Little Trouble in Big Absalom was Paizo’s offering for Free RPG Day 2020. It was designed to show off the new Kobold Player Character options from the Advanced Players Guide, which was just being released.’
The adventure contains four pre-generated characters, or players can create their own 1st-Level kobolds.
Introduction
My group was running a player down again this week. We decided to give another Paizo Free RPG Day one-shot a try. One of the players in my group describes himself as having a “goblin/kobold mentality” so we went with fun Kobold hijinks for this week’s game.
Synopsis of Adventure
In Little Trouble in Big Absalom, you play as a group of 1st-Level Kobold characters. You are tasked by your higher-ups in the Hookclaw Clan to enter a chamber they have tunneled into and secure it so that your kobold extended family can follow behind at loot the place in hope of finding a fortune that will gain them recognition and notoriety.
The adventure is split into two halves, the first featuring the chamber (a basement) that is tunneled into, and the second featuring an optional extension to the original task by following the stairs out of the basement and into the house–and yard–beyond.
Experience
As the GM, this one was written absolutely wonderfully for my purposes. The sections are numbered on the map sequentially how your players will run across them, and then the information is laid out sequentially in the text where you can follow directly along from one section to the next with ease, even if you lacked prep time and had to run the adventure cold.
A caveat here, my group elected to end their adventure with the completion of the basement mission. It honestly does make a nice stopping point, the party has completed the mission they start the adventure with and just encountered a fun boss in the form of a creepy haunted doll.
It was a ton of fun, the way that the text gives you a description of a basement in terms of the tombs that you would usually be delving into in a Fantasy TTRPG is great. We really had a great time playing through this one.
My players already told me they’d love to revisit the adventure and do the second half another time. It was a complete reversal from their experience with the 2019 Free RPG Day offering, which I wrote about a couple weeks ago. It seems like an adventure written with the actual rules completed makes a difference in the experience with balance in encounters.
Overall
I really enjoyed running this one. Getting to play a kobold tunnel master and a creepy doll and describe the sentient mushrooms emerging from a long-forgotten casserole was fantastic. The layout is great for if you are usually a player and want to have a go at the GM’s seat. Even with distractions and breaks, my group finished the first half in about two and a half hours, so this is a true one-shot that should fit into one night of gaming.
I’d really recommend checking this one out. It’s organized well, it’s written around a fun premise, and my players enjoyed it.
Also, the PDF version is free, so there’s no reason not to read through it and see if it’ll be a good fit for your group.
Where to Find
Available directly from Paizo
PDF: Free
Print: $5.00
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