Review: Crownphage Vol. #1: Stone Tears

Today we're looking at Crownphage Vol. #1: Stone Tears, a city supplement and level 2-3 investigation adventure by Arthur Marques. It's got a basilisk right on the cover, so I'm in.

The first impressions are that the designer approached this with thoughtfulness and intentionality. They did their homework and read some of the classics and sought the best advice on structuring this type of adventure. Maybe it sounds strange that I’m excited about that. Maybe you assume that most adventure designers perform a similar amount of due diligence before they start writing. I don’t think they do, and I think a lot of common mistakes could be avoided if they did.

The author posits that the reason city campaigns are difficult is a lack of digestible adventures. I agree. You can grab a great resource like Fever Dreaming Marlinko and you get a wonderful sandbox, but not much in the way of a discrete adventure that takes place in the setting. And the same is true for most other city supplements. Lots of hooks, factions, history etc but not much that is immediately ready for the table. When you do find city adventures, they often take place in a sewer and eschew all the interesting potential of putting the action in a, you know, city.

The setup here is that a noble named Haldor is pretending to be a skilled sculptor, but in truth is just kidnapping people and turning them to stone with a pet basilisk. Ok look, in a world where basilisks and medusae exist, if someone goes missing and then a statue shows up bearing their exact likeness with an expression of horror, people might get clued into what’s going on. So some suspension of disbelief is required here. But it facilitates a multi-part investigation. 

Some of the hooks might be a little bit too obtuse. “In an alley, a thieves’ guild member ambushes and shakes a tax accountant from Haldor’s estate. The accountant carries payment for Dockmaster Greg (p. 36), but flees as the thief is distracted by the party’s arrival.” I’m not confident that will lead to the PCs’ involvement. They may need a little more prodding. Others like “Leaving an auction, a disgraced sculptor intercepts the PCs. The sculptor claims Haldor is a farce and offers to hire the party to uncover Haldor’s method.” are more direct and will probably be more effective. But at least there are six hooks given so you have options.

There’s a very helpful summary of NPCs - what they are willing to share and what they are trying to hide. Very succinct and very relevant to the matter at hand. For an adventure that will lean heavily on social encounters we get the tools we need to run them effectively and use them to drive the investigation forward. 

All of the answers that the PCs are looking for are in Haldor’s estate where he keeps a diary that explains everything. Nothing wrong with that per se, but the crucial piece that’s missing is danger. Besides a few random encounters there is no palpable risk and not really a need for the players to hash out a real strategy for infiltration. As written, the only living things definitely in the house are the basilisk and its next victim. We need schedules for the NPCs, guards and alarms. We need the PCs to be able to use all the great info from the NPC summaries to bribe, blackmail or otherwise coerce their way in. 

As long as you can keep the PCs from making a bee-line to Haldor’s estate and ransacking it, room by room, I think the author has set up a very fun investigation that the players will find satisfying and not too difficult. If I were running it, I would keep Haldor’s name out of it for as long as possible. Lead the party to investigate the docks, ship and warehouse before finally discovering the likely perpetrator. And all the information you need to do that is provided - all the clues and characters are there. Just be careful of the order in which you dole them out. 

And that, I think, is the biggest pitfall in Stone Tears: it provides an abundance of hooks and clues for the GM to use as tools to keep the investigation moving, but not quite enough structure to use them effectively. You’ll have to plan out when and where to place them in order to get the most out of the adventure. While that does give you the flexibility to react to the players’ choices, it also runs the risk of them doing an end run around two thirds of the content. It’s too easy for the big reveal to happen much too soon. It might be helpful to break the hooks and clues up into phases to enforce the pacing a bit.

On top of that, more varied encounters beyond chatting up NPCs. Maybe Haldor sends some thugs to intimidate the PCs or maybe his room is trapped to prevent someone from stealing his diary where he has written a lengthy confession. I should mention that there is a trap before the basilisk den that prevents the characters from closing their eyes. Deliciously cruel.

Stone Tears does a decent job of highlighting the advantages of a city adventure but is a bit undercooked. The missing a pieces bring it dangerously close to a toolkit rather than a polished adventure. But with some effort from the GM to organize the clues and throw some encounters in to put distance between the important discoveries it will definitely be a nice break between dungeon delves.

On a scale of 2-12, Crownphage Vol. #1: Stone Tears gets 6 stingbats.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/534899/crownphage-vol-01-stone-tears