Tales from the Shadows Dares D&D Adventurers to Tread the Twisting Paths of Shadow

I’m just going to come right out and state Kobold Press is the best third party publisher of material for Dungeons & Dragons. Their brand of D&D fits right in with my own approach to the game and whenever I get my hands on a new title of theirs I always find lots of stuff for my games. Recently I shared my thoughts about their Book of Ebon Tides and in this post I’m looking at its companion title Tales from the Shadows. The former already had me feeling excited to explore the Shadow Realm (what I call the Dreaming World) in my own games and the latter makes it even easier with 14 adventures playable separately or in sequence. Let’s get into it.

Inspirational game material

As is my custom the first thing I do whenever I get a new Kobold Press book is check the credits. I see Graphic Design & Layout handled by Marc Radle who also takes the Art Director reigns on Tales from the Shadows so I know this book will look terrific. Bryan Syme is listed with the Interior Artists too, who I consider a tone setter for the fantastical elements presented in Kobold Press products. John Joseph Adams functions as editor on this book and of course Wolfgang Baur shows up as Publisher. I wasn’t familiar with this editor and after a quick search learned he’s a science fiction and fantasy editor, critic and publisher so I’m curious to see how this translates to a book with a heavy dependence on game design as well as narrative text.

Like other Kobold Press adventure anthologies I like the presentation and organization in Tales from the Shadows. All the adventures appear in order from lowest to highest level with both thematic and narrative connections between them. This means any of the adventures are useful individually but also together create a great campaign taking characters from 1st to 8th-10th level. Each adventure includes a map, which is very nice but in some cases don’t look as useful to me. A few of the maps reflect very large regions and not much detail so the way I incorporate maps doesn’t really jive with these. I find maps like those in their Peculiar Towers collection more useful to me because they’re showing smaller areas and include more details I can use for visual description.

All things considered I always enjoy looking through a Kobold Press book and feeling inspired for my own games. I’ve run lots of their adventures and they’re always fun and memorable. Plot hooks and scenarios are intriguing, challenges are varied and they always incorporate tables and charts very well to spice things up and make the experience more unique to each individual group of players. I haven’t yet run any of these adventures so my thoughts are based solely on browsing through the book.

Inside Tales from the Shadows

1. The Night Messengers. Introduces adventurers to the Shadow Realm by dropping the characters amid a conflict between ghouls (in Kobold Press lore ghouls are sapient and have their own civilizations) and The Night Messengers, a group of Shadow Realm couriers. I like the structure here, which puts adventurers into an unknown wilderness while something else takes place and pulls them into the orbit.
2. Hunters of the Tenebrous Plain. This search and rescue quest bears some similarity to a scenario in my own homebrew setting so I’ll definitely borrow some ideas. A lost child whose powerful imagination manifests shadow beasts who wreak havoc in the real world sounds great and since this is a mystery adventure I’m happy to see a good deal of support for investigations. There’s also another group of seekers looking for the same things as the adventuring party so there’s lots of potential for exciting drama and tension.
3. The Weeper in Shadow. I’m a sucker for adventures where characters become part of an existing legend. It’s just a neat dynamic to consider. Do the characters bring about a fundamental change to the tale, stop it completely or perhaps simply experience its effect upon the world during its latest manifestation?
4. A Death Among the Pale Roses. Fey courts are fantastic locales for fun adventures. We’ve even got our own take on such a soiree. This time around a murder takes place and the party goes on lockdown. There’s wonderful support for handling this kind of adventure, which reminds me of a similar murder mystery adventure from Midgard Sagas. D&D definitely excels at supporting the combat pillar of the game (thankfully WotC made some strides in other directions more recently) but Kobold Press does a great job providing meaningful guidance to run such scenarios.
5. Reflections and Remembrance. A fairly straightforward premise of something strange going on and a call for the party to check it out. If I’m honest the adventure hooks don’t come across as intriguing as others in this book. There doesn’t appear to be a clear goal so I imagine it could be a bit clunky in this regard. It feels heavily dependent upon the players taking the hook simply because it’s there. My impression is there’s lots of lore and information stuck behind a wall of Player Engagement in the sense if players don’t go all in on the premise it seems like it would be a short adventure lacking much nuance.
6. Big Briar’s Blessings. Each adventure so far presents a very distinct set of circumstances and this is no different. I don’t want to spoil too much because the very premise of this one is the peculiar mystery with a terrific twist. I quite like this strange scenario and there’s a lot of material provided to reward characters’ curiosities. To this end the suggested hook makes a lot of sense and fits right in there with my perspective on published adventures and that’s as a drop-in encounter. Rather than float an explicit call to action from a quest giver over to the players here they’re simply in the right place at the right time (for adventure).
7. The Lost Treasure of Paletree Rise. My takeaway on this one is it’s a little weird by comparison. The adventure background is reminiscent of old school modules with a lot of specific lore to explain a complicated scenario and hooks mostly dependent on characters taking on the quest simply for the reward money. More than the other adventures in the book I do not have a sense of what adventurers do or why in this one. The three included maps are not very evocative either, so overall this one feels out of place with the other adventures in this book.
8. The Horn of Revels. My favorite one so far. The adventure background is succinct and the hook is great, providing a clear goal for the adventurers but with a bit of wiggle room. I like the straightforward adventure location, which has a nice mix of challenges and things with which to interact. It’s also got some fun dynamic elements going on like multiple antagonists with clear motivations. I could imagine this particular adventure location becoming a recurring part of the adventurers’ story too.
9. The Sodality of Silent Rites. The writer of this adventure punched up the adventure hooks section quite a bit. I appreciate this extra work because it creates a lot more context and also gives the players a way to engage with the hook whereas other adventures in the book just suggest a potential hook and leave the GM to figure out how its implemented. Another unusual component here is guidance for different approaches to the adventure like taking a more social route, stealthy route or a solo route meaning the party pursues their goals without any help from NPCs. In fact this adventure seemed so structurally different I felt compelled to find out more about the creators, who look like they’ve worked on a handful of Kobold Press books before. My suspicion is this is the writers’ first published adventure, and it shows — in a great way! This one feels like there’s a lot of passion behind it and consideration given to GM guidance for lots of different possibilities (a design philosophy Nerdarchy follows too).
10. The House of Reciprocities. Another case of great adventure hooks these cover a wide range of possibilities with additional guidance for narratively enhancing them. The adventure deals with a theme we’ve explored quite a lot ourselves in our own modules — stolen memories. I love stuff like this and here again there’s an adventure with heavy investigation elements plus the support to make it fun and satisfying. The villain in this adventure really intrigues me too and I am already imagining all the fun The Ticktock Man can bring to my games.
11. Among the Shades and Shadows. I’m not sure how I feel about this one if I’m honest. There’s no suggested hooks and instead assumes it’ll be dropped on the characters when they arrive at a particular place. It’s also a bit heavy on the complex story elements for my taste. My perception is this is too much a story meant to play out in a certain way and not enough of an engaging adventure and this is a turn off for me. Like at the conclusion the important people were the NPCs and the adventuring party exists to determine how their story turns out.
12. The Time-Twister’s Daughter. Now this is a heist! Rumors of an impenetrable vault ripped from time and space turn out to be true and the hooks cover the bases from greed to curiosity. The journey to the adventure location is fun and cool, the challenges of the vault are very interesting and the future potential for introducing a city from eons ago reappearing already have my head spinning. Plus the whole adventure incorporates time distortions, which is the kind of weirdness I love in my games.
13. Radiance Lost. In contrast to an earlier adventure this one feels like it’s got a great, compelling story but the adventurers are the stars and focal point for the drama. It’s a subtle distinction and again it’s worth noting I haven’t run these but my impression here is the story unfolds in the adventure because of the players interaction and serves only to give their party’s experience more context. There’s also some great puzzles in here to reward characters who take the time to explore the environment.
14. Shadows of the Dusk Queen. Sounds ominous. I hate to say this but as the climax for this collection of loosely connected adventures this seems a bit anticlimactic. Essentially a fetch quest there’s some head scratchers here like a major, important resource for information and clues that if the characters don’t encounter first makes the rest much more difficult. Fetching the items means finding where they are in the fairly large region (risking wandering monster attacks along the way) then fighting the creature near the item. Once all the items are obtained the party can trade them in for a boss fight basically. I do not like how the final encounter indicates the boss demands the items and even if the adventurers obey a loyal minion of the boss attacks them while the boss snatches the items away. Huh?
15. Appendix. I can always count on Kobold Press to include lots of fun stuff in appendices, curated from across their library of titles along with a dash of new things. Tales from the Shadows includes some nifty magic items, one of which has a listed rarity of “fabled” that’s got me all intrigued. A sidebar explains fabled items scale in power as a character does. There’s also some new monsters as well as a chart showing substitutions for Kobold Press creatures with those in the core rules of the game. I was most interested in The Ticktock Man, which I desperately hoped was not a reference to the social media platform. As far as I can tell it is not, and is in fact a very cool creature with interesting traits and actions — totally unsurprising from a Kobold Press monster — and a lair with its own lair actions. This time twisting fey is showing up in my world 100%.

With a couple of exceptions I found the adventures in Tales from the Shadow intriguing for a few reasons. The ones I like the most offer adventure hooks in such a way that the players get a clear understanding what to do but free reign to accomplish those goals in their own way. I also like how they’re structured differently and support different kinds of playstyles. Like all my favorite Kobold Press adventures they also include plenty of peculiar circumstances, challenges, flex points and the like with fun mechanical components to make them memorable from a story perspective as well as a game.

Check out Book of Ebon Tides to get your own copy and help support Nerdarchy here.

*Featured image — In the Shadow Realm, sites of mysterious enchantment abound, watched over by denizens both strange and wondrous. From woods dark and eerie to courts of noble fey, all paths lead to haunts, ruins, machinations, and subterfuge in Tales from the Shadows by Kobold Press.

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