The Rising Knight is a short introductory adventure by Troll Lord Games for 5th Edition.

Disclaimer: We were provided with a free digital copy of this product.

Story

The small farming village of Malforten is situated at the edges of the kingdoms of New Aenochre, in a frontier region filled with danger and far from any quick help. So far, its residents have defended themselves – banding together and fighting off beasts, goblins, and bandits, but now they’re come under a dire and grievous threat: a vicious Gnoll warlord, Gritznak the Bold. His band of raiders have made camp in an abandoned temple, and often assaults the village to steal supplies, getting more confident until eventually coming to Malforten to demand tribute instead of attacking.

The villagers have been unable to deal with him, so the lords of the region have posted a bounty on Gritznak, which naturally gets the players involved. They arrive in Malforten and begin their investigation; there are several rumours, and there are also suspicions of traitors, as Gritznak often seems to know about plots and plans against him. After that, the party moves through the wilderness, fighting off goblin patrols and wild beasts, until they reach and assault the temple, where they find out that the Gnoll is more than just a simple bandit, but instead seeks to enact a ritual in the old temple of his evil god.

Something to keep in mind is that the adventure has lots of random encounters, and there are large number of enemies as well; it’s more of an OSR feel, but it means that this won’t be as quick as I might make it appear from this story overview. It’s also set in the world of Aihrde rather than the Forgotten Realms, but it’s trivial to place the village in any remote area and go from there.

Layout & Art

The book uses the standard double column layout. It’s divided into roughly 4 parts: Introduction, Malforten, the Wilderness, and the Temple, which itself has 2 levels and lots of different rooms with their own encounters. There are no distinct “Chapters” or a table of contents, which might make it hard to navigate, and there are also no statblocks for the creatures; their info is given in the form of a text paragraph, which again makes it a bit more cumbersome for the GM. Finally, there isn’t a straightforward suggestion for the player character level – I’d go for a level 4 or 5, because even though most enemies are low-level, there are a lot of them. But you can also start at 3 and level up on the way. As for art, there are maps of the local area and the temple layout, as well as a couple of character portraits. Besides the front page, the rest of the book is in black & white.

Final Thoughts

The Rising Knight is quite an old release, all the way back in 2017 – and it shows its age in some aspects. It can be a bit cumbersome to prepare and run as a GM, but if your players like their combat, they’ll enjoy it quite a bit, and it can serve as an introduction to the rest of the series that follows.

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