The Lost Kenku: A D&D Adventure Review

February 13, 2018

Today, we’ll take a look at The Lost Kenku. This is a short nine page adventure for fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons, which can be purchased for $4.99 on Dungeon Masters Guild. Both the writing and illustrations were done by Shawn Wood, in house concept artist for D&D who you may know from some of the illustrations in The Tortle Package, Encounters in the Jungles of Chult, and The Risen Mists, also available on Dungeon Masters Guild.

A D&D adventure for charity

The adventure was produced in conjunction with Extra Life, a charity organization that gathers thousands of gamers in various media (video games, tabletop roleplaying, etc.) to raise money for local Children’s Miracle Network hospitals. All the proceeds for the adventure will go toward said charity. That alone is a fantastic reason to pick up this piece of material, whether you plan to use it wholecloth in your home campaign, or take some of the salient bits and repurpose them for your own inventions.

But in case you need more motivation to purchase the adventure, let’s take a closer look at what’s on offer in The Lost Kenku.

Art style

An illustration from The Lost Kenku D&D adventure. [Art by Shawn Wood]

The most notable aspect of the adventure, and certainly something to make the modest price tag worth it, is the beautiful art appearing throughout the nine pages. Some of it is interspersed with the text and some of it takes up the majority of a page here and there. But all of it is stunning and evocative of a traveler’s journal, sketches of the various people and entities inhabiting the outpost of Weirding, where the adventure takes place.

It’s done in a rough, pen and ink style with watercolor splotches in light and dark greys. Each piece could serve as excellent inspiration for characters you may wish to incorporate into your campaign, or could be used as visual aids to help your players envision the NPCs they run across while exploring the small town. Most worthy of praise, in my humble opinion, are the portraits of the mind flayer aldoon and the titular kenku, characters around whom the adventure centers.

As someone who values high artistic production value in tabletop RPG content and who gravitates toward the thick, dark lines and use of negative space in the old D&D materials from first and second edition, the art in The Lost Kenku scratches that itch to great satisfaction.

Structure

Perhaps the best way to describe the adventure is an entry in a gazetteer, a place on the map with an interesting story that will undoubtedly unfold more as the player characters explore the outpost further. The adventure does something quite well: it turns another seemingly innocuous dot on the map into a place replete with secrets and intrigue, a place sitting directly under the thumb of a wizard (read: disguised mind flayer aldoon) who likes to experiment. I had an opportunity to talk with Shawn Wood about the adventure. Here’s what he had to say:

“The actual bones of the adventure is something I’ve been running for a while. I originally wanted a fun premise that could be played in a short amount of time and was friendly to a ‘one-shot’ style campaign. The Extra Life event at WOTC gave me an excuse to put some art to it. One of the Extra Life donors requested a PDF of the adventure as one of the rewards, so I decided to take all my notes and clean them up. The result is something quite a bit looser than the traditional adventure, but I hope there is enough structure there to have some fun. DMs don’t need a lot to spin up a great adventure, and the best stories are told by the players anyway.” – Shawn Wood

It’s an outpost that can be inserted into your world and it comes equipped with notable people and places layingwithin its borders, all described in enough detail it neither overwhelms you with minutiae nor leaves out details about which the PCs might inquire. This is one of the redeeming qualities of the adventure as a whole: freedom to develop the place as you see fit, either following the guidelines the author places in front of you or adding elements that make sense in your world.

A mind flayer alhoon as seen in The Lost Kenku D&D adventure. [Art by Shawn Wood]

The character descriptions are typical thoroughfare for D&D adventures. They highlight the behaviors of the individuals and explain what their motivations are and what they know if questioned by the PCs. Something done very well is adding in side stories for each of the characters interacting with the main narrative underpinning the whole affair. Every character seems to have a life of their own and each of them could become memorable NPCs the players could interact with more once the situation in the outpost is resolved.

Locations are fleshed out with descriptions of scenery and skill checks for certain aspects, like scaling a poisonous vine-encrusted wall or picking a locked door. You’ll find the most detailed descriptions about the whole outpost in the section about The Manor of Weirding. There are room descriptions for each floor, which you can adjust at your leisure, in addition to various magic items that might be found in the wizard’s quarters and library. For those that like the Deck of Many Things, there’s one here for your players to find (and, much to your chagrin, proceed to draw the Moon card to get 1d3 wish spells).

One of the things that may dissuade the potential Dungeon Master from using this directly is the fact the story elements are largely left between the lines, as it were, and need to be read as such. There are a few gaps in the overarching narrative that need to be filled and fleshed out (why the kenku was here in the first place, as an example). But this can be a good thing. There’s a kind of one-size-fits-all mentality here that enables the DM to adjust the context to fit their world. I personally enjoy this style of adventure writing because it lets me exercise my own creativity, springboarding off of the creativity of the author to spin a tale unique to my game, with the structure of the adventure sitting underneath and informing my interaction with players.

The last thing I’ll mention about the structure is the fact there are no stat blocks for any of the creatures or NPCs that turn up in the adventure. There are references to various materials from Wizards of the Coast where the stat blocks can be found. So if you want to stick to the script and use the characters as suggested, you’ll need to have a copy of these supplements handy. Of course, there’s nothing mandating you to do so; you’re free to adjust the properties of the people and creatures as you see fit, and the author makes this explicit in the opening foreword.

Concluding remarks

All in all, the adventure is well-written and thought-provoking, the art is top quality, and the bits of humor present (looking at you, Nut Puncher Quinn Quinn) are witty and worth the double take when they do show up. I recommend picking it up if you enjoy adventures that are freeform in design affording you as the DM the agency to adjust the details to your liking. I can’t say it better than Shawn:

“For me, what makes tabletop roleplaying games special is the fellowship you get with friends (or strangers). When you are with a group of fellow adventurers and are able to relax, laugh, and tell stories together, it helps heal some of the damage that we get when soloing in the real world.” – Shawn Wood

The adventure can be yours for $4.99 and, once again, all the proceeds go toward Extra Life Charity, so if you liked the aspects I mentioned and you want to support a great cause, grab your PDF copy from Dungeon Masters Guild. [NERDITOR’S NOTE: While you’re there filling up your cart with D&D adventures and stuff, you can use Nerdarchy’s exclusive coupon code DTRPG-Nerdarchy for a one-time 10 percent discount on orders of digital products $10 or more.]

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