EN5ider Reaction Issue 5

The Business of Emotion Cover by EN Publishing

Issue 5 of EN5ider is a longer adventure (eleven pages) called The Business of Emotion. It is billed on the cover as an adventure for characters of second to third level, by Paul Oklesh. There will be spoilers.

Personally, I don't love the adventure concept of a town drunk on a love potion that has devolved into debauchery, but that's mostly because I keep my games at a "safe for work" level, and I could see this spiraling quickly. Setting that aside, the adventure generally makes sense. I would have liked a few more locations in town as vignettes of the on-going crisis, and to provide more nodes for the mystery piece of the adventure. The call out boxes on the NPCs are helpful, but the information could be laid out better. In fact overall, the main problem I would have running this adventure is the amount of important information and details buried in block paragraphs, which makes it much more difficult to quickly parse and draw from. 

There's also some inconsistencies in formatting, including not bolding the names of relevant stat blocks with the notable exception of the owlbear at he end of the adventure. This too makes it harder to quickly know which stats to use for a GM. The stat block is unremarkable for the witch who is truly behind the negative effects on the town, but the exposure table to track player character exposure to the love potion through the river isn't bad.

All in all though, not my favorite adventure. Perhaps with some modifications I could run it, but otherwise I'd mostly mine it for parts and pieces.