Kidnap the Archpriest: Review

BACKGROUND & SUMMARY

The players are adventurers hired to Kidnap the Archpriest. They’ve got to get into his castle, nab the old man, get out, and get paid.

This “heist-style” adventure is divided into three main parts: developing the plan, capturing the Archpriest, and trying to get away. Among the resources included are a map and description of “fantasy Rome,” a keyed map of the castle, write-ups and timetables for each major NPC, and some advice for designing your own heists.

This adventure was written by Skerples of Coins and Scrolls, whom I’ve mentioned in reverence several times on this blog – particularly for the Tomb of the Serpent King. Since I’m writing a review of Skerples’ work, perhaps Skerples will read this post? In which case, I’ll likely freak out and faint on my computer like a fan girl.

Upon writing this review, I’ve run this adventure twice: once as part of an ongoing campaign and once for another group as a standalone adventure. Also, this review contains spoilers. You probably shouldn’t read it if you plan on kidnapping the archpriest yourself.

GOOD THINGS

The writing is compact and punchy. It describes exactly what you need to know to evoke locations and voice NPCs. There’s few wasted words and nothing glaringly missing.

In the same vein, this adventure seems designed with “ease of use” in mind. Entries in the castle key have pull-out maps on each page, so you can see what’s described. Advice for the referee is solid and written in conversational style. The adventure itself is well-formatted, with info contained to single pages and few bleed-overs.

The NPCs are flavorful. There’s intrigue, deception, and conflict ripe for exploitation.

Overall, the adventure is fun. As you’re reading, you can sense the impending fun (and chaos – but the fun kind of chaos) waiting to happen.

I also think it’s important to recognize the adventure’s originality. I’ve never read or played another adventure like it. And the “fresh air” this adventure brings is definitely a good thing about it. The novelty will likely bring joy to your players… unless you’re already playing a game that features heists all the time? But who does that?

I also appreciate the advice Skerples provided at the end about creating your own heists. I think heists are an under-utilized genre of adventure and would love to see more of them. Two thumbs up for creativity and innovation 👍👍

Across two independent playthroughs, both groups of players arrived at the same plan: to incapacitate the Archpriest and carry him out like a sack of potatoes. See above

CRITIQUES

Despite all the tools Skerples provides for ease-of-use, I still found this adventure incredibly challenging to run.

Part of this challenge may lie in my weaknesses as a referee. I tend to consider myself “good” at running dungeon crawls and wilderness exploration. However, I struggle with voicing NPCs, evoking cities, and managing lots of information at once.

This adventure involves all those things I’m bad at.

I think another part of this challenge comes from the sheer complexity of the adventure. This adventure has more for the referee to “keep track of” than other adventures. It’s generally well-formatted and well-organized information… but it’s still a lot of information.

For example, the Castle St. Logan isn’t your typical keyed map. It’s a map whose contents change every hour of every in-game day, meaning you must constantly refer to the text to see what’s in each room AND cross-reference that entry with the in-game time. This addition may not seem like that big of a difference, but it really seemed to compound on itself during play – particularly when trying to figure out who might be in adjacent rooms and react when the PCs inevitably did something stupid.

The keyed map of Castle St. Logan made this process harder to do “on the fly” because it lists each NPC that might be in the room, followed by the times they might be there. In my opinion, it’d be better to give a list of timespans in the room, then the occupants of the room during each timespan. While running the game, I’m don't scan the map to find a specific name - I can look on a specific NPC's timetable, should I need to find them. When I'm looking at the map, I’m looking to see who’s in each room at the present time. This change would keep me from having to scan each NPC’s entry for the present time; instead, I could read the current time and see which NPC’s are there. Perhaps there’s a compelling reason the info’s not already organized this way (i.e. it could take up more space on the page), but it’s something that might have made running the adventure easier.

With regards to the complexity of this adventure: if you choose to purchase and run it, I advise you to diligently prepare for it. When you think you’ve prepared, keep preparing until you’ve over-prepared. It could just be my own incompetence, but I don’t perceive this as an adventure you can effectively “pick up and play” the same day. To run it well, I think you need to read it in advance more than once and develop diligent notes. I made mistakes while running it both times (which detracted from the experience and made the adventure more difficult), despite all the studying I did beforehand.

Furthermore, during your preparation, be sure to take your campaign setting and rules system into account. I’ve seen other reviews suggest this module can be used with any system or campaign setting, which is perhaps a bit misleading. It’s true you can adapt this module to any system, but Skerples directly states in the text, “This module isn’t about spellcasting clerics.”

It makes a big difference whether the archpriest is a defenseless old man or a 12^th-level cleric in B/X D&D. Fifth Edition makes magic an even greater concern. Access to spells (ex. alarm, zone of truth, disguise self, fly, invisibility) and magic items would drastically change the castle’s defenses and require significant adaptation. Skerples concurs in the text, stating that the referee needs to add defenses to the castle to accommodate the system – and I think this point is worth emphasizing for any potential buyer, as the low-magic setting means this adventure takes more work to “drop” into an existing campaign with more magic. Perhaps the simple (but cheap) work-around would be to say that the castle is surrounded by an anti-magic field? I suppose that saves you prep time as a referee, at the expense of feeling like a cop-out.

FINAL & FORWARD-THINKING THOUGHTS

Acknowledging the challenges I faced, I started to think about the tools I needed to help me run it more effectively. Exactly what problems did I have? What could I do to alleviate them? If I ran this adventure a third time, what would I do to help me have an easier time of it?

After running it the first time, one ease-of-use tool I made for myself was a single-page keyed map for each level of the Castle. I’ve included an image of a level below, with some text intentionally omitted to protect Skerples’ copyright. The adventure already included room descriptions next to zoomed-in pull-outs of each level, such that maps and descriptions of levels 1 and 2 are spread across three pages each (six pages total). The first time I ran the adventure, I found myself interrupting the tension of the heist by page-flipping and cross-referencing as the PCs moved from room to room.

The one-page labelled map came in handy the second time I ran the adventure and seems like something that would be beneficial for future heists. Even the simple arrows connecting the descriptions to the rooms themselves saved me a few seconds from scanning down the numbered entries. Those seconds really seem to matter at the table. There might be a reason such a map wasn’t included in the official product, but it’s something I’d recommend to a referee planning to run the adventure.

Along that same line of thinking, I like the idea of exploring new and innovative ways to present the information about the heist. A heist will inevitably be a complex and interwoven adventure, I think. However, given that the heist is a fundamentally different type of adventure from a traditional location- or event-based adventure, I’m wondering if there are other ways to present the information that may better suit this adventure style? One thought that comes to mind would be an NPC map, like the one below provided for a one-page dungeon submitted to the contest in 2012.

"A Rough Night at the Dog & Bastard" by Kelvin Green

There’s also the above NPC map provided in Woodfall by Lazy Litches Loot, which could be an interesting way to organize the information about the Cardinals or denizens of the Sober Monk Inn. For example, Cardinal Delver has an illegitimate son named Thormund. However, this information is listed only in Thormund’s description – not Cardinal Delver’s.

Skerples provides an “NPC Summary” on page 28, but I got little use from it because it only includes roleplaying cues for the NPCs. A single-page reference sheet with more information about them would be helpful. I’m imagining a chart with NPC names along the top and rows of consistent information about each: their persona, reasons to help the PCs, reasons to oppose the PCs, the help they could provide, and the hindrances they could introduce. I'd make such a sheet for myself, were I to run it again.

The same thing could be done for entrances to the castle. The columns could list four ways into the castle (ex. Main Gate, Side Gate, Covered Bridge, Climbing the Walls), and rows could list what activity PCs observe at each, the entrance's weaknesses, and the entrance's defenses.

To be clear, I’m not saying I necessarily expected this adventure to include any of these things. These methods of organizing and presenting information aren't standard. They might only benefit someone as incompetent as myself.

However, reading and running this adventure has me thinking about – and questioning – the standard, “conventional” ways of presenting information in adventures. And I’m wondering if the "traditional" ways of presenting information in adventures are the most relevant and useful ways to present information for heists. It seems to me like this new kind of adventure could result in some new kinds of information management for referees.

CONCLUSION: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/5 Stars

Definitely worth the $5 price tag on DriveThruRPG. Even if you never get a chance to run it, it’s worth reading simply to appreciate and learn from its design. If you do run it, read it through several times in advance and adapt the adventure for your chosen system. It’s written for a very low-magic setting and needs some thought to make sense for a setting with spellcasting clerics. If you’re like me, it will significantly challenge you as a referee. It’s not an easy adventure to run, but worth the time and energy to do so because it’s fun, original, and unique.