A Cursed Fate for Torfjell

By Fabiano R de Azevedo
Self Published
OSE
Levels 1-3

A witch burns. A curse remains. The fate of an entire village rests in your hands. The peaceful village of Torfjell is about to witness the execution of a convicted witch. Whether the adventurers intervene or stand by, the outcome is the same: a terrible curse is unleashed, bringing sickness, madness, and mysterious deaths to the village. With each passing day, more lives are claimed. The only hope lies within an ancient legend: the forgotten Tome of the Light Shaman, hidden deep beneath Mount Inhaltyr in a long-lost dungeon guarded by dangers far older than the village itself. The heroes must uncover the truth behind a centuries-old myth, explore a dungeon filled with secrets and meaningful choices, and confront the creature that protects the tome. But legends are rarely as simple as they seem, and not every monster is truly evil.

This thirty page adventure uses about six pages to describe fifteen rooms in a small dungeon with a manticore. It’s got a nice little set up but the dungeon, proper, makes little sense. 

The set up to this one is interesting. As the party enters a village they comes across, live and in progress, the village major just pronouncing sentence of witchcraft on a woman tied to a stake and about to be burnt. If they do nothing then the village burns her and she does the old “pronounce a curse while burning” routine on the entire village. Which now includes the party. Oops. If they free her then she goes off and kills someone and curses the party for their troubles.  She is a witch and she DID murder a couple of innocent people. She has to kill three people to extend her life and she had already killed a mother and child, so, you know, it’s D&D and “shes a witch who did bad things” can, actually be true. Noice play on the trope. Anyway, one person a day dies from the curse. Ouchies. Turns out though you can go get a book in a dungeon nearby which will take care of the curse; this shit happened before long ago and the village elders know about the book. So off you go the dungeon.I love the play on the trope and the party getting whats coming to them for meddling in local affairs. Sure, WE know there’s no way out of the hook, but the set up is still a nice one, with a decent curse. 

The dungeon is a weird one though. There’s a convoluted backstory that has mom & dad turning their son in to a manticore and the dungeon gets built and the holy book with the curse cure is placed in it. Both mom and dad have “rooms” where a stone golem resides that the party can animate, one to attack the manticore and one to defend th party while fighting the manticore. Got it? Dungeon, purpose built, manticore in it, a couple of golems to help the party out. 

But then the place is designed, weird? This is more than a random other monster appearing. In one room there’s a sconce on the wall and if pull it then it casts animate dead on the skeletons in the room. Huh? Why do you do this? Why build a dungeon to HELP defeat the manticore and breaks the sons curse/put him to rest and then include a hidden sconce pull that animates dead? I’m not a fan of the “the tripwire cats a spell that then … “ stuff, it’s trying to explain WHY and you don’t need to do that, but, more than that, why put this kind of … trap? in the dungeon. And why does it have this hidden trigger mechanism? There’s more things like this in the dungeon that just don’t make sense, from a dungeon design standpoint. There’s no hint of something gone wrong over the years, or anything like that. 

This is more than natural aging of a dungeon. There’s a decent “bandits attack while you cross a rickety bridge” on the way to the dungeon, always a classic, although there are no hints of bandits even though the bridge is close to the village. There’s a room with a collapsed floor and monster at the bottom, also a classic and I love the classics. Those fit in. But the out of left field stuff is just jarring. Offputting. Looks, it’s a dungeon, not everything has to make sense, but this stuff just doesn’t match up with the rest of the vibe of the dungeon. Why is there a skeleton throne room? And why is the skeleton wearing a golden crown? If this were some kind of rando dungeon, ok, but its supposed to have been purpose built. Remember mom and dad?

Formatting here is all bullets. Bullets can help bring clarity. The EXCLUSIVE use of bullets, though, is seldom a good thing. If everything is important then nothing is. 

It’s an ok adventure. The premise is nice. There are some ok elements to manage, like the collapsed room/pit and bandits on the bridge. The formatting isn’t great and dungeon doesn’t make sense, as a whole, which I think is a problem for parties trying to do a thoughtful exploration. Treasure is quite light. Descriptions are bland. Meh.

This is $5 at DriveThru. The preview is three dungeon pages, so, good preview. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/578862/a-cursed-fate-for-torfjell?1892600