The Doom of the Dark

By Patrick Stuart
False Machine Publishing
Tunnels & Trolls

A mysterious Inn at the end of the world, an evil sorcerer, a talking shadow on the wall, a door down into the dark. The world must be saved and only this particular group of weirdoes (who happened to be staying overnight), can do it! They have until the Doom of the Dark is fulfilled! (Roughly six hours real-time, but you should be able to get it done in two). They also have a Turne-Spytte Dogge, his utility so far unknown.

This 35 page one-shot adventure details a twelve room fucked up dark fairy-tale save the world adventure in a … weird inn basement? T&T is light, and it matches for the adventure. Great ideas and everything that filthy casual crowd wants out of their D&D clone systems and games.

Man, I always forget about Tunnels and Trolls, even though some of my favorite of the original era adventures were written for it. T&T is great for the same reason B/X is great. They are simple and don’t get in the way of actually playing the game with all that min/max rules lawyer shit. It;s got that beer & pretzels vibe that makes it great for a game with filthy casuals. Con games. A one shot at the game store. All your stoner friends coming over for game night. I don’t know if you can do more with T&T, but just like classic CoC, it’s perfect for one-shots.  And the actual content of this adventure, man, it’s like Pan’s Labyrinth mashed up with some of those “core” AI fantasy TikToks. Stuart knows how to bring a vibe.

It’s not a traditional adventure, he states up front. More of a storybook kind of thing. I might call it original old world fair tales, with arms falling down chimneys and shit. There are some cutesy LOOKING things, but everything here is ready to fuck you up in a weird way that is just so thematically appropriate to them/their setting. 

You’re staying at an inn, in the attic or in the barn nearby. You wake up in the middle of the night. “Now you awaken to the distant sound of laughter, counting, and the

clattering of coins.” There is no light. NONE. Like, bottom of a cave no light. EXCEPT you can see some coming from the inn/downstairs. Your own light sources, WHATEVER they are, don’t shed any light at all. That’s not good. The main room of the inn has a lamp anging from the rafters, shedding the light you’ve seen, the innkeeper frozen in solid bronze, a pair of green eyes in an ash tray, the skin of a man draped over a chair whimpering, and a mangy dog licking the bloody hem of the skin. ““Ignore it.” Whispers a voice. This is the Shadow-Man.” The shadow man flits from shadow to shadow in the room, cast by the light. He tells you he’s the shadow of a wizard who came to the innThe sorcerer is trying to steal the 13,000 coins that the original True Night originally was bribed with to sleep forever.  His shadow disagreed wit him so he cut it away with a silver knife. His eyes disagreed with him so he cut them out and replaced them with silver coins. His very flesh protested so it cut it away and there it hags now. Uh, yeah, so that’s why wizards rule. None of the rest of you fucks have that kind of dedication. 

I don’t even know how to describe that. Storybook? Fable? I think it hits that Mythic Underworld thing; things are certainly different. Cutting away the shadow with a silver knife. Plucking out eyes. Silver coins. How many culturally significant things can you load on to something? This is the vibe you are getting with this adventure. 

Yo, did you pick up that the shadow, skin, and eyes could be your allies, if you take them along? I mean, they must have really disliked him for him to cut off his skin, right? Anyway, you make your way in to the dungeon under the inn. All the while you can get the clatter of coins and an ominous countdown, from like 13,000. There’s a handy dandy chart that says something like “four hours of game time has elapsed, so the countdown is now about 4,600 is the players ask” and so on. Thusly, a real-time game limit. When it hits 0 the robbery is complete and, the True Night, finding the bargain broken, makes sure there is never light again. This is all handled wel, is easy to follow to add colour to the game.

The encounters here fanciful as well. We’ve got moon goblins out of some art deco nightmare, and their heads can be squeezed for juice which will shrink you. This there are a couple of ways to handle rooms, either full size of shrunk, which can last six hours or so, the length of this adventure. Adding to this are challenges easier is shrunk, or impacts that are different. The Mice Knights are running around and set against the Black Rats … who don’t necessarily need to be your enemy and could even be your ally. The environments, scenes and interactivity here is fanciful, and is of that perfect type of you being able to interact or just stab the fuck out people. 

The descriptions here get a little long. It’s not a typical formatting, it’s communicating the vibe and feeling of the place through text meant for the DM. There are bullets in the right places, along with italic and such, but this is not the typical room/key layout. It can work but its more of a read-ahead and really understand what the room is trying to do sort of thing, that tries to remain sticky in your head. Some portions could be communicated directly to the pliers while others are more an overall kind of feeling of the place. Not literally, but that’s what the text is trying to communicate. Thee are places where the text falls down as well, I’m looking at you “large rectangular stone room”, but those are minimal and don’t really detract from the situation going on in the room. 

This is a good one shot. It’s everything a casual one-shot, that we see so often for sale for minor OSR systems, are trying to do. Its got solid theming. The rooms hit, room after room and challenge after challenge. It’s not one dimensional and presents alternate paths for resolution. The non-traditional formatting (which those familiar with Stuart’s style should recognize) does mean that you’re going to have to do a little more prep work up front, but it certainly a memorable piece and reminds me of one of my favorite one-shots, In Media Res, for CoC in Unspeakable Oath.

This is $7 at DriveThru. The preview here is seven pages. It more of the intro and lead in to the adventure, and because of that it has a style that is not the same as the rooms, proper. I would not be scared off by it but would have liked to see a room as well, to get a better read on how the core content is presented.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/578297/doom-of-the-dark?1892600