A very good adventure which can be done in one session.

The actual adventure are only a few pages, but you get more material like detailed description of a village and npc's, a map of the village and a really good map of a small cave system. The players are free in their approach on solving the issue and the GM is getting guidelines, motivations and information instead of a pre-planned story to follow. It even contains examples and explanations of different outcomes and hooks for further adventuring / follow ups.

However, I was a bit disappointed because I was expecting more of a mystery or interaction with other npc's to solve an abduction or something similar. In fact you get mostly a dungeoncrawl. As it is very well done and a good introduction I will give 5 stars nevertheless. Although the price is very high when you are considering it is meant as an introductory module. Many publishers are giving similar modules away for free. The difference is, however, that you can use the village description later in your game.

Overpriced I'm perfectly happy to pay a couple of quid for some quickstart rules, which are included in this product. The trouble is this 'field of daisies' adventure could better be titled 'basic dungeon crawl'. There is a lot of detail on the local village, but the only information to be gained there by the characters is a fairly obvious 'go adventure in this location' sign post.

This should be called Quickstart rules and sample encounter... but would anyone buy it if it were?

Field of Daisies

Intro: 1 page author & contributor credits, etc. plus 1 page interior plans map key. Adventure: 4 pages Falkath: 16 pages including 5 pages of maps & plans. Pre-Generated Characters: 10 pages, 2 pages introduction plus 4 characters each with illustration & 2 page information. HârnMaster Quickstart Rules: 18 pages plus 2 pages of rules examples. Covers: 4 pages full colour inc. colour map of Falkath inside front cover. Total: 54 pages.

Field of Daisies, written by Daniel Bell & illustrated by Richard Luschek, was Columbia Games Inc.’s offering for this year’s Free RPG Day event & now that event is over, thankfully this little gem is available to all.

Firstly, the look of the thing – crisply printed in black & white & liberally scattered with some excellent illustrations plus a full-colour cover including a location map on the inside front cover, Field of Daisies looks extremely good before you even delve into the contents proper.

Leaving aside the HârnMaster Quickstart rules for a moment, let’s focus on the background material & the scenario. The sixteen pages of information on the village of Falkath has everything a GM could want to know about the place including details of each of the village families, the Lord and his household, the village’s environs, even a financial information ‘Manor Sheet’ [Falkath 13] so you can see at a glance how much cash the Lord has to play with, what crops are grown and how much the village costs to run; the depth of information is amazing and is one of the things Hârn is best known for. Back this up with colour and black & white copies of a Players’ map of the village and a black & white GM’s map, and black & white Players’ and GM’s maps of the cave system and Field of Daisies is surely worth it for the Falkath section alone.

Add to that the Pre-Generated Characters, a party of four beginning characters who already know eachother. Each character has a two-page write-up, the first page including at-a-glance details and an illustration of the character, the second page has a comprehensive character background and game stats for the 3rd edition HârnMaster rules system.

With all that on board, it may appear that four pages of actual adventure seems a bit light – far from it. It is the amount of background information and stunning mapping already described that makes the four-page adventure a pleasure to play through or to GM. Everything required is already done, leaving GMs & players alike nothing to do but enjoy the game. The basic premise of the adventure is that a boy from the village has gone missing, possibly at a local cave reputed to be the haunt of restless spirits, and the PCs become involved in the search. There is even a section of ideas for further adventuring once Field of Daisies is over – enough to contemplate running a complete Hârn campaign. To say more than that would certainly spoil the surprise, suffice to say there are caves to explore, monsters to contend with and more.

The HârnMaster Quickstart rules provide enough of the rules system for any GM to run Field of Daisies without needing to purchase any additional products, though once you’ve played through the scenario it’s sure to leave you wanting more.

Whilst intended for use with the HarnMaster system, Field of Daisies is generic enough to be easily converted to almost any fantasy rpg. You owe it to yourself to check this out!