Menagerie of Adventures

Menagerie of Adventures contains the first four adventures published under the Menagerie Press imprint. Prior to publishing these, the developers and writers had been focused on writing for the Adventurer’s League Organized Play campaign. Before that, we made a handful of bestiaries and adventures for Pathfinder 1 and dabbled in card game design.

Temple of Misfortune

Temple of Misfortune is a low-level adventure featuring a bandit hideout and a haunted temple of Sawel, the sun goddess. The truth is most of the adventure draws inspiration from Romeo & Juliet. The halfling familial murder, eloped lovers, and bandit gang are all variations or tributes to Shakespeare’s ill-fated romance. Linguistically, most of the names are modeled Proto-Germanic or even earlier phonic forms, something that continues into our later work.

Ghoul Cove

Ghoul Cove had a great playtest. Early one session, a warlock was petrified by the cave basilisk, and the player finished the adventure playing the warlock’s imp familiar. A considerable design motif solidified during brainstorming for this adventure: Why not make an adventure functional as a whole and as parts? Many GMs spend time massaging and fitting bits and pieces of pre-written scenarios into existing campaigns. With Ghoul Cove, this use is a built-in assumption, so we sought to make the sea cove versatile.

Descent Into Mirefen

Chronologically, Descent Into Mirefen was the first Menagerie Press adventure. Level-wise, it’s solidly mid-tier. There’s a sweet spot in character level, from levels 5-8, where most games occur. Higher-level design, especially levels 17+, is far more complex. Characters have history, and with that comes magical abilities, techniques, and play choices that can quickly render even the most carefully designed adventure a farce. Because of this, most of the adventures we design span character levels 1 to 10. Descent Into Mirefen also includes a foray into mechanic design, specifically the toad folk and several toad-themed feats. Character backgrounds are easier to design and have implicit limits.

Adûl, City of Gold

Peter Hopkins, the specialist who helps with our virtual tabletop import, called Adûl, City of Gold “a post-apocalyptic fantasy adventure.” This is the most apt description we’ve heard of the Golden City. The intent wasn’t to create a desert wasteland filled with malign oozes and bounty-hunting djinni, but that’s what we ended up creating. More so, the themes we strove for included “desolation,” “hubris,” and “desertion.” The result was the cursed city of Adûl and its radioactive adamantine spires.

Available here: https://legacy.drivethrurpg.com/product/456002/Menagerie-of-Adventures?affiliate_id=14013