I recently picked up a copy of The Haunt Trilogy: Special Edition, by Phil Beckwith and Travis Legge, and published by PB Publishing. The contents of this book are a compilation of PB Publishing’s Haunt trilogy of adventures.
I should add a disclaimer here that I am friends with Phil Beckwith. I will, however, endeavor to keep this review as unbiased as possible.
I purchased a hardcover edition with the PDF. I heartily recommend that if you purchase the print version, you get the PDF version with it as well. I will explain that later.
At first glance, this book is just physically gorgeous. The cover is great, though I wish it was a brighter white color. I absolutely love the design and think it fits nicely side-by-side with my existing 5e hardcovers. The cover image could be better and seems a bit blurry, but the rest of the cover and trade dress makes me easily forgive that. I will say that the cover image is quite creepy!
The layout of the book is gorgeous, and includes some nifty monster art that has an almost comic book style. The monster stat blocks are very easy to read.
However, where the physical book breaks down is with pages in the appendices. Many are meant to be cut out, whether they’re paper minis, encounter sheets, or character sheets. I just can’t see cutting into a hardback book like this. Get the PDF version as well so you can print any of that out.
The encounter and character sheets have a neat design, but work needs to be done to offer greater contrast for easier reading. This would help those who are visually impaired. There are enough copies of the character sheets in this book to account for a full fourth (roughly) of this book. I would have rather seen added content.
I’ve only skimmed the text thus far, but I can tell you that the adventures are a set of dungeon crawls, but with story. I regret that I have not had a chance to play the adventures yet. I will say that other reviews have given this trilogy high marks for being well-written.
Check it out!
