Before I got into any new adventures I was reminded last night that I had already downloaded and printed Grimm Encounters by JVC Parry and Jeff Stevens along with contributions from five other authors. As I'm sure you can tell by that quick preface Grimm Encounters is an anthology collection of adventures.
The book itself comes in at 28 pages and manages to pack 12 encounters between its covers. The overall theme of the collection is Brothers Grimm fairy tales with a slight D&D/horror re-imagining. As I believe I referenced in the past this is the kind of material I really like as it combines the unknown with somethings that begin with a familiar backdrop. Typically I find that's the kind of flavour and background my players can deeply and quickly immerse themselves in which makes encounters like this ideal for one-shots where you won't necessarily be investing in world-building ahead of time.
Overall the quality of the writing is excellent and the artwork is suitably dark and thematically appropriate to the content. I appreciate the choice to pull the references for the monster stat locations out of the individual encounters and collecting them in an appendix at the back of the book as it removes mechanical distractions from absorbing the narrative content on a first pass through. Although I haven't yet run any of the encounters yet upon a first read through they all seems very well balanced to the suggested party levels. Having said that I really like the fact that 'The Tailor And The Giant' includes an element (sarcastic spoiler warning; it's 'the giant') that if players make bad choices will quickly break the notion that D&D 5E is a non-lethal RPG for player characters.
Normally with an anthology I try to focus on a single scenario that I was really excited about but in this case three of the encounters really appealed to me and I will definitely be using in the near future.
The Marquis Of Carabas by JVC Parry (inspired by Puss In Boots) caught my eye by having a very non-traditional jumping off point for a D&D adventure, using a mysterious cat just showing up rather than an overly contrived 'hired for a mission' start. At first the players might be inclined to think they're dealing with a Cheshire Cat type of antagonist but after some investigation the twist will reveal itself and the true villain of the story will appear. It's a short encounter but starts off with a little fun and whimsy before taking a dark turn and it should appeal to both players who like to use their brains to work through a problem as well as those who like to use their brawn to get things done.
Not Another Cinderella Story by Tony Petrecca (inspired by Cinderella) was my next selection. For most players the setup for this adventure should feel very familiar and many groups will probably guess who/what they'll be fighting at the end (incorrectly) before what's really going on reveals itself. I like twists in my adventures but I really like twists that make sense and follow narrative logic and this encounter delivers on both fronts. In addition to being a potentially great one shot this adventure feels like it would fit very well into an existing Old Margreve campaign.
The Tailor And The Giant by Jeff C Stevens (inspired by The Brave Little Tailor) is my final choice for a must-run. Outside of the narrative itself I will start off by saying that one of the things this encounter does extremely well is break the feeling that the D&D world is like a video game where higher level areas are bordered off until you are ready to deal with them. Just because you're level one doesn't mean giants don't exist in this world or they'll leave you alone until you're suitably high level to fight them. This encounter really encourages the use of role-play and soft-skills to get through, it's really nice to see an encounter structured this way as it will give groups a completely different type of experience than a traditional D&D game. As an aside I can't help but wonder if inexperienced players are more likely to be successful in this encounter than more experienced players.
Overall Grimm Encounters delivers a high quality take on Fairy-Tale-Horror and I highly recommend it to any DMs looking for something fun and dark to run this Halloween season.
Grimm Encounters is currently available from DMsGuild at https://www.dmsguild.com/product/224651/Grimm-Encounters?term=Grimm&affiliate_ID=329977 for $3.95 and is a bargain at that price.
-Jay
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