Sunken Isles, by Eldermancy

This particular book was part of a Kickstarter I participated in, and it is a 5E compatible campaign set in a group of islands that bears a strong resemblance to an apocalyptic vision of Hawaii if it only had some four or five months before it faced complete destruction. As is common in some campaign books (some of which I have reviewed which have a geographical base), this particular book conceives of itself as part of a long campaign where a single party of several characters from custom races and classes work together to help save as many ordinary sentient beings as possible with a ticking clock that points to a showdown between creation and a creator that appears to be bent on destroying his corrupted and flawed creation. It is, of course, the job of the players to stop this from happening in part by assembling together, gaining in their own strength, acquiring a particularly mystical weapon that is capable of spiritual levels of destruction, and taking on increasingly powerful enemies that consider themselves to be divine and semi-divine with a lore that combines native Hawaiian myths with what looks like a particularly perverse reading of the Bible’s flood account and/or Revelation along with other elements .

This hardback book is a somewhat sizable one at more than 300 pages of material, enough to make for a complete campaign. The book is divided into 9 chapters, beginning with a section that discusses some basic introductory information about the campaign and its gameplay. The first chapter of the book looks at player options for choosing a race and class option for one’s character. After this there is a discussion of venturing through the scenario and the importance of boats for this adventure (2) as well as dealing with an economy that does not use gold alongside matters like crafting and magic. This is followed by a discussion of the various forces of the island chain, including its creator, the Star Reacher, his servant Kada, and various undead lords (3). After this comes a brief overview of the 20 week scenario and the options that players can take throughout this period, not all of which can be chosen (4). This is then followed by a discussion of the beginning of the adventure (5), after which comes the longest chapter of the book, which details all of the places in the scenario that a party could explore, their history, important NPCs and population, how the character would have arrived at the place on a given week, features, locations, quests, possible changes if characters return to a place later on, and so on (6). After these locations are discussed the next chapter discusses the apocalyptic war for the survival of the islands as a whole that takes place over the last two weeks of the campaign that shows the possibilities of friends and enemies that the party has made along the way and the final fight at the Black Atoll with the creator of the islands Himself (7). This is followed by two chapters that detail the items, magic and extras of the scenario (8) and people, characters, and species that one could encounter during gameplay (9), along with the open game license at the end.

Even more than one might expect for a campaign book, this particular volume is organized in such a fashion that it defies being read straight through, even though I did so anyway as is my habit. This book is definitely a reference material, mostly useful for someone who is a GM for a long run of this scenario, as there are numerous options that the party can take throughout the twenty-week, twenty-level run of this particular scenario, where characters start out as fresh adventurers and end up as beings of immense, even divine power. Because some particular places can be visited multiple times over the course of the scenario or not at all depending on the choices made by the characters, among the more challenging tasks that this particular book has for the GM who has presumably read and understood this book is to sum up the allies and enemies that the party has made along the way. Additionally, this book offers the GM of this scenario a lot of options for helping along struggling parties or giving punishing challenges to parties who are succeeding a bit too easily in order to keep the challenge level up. While this is an exciting and definitely creative campaign, at least from what I could see, it requires a seasoned and able GM to keep the game going along well, and savvy players will find much to enjoy here if they enjoy a stiff challenge and a world full of creative and unique lore.