as much as little annoyances. (how many times is dagger note going to fly out
of the dark at me?!?)
My other complaint is
that it runs at a breakneck speed! In some ways this is really nice because it
takes the pressure off of scouring the city to find *exactly* the right spots
to trigger events. On the downside my characters are BURSTING with opponents
gear they want to sell off!!! ;-)
Despite any of my complaints
it's still so far a great adventure and an awesome campaign idea! I actually
find yself doing things that the characters would do as opposed to what is best
for the adventure!
On word of caution
tho' the font / color combination may not appeal to everyone for game05. I
found it too hard to read so I killed the game.fon and always.tlb files Just a
personal preference. It's unfortunate that FRUA has such limited font
capabilities... sigh oh well.
Ray really has set up
the best campaign element I've seen yet for playing those old modules. Good
job! Can't wait for my pc's to retire as lords of the...REALM!!!
Thrull :<>
The Veiled Society is
the first design of the Eastlands area in the Realm campaing setting by Ray
Dyer. The design is a conversion of an original module of the same name.
Story starts with the
party entering the city of Specularum, where a festival is going on at the
moment. What happens then? Play it and you'll find out.
The story itself was
quite good and the text well written, but the game moved on too fast. There
were times when my characters would have given their right arm for a break.
That was also bad, since I didn't have any time to figure out what was really
going on. Suddenly, the game just stated that I had ended the threat of the
infamous Veiled Society. The ending was pretty lame. You know what I mean if
you play the design.
The other really bad
thing about this design is the horrible amount of bugs I found and in this
design they come in all sizes. The small ones were harmless, mostly caused by
not using the 'when facing certain direction option'. But there are also these
huge bugs. They are not very easy to find, but they're there. At least I ended
up fighting one battle twice, first killing a man and then on the side of the man
I just killed. This is -really- bad thing. More so, because you could actually
fight the battle as many times you like.
The art was yet
another weak point. The pictures were mostly of good quality, but there were
some exceptions. The real problem with the art is that some pictures are used
were used at least twice (mostly in stores). There was also some poor choises
made with the art: I refuse to believe that anyone would want to stand all day
in a full plate selling armor and weapons.
The combats were mostly
pretty easy. If you want more challenge than I, don't use the sleep spell.There
also was this really awful event that was fired if tried to search in the
cellar. It really shouldn't happen -every- step. I know that I was supposed to
search only when it felt necessary, but you couldn't believe how many times I
got that really long text event when I felt like it and every time I had push
enter twice! It should attleast have been little shorter text event.
I was also suprised
how few things there was to do in such a big city. It felt quite empty, even
with all those 'people' standing around. There were only taverns, shops,
temples and a couple of other buildings.
Hacks were pretty good
(except the font). Nice intro, nice music and nice frame. No complaints about
the items.
So should you bother
to play it? Well, yes, but only because it's the first design of the campaing.
This design needs an update. When those bugs are cleared out it might be a
worth a try.
-Tero L.
Ed. Note: With Tero's help, the patch file was created for
this game.
The reviews below reflect the much higher quality design
that is now available!
I actually liked
Veiled Society a lot. It was very refreshing to play a city-scale combat-light
design, despite the awful text-background color scheme (plain unreadable with
included font, and barely readable even with default font) and numerous
storyline bugs if party doesn't act in procession encounter (where it chooses
sides).
Ghaaroth without
internet :(
As for the Veiled
Society, it was a very good module. You land up in a city in which there is a
power struggle between two families. You then discover the corpse of a woman
and one of the families seem to have done it, only to find out later that they
had been set up. It is your job to uncover the truth.
The module flowed
well, but I seemed to stumble through most of it, being convinced to join an
assassins guild and only having two characters standing (namely because I
couldn't get to an inn after the riot dropped most of my party). I then
inadvertantly finished the game, after chasing a lone archer through the
streets and stumbling across the secret Headquarters with all of the evidence
in my lap. Later I learnt that you gain bonus Experience from other evidence
that I found.
Game05 - The Veiled
Society (rating: 6)
First thing to do is
change the 'always' colors to something else. The font is so thin, and the
colors are so bad, that I couldn't read much of the text without my eyes
getting tired. After some time of playing, UA and the whole system crashed. May
be because of the hacked music, maybe not. I tried removing the music and the
crashes went away.
After a moment of
playing, I noticed that this design uses the good old method of taking the
party into the correct direction. If they don't 'volunteer', then by force.
Actually, it's more of a personal problem, since I usually play with high level
characters, even if the design is written for low levels, so the threats the
NPCs make sound often more amusing than threatening. Yet, my point here is, if
I'm to do 'good deeds', then let me be the one who decides to do them, not some
NPC who threatens to kill me if I don't do the 'good deeds.' Thank you.
It's quite a... nice
game. Nothing terribly earthshattering, but it proceeds nicely from start to
finish. Basically it's a murder mystery, and our party is to solve it.
Alongside happens some powerstruggle in the city. Naturally, the suspect for
the murder was so obvious, that it couldn't have been that way, so there was
some minor (yet guessable) conspiracy theme in the background.
There were few minor
bugs, like the lack of facing directions and some spelling errors. A very
positive thing was that not a single time I needed to go to the editor to look
for clues or fix a bug.
game05.zip B6, The
Veiled Society
A very clean
adaptation of the classic module. I am really enjoying this trip through the
Eastlands of the Realm. This is definitely a thinking module, no random
"Monsters Attack" here. You must be able to wend your way through the
political mire in Specularum without dying. I really liked the way the designer
created the atmosphere of a festival. I didn't run into the problem the review
earlier today mentioned. I didn't use as much spells as I used lots of arrows.
Plot Matter: 9 Artwork: 9 Hacks: 9 Text: 9 Events: 9
Originality: 9 Errors: 10 Difficulty: 5
Total Rating: 91%
Mycroft Rating: 9
Wonderful translation of a classic that I
own. May only complaint is a time table that railroads you. I remember running
the Pen and Paper version which took several took several game days. My
characters entered the city just shy of a new level, and didn’t get an
opportunity to train until after defeating the bad guys.
