Martin M. Wilkinson
Bewertet in den USA am1. September 2023
Firstly, I cannot sing the praises of Loke products ENOUGH. Everything they produce is high quality, beautiful and incredibly useful. Hands down, the best money that you will ever spend as a DM outside of the rulebooks, a really good notebook, and dice.The RPG Toolbox - The Long Road is no exception. This sturdy, gorgeous and colorful box has a pretty good quest-type adventure that can be easily run for about 2 to 3 normal sessions, as written. My regular D&D 5e group could easily stretch that out to 6 or 7 sessions, knowing them, and as I tend to adlib some additional things in most published adventures, I'm probably not helping to keep it short either. Interesting new monsters and engaging NPCs are also contained within. The lore used in the books is very easily adaptable so that you can fit it into an existing campaign with just a few minor tweaks to the overall quest storyline. There are plenty of plot hooks, potential dangling plot threads, and curious PC follow-ups to this adventure, that can lead you into your own full-fledged campaign using this adventure as a springboard to get your creative juices flowing.In addition to the Adventure, (called The Long Road, duh!), you also get 10 large double-sided dry/wet erase compatible sturdy maps in full color (20 maps total), depicting all of the many locations mentioned in the adventure. All of the maps are the 1" grid industry standard for D&D and compatible RPGs, and are fully modular (meaning that they can mesh well with all of their other map products), as per their normal Loke battlemat product standards. To be perfectly honest, I didn't really care about the adventure or anything else in the box (more on that in a minute) when I had originally ordered it on Amazon, I just wanted the maps! (I'm obsessed with maps like most other D&D players are obsessed with dice, although I definitely still have my own obsession with the clickety-clack math rocks...) What I got was way more than I had expected, especially for the price, which was already reasonable to me.So, in addition to the full color Adventure Book and the 20 total maps, it also included a deck of face/picture cards featuring all of the characters and monsters in the adventure. (I'm probably going to use the cards outside of the adventure too because #1 - they have gorgeous artwork, and #2 - I am always in need of faces to go along with names of random and non-random NPCs that my gaming regulars encounter, and #3 - when I need a random monster to throw at my players, as most of them have already memorized the D&D 5e Monster Manual and Monsters of the Multiverse, I can whip one of these bad boys out, and use the provided 5e Stats! Win/win for the DM, but hopefully not a full TPK for my players.)But, wait... there's actually even more! The box itself has a playable map on the inside of both the box and the lid, although I don't know if they are wet/dry erase compatible, but my guess would be not. And, last but not least, like all of their other boxed products (Box of Adventure 1 & 2), they also include some digital content, accessible by using the digital code provided in the Adventure Book. This digital code includes printable full-color and appropriately sized TOKENS for everything/everyone needed to play the full adventure, outside of your actual PCs, of course!Everything is top-notch quality, as I would expect from something with the Loke brand name attached to it. It does not disappoint. And, at the price I paid, it is worth so much more than I had expected or anticipated.There is another RPG Toolbox coming out in early September called The Veiled Dungeon, and after seeing this one, I am even more eager for the next one! I am hoping that this becomes a two, three of even four times a year thing from Loke!I am not (currently) being paid by Loke to do reviews on their products, but I am willing to be sponsored by them, should they be interested. My opinion is my own and completely honest. I am biased, because I have DM'd a LOT of games, and the one thing that I will NEVER get enough of are MAPS. I am just tired of the old flimsy paper maps, and am not the biggest fan of the featureless roll out maps like Chessex (that really can only use Wet Erase markers), although I do have a few of the big ones, because they do work for quick sketch maps where you don't really care to immerse your players in the environment, and it's all about the combat. The Loke branded battlemats are dry and wet erase compatible, and really help to draw the players into their surroundings, which helps them to engage better with their surroundings, and that in turn, makes them more a part of the world that we are all crafting together, and that just leads to more enjoyment of this amazing hobby that so many of us cherish.