Pest Control

By Zzarchov Kowolski
Self Published
NGR/OSR
Level Any/1

A dead body found clutching a map is found at a major crossroads with an arrow in his back. He wear simple clothing, leather armor, a sheathed sword, and carries a backpack with three torches, 50; of rope, an empty wineskin and a flask of oil. The map shows the crossroads and leads to a tower labelled “treasure” in beautiful handwriting, apparently only half an hour into the forest.

This twelve page digest adventure features a five room tower. It’s a cross between a Fuck You and a kind of hook for a larger campaign thread, much like the advice in Broodmother.It can’t be denied that Zzarchov knows their shit. A brief little thing stretched out.

This describes a five room dungeon in a tower. It’s a roach motel for humans. Humans go in, find treasure, spend it and, low and behold, the coins are a slow poison. Which, theoretically, sow discord and rebellion among the wealthy and powerful as coinage circulates upwards and the power vacuum from deaths foment unrest and rebellion. The bent is toward the elves doing this, but, obviously, it’s whatever baddies you want in the campaign. If it’s lotFP then, obviously, aliens, since everything in LotFP is aliens, but, whoever you want.

The suggestion is that he DM drop the tower in to the players game. They find a map at the crossroads. It leads to a nearby tower. Off you go. But, also, it’s suggested that as the campaign progresses, the characters start to hear rumors about other people who have been to other towers. This is a hint to a larger conspiracy going on in the game world and thus, an initial adventure hook is actually the hook for a larger campaign arc, etc. All undetailed here, but it’s an interesting idea. 

The whole tower takes three or four pages to describe. It’s five rooms. A Five Room Dungeon. Sound familiar? The Entrance, The Puzzle. The Red Herring. The Climactic Battle. The Reward. Zzarchov is not afraid to go tell the Bad D&D Advice people to fuck off, implicitly anyway. He takes the common bad advice trotted out for pay per word views and mocks it in fine style. And this, the Roach Motel of adventures, is the perfect place to do that in. It walks the line well. Roach Motel for Humans by Elves. Mocking the bad advice prevalent on the internet for adventures. This could be mean-spirited. Instead it simply shows you the absurdity of these ideas as implemented and leverages them in to the beginning of a nice campaign arc. After all, isn’t the first adventure SUPPOSED to lead to the last one? 

Each room of the five tower rooms looks like a normal dungeon room. A room, dominate by a large wooden throne. Seated on it a skeleton with gemstones for eyes in a suit of ancient bronze armor with a horned helmet. An echoing inhuman voice “I vow to slay all violators who have defined my tower!” But, the ancient armor shows no signs of rust. No one ever wears horned helmets. The throne isn’t aged at all, just stained a dark color, as are the wooden doors. There’s a ladder propped up nearby to reach the trapdoor in the ceiling to the roof level. The chest on the roof is dark stained balsa wood, identical to the one on the first floor. And so on and so on. Looking just a little beyond the surface shows that something is quite off, in every room, from every standpoint. The build, the aging, the tower isn’t even is there to defend anything, being out of place. 

Each room calls these things out in detail. There’s a little description, sometimes a column long for the longer rooms, and another section of “Clues Something is off …” The riddle room accepts any answer as an answer “Hrm, a worthy answer that I fid accept, the curse on the bars has been lifted.” Any basic inspection of anything, beyond the surface level, will reveal something isn’t quite right here.

This is a gimmick adventure. Essentially a hook for a larger campaign. For what it is it’s fine. Perhaps a little obvious in places, like the balsa wood, but the vast majority of it is subtle enough to make it through a first glance unless one digs deeper. Perhaps a little long for what it is, but, seen for what it is, a print promo offering (which is what I seem to recall it is) it’s a fine little give-away. 

This is $3 at DriveThru. No Previeeeewwwww!!!!

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/537468/pest-control?1892600