The Thicket (Arden Vul)

By Richard Barton
XRP
OSRIC
Levels 1-3

The Green Fang kobolds have existed on the fringes of the human settlements of northern Burdock’s Valley for decades, secure in the strange, thorny thicket surrounding the Broken Knob. Until recently they were content to hunt, forage, and generally avoid human contact. But reports of open assaults on merchants, caravans and travelers using the road from Gosterwick to Deepton are mounting. The formerly timid kobolds seem to have become aggressive and hostile. Why? Eusebia, the Archontean thesmothete in Gosterwick(AV AK-23), has had enough. She has quietly let it be known that she is willing to fund an expedition to cleanse the Thicket of this scourge, once and for all. It should be easy work – after all, how much trouble can kobolds pose?

This 55 page adventure uses about thirty pages to describe about 66 rooms inside of a thorny thicket, and some tunnels underneath it, full of kobolds and plant monsters. I might call it an exercise in self-indulgent backstory and explanations WHY. 

This is an expansion of the Arden Vul product, providing some outdoor areas to expand the area around the dungeon proper. In this case it’s a magic thicket with some kobolds living in it, and in some tunnels under it. There’s a druid spirit controlling it and he feels protective of the kobolds so he’ll manifest some plant monsters if you fuck with them. There are a few connections to Arden Vul, like the kobolds sending prisoners to the Beast Men and such. 

I do not like it Sam-I-Am. I know a bunch of you like to suck off Arden Vul. I thought it was ok. This is not that though. It’s been awhile since I reviewed Arden Vul, but I can’t imagine giving it any kind of decent grade based on the issues that are all over this thing. I don’t know what’s going on. Same designer. Same editor. But the writing style here just feels COMPLETELY off and different from Arden Vul.

Primarily this comes from a degree of text verbosity achieved through explanations, backstories, whys, for whos. This is present to an absurd degree that seems self indulgent to the extent that we’re paying for fiction rather than an adventure. I really mean this The fucking hooks take up three pages and that’s not because of the specificity provided to help the DM run them memorably. 

This thing engages in backstory for just about everything. Worry not, sturdy DM, for if the players ask WHY there’s a rock you just ad-libbed in then the adventure will provide the context! Here’s a rom with a couple of ghouls in it: “Backstory: The ghouls are the corrupted legionaries from a konturbs of the II Legion (Sheepshead Rangers), whom the Archon Adrienic deputed to accompany Ingerikos on his expedition to this area. They employed a local guide called Wulthrith. Told to wait in the cellar while Wulthrith and Ingerikos inspected the barrow doors, they became trapped in the cellar after Wulthrith betrayed and killed their master (see BV1-16, BV1-28, and BV1-35) and then collapsed the upper story of the villa. Abandoned and trapped, the legionaries consumed all their food supplies while waiting fruitlessly for assistance, before some finally turned on the others in desperation; having killed and eaten the others, eight of the twelve killed rose as ghouls.”  Whats the fuck man?! What the fuck is the point of any of that? I don’t need to know this shit. Maybe describe the fucking ghouls as legionaires or something, but all of this? 

The adventure does this over and over and over and over again. Its favorite hobby is doing this. Here, I pulled out this one in the dungeon below. It runs across two pages, taking up more than a column of space. TO NO FUCKING END. There is absolutely no point to any of this. MAYBE some of this can eek out as a room description. And the “takes a dim view” thing is nice. But the rest of the, the vast majority of over a column of text, is just garbage padding to no end. This is all trivia. It serves no purpose in any way other than a phD paper or maybe a museum exhibit. Hey, did you want to know, in the backstory, that “During her lengthy sojourn at the Knob, Grishia lightly modified the interior of the barrow and added a colossal statue of Phagtro atop the Knob (BV1-36).” That’s not even room backstory, that’s introductory backstory. Who the fuck cares about any of this?! “Oh, I like it!” Fuck you. Fuck you all to hell. This kind of self-indulgent shit is the ruin of tabletop adventures. I could maybe understand more if this were a singular work, but its got an editor attached, Joe Browning. There’s no way he doesn’t know better. What was the effort here, spell checking?I’m just aghast at seeing this in 2026 from XRP. I’m stunned.

And then there are things that just don’t make sense. Yeh yeah, D&D, elves shooting fireballs from their asses. No, in a different way. Those ghouls? They are trapped in like a one room basement. For several hundred years. They didn’t dig out of the fucking basement? And they have tools with them! And are roman soldiers! It’s fucking nuts. Whatever, you wanted ghouls there, got it. And the layout of that room? You have to get to the cellar to learn that the ghouls plead to get out, not in the room  above the cellar where the he voices of the ghouls would be heard. “Uh, oh yeah. I guess you heard some people begging to be let out, as you remove the last beam.” It’s fucking maddenning.

The kobolds cover their entrances, their WELL USED entrances with a 2’ thick mat of thicket thorns. This hides them like a secret door. Fuck no. You don’t get to use something in the natural world frequently and remove and replace a 2’ thick mat of thrown frequently and have that remain well hidden, magic thicket or not. And I’m not saying this from a nit-picky standpoint, I’m just giving this as yet another example of shit in this that just don’t make sense. Lots and lots and lots of backstory but for all that explanation there’s just stuff all over the place that just doesn’t make sense from a design standpoint or a suspension of disbelief standpoint. 

The spirit in charge of the thicket can manifest up to EIGHT 3HD plant monsters PER HOUR. THREE HD. In a level one to three adventure. And it will do this if you kill four or more kobolds. And any combat with the kobolds is 20% likely to manifest the 3HD plant monsters. 

There is no fucking way this was playtested AT ALL. How do I know that? Because there’s no way you can toss a bunch of 3HD plant monsters at the party, along with Tuckers Kobolds hit squads, at a party and not get a TPK. Not at levels one to three. It’s fucking impossible. 

The kobolds have cleared the land around the thicket, so you pass through open meadow to approach. They have guard posts up in trees all over the place. They have false entrances. They have ambush spots. They have hit squads. They have trained giant weasel and trained giant fucking boars! At levels one to three! Along with, of course, all of those 3HD plant monsters, eight per hour. If you are gonna put in a 100HD orc in the middle of a bunch of 1HD orcs then you have to telegraph that shit. 

I can’t imagine what work there was done on this prior to publication. Not on the fucking map of the thicket, proper, which is a pain in the ass to read. It took me forever to find entry “4” on the fucking map. 

Ok, so, the kobolds have some prisoners, one of the hooks says. We’re gonna ignore that. And it’s hard to burn the place out, magic thicket that regrows and all that shit. (it takes FIVE TURNS to chop out on 10×10 area for passage) And, of course, the kobolds and plant monsters. But, still, I think haunted housing this is best. Bring in a hundred hired hands, set up a camp, systematically burn it out with oil, and then flood the underground with the stream in the thicket. Then go pay the cornice to sift the ashes for loot. 

Doesn’t that sound like fun? It sounds more like a hex crawl thing to me. Beyond the text padding shit, and that this is mostly a hack, it sets the party up for failure. You’ll have to warn them, very heartily that this one is different and needs to be approached differently.

This is $15 at DriveThru. The preview is seven pages., You get to see some backstory. Don’t worry, you’ll get to see a lot more in every room. Poor preview. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/553194/the-thicket?1892600