Bugbears in the Mountains

By Fabricio Garcia
Kobold King
OSR
Level 3

Bugbears are attacking the dwarfs on their way up the mountain to make offerings to their god. A group of elf scholars came to the region to study the presence of bugbears in such remote region and they are stopping the dwarfs in their attacks against the bugbears. Furious with the lack of offerings and prayers. The dwarven god is eminent to turn away from the region and allowing monsters to roam free. The PC’s can seek the god absolution on the dwarfs instead or even make them leave the region and help the bugbears in taking the region and put their gods in power of Altuvia.

(This is a PDF but there is an Obsidian markup file. Again, I tried to install obsidian and get it going to view it the way it was meant to be viewed, got it installed, but again couldn’t figure out how to view/work with the markup file)

This sixty page adventure describes … I don’t really know what it describes. A political situation? A couple of dungeons surrounding a political situation? It’s all just general ideas, with few specifics, and almost certainly worth no time. And yet, I find the premise intriguing in a weirdly real-life cynical way.

The marketing blurb is essentially correct. Some dwarves were driven above ground by oozes attacking their mines. They have no ore. They are trying to get ore from their cousins but the elf lands are in the way and  “Now the dwarfs wait for the complicated and unhurried elf politics allows the ore transport.” Noice! And, now, some bugbears have moved in to the region. Their attacks are preventing the dwarves from getting to their temple to honor their goddess. This WILL eventually cause her to abandon them and then the bugbear god will move in to set up shop, which is the EXPLICIT plan of the bugbears. IE: preventing the dwarves from worshipping their goddess so she’ll abandon them and their dude can take up the mantle of the region. But, now, also, with the bugbears showing up, some elf researchers have shown up and have a manor home in the wilderness where they’ve set up base. They want to study the bugbear migrations, which they find unusual, and are preventing the dwarves from attacking the bugbears. If we think of the eves as having superior technology/gods/magic/armies, then the position of the dwarves becomes quite interesting. Piss off the local elves and maybe influence the larger political “ore from our cousins” thing? Are there local dwarves acting as guides to the elves, or, maybe, nearby halflings that trade with the dwarves but also sell their services to the elves? The analog of an asymmetric power relationship, and the consequences to all parties, it quite interesting. The elves WILL, through their good natured scholastic meddling, cause the dwarves to be wiped out and the bugbears to take over the region. Do they care? Will they be wiped out also? This is all fucking magnificent. The comparisons to real life are obvious.

And almost nothing of substance is in the adventure. Some of what I described is present in the adventure. Some of it is shit I inferred, like dwarf collaborators or halflings, or other linkages. But, also, beyond a simple overview, essentially matching in context and length what I described, there is nothing of any of this present in the adventure. The individuals, the timeline, everything else, none of it really is related to the overall situation described. Yes, the bugbears want to kill and maybe an elf , described, wants to study shit. But these kind of grand machinations, or even minor machinations, are just not present in the adventure. At best you’ll get an NPC description who has a quest like “I want some elven wine.”

For it being sixty pages there is remarkably little specific to point to. The dwarf mines have a map, but no key, just instructions to roll on random tables. But, even then, I’m not sure I can make heads or tails of the map. Are the rectangles rooms? Or are those just hallways that meet up? What are the grey lines? And then the map of a ruined manor is not keyed, with just things like “Bedroom 1 : The room to the left of the corridor” Creature amounts and mundane treasures, including potions and scrolls are just not present, explicitly so, fitting in to some “for use with any system” statement. I can’t fathom ever doing this in an adventure. 

This is SO open ended, SO non-specific that it amounts to just the overall situation description, some NPC descriptions that don’t tie in very well, and site descriptions that are almost as vague and non-specific as you can possibly have and still call it a site description. You’re going to have to wing, and add to and expand everything. I get it, we do some of that when running a game. But there is SO little direction here, so little that is specific, that this amounts to very little more than napkin notes and ideas of what could be going on in various places with various people. In sixty pages.  I think I’m done with Kobold King. 

This is $2 at DriveThru. There is no preview. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/569519/bugbears-in-the-mountains-markdown-mini-setting?1892600