Fury of Shadow

Fury of Shadow is a sourcebook for Midnight, by Fantasy Flight Games. It covers the forest of Erethor, the home of the elves and the last large area free from the control of the Shadow, and against which Izrador has turned all of his fury, hence the product’s title.

It is not a bad product. There are useful descriptions of the whole region, with story ideas, and of the forces massed against elves, along with the defenders of the forest. It would certainly be a major help to anyone running a Midnight campaign set in and around the forest, and should give them a lot of ideas.

However (and you could see that coming, couldn’t you?), it wasn’t absolutely inspiring. I think that may be partly due to a lack of the right sort of detail. What would be inspiring would be if there were well-detailed things that player characters could do, at various levels of power and with various backgrounds, to blunt the assault of the forces of Shadow, along with some consideration of how that would affect the outcome of the war. The default course of the war is detailed, and it isn’t good for the elves, although they are not completely defeated. There is even a bit of background on how player characters could intervene at various points. I feel, however, that developing these in a bit more detail, and making them a bit more specific, might have improved the product.