They Come at Night

Posted on September 30, 2026 by Bryce Lynch 
By Stadtjaeger
Self Published
Generic/Universal
"Low/Mid Levels"

Something went quiet in Frostholm. The mining outpost stopped sending word weeks ago. Company says it’s the weather. Locals won’t go check. A mother’s paying good money to anyone willing to find her son — a scholar who went up chasing some old civilization and never came back.

This thirty page adventure presents a small village investigation and a dev le in to a mine with about eight rooms, plus a couple of overland events before and after. It’s more of a scene based “Experience” than an adventure, with the designer describing it as no-win. The writing is purple and there is no loot to be gained. 

This has elements of War Against the Chtorr, in that an alien organisms is trying to chtorraform the planet. You head up to a snowy mining camp that no one has heard from and have a few spooky things happen along the way. At the camp you poke around the buildings and find bodies and more eerie stuff. You survive (presumably) a night attack by a swarm of alien insects and head to the mine the next day. There you might get infected with spores in the weird crystal/plant environment and find a dude in an alien pod. If you free him then an unbeatable monster appears. Fleeing from it you fight hordes of crystal block constructs. You’re supposed to figure out to seal the mine shaft with some explosives you find. On the way back down the mountain, with the dude you found, a different unbeatable monster appears, klils the dude, and takes off for the stars. The dude you found has a book and if you perform the ritual in it then a portal opens in which armies of alien life forms come through to finish chtorraforming the planet. 

The vibe here is similar to those killer LotFP adventures. You know, you delve in and try to get loot while avoiding the doomsday scenario that is sure to happen. Maybe mix in a little Call oc Cthulhu where messing with books will fuck you up. Except, there’s not really any loot here. I find this annoying and it makes me want to put this solidly in to the Modern Adventure category where you’re just fucking around together at a table instead of gaming. Yeah yeah, there are different ways to have fun, but I prefer the one where the story is the one the party makes. But, with that in mind …

This is also a generic/universal adventure. Which means a lack of stats. You get some general “there should be twice as many creatures as party members” and other story based mechanics like “the attacks last until dawn” kind of stuff with a few “they should take one hit to kill” sorts of things thrown in. This, again, contributes to the more story based approach that the adventure is taking. 

It DOES do a fairly decent job with the investigation and lead in to the mine. You get a few eerie things happening on the trail to the mining town, dogs nervous, a body frozen in the snow and so on. And the town investigation is also likewise eerie. Strange scratch marks covering all of the buildings, skeletons huddled in corners stripped of their flesh or other clearly holed up and waited to die. The whole “meal still on the table” sort of thing. At one point you can’t get in to tone of the village buildings and have to go in a window to find the door blockaded. Nice.The whole preamble to the ride os decently done, in what is presented if not in its form.

Any by form, I mention that because of the writing style. It’s very much heavy with first this thing happens and then this thing happens and keep the party from doing X and so on. This is then exacerbated by a certain conversational style of writing, HEAVY with purple text. “The walls have stopped pretending to be stone. What covers them now is something else, layered thick like scar tissue over a wound that never closed — glistening, faintly pink where the light catches it, soft enough that you do not want to touch it and cannot stop noticing that you have to.” Or something like “Something is coming, but not in a hurry, It doesnt need to.” That least bit being a read-aloud line. 

While this MIGHT work in in the village/investigation portion, it breaks down in the mine where it tends to continue. The mine is mostly just poking around on a museum trip, looking at the weird plant life that might infect you with something only very high level magic can cure. There are a couple of light problem solving situations, like getting down the central shaft, but you’re not doing much until you find the dude in the alien pod thingy.

At this point all of the stillness disappears. The unbeatable monster appears as well as the hordes of lesser crystal golems. You’re supposed to run away. That’s the point of the entire adventure. Run away, beat off the crystal golems while ascending the shaft and, hopefully, sealing it lest the horrors are loosed upon the world. 

This is all, essentially, a railroad. It’s an experience. Follow the tracks laid down and survive and “win” by escaping with a sealed shaft,. If you don’t guess what the designer wants you you to do then die 

The conversational writing style makes running it difficult, and the purple prose if so bad that I’m not sure I could read it with a straight face. Even when it’s not read-aloud the DM will need to wade through it and try to translate it to something evocative for the party, which is not going to be easy.

The generic/Universal curse strikes again. Just write it traditionally and stat it for B/X and STILL call it generic/universal. Once you get good, as a writer, THEN you can branch out to more experimental styles. But you gotta learn to walk first.

This is $4 at DriveThru.The preview is the first three pages, which are all, essentially, designer notes. A few encounters needed to be included so a potential buyer can get a sense of what they are buying before they do so.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/578991/they-come-at-night?1892600

Posted in Reviews | 5 Comments

Lies at the Bell Tower

Posted on September 28, 2026 by Bryce Lynch 
By Oliver Müller, Prizren Buçpapaj
Voltaria Games
OSE
Level 1

A village is silent. None dares to speak out loud anymore, for fear of invoking the curse of the bell. A nun was burned 300 years ago, because she was accused of having consorted with a demon who stole the voices of his victims. The same demon who is bound to the bell of the ancient belltower in the center of the village. Will your party of adventurers brave the depths of the old catacombs to lift the curse and right the wrongs from the past, or will they accidentally unleash an even greater evil?

This twelve page adventure presents eleven rooms on two levels of a small dungeon under a ruined monastery. It’s a little dull and lacks flavour but is far from the worst things ever written. 

Man, my compliments are really getting out of hand, aren’t they? But, seriously, something seems to have happened with adventures. Some of them don’t make me want to gouge my eyes out. Now, I’m not saying they are good, or even regertful, but, they don’t just absolutely suck ass. I don’t know how many times in, what, fifteen years, that I’ve seen stuff that is just Meh, but I’ve been seeing it a lot lately. Yeah! The world is getting better! “You won’t hate everything about your life if you purchase this adventure!” That’s right, I’m available for writing ad copy! If this trend continues I may be out of a non-job. Because as much as I love a good adventure the blog only exists because I REALLY hate bad ones. “Not writing crap” seems like such a simple idea, at least in theory.

You show in a village. The people won’t talk to you. They will grunt at you. They will make arm gestures. Some will write notes. (Booo literacy!) But they won’t talk. Every time someone tells a lie then the bell in the old ruined monastery rings, louder and louder. Popping on over you can go up the bell tower, which contains only the bell, or you can go down in to the dungeon and it’s small handful of rooms. Down there you will fight a few 1hp undead, a few skeletons, and meet the ghost of a chick burned alive who cursed the monks. The bell contains the essence of a demon, which is why the monastery exists. The chick was a part of the monastery, the monks lied and got her burned. The curse infected the bell. Destroy the bell and the demon gets out. Kill the ghost of the chick and the bell cracks and the demon gets out. You’re supposed to find the one-charge hammer of banishment and use it on the ghost, putting her to rest while the bell remains intact and freeing it of the “lie and the bell rings” curse. 

The hooks are the usual low-effort stuff of get hired, with one having the party just arriving at the village and stumbling in to things. One of the best parts of the adventures is a throw away line in that hook that has an old woman attacking the party with a broom if they speak. That’s the kind of specificity that makes an adventure shine. It’s short and fits in perfectly with a bunch of scared villagers. Another line has advice to the DM in making the bell ring every time someone in the party tells a lie. A nice touch. Finally, n the dungeon are a number of cubbies with bones in them, catacombs like. In one cubby the skeletons still have jewelry on them! Time to get a lootin! Except it’s a cube, the remains of other adventurers in it. Very nice integration of a classic monster in to an adventure in such a way that makes it a surprise. All of those “empty” bone reliquaries pay off in a nice monster attack. That’s how you lure a party in to a classic monster.

The descriptions here are not terrible, although they are not really evocative either. The Sacrist reads “8. SACRISTY Wardrobe: There is a rotting wardrobe containing 1d4 robes for mess. They are damp and filled with holes, but they will prevent the skeletons from attacking.  Box: Used to store religious tools for the mess, which have been hidden in the secret treasure room when the monastery was abandoned.” This has some line breaks in it, I’m condensing it here. It’s easy enough to follow and, while the length is not great it’s also not a burden. It comes across as rather mundane, and doesn’t really do a great job of painting an evocative picture of the room, being more fact based than impressions. Note that there is no room summary, and in some places this gets awkward, such as in one room with zombies that only show up at the last sections. These sorts of things, the most obvious thing or something likely to be of import immediately, should really ne higher up in a description. “Oh, yeah, there are also some zombies here” is not the way to run a D&D game. This means takingin the entire room description before relying it to the party rather than a descriptive style that builds with first impressions and follow on detail. Thus the text length does come  to play when as being of note.

It doesn’t feel like a spooky monastery with shit going on, although thats what it is. The titular bell tower, while having the mostimportant thing in the adventure, the bell, is almost an afterthought, with the focus being the dungeon under the tower. The bell tolling helps, but it needed more build up or, interestingly, less, almost as an aafterthought. Either would have worked better, I think.

This is an EASL adventure, with some AI to help with the translation, the adventure discloses. This is probably fine. I suspect some of the mundanity in the descriptions comes from its EASL nature, but that’s to be expected.  “Grave chamber: It is an undecorated tomb with a single simple grave in the middle.” is a good example. Like, a dug grave, in a catacomb? I suspect we mean a stone sarcophagus? But, also, not exactly the height of evocative writing. There’s not a whole lot wrong here, it just doesn’t stand out as something I’d like to run. Also, put the level range is IN the adventure. Put it on the cover or in the marketing blurb.

This is $3 at DriveThru. The preview is the first three pages. Another page of encounters would have been nice, to get a true sense of the adventure keys.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/581426/lies-at-the-bell-tower?1892600

Posted in Meh. It's fine, Reviews | 7 Comments

The Hand That Counts

Posted on September 26, 2026 by Bryce Lynch 
Vestiges?
Self Publised
OSR? 5e.
Level 2

Every night, someone climbs down into a burial mound sealed for sixty years and declared “inactive.” He’s counting something on a wall, in chalk. No one knows who, or why — and the answer reaches far beyond one lone surveyor.

This 21 page adventure uses four pages to describe six scenes, one having five rooms. Is it AI slop? It is pretentious? You now longer have to choose, now it can be both! It’s also barely comprehensible. 

This was a request, but the designer, as it turns out. I’m always a little bemused when someone wants ME to review something they wrote. Any publicity is good publicity? I mean, there are more than a handful of reviewers that will just give you five stars, why not go there? 

And then there’s the statement in the request that the line drawings are AI. Sure, ok. I don’t actually care about AI. I feel about it the way I feel about Mork Borg: there’s nothing inherently wrong with it, it just turns out it’s enabling a lot of garbage. Because, you see, while the designer disclosed the use of AI art to me, the adventure has this disclaimer at he bottom of the title page: “The illustrations in this work were created using generative AI tools, under art direction. Part of the content was developed with the help of AI, which was also used for proofreading and for translation. The whole — setting, rules, text — was conceived, directed, reviewed and approved by its author.” So, you used AI to write it and then write a deceptive missive to me in order to get me to review it because, I suspect, you knew that the use of AI in writing would be a no go. Except I don/t care about the use of AI. I care about the end result, and the fact that you engaged in a deceptive practice. I know, damned if you do and damned if you don’t, right? I note that the last sentence in that disclaimer basically just says “I used AI” using different words and notably does NOT say that someone write this. Just that they directed the writing of it. Having saif all that, I don’t understand WHY someone would use AI in a creative work. Isn’t that the point, the process of creation? Isn’t that a major joy in life? If it’s not then why the fuck are you engaging in it? Like most modern shams, this is hollow. Nice art. Nice page layouts and backgrounds. The APPEARANCE of quality. And it’s all to the end of hiding the word-guesser slop underneath. 

The text here just positively drips with AI mannerisms. Which is a euphemism for overwritten purple prose. It anyone wants to be a failed fantasy author, it’s the AI agents. “A Cabinet station: plain, functional, without a single ornament. It is not a tomb, it is an instrument, and it still works. At this depth nothing explains itself at first glance” Uh huh. Purple slop. “But he can read a depth, feel a draught and tell when a corridor is lying, which is worth more than a map.” Uh huh.Purple slop. “The threshold says it to anyone who looks: a sword bent double, a crushed helm, scattered iron filings — everything that carried iron and came too close” Purple slop. 

It doesn’t help that this is some walking simulator. “It is also a way into Vestiges, a game of archaeological fantasy in which you do not loot dungeons: you survey what dead worlds left behind, and you decide what to do with what you have understood.” I decide to sell it for money and power. “A Guild of scholars, the League of Nyméria, funds the expeditions, buys up the finds, and decides what the world is allowed to know.” Wrong! My sword decides that. “The scenario is not won by killing Orin. It is played by deciding what to do with a man who counts in spite of himself, and to whom the count is handed.” But, it’s a lot easier, I’d say, if I just stab him? So, pretentious setting. Oh, oh, also, you get the famous “ask the party a deep question” bullshit. In this case “Why do you go underground, when sensible people stay up top?” I do it as escapism for a shitty middle class wage slave life in order to have fun and as a pretext to spend time with friends. Why the fuck did you shortcut one of the few meaningful things in life, the act of creation, and instead resort to AI slop?

With pretentious interactivity. I’m not sure you actually DO anything in this. There is certainly no conflict. There are a few die rolls, which you can’t really roll to continue with. I guess, once you walk to the end you get to decide who to seel the COUNTER out to, if anyone? It’s not meaningful though. There’s not real consequence for anything. 

Bolding is used seemingly at random. The entire text is nigh incomprehensible because of the AI. I THINK I could give a somewhat accurate overview, although none of the motivations make sense. At some point in one of the railroad scenes it says something like “The real thread is pulled at a College cartographer’s, who sells copies of old surveys.” So, this is out of nowhere, I think, after you pursue the clue given to you at the start, which is a dead end/fake. How you end up at the Cartographers COllege, which has not been mentioned previously, is beyond me. At the end, during your one choice, you get this text “The return is the real fight, and it is fought without weapons. Three parties learn, within a few days, that the group went down — and each of them wants the count. Bring them in in that order” Bring them in WHAT order? The people mentioned, the table the table that follows, there is little in the way of consistency that would let you figure out what is going on here. 

This is just a mess. An AI mess. A pretentious AI mess. Even if you are in to walking simulator D&D this is a shitty version of it.

This is Name Your Own Price at Itch.

https://sylkaen.itch.io/rpg-sylkaen-en-the-hand-that-counts-en

Posted in Do Not Buy Ever, Reviews | 15 Comments

Blood Castle

Posted on September 23, 2026 by Bryce Lynch 
By Close Reader
Oriental Mandarin Legend
OSE
Levels 1-2

In order to thank the PC for killing the monsters in his territory, the Boold[sic] Baron invited the players to come to the bright Red castle he built on the Wild Eagle Mountain.

This 28 page adventure presents seven-ish rooms in a scripted human sacrifice ceremony dungeon/scene/event. It has both EASL issues and is overly scripted. 

Disclaimer: I think this is a difficult review to write. I suspect strongly, based on the chinese characters in the text, that this is an EASL adventure and, further, an asian one. I love seeing non-tolkein fantasy and I don’t want to do anything to discourage EASL adventures, particularly from our chinese friends. But, also, there are EASL issues. The imagery in the writing doesn’t hit at all which is a problem given the subject matter and there are some areas, in the overview in particular, in which the language could be clearer on what is supposed to be going on, plot-wise. I’m not going to mention these things again in the review and encourage the designer to continue writing florid text, and, certainly, to continue writing adventures. 

You’re invited to the barons castle. Except, he didn’t actually invite you. It turns out that a priest, a spy in the castle, issued you the invitation. But, a carriage from the baron shows up to pick you up and you’re let in anyway. There’s a big banquet going down, but, right at the start this priest/spy dude tells you to go to your rooms and pack, and the baron reluctantly agrees. Also, the baron has drugged all of the food and wine and he and his cultists, also present as guests,will be capturing everyone to drag them below to sacrifice to their god. Also, the priest/spy invited you because he wanted a back up plan in case HE failed to stop the cult/sacrifices. Also, something else is going on with the ceremony because if you stop it then the cthulhu monster the worship will be freed and if you DONT stop it then his bonds are strengthened … so both the Blood baron cult leader AND the priest/spy are wrong about what will happen. Got it? Barely? Ok we’re on the same page.

The set up here makes little sense, from the invitation, to the baron excusing the party to their rooms. I’m not saying every setup has to be perfect, but there’s got to be some reasonableness to it for the party to buy in and for the DM to be able to expand upon things and run the situation. 

The hook, the carriage ride, arriving at the castle, the dinner, up to the party going to their rooms is all handled in a “first this and then this” kind of situation. It’s ALL hook. The presentation is not ideal and the “adventure” won’t really begin in a meaningful way until the party is in their room packing. At that point you can go explore the other bedroom on the second floor (and awfully small castle …) or go back to the main room to see the “end” of the feast and people getting hauled away, as well at the priest/spy getting gacked. Oh, and no leaving early, there’s some handwaving about there being “towers” with crossbowmen on them ready to shoot anyone who leaves. And it really is handwaving. This is not presented in any way as a tactical problem or in anyway a raid/sneak kind of thing, There are some minor notes, a sentence or two, to handle “the party eats the food” or “the party doesn’t go back to their rooms.”

The five room dungeon under the banquet hall (no maps of the upper floors/castle are provided) are the only traditional adventuring environment. Basically you fight giant worm things, a kind of body horror environment is attempted to be described, which doesn’t come across very well. I’ve generally pretty forgiving of EASL issues, but in this case the descriptions are critical to bringing about the full vibe of body horror and it’s just not present in a meaningful way. Since this is just a hack, hacking worms and finally the cultsists in their ceremony chamber, this is unfortunate.

I might call the first part just similar to an outline of an adventure and the five room dungeon portion a hack. I’m sure te language issues can be overcome with some more work, but the overall structure and flow of the adventure, getting the party in to it, the under-reliance of the tactical/free will element to the party and lack of exploration elements are just fundamental design issues. I’m excited to see more coming from asia though. And the attempts at formatting here, while not perfect, do show some understanding of layout and orienting the text to the DM who is running it.

This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru with a suggested price of $3. The preview is three pages. In chinese. Which is great for our chinese audience, I guess? 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/455035/blood-castle?1892600

Posted in Reviews | 2 Comments

The Matriarch of Verzogen Vald

Posted on September 21, 2026 by Bryce Lynch 
By Demi ElGato
Possum Print Games
OSE
Levels 3-6

Verzogen Vald is a twisted forest surrounded by impassable, jagged peaks. Folk that go in almost never come back out. One man has, but in his two weeks in those woods, he looks to have aged decades. His memory is not completely reliable, and his fellow lumberjacks think him insane. Though, they are disconcerted by his unnaturally fast aging, and his stories of what lurks in those woods. Every two hours, the great Green Dragon, Viridis, flies over the Vald, her domain. This is enough to keep all but the most foolish wanderers away. One of the most foolish, the heir apparent to the throne, 12 year old Prince Lukas, delved into those woods one week ago, alone. The King has posted a standing reward of 5,000gp for any brave enough to retrieve him. So far, none have been that brave…or that desperate.

This twelve page adventure uses five pages to describe ten point crawl locations in a fanciful forest. It seems a little pointless, the combination of fetch quests with a dragon at the end. But, if you’re ok with that, then fight on, it’s not bad except for the lack of adventure.

“Too Much stabbin!” or “Not enough stabbin!” Stabbing is a means to end, the ultimate way to get the treasure and remove obstacles when all else fails, or you just feel like today. A typical adventure needs a good balance. Situations and all types of conflict vs the expediency of a good stabbin. You can stab all adventure, with a good sneak in and magical plot to get in deeper and tactical assault/lair raid. You can do no stabbin with some situations good enough with nuance to for the party to work their way around … and stab their way out of. But, generally, you gotta think the whole thing through, as a designer, and work out a way for things to include the potential for stabbin and not stabbin.

This adventure don’t do that, mostly. You see from the intro that the kings kid is missing. In to the forest you go, to look for him and get the reward, while avoiding the dragon that flies overhead every two hours. Unlike Gon FIshin’, there is no stream of do gooders out for a reward; it’s just you in the forest. Not the best set up, but, we’ll forget that for the sake of expediency, while wishin for some Fishin. 

Most of the adventure has you visiting points in the forest with someone who wants something and has something. The vampire (yes, vampire) has wine and wants a goat. The goatherd has a goat but wants a lot of gold and/or some nearby bears killed. The kobolds want to be vassals of the dragon again and.or some silks. They all wants something and have something. Mixed in an occasional combat like an undead dude or two and some plants, that’s about it. So, you gonna run around and give the blue key to Bob who will give you a Red key to give to Sally and so on. It’s all a little too set. Combine that with the lack of specific numbers of kobolds, etc in the adventure and its clear you’re supposed to talk to people and do some horse tradin. No stabin. Except when explicitly told you can stab, like the rando undead or plants.

Reaching the last point, the dragons lair, this all comes to a head. The dragon wants followers. Like the kobolds. The dragon has a lot of gold. And the kings son, the prince. Critically, if you get the dragon what it wants it will let you leave, but not the prince. There IS no solution here, ultimately, for the dragon and prince, except stabbin. Everything else you do accomplished nothing. Oh, sure, if the elves teach the cavemen to sing then tey will teach you to read some glyphs which will help the wizard trying to decrypt some glyphs which will cause him to toss you a gem of seeing. But that didn’t help kill the dragon. It is an adventure in two parts. Wander around the woods performing fetch quests and then stab a dragon. The two are essentially unrelated. This irks me. The kabuki.

There’s another mechanism at play here that mixes in. Every two hours the party will age ninety days. It takes, essentially, one hour to cross a tiles borders. This means that if you go straight to the dragon and stab it then you age six months, based on the initial map. But that’s not going to happen, right? The party is going to fuck around with the side quests. And then, also, the map shifts every two hours, like a maze. So you’re gonna have to figure that out, perhaps with some clues from the adventure. Figuratively, and perhaps literally, a waster of time. There is a clue, up front, that the forest ages you, but the maze situation, as well as the social commentary on the ultimate futility of the struggles of life, well, that one you entirely.

The maze, fetch quests, dragon, and aging don’t mesh well together, I don’t think. Other than the assisination, though, the play is fine. A barbed wire fence, that you can catch tetanus from! I love scary real world shit tossed in a game. Dragonpos can go fuck itself but TETNUS resonates, yeah? And, frankly, a lot of the fetch quest shit is not bad. Maybe a little simplistic and lacking, ahum, alternate solutions, but it IS there, if a little overt for my tastes. Telegraphed, I guess. The fanciful nature of them is a little off, in my opinion. A vampire that wears a sun hat out. A kobold that speaks seven languages in a kobold village that sounds more like a halfling village. A wizard who teleports in and out of the forrest every hour, but can’t do a comprehend languages. It’s just straining thinsg a bit too much. I hate to bring up comparison adventures, but THAT OTHER ONE had a somewhat fanciful nature as well. But it was clear there was some farce. And it was grounded. People were idiots. The fanciful stuff seemed to mesh well in tha the elements it used did no seem random. 

I don’t know. I guess this one is ok. I mean, I hate a lot about it, but, at least you can comprehend what is going on and follow along and there IS something to do. Hmmm, I guess I mean there are situations here, even if I do think they are simplistic, and that helps a lot.

Sucker! Ain’t no stats for the dragon! Ha! Got ya!

This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru with a suggested price of $3.33. There’s no fucking preview. Put in a fucking preview that shows us some of the content before we have to spend money on the thing!

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/581381/the-matriarch-of-verzogen-vald?1892600

Posted in Reviews | 139 Comments

The Unleashing of St. Nimuanne

Posted on September 19, 2026 by Bryce Lynch 
Lixu
Lixuni Gaming
OSE
Levels 1-6 (ha!)

Centuries ago, a mortal Myrenean queen named Nimuanne used forbidden rites at a sacred menhir field to transcend death, splitting her essence into three fragments upon her final death: Body, Mind, and Spirit. Grave robbers broke open the funerary urn containing these fragments, plunging the region into a desperate crisis.

This 79 page adventure presents four or five dungeons with ten to twenty locations each, plus a few small towns in a small region that is having some troubles. Its abstracted text seems out of place given the page count, with a lack of anything specific going on in the adventure.

Ok, so, I got some things to say. And this adventure probably doesn’t deserve to be the one I go off on. It’s not a disaster.

But, also, this sentence appears in the adventure: “That independence became its undoing: no walls, no militia, no warning before its own monks were the first to fall when the Mind Stone took root beneath them, spreading house to house until the entire town turned in what may have been a single night.”  I have a blind spot when it comes to spotting AI. But, the triple negative is a a hallmark of AI. I’m not even going to mention the end of that sentence, just focusing on the triple negative. It stands out like a sore thumb. And it’s listed as human created with no AI. I’m no “AI is the bogeyman and everywhere!” kind of person, but this sticks out.

I think, though, what stood out the mot for me in this adventure was the page count vs the dungeon content. I’m not sure how to frame this so people will understand. The dungeons here are relatively small, ten to twenty rooms. The room descriptions are rather minimal, a sentence or two. “Cell 3. A single unlabeled potion of climbing, tucked behind a loose stone, easy to miss without a search.” Or, for a longer room “Storeroom. Broken crates, moldering sacks, the smell of old grain gone to rot. 2 Shambling Husks stir. Loot: a locked strongbox (30gp), and a scroll of protection from undead, wax seal still faintly intact.” Even that is pretty light. And there’s nothing wrong with that. But, that also means that the dungeon keys fit on a page or maybe a little more, for a ten room dungeon. And there are only, I don’t know, four or so dungeons in this? That’s only a small number of pages. But this is an eight page adventure. I have no idea, honestly, no idea, what those pages are being used for. Stat blocks at the end, tables at the end, maps, I guess. It’s just so offputting. To see a large page count and then see the size of the dungeons and the minimal room descriptions. 

Because the rest of the content, those in between pages, are not exactly stellar. The local lord is having a dream about three locations. Go check em out and defeat the evil one. I know, I know, i’m hyperbolic, but this is almost the extent of what you get to help launch the adventure. Go ahead and get the party moving based on that. Because that’s about all you’re getting. Oh, there’s a fuck ton of explaining and backstory and so on, but I think thats being confused for gaeable content. The actually hooks in, the specificity, is not there at all. This is supposed to be a sandbox like thing. Do the three in any order and then end up at the final dungeon. But its all so very loose. Maybe, I mean abstracted. “Hey, there’s a ransacked village with some pod people in it. You need the party to en up at the local monastery.” Again, hyperbolic, but not by much. But, then, also, augment that with a whole lot of backstory that isn’t really relevant to the game at the table. 

The emphasis here is on the wrong things. You can, as Stonhell demonstrated, get away with some minimal keying. But you do this by adding context and specificity around the general situation in the area. There are things going on, the place is alive, as noted in the general notes for the level/area. This allows for a rather shorter dungeon key entry. But, importantly, we cannot mistake historical background for “current situation.” Or even, the current situation for “this shit will impact game play.” If it’s not impacting game play then it’s just padding. A line or two od padding, thrown in here or there, might be fine. You can’t lose sight of the goal: supporting the game at the table. In looking at a page long NPC description, does it matter that dude grew up an orphan? Almost certainly not. 

This misses the mark with nearly everything. Yes, it does have some interconnected dungeons that are coherent enough to run. But any specificity, in town, in the hook, in the wilderness, outside the dungeon, inside the dungeon, is essentially absent. Anything that could tie things together well and help the DM create the feelings of immersion that a ten session adventure would rely upon is not present. 

Also, it’s mostly stabbin. 

There is supposed to be a whole pod person thing going on in one area that can bleed over in to others. None of that comes through well. The interconnections and theming between the sites, doesn’t come across. And, finally, the last dungeon has three separate version, only one of which will be used. This would seem to be a waste.

It’s just weird, in the way it abstracted the content and yet is STILL quite lengthy. 

This is $10 at DriveThru. The preview is fifteen pages. You’ll get some general overview, and none of the dungeons. That overview is, honesty, the most information you’re going to get about the hook and linking things together.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/580488/the-unleashing-of-st-nimuanne?1892600

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Ahidl’s Keep

Posted on September 16, 2026 by Bryce Lynch 
By Jeremy Farkas
Troll Lord Games
Castles & Crusades
Level ... 3?

Dare you cross the vast desert and seek out the great red mesa where the near-mythical mine is rumored to lie? Dare you plunge the darksome depths of the labyrinth and wrest fortune and glory from its yawning chasm? Dare you seek out the legendary hammer Earthrender, which bestows lordship upon any dwarf who holds it aloft? Dare you discover the fate of the great wyrm Morglax the Bold, who brought her great host of bandits and monsters up from the south to snuff out Lord Ahidl-Mor and his kin?

This eighteen page adventure uses about fourteen pages to describe a thee levels dwarf “orcs in a hole” with about 35 rooms. Stuffed with humanoids, it uses a conversational style to present a lot of things to stab. 

I’m not sure what to say here. You know all of those adventures that have a bunch of humanoids in a dungeon with some kind of backstory? This is one of those. In this case the humanoids are kobolds, goblins, orcs and bugmeans. Along with the required vermin, an abomination or two, and a young dragon at the end. And in this case the dungeon is a three level Lonely Mountain, with thew dwarves pushed out by orcs and a dragon and the old dwarf king leaving a clue where the entrance was, up to and including a secret entrance on a ledge. The required “broken dwarf elevator” is present. 

Look, I don’t have anything positive to say. I guess I’ve got some negative things to point out. But, overall, there’s just not a lot here. This was a tourney module and then they added some content to try and expand it. I’m going to ignore the expanded content, a village and preamble adventure. I don’t think they really add anything interesting and are just padded out. If you just want to, I don’t know, enter a few rooms and kill a few things then I’ve got some great news for you about this adventure. It even has a few environmental things and light puzzels to solve! You gotta find the yellow control crystal to make the elevator work again! Uh. That didn’t come across well. If you want to stab things then you can, and there a few things to break up the stabbin.

Look, I know people like to stab. It is not lost on me that Chainmail exists. Chainmail, 3e, 3.5, 4e, the whole range, devoted to stabbin.I like to stab also. I like to stab as a means to an end. B/X is my favorite edition because of the balance there between stabbin as a means to an end rather than a tactical minis simulation. Ultimately I’m looking for something with a decent exploratory vibe, some roleplaying, and other interactivity in addition to the stabbin. And it has to be something  a little more interesting than “find the gold key to open the gold lock.”  And the adventure here is not altogether great in areas other than things to stab.

I’m also more than a little irked by many aspects of the C&C house style. Is any one thing terrible? No. Does it all annoy me? Yes. Like, no level range anywhere. I guess you just rush out and dump money at the new C&C adventure rather than looking for a specific adventure for a specific level range? Man, stick a fucking level range on it somewhere.

And the read-aloud here. You know the drill, fancy fonts with long italics make things hard t read. But, further, the read-aloud is all mixed up. We’ve got the famous second person stuff, with lots of “As you draw nearer, you clearly see …” writing, which should never be used. But, then, the bold/italics shifts. While read-aloud is in bolded italics so it DM text! Or, maybe its also read-aloud? It will just suddenly have what is obviously DM only information in the same bolded/italics. Huh? What’s the point then?

And then it’s padded ALL the fuck out. The house style loves to pad, but then the adventure does also. Creature stat blocks are long with phrasing like “Their primary attributes are physical. Their special abilities are dark vision and light sensitivity. In battle they use military forks that deal 1d8 damage, or short swords that deal 1d6 damage” As I get older the sublime majesty of the ready ref sheets becomes more and more apparent. No? You don’t agree? How about a very conversational tone in the writing, which forces you to wade through mountains of padding when locating information? “If for some reason the PCs feel compelled to loot Ahidl’s grave, “ Oh come on. What’s the point there?

And then in other places the information is absurdly out of order. AFTER a room description we get this little note “When the PCs get within 10 feet of the chamber prior, they must cross a steel tripwire just 6 inches off the ground.” That should, I think we can all agree, come BEFORE the room so the DM notices it before the party gets to the room. “Knock has no effect” ah, jesus man. It’s a low level adventure. Let the wizard use his fucking knock spell. It’s one less sleep he’ll have memorized, which is the entire point of utility spells. I can bypass this ther kind of challenge if I give up nuking a room of monsters. What’s wrong with that? Sounds like the D&D circle of life to me. 

I’m looking at room 33 right now, titled Dragon Bones. There’s a paragraph of bolded italics read-aloud. Then there are five paragraphs of DM text that follow. There is nothing in those those five paragraphs related to the room, in play. The past sentence is “Searching the room will yield no secrets or great treasures.” It’s all backstory. A quarter page, or more? For one room? 

I can excuse a lot of things as I’m Not In To That Style Of Play. But I can recognize how someone else might be. But, all of that text, for nothing? Wasted effort? Aimed at readers? Distracting from the purpose of the designer AND the purpose of a DM? Nope.

This is $7 at DriveThru. The preview is about a dozen pages, which includes a sizable number of rooms as well as some preamble text. More than enough to see what you’re getting yourself in to.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/579756/castles-crusades-ahidl-s-keep?1892600

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Shadows and Flesh

Posted on September 14, 2026 by Bryce Lynch 
By Noah Green
Necrotic Gnome
OSE
Levels 2-3

he shattered remains of the arch-wizard Rakius’s tower have long stood silent—until now. Gnoll fugitives seeking refuge have unwittingly unleashed the restless horrors that linger in the ruin. Can players unravel the wizard’s forgotten doom and escape his labs with arcane treasures and their souls intact?

This 24 page adventure uses about twelve pages to describe 25 rooms in s small five level ruined mage tower. You’re running around doing things for the undead as you stab some abominations. It’s trying to keep som themes running, but it feels disconnected from itself.

Meh. It’s a small ruined wizards tower. Inside you’ve got these gnolls, hiding out after they stole some gnoll artifacts. Except, all but one are now possessed by spirits that were in the tower. They now all hate each other, or have some quest inside the tower for you to go on, which could be something like “kill the other spirit Bob” or maybe “cleanse the tower of the abominations”! Because, yes, as a wizard tower there are some weird fleshy abominations. (Nice art for them!) 

I am just so Meh about this one. I can only point to a bunch of trifling things. There is a decent little outside portion, with multiple entrances inside and windows and thicket holes entrances and so on. There’s a little read-aloud section and then some decent little interactivity in places. Let’s open up the cold dome and find some brains and put them back in to skulls with bejeweled eyes! Or a toad statue in a fountain with a gemstone hidden in an eye, all in a kind of overgrown garden setting. Or, even, a room with paintings in it, one of which is a famous missing work! This should all be decent. I mean, even the shades and their entire fetch quest little bullshitty things, that should be fine also, right? Bring me the Jade Monkey! And I shall give you, I don’t know,  a necklace hidden in a fireplace nearby. 

And, some of the magic items are not bad at all. “Leonard: A life-sized, bald human male head sculpted of rubbery material. Pulling the nose or an ear causes it to scream for 1d6 rounds; all nearby suffer a –2 penalty to attack rolls.” Or a little bonsai tree with litte fruits on it that provide full size rations. Not everything here is great, there are boring old +1’s, but, it does have some objects with some creativity

But there’s just something missing to all of it. Some life? Some joy? Some completeness?

Let’s revisit that painting. It’s in a room with like twelve other paintings. It’s the only one mentioned, at like 200go, but, are the other worth something? It’s like they don’t exist. The whole possessed gnoll thing, and the stuff they stole, it just feel random. Why gnolls? Why possessed? Why do we care about the gnoll artifacts? The spirits, and their goals and wants and stuff, It just feels disconnected from itself. Maybe I mean passive? The spirits don’t seem to give a shit about anything. And not in a cool “Im from th beyond the grave” sort of way. Yeah yeah, go kill my brother. Yeah yeah, maybe rid the place of monsters. They’re boring. The entire thing is boring?

I don’t know why. A lack of active verbing? I mean, even in B2 the place didn’t FEEL boring. It felt dynamic. Dudes were up to shit. Free room and board. Toss a bag of gold through the door.  The spirits, here, are the main “person” interactivity. And they have some sort of enemies, friends, things they want done. At least theoretically. And I guess their rooms note what they could engage the party on. But there’s nothing in this beyond that. They just don’t seem particularly interested in getting what they want. As for the rest, it’s just vermin and abominations. Oh, oh, there’s a gnoll, a single gnoll left not taken over by the spirits. He’d hiding in a garden room. The one with the fish statue/fountain. It’s got some blood moths in it, think of them as stirge. They’ll attack him and if you save him then he;ll tell you that the eye of Utnapishtim is in the fish statues eye socket. It’s all in one room. There’s nothing larger or more grand, for the most part, than whats right in front of you. 

In another place you slap the brain of a dude back in a skull. That’s it. No fun interactivity that it enables. No places to unlock. There’s literally nothing else. 

So, I don’t know. Is there some room interactivity? Yes. Is there some NPC interactivity? Yes. Are the room descriptions disasters? No. Is the formatting a disaster? No. Do I care about anything in this and/or am excited to run it? No. As I noted, it feels disconnected, like the rooms exist in isolation, in spite of a few rooms, especially with the spirits, being tied loosely to to other rooms. 

It’s not bad. It doesn’t make me want to claw my own eyes out. So, you know, good job?

This is $5 at DriveThru. The preview is twelve pages, with a handful of rooms in the dungeon at he end of it. More than enough, i think, to get  a sense of the dungeon. And my malaise.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/580706/quick-delve-4-shadows-and-flesh?1892600

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The Tomb of Kallia

Posted on September 12, 2026 by Bryce Lynch 
By Richard Barton
XRP
OSRIC
Levels 2-4

Rumors of a lost tomb lying deep within the New Forest are starting to trickle into the ears of adventurers in Gosterwick and Newmarket. While the source – and thus the veracity – of these whispered stories remains uncertain, all of the third-hand accounts suggest that the tomb was the product of the Archontean golden age, and not a simple tomb delved by the local Thorcinga. A few rumors even imply that the tomb displays the type of exceptional craftsmanship usually associated with dwarven master masons. Could this lost tomb be the work of the great Zhorak? or of Zhorak’s legendary master, the lesser-known Grishia Basalt? If Grishia was involved, might this tomb shed light on the location of the fabled Egg of Creation? Regardless of its creator, the tomb is sure to be filled with the treasure and lore of the ancients!

This one hundred page adventure uses about six pages to detail ten rooms in the Tomb of Kallia. There is also extensive coverage of a nearby wilderness area. Extensive being the watchword with this, as eighty words are generally used where one will do. Padded with backstory, I am bewildered by Arden Vul.

Yo, notably there is no map, at all, in this.You have to download a separate map pack, The Maps of Arden Vul, which is  free download containing all of the Arden Vul maps and all related regions. 

So, my summary is off. While this is titled the Tomb of Kallia that section makes up just a small portion of it. The tomb is actually sitting in the middle of a larger slavers camp which has about twenty locations and then about ten locations for the tomb proper, plus  few more in the slavers section for a false tomb. The bulk of this is a forest with about thirty locations, many with a small handful of sublocations. Thusly the adventure here is really the various intrigues taking place in the region that will eventually lead the party to the slavers camp and/or the tomb that is a relatively minor part of the product.

And there is quite a bit going on in the region. There are a couple of groups with some larger intrigues, like the slavers, and a several smaller things going on, such as some scammy bills of lading related to a quarry and humanoid band with, ahem, elective raiding, that loosely, or strictly hint at the larger “slaver” plot, with slaver in quotes because of the various schemes going on. As a regional supplement, sandboxy, it has a decent amount going on in it. The level range here is, I think, a bit misleading when you look at things like all of the level sevens and nines in the slavers camp, which the adventure warns you about. The wilderness sites ARE dangerous as well, so this feels like a long slow adventure with lots of retreats to regain strength and recruit again, slowly making progress in clearing things and finding more sites. 

Look man, I know we’re going to get in to it on these next comments. There are readers who will love this. There are fanboys who love this. There are contrarians who have an identity based on disagreeing and ignoring meaning. My platonic ideal of an adventure includes it being easy to run. That is the purpose of an adventure. To be run at the table. Ideally with little to no prep required. “You can run it without reading it!” is hyperbolic but also the unreachable goal to shoot for. “Easy” to run. What is easy? We’re not going to agree, some of you. I recognize that we read adventures before hand, we take notes and highlight things. We have to puzzle out the connections in the adventure and make reference sheets and all of that shit. How much of that should you have to do to run it? How much of that should, in fact, be on the designer to solve before it reaches your hand? The writer, designer, editor, it has to be “easy” to run. We can disagree on the nuance here, but not on the premise. Except now I’ll walk that back, there ARE adventures that come along, rarely, that are obtuse and ABSOLUTELY worth it to puzzle out and spend a lot of time prepping. And those adventures are exceedingly rare. It is far, far more likely that an adventure will be a disaster of writing, layout etc and not be “easy” to run and not worth the effort you will put in. And that is, I think, the case with all of the Arden Vul products I’ve seen so far. The fucking thing fights you, for no reason, and ultimately I’m going to turn to some other product to run instead of this. Because the content, while decent, just isn’t worth devoting my life to in order to make it to the table. I’d have to go look at Thicket and Arden Vul proper to verify, but my recollection is that it’s been the same with all of them.

The writing here is dense, almost to wall of text territory. It’s padded out with backstory inline and descriptions of why and irrelevant descriptions. You have to fight through mountains of text and loosely formatted paragraphs in order to suss out what’s pertinent in the various locations.

One section has a palisade with watchtowers. Palisades get an inordinate degree of attention in this. “The palisade is 9’ tall and made of new wood bound together with vines, rope, and interior support timbers.”9’ tall? Sure. The rest of it, is that important?  How about a description of the watchtowers? “Four observation and firing platforms are found along the length of the wall. These small platforms are 5’ above the ground and accessible by ladders. They allow guards to watch the approaches to the compound.” Well, I guess we’ve defined what watchtowers are, yes? These, yanked out of context, don’t seem terrible, but it is just relentless in the degree of detail everything is described in. How about an NPC? NPC’s routinely get a quarter page description. “Personality: Orphaned at an early age, Happy was taken in, raised, and trained by one of the Elder Brothers of the Benevolent Brotherhood of Arcturus.” Is this relevant to the adventure? No, it’s not. Sometimes, like the palisade detail, these things can be used to add color to areas. But you can’t do it everywhere. You can’t take every single thing in the adventure fully describe it. 

I don’t know. Maybe you can. But you gotta WORK that formatting to do it. And this don’t do that. We’re relying on paragraphs here with some underlining and some light indentation in places. And then there are these long ass sections of supplemental information that just appear thrown in willy-nilly. You’ll be in a room description and suddenly it will ballon to multiple pages and there will be this cumbersome page and half table just tossed in. How you can keep a train of thought here is beyond me. It’s almost a wall of text broken by weird presentations of information.

There is something here. More so, i think, than The Thicket. But it is so hard to get at that I can’t possibly, after multiple read-throughs, think of a situation in which I’d be pleased or excited to run this. 

This is $20 at DriveThru. There’s no preview. This HAS to have a preview. You HAVE to know what you are getting in to before purchasing this.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/577509/the-tomb-of-kallia?1892600

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The Underbranching

Posted on September 9, 2026 by Bryce Lynch 
By E.S. Wynn
Cairn
Self Published

This 210 page supplement is a collection of one hundred two page dungeon zones. More toolkit than adventure, you stick them together, in a modular fashion, to create your own megadungeon. That’s bs, but the zones themselves are fairly interesting, if small. It channels soe decent OSR zone spirit. Putting some thought in to it would have turned out a decent adventure/megadungeon.

Is it a megadungeon or is it a toolkit? This is almost certainly a toolkit for constructing a megadungeon. It presents one hundred zones that you could stitch together in to something larger and/or drop in as sub-levels to another dungeon. You have to think of it as a kind of dungeon geomorphs project. Each section has a number of entrances/exits that you could link up to other areas, with a few being targeted at main entrances/exits to a dungeon. It’s laid out in a “facing pages” format, with the map and a little overview on one page and the keys on the other. This limits things to about twelve or so rooms per page, maximum, and zone designs that are none too complex, from a mapping standpoint. Each zone will have a few rooms related to the zone, theming wise, and generally a few more not directly related to the theme.

There is a very fine “OSR spirit” present in many of the rooms. One of rooms reads “Ominous Vault: An impenetrable door of warm stone bars access to this room. Three locks are arranged in a triangle on its face, each accessible only with a Branch Key. Inside, a cursed, deathless humanoid like those in the sarcophagi waits, bound in leather straps and desiccated, but still aware. It will wait until someone comes close enough to bite. Stat as a Vampire (Cairn Bestiary.) It may be reasoned with (or bartered with) eventually, becoming a source of information, but is currently crazed with hunger.” So, a vampire. But you’re not just walking in here, it’s triple locked. It gives the party a reason to revisit the one or at least get some knock spells agoing. Once in we’ve got a nice little description of dessicated and bound in leather straps. And then, the vampire, it does have this “you got too close thing” but also it becomes a situation. Can you bargain with the dude to get some info? Will you dump some blood at it?It’s a resource to exploit. It is a fairly involved room for being a short-ish description, with lots of interactivity possible for the party to exploit, or be exploited by. And that’s a good room. 

In other zones you’ve got some goblins running a kidnapping for ransom thing. Will you get kidnapped, or will you exploit them to get them to kidnap someone else for you? An undead zone has a lich who wants to finally get to read his big ol book collection. (I’m sure many of us can sympathize,) Are you gonna piss him off? Are you going to manage to use him to your own ends by bargaining a book? He’s testy at being interrupted. This things manages to put in an impressive number of situations in the dungeon, and not just the parties relationship with the various denizens. 

Writing is generally good, there are a decent number of evocative description, rooms that feel imagined first and statted second, the way it should feel. That vampire being desiccated and bound in leather being a decent example. It does rely on “strange” and “weird” a little too ofton; we should be striving to write a description that avoids conclusions like that and gets more visceral, to the point the PLAYERs think “huh. That’s weird.” But it’s ok in general, especially given the sheer number of rooms.

The issue here, as with nearly every geomorph type product, is that there is little in the way of a larger picture. These areas are in isolation. “He seeks revenge against whatever pushed them out of their old home in an adjoining area and will pay with a random relic,” That guy, and his situation, with his cult, would be better if he had a specific vendetta against a specific group, that was played with in both zones. The interconnections between zones, and I’m not talking mapping, just are not there. And, i think, by design. There are some possibilities, like a dude who has a bronze tablet that “someone else wants”, but then it would be better if there were, say, some cross-references with ideas for linking areas. Or, just forgo the entire geomorph thing and spend the extra effort to put this thing together into a unified whole. That shouldn’t be THAT much more effort for the designer, already familiar with its two hundred pages of dungeon. Then you’ve have a real product here.

And some areas ARE weak, or have weak aspects to them. “A Maze of rough-hewn mine tunnels carved into the living rock …” This is just a few standard rooms layouts, as one would find in any dungeon, nothing minelike or mazelike about them. 

I really like the vibe here. Strong OSR situations in the zones. Terse descriptions that still give the DM a lot to work with. But, then, I’m doing the Bryce thing. I bought a geomorphy thing and now I’m gonna complain that its a geomorphy thing. But it is! And it would be such a strong product if the designer did the work to tie the zones together and create a cohesive whole instead of explicitly noting that the DM is free to link these as they wish. Lean in to some cross-references, at least, to suggest possibilities! Oh, also, it’s Cairn, so, you have to adjust treasure appropriately and I’m not overly happy withthe magic items.

This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru with a suggested price of $10. The preview appears broken.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/572362/the-underbranching-cairn-megadungeon?1892600

Posted in Meh. It's fine, Reviews | 1 Comment