Daniel Bishop's The Falcate Idol, published by Purple Duck Games, is the first installment of the "Campaign Elements" series for DCC RPG. While written specifically for DCC, it is easily adaptable to the OSR game of your choice. As of the time of this review, there are five other Campaign Elements adventures (even a bundled version of 1-5), but here we'll focus on the one that started them all.

This adventure (as well as others in the "CE" line) helps the judge provide a short, 4-8 hour quest to respond to some new element in the campaign. Perhaps the wizard is hunting for a spell, perhaps the cleric is suffering extreme disfavor with her deity, perhaps the warrior is looking for a some clue of the fabled sword whereabouts, etc. The Falcate Idol is a fantastic drop-in quest for those situations, and many more. It is also an ideal one-shot for a con game.

Along these lines of versatility, the adventure suggests using 2-8 level 2 PCs, 1-2 level 3 PCs, or a solo level 4 thief. This is not "hot air" from the author; the adventure, as written, is that robust. Essentially, the adventure consists of a small temple with a secret underground portion. Ten encounters in all. In addition to planting your own hooks, you can use the ones suggested: a thief must steal the Eyes of the Harrower; an arcane caster must retrieve the Egg of Creation.

Thematically, The Falcate Idol, is quite tight in the way it presents a temple devoted to the Harrower, a neutral god of both the moon and death. Every encounter reminds the PCs of where they are, and what they are up against. Some "dungeon crawls" have generic rooms that could be in any crawl; this is not one of them. Every room says "Harrower" in one way or another. To enforce the feel, there are simple guidelines, as well as an "additional effect" table, to alter the way magic works within the temple; there is also a treasure table for looting corpses.

Like any well-written adventure, The Falcate Idol provides many areas of expansion into the present campaign. There is a curse, a "Walking God", a few supernatural/magical items (my favorite is the moon die!), and a creature's "transformative" special attack that could spawn a new adventure, just to find a way to undo the transformation.

In my own game, I've used it as a shared dream sequence for the party whose cleric was disowned by his god. This quest provided a means to regain some favor.

I highly recommend The Falcate Idol. Buy it and try it out!

An Endzeitgeist.com review

This first installment of the Campaign Elements-series is 15 pages long, 1 page front cover, ~1.5 pages SRD, leaving us with12.5 pages of content, so let's take a look!

The first thing you'll notice about this mini-supplement is the level range - this one can be run for 2-8 level 2 characters, 1-2 level 3 characters or a level 4 solo thief. That out of the way, this is an adventure-review and thus contains SPOILERS. Potential players should jump to the conclusion.

Still here? All right! After a short background/introduction, we kick off this pdf with one conan-esque quest - infiltrate a hidden temple of the Harrower, a strange, spider-like god. While the creatures in here are susceptible to lawful or neutral turning are penalized by -1d (and even further closer to the sanctum) and spider-affine spells can be increased in their power or have unforeseen consequences based on a table of 1d7+luck with 9 entries.

While the default assumes no service by the cultists in progress, advice to include them for a bigger challenge is included, as is a 2d5-table of treasures found, a 1d5 table of unique items. The complex per se contains 10 areas and challenge-wise, the dead famous thieves in the beginning should hint at some dangers to come - offering blood to get past guardians, finding a holy book of the harrower (which contains written tenets and hints!), fighting deadly crab-like beasts with sticky filaments called Moon Reapers -worse, these beings may cause personality damage with their filaments, turning into the dread guardians of this place - disturbing indeed!

Oh, and there is the fungoid-looking spider-like thing that is this place's grand guardian - and an idol of the Harrower with a tempting emerald. And whoever steals the emerald, will, as in the classic sword & sorcery trope, be hunted by the dread idol - which is almost indestructible and slow, but relentless: Adventure-seeds galore waiting there, especially since the thing is fully statted. 222 HP. That's all I'm saying. Oh, and have I mentioned the chance to fight the personified Anger of the Harrower, which curses the area with VERY bad luck...

Conclusion:

Editing and formatting are top-notch, I didn't notice any significant glitches. Layout adheres to a printer-friendly two-column standard with iconic b/w-artworks included and the cartography is serviceable, though nothing to write home about. We don't get player-friendly maps, which remains the module's only true flaw.

Seriously, I'm fast becoming a fan of Daniel J. Bishop - the author GETS what makes magic feel magical, what can evoke a sense of disturbing antiquity and what makes the Sword & Sorcery-genre work -and this is no exception: A glorious little module for a more than fair price oozing flair, panache and disturbing imagery - my final verdict will clock in at 5 stars EDIT: Now, with seal of approval since a player-friendly map has been added.

Endzeitgeist out.