Tis the season!

Christmas Encounters is a 5th edition collection of 14 encounters produced by Jeff Stevens Games that includes Christmas-spiced adventures for your holiday sessions. You even get to fight Santa in one of them! Although the supplement is aimed for 5th edition, its encounters are not that combat heavy, so it could be used with other systems relatively easily.

Disclaimer: We were provided with a free digital copy of Christmas Encounters.

Inside these 30 pages, you can find:

The stories

The names of the encounters are truly festive and add more to the seasonal theme.

Carol of the Sirens: during the town’s annual celebration, people become enchanted by a captivating melody and are lured into a cave. The role of the adventurers is to uncover the truth behind the melody’s origin.
Feast of the Moon: a social encounter that can be used during rest.
Get Flocked: what seems like an easy task about retrieving a tree for the town’s celebration, entangles the players with animated trees.
Ghost of Solstice Future: you are definitely not afraid of ghosts or winter feys.
Gnome for the Holidays: gnomes are hosting a festive dinner, and you are invited.
Jingle Bell Vrock: what if, instead of Father Winter, a demon is summoned?
Missing Chestnuts: when the festival’s most beloved vendor hasn’t arrived on time, it’s up to the adventurers to find out what happened.
Noggins’ Toboggans: compete on a sled race for honour, glory… and loot! Race point worksheet included.
O Tannenbaum: don’t cut the tree down, or the tree will cut you down. (While I was writing this, Chris mentioned that Tannenbaum is the author of a really good computer architecture book.)
One Tough Cookie: what do a cookie, a banker and a note have in common?
Santa in Scales: who said that all red dragons are bad? Some of them even give you gifts.
Sinister Stockings: you don’t always find gifts in your stockings
Waltz of the Snowfey: Newlyweds seek help to navigate a treacherous forest filled with mischievous fey.
You’re Not Santa!: Something feels very wrong about this Santa…

All stories are well-written and offer plenty of information in order to use them in your adventures according to your preferences. Moreover, they involve unique challenges with multiple resolutions that cover all three pillars of adventure, where each choice made by your party has a different impact on the story.

Layout & Art

At the very start of each encounter, you can see the Average Character Level followed by a brief summary that outlines the encounter’s theme. Sometimes, Scaling Suggestions appear inside a grey box, providing useful recommendations for adjusting the level difficulty of the encounter. Bold text is used to highlight NPC names, creatures and dice check rolls for easier reference. As for the art, you are presented with a colourful Christmas gift on the cover. Furthermore, almost every encounter gets an accompanying black and white map.

The encounters have the following structure:

• Background: general background information is provided
• Hook: explains how your players are drawn into the encounter
• The Encounter: the section where the story is unfolded
• Resolutions: possible outcomes based on the players’ decisions, and
• Conclusion & Rewards: summarises the encounter and provides rewards

Final Thoughts

Christmas Encounters provides a mix of exploration, combat and social interaction, in bite-sized chunks, which is perfect for the time between the seasonal feasts. Do you tend to run season-themed adventures? Would you dare unwrap these Christmas encounters? Because I’m definitely planning to (or make Chris do it).

Stay crafty and jolly,
Your new favourite author.

This post contains affiliate links. By using them, you support the blog without any extra charge being applied to you.