Encounters in the Savage Frontier is a collection of 24 short and unique encounters to spice up your D&D game’s encounters. This collection has been put together by a collective of amazing writers of the Dungeon Masters Guild: Jeff C. Stevens, Chris Bissette, Ken Carcas, Glen Cooper, Jean A. Headley, Richard Jansen-Parkes, Josh Kelly, JVC Parry, and Tony Petrecca. Below will be my SPOILER free review of the product:

Synopsis

The following description has been taken from the module.

“The Savage Frontier of the Forgotten Realms is a very large place. These encounters were created for you to use while the adventuring party travels within the Savage Frontier. Some location suggestions have been made. Use these encounters as you

wish, as written, or chop them up and use bits and pieces. Many are short encounters while some may take you one complete session to run. And they don’t have to be limited to the Savage Frontier. They can be dropped into any campaign with only a few modifications.”

Initial Thoughts

(My Perception Check)

From the front cover artwork and title, my mind already starts taking my adventurers to places like something out of Indiana Jones. Deep jungles with forgotten temples full of treasures, battles across long rickety bridges over alligator infested waters, maybe even surviving a plane crash by inflating a raft, oh wait, never-mind that last one. 🙂

But because that is just where my mind starts to go towards from a picture, that is not completely what this product is about. It would be too easy and too mundane to take silver screen iconic-ism and replay those out. These adventures use new ideas and give you so much more than a mere archaeologist by himself could handle.

Pros:

The collective ideas of these writers makes for very unique ideas that can be easily tailored into any adventure landscape.

The detail on the backstories around the places you go and people you meet are very robust.

Each module is in the same format regardless of the writer that contributed it, which is helpful when looking for Challenge Rating, DM Notes, Location Type, and a brief description of what the encounter will be about.

The book contains some very cool new monsters with properly formatted stat blocks such as the Trollhound, Doppler Plant, and a Giant Trapdoor Spider to name a few.

The book also does a very good job at not only giving page numbers in the Monster Manual to referenced NPC’s and monsters but also goes the extra step to give simplistic stat blocks for ease of reference.



Cons:

The overall artwork throughout the module is a little lackluster and generic at times and doesn’t give a consistent feel for the product.

There are a few duplicate encounters (but they each have their own take that makes them unique)

I did not find any other faults than that along the way and don’t think the above two I found are very major at all.



Overall Impression:

Overall, I think this is a absolutely fantastic product and tool for any Dungeon Master to have in their back pocket. There are so many unique mini adventures and encounters to use while you are in between your character’s next main quest. This would also be very handy for running One Shot adventures or something random if one or more of your normal players can’t make it to a a session and you need to “stall” for a side quest.

Although I think that one major thing to enhance the quality of the product would be for the producer to give a consistent feel for the maps and artwork involved. But even with this minor issue, the pictures and maps give you enough to go on and let your mind do the rest. The descriptions in it paint beautiful scenes for your players imaginations to go to without the use of these illustrations.

Ok, now where do you find it?

You can find it here on the Dungeon Masters Guild website – HERE

This 72-page supplement contains encounters written by Seven Best-Selling Dungeon Masters Guild writers and two new writers!

Encounters in the Savage Frontier includes 24 unique encounters of various difficulty that can be used while the adventuring party travels the Savage Frontier. It also includes several new creatures and magic items, hand-drawn maps, and original artwork. Some of the encounters are short and brief, while others may take you a full gaming session to complete.