Today we want to show you our review of The Feather of Aka’ayah, but first of all we want to thank the author Leonardo Benucci for sending us a copy. This is a standalone adventure for D&D5e, suitable for 4-6 fifth level characters. You can purchase it in digital format on DMsGuild at the price of $ 4.99, about 4€.
You can also read our review of First Adventure, Benucci’s previous work.
What is The Feather of Aka’ayah
The Feather of Aka’ayah is an adventure that aims to make fifth level characters experience rather ambitious emotions; therefore they will face important threats, but not yet on a very large scale. It does so with some narrative gimmicks that allow the PCs to plunge into the dangers greater than themselves. It also has the peculiarity of being a “timed” adventure; we will see later what it means.
The adventure has a “mildly horror” tone, echoing the author’s definition. The reference to the Nightmare saga and its protagonist Freddy Krueger is quite evident, even if not explicitly stated. However, the author himself specifies to adapt the narration to the needs of the group, even if he does not give any indication on how to do it.
The Handbook
The 57 full-color pages of The Feather of Aka’ayah contain rather appreciable illustrations (as you can see from those included in this review), unexpected for a product in this price range.
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about the layout of the volume. The layout was designed to be themed with adventure, which is a good thing; but unfortunately it does so at the expense of readability. Moreover the font used for the titles isn’t the best option for the reader’s eye. However, this is just a detail. The background of the pages, instead, is necessarily omnipresent and it often makes the reading difficult.
A part from that, the adventure roughly follows the typical layout scheme used for D&D5e. This choice guarantees ease of reading and quick consultation.
Exploring The Feather of Aka’ayah
“Some places should never be disturbed”
This is the subtitle given to The Feather of Aka’ayah. The adventure, in general, has a very classic development. Characters are asked by an NPC to retrieve an enchanted item for him and are teleported to the remote location where it can be found. As always, our reviews are spoiler free, so we stop here.
We just say that the classic “dungeon” that gives its name to the most famous roleplaying game in the world here is “divided into pieces”. Each room, with all its dangers, is presented individually. It will be up to the players to choose the sequence in which to face the various challenges proposed. At the end of the volume there is also a small compendium of the original creatures that can be encountered.
The undoubtedly original idea offered by The Feather of Aka’ayah is, as mentioned earlier in this review, being a “timed” adventure. Once the characters have arrived at their destination, the author recommends starting a four-hour timer; this is the time in which the adventure is expected to be resolved. Once the time is over, it will not be possible to continue, whether the task has been completed or not.
On the Weighing Pan
Unfortunately, the countdown doesn’t work so well. The adventure is designed to unfold in a rather complex way, alternating various phases and various scenes. The author advises to approach it with an interpretative style, underlining it to the point of asking himself why he chose D&D and not a dedicated system. In general, a group that really wants to play a lot would be particularly disadvantaged by the countdown. Even just the possibility that the group splits makes the idea of the chronometer at least uncomfortable.
Moreover, the author speaks of “Benucci style” fights. Self-referencing is a fairly common flaw in The Feather of Aka’ahya. In my opinion it is not pleasant to feel the presence of the author in such an intrusive way behind the notes. But decanting a style in which
“Combat […] has to be fun, different, never become trivial, and above all, 90% of the times it has to be avoidable”
creates expectations in the reader. The characters, in fact, will instead find themselves faced with a series of fairly conventional challenges. It is certainly possible (and indeed recommended) to have a more investigative approach than open combat, but this is not particularly original or innovative. Moreover, the clues are often predictable or, on the contrary, they only make sense in retrospect. In any case, the problem does not arise: not following the various dungeons in a predetermined order may lead to not even having the opportunity to discover them.
Too Many Mistakes
Another original element of The Feather of Aka’ayah that I want to analyze in this review is the “diabolical options“. Free complications that the Dungeon Master may decide to adopt to make the life of his players more difficult. It must be said that mostly these are free punitive measures that do not bring anything interesting to the game. Certainly not the elements of the “Benucci style” promised earlier. The same goes for some more or less random events that may happen, depending on the behavior of the characters. Really not very useful diversions, inserted only to make the countdown more pressing, but also more complex to manage.
In general, The Feather of Aka’ayah is a rather pretentious adventure that, in an attempt to give itself a touch of originality, ends up collapsing on itself. The absence of an editing phase in the final product is very noticeable: errors are as frequent as typos; the descriptions are unnecessarily bombastic and the dialogues have a particularly innatural tone.
It is understandable the author’s willingness to use many similarities to make the narrative more effective, but reading statements like
“the protoplasm squeezes out like home-made pasta extruded by a drawing machine”
really requires too much concentration from the player. Not because they are complex, but because unfortunately they are hilarious.
Conclusions of the Review of The Feather of Aka’ayah
A good editor, or a dedicated reading group, would also have pointed out a further lack. Presenting two new divinities and proposing them as possible future ideas implies providing game information, not just descriptive ones. At least alignment and domains should be indicated, but it didn’t happen. A suggested ad hoc soundtrack is certainly a nice attention. However, I would have preferred a few lines explaining how to adapt this adventure to characters of different levels; simply writing that conversion is possible is not very useful to the master.
In spite of a large number of playtesters and good sales results, The Feather of Aka’ahya is an adventure that wants to be ambitious and ends up being pretentious. Unfortunately, at the time of evaluation, the balance ends up leaning more towards the plate of defects than towards that of merits.