Review of Terror in Paradise

There's an old saying: "Don't judge a book by its cover." I'm guilty of doing that sometimes. Such is the case with an old D20 OGL adventure that I purchased years ago when running one of many Freeport-based D&D and Pathfinder campaigns. The adventure is called Terror in Paradise, from Mhorann Games. I didn't read it too closely at the time, for two reasons; one, I had plenty of other material to use in my campaigns, and two, the art wasn't as nice as what I found in other products.

It turns out that that was a mistake on my part.

Two and a half months ago I was called on to run a session for the monthly campaign in which I play. The GM was coaching a football game, and so I offered to run a pick-up session with the regular players and characters. Since we were traveling by sea to a distant port, it provided me with a good opportunity to run a one-off involving a relatively uncharted island. Looking over the material that I had but hadn't used, I remembered Terror in Paradise. I gave it another read.

I was wrong. While there's at least one part in the scenario that is more heavy-handed than I prefer--and that I circumvented by letting the players see what was happening and have their characters decide accordingly--it proved to be a fun scenario. The premise is solid, involving a tribe of primitive islanders and marauding sahuagin. We played through it in one long session (eight to twelve hours, depending on how much we lost to cooking meals and other breaks), and the adventure provided plenty of nautically-themed action. In fact, I've just downloaded the next one from Mhorann Games, Thormek's Mansion, because the GM has another conflict. I'm looking forward to running it.

Terror in Paradise

-Nate