Today we want to thank Dragon Turtle for giving to us a copy of Interlinked – a Carbon 2185 Mission Book to review for you. As the name suggests, it is a series of “interlinked” adventures for Carbon 2185; an Andrew J. Lucas and Ty Moore company, signed by Andrew J. Lucas and Ty Moore. If you are not yet familiar with this cyberpunk setting for D&D5e, we advise you to check out our review. We were thrilled!
As for Interlinked, however, you can find it for sale at Drivethrurpg, a 67-page pdf at a cost of $13.83. With a rather high average rating despite … certain issues.
Interlinked Review: What Is It All about?
We are looking at a 67-page pdf that contains three inter-connected adventures. To be honest, the first two adventures, Roadblock and End Run, serve to prepare the scenario for Interlinked. The adventure is lacking in illustrations, but those used are of a very high quality; a real pleasure for the eyes. For the rest, the manual has a layout strongly notable for readability, which is well suited to the cyberpunk atmosphere of the game. In short, perfect Carbon 2185 style.
The manual also contains a small “bestiary“, with ready-made cards of the NPCs presented in the adventure. Here a few more illustrations would have been nice, but not essential.
Interlinked: Review of the Adventure
We want to leave you the pleasure of discovering for yourself the history and the twists of Interlinked. In the words of the authors:
“A new experimental synth was injured and left for dead following an industrial accident at a food processing plant. The Nightingale model was slated for disposal and shipped back to a Villeneuve Robotics reclamation facility. On arrival, however, the synth was secretly removed from the facility. Unknown to the management of either facility the chief mechanic at Frisco’s, Thomas ‘Willy’ Williams, has established a relationship with the synth and can’t bear to see her destroyed.She reaches out to the cyberpunks for help in getting revenge on the corporations that have abandoned her, and to free her trapped synth brethren. She resents humanity and especially the corporations that created her, but she knows she needs allies in the process of gaining that freedom.“
Roadblock and End Run allow the PCs to begin to familiarize themselves with the setting and the mechanics. They are progressively introduced into the story which then takes off in Interlinked, in a rapid escalation of events.
The scenes are described in a very rich way, perhaps even too lush at times. They become distracting at times, especially when approaching the grand finale. Challenges can be met with various approaches, and the most obvious – and most violent – is not always the best.
Hacking, stealth and espionage can all be key strategies, if cyberpunks want to see the end of the adventure.
Strength(s)
What we particularly liked about Interlinked is that cyberpunk isn’t just cosmetic, as it often can be. Artificial intelligences and synthetic organisms that claim their autonomy is one of the most dear tropes in the genre, a true classic. It isn’t just D&D with mechanical limbs and the internet, but a cyberpunk worthy of the name.
Of course, it should be noted that Carbon 2185 still remains a setting for D&D 5E. And as such it has a particular focus on action, with investigative nuances and ample room for interpretation. But it isn’t intended to delve too much into the social and political aspects of play.
A shame in some ways, but those who choose it want to bring cyberpunk to the world in the D&D style. If you want more, you can definitely find other games to do that better.
Interlinked does what it sets out to do, and it does it flawlessly.
Error 404
We now come to the sore point of this Interlinked review. The rating of the adventure on Drivethrurpg is very good: 4.5 stars out of 5, although it has serious defects as a product.
Not all the locations described are provided with maps, and the descriptions aren’t always sufficient to get even a ‘fairly accurate’ idea of the locations. Even more serious, some paragraphs are actually incomplete, cut off at the end of a page. Still others are repeated several times in succession. These are rather frequent, very gross errors, unforgivable in even an amateur product, let alone a paid one.
Furthermore, Interlinked presents a section on plot hooks for the rather synthetic adventure, without ever specifying the number of characters they are for, or their levels. Those can only be found by reading the adventures (for the record, 4 first level characters, starting with Roadblock).
There is no advice on how to adapt the challenges for groups of different compositions. Even more serious, given the theme of the adventure, there is no advice on how to manage a synthetic character, since it is one of the bloodlines available in the basic manual of Carbon 2185.
Mind you, nothing prevents you from using the adventure.
Additional maps are created with ease and missing paragraphs don’t compromise the experience all that much, but it is a shame to allow such good material to be marred in this way. It seems as if they rushed to finish the job before properly revised.
To Conclude
Bottom line, Interlinked is a great series of adventures, with great packaging and poor assembly. It perfectly embodies the spirit of Carbon 2185, which seeks a compromise between the cyberpunk of other games and a more “d & desco”, classic approach. This doesn’t mean that it betrays what are really the cornerstones of the genre, however.
Filling in the missing material doesn’t require too much Game Master commitment, and offers players an extremely dynamic and enjoyable game. From this point of view, Interlinked is certainly endorsed and recommended; on the other hand, Dragon Turtle deserves also a pull on the ears, because of the rather low production standards.