Lost Tower of Viondor

Uncertain of what to do for an adventure the night before the game, I looked around on drivethrurpg. The Lost Tower of Viondor (4e) was the right level. Primeval Thule seemed to be well regarded. My players have a spelljammer but I figured I could adapt the adventure. My only concern was that it might require the Campaign Setting book. Taking a chance I purchased the product.

I wanted to like the adventure but I encountered problems right at the start. The stats for all the monsters are not included. It requires Monster Manual, Monster Manual 2, Monster Vault, and Primeval Thule Campaign Setting. I only own the first two books. The Monster Vault creature is an ice archon. While ice archons are in the Monster Manual, they aren't quite the same. The adventure doesn't even tell you what level or type of monster it is.

Frost corpse and mammoth come from the Primeval Thule Campaign Setting. Again no information is given for the level or type of the monster.

Monsters can be substituted so neither of these is deal breaker but it makes the adventure more work. Unfortunately looking at the monster choices brought more problems. The adventure includes a fen hydra from the Monster Manual. When Monster Manual 2 came out, Wizards of the Coast basically said to not use the original hydras because they were poorly designed. Partly the fault for this falls on Wizards of the Coast, they released errata for many things but never updated the early monsters.

The first section of the adventure includes a boat frozen in ice. It is a simple longship with a cabin on the end. No map is provided for the ship. Given the simplicity of the open-hulled craft, it is not hard to construct on the fly if needed but still would have been nice to have a map.

Besides the monsters, the larger hinderance to using the adventure first appears on page 12. The big image area displays the text "summer cavern 1/2p". Similar problems appears on every other map in the adventure. Discouraged I didn't bother reading that section of the adventure. Emails and other methods of contacting Sasquatch Game Studio fail to receive any response. After drivethrurpg's support failed to get a response, I was given a refund for the product.

This is not the first product, I've received a refund for but I hate to do so. The Lost Tower of Viondor is still potentially more useful to me than Crawling Under a Broken Moon #5. I could use the general plot and challenges. There are new monsters I could use. I would still consider buying products from Sasquash Game Studio because what I read was well writen and designed. Unfortunately I can't recomment the Lost Tower of Viondor (4e) in it's present state.