4 out of 5 stars

This being the week of Thanksgiving here in the US, there’s some traveling on most of our schedules, and that definitely holds true for me.  Indeed, I drove over 4 hours yesterday after teaching my morning classes and then flew from Manchester, NH to BWI, before finally spending a couple of hours in traffic as I made my way to my parents house in the DC area.  As a result, I didn’t have time yesterday, or earlier today, for that matter, to do my usual reviews.  However, WotC has a few scheduled holidays in the release scheduled later this week (on Thursday and Friday) and so I’m going to take advantage of that to get things back on track.  As a result, today I’m reviewing yesterday’s article, tomorrow I’ll review today’s, and on Friday, I’ll review tomorrow’s releases.  Any questions?

Looking at yesterday, the release was focused on FR, with a return to Airspur to introduce a few more NPCs for DMs to use when their players visit the city and even an encounter to go along with one of them.

The first character is Alyshex, a half-orc who is descended from the orcs that occupied the lands to which Airspur returned before said event.  As a weapons dealer, she’s sure to be near the top of the list of characters that the players want to meet, even if they’ve never been to Airspur before.

The second is Kevrick, an elder of the Vistani (a group that was introduced in Dragon last month).  Given that the Vistani are a nomadic group, Kevrick can’t really be considered an Airspur NPC as the party could encounter him anywhere.  Airspur simply provides many opportunities for introducing the party to him.

The third character is Valshelar, a genasi who works for the Netherese government to infiltrate and spy on the new Genasi governement in Airspur.  A perfect contact for parties who love political intrigue.

After the characters, the article details a goblin hideaway behind the Akanawater Falls and both a skill challenge and tactical encounter that might take place if the party stumbles upon, or goes looking for it.

Unfortunately, the article is lacking in the fluff details that would really make the characters pop.  The basics are there, but that’s all that’s there.  Each character could use another couple of column inches to give them some more life.  What’s there is useful, but you’re going need to provide a whole lot of the details yourself.  It almost (though not quite) defeats the purpose of using someone else’s NPCs.