Lies at the Bell Tower

By Oliver Müller, Prizren Buçpapaj
Voltaria Games
OSE
Level 1

A village is silent. None dares to speak out loud anymore, for fear of invoking the curse of the bell. A nun was burned 300 years ago, because she was accused of having consorted with a demon who stole the voices of his victims. The same demon who is bound to the bell of the ancient belltower in the center of the village. Will your party of adventurers brave the depths of the old catacombs to lift the curse and right the wrongs from the past, or will they accidentally unleash an even greater evil?

This twelve page adventure presents eleven rooms on two levels of a small dungeon under a ruined monastery. It’s a little dull and lacks flavour but is far from the worst things ever written. 

Man, my compliments are really getting out of hand, aren’t they? But, seriously, something seems to have happened with adventures. Some of them don’t make me want to gouge my eyes out. Now, I’m not saying they are good, or even regertful, but, they don’t just absolutely suck ass. I don’t know how many times in, what, fifteen years, that I’ve seen stuff that is just Meh, but I’ve been seeing it a lot lately. Yeah! The world is getting better! “You won’t hate everything about your life if you purchase this adventure!” That’s right, I’m available for writing ad copy! If this trend continues I may be out of a non-job. Because as much as I love a good adventure the blog only exists because I REALLY hate bad ones. “Not writing crap” seems like such a simple idea, at least in theory.

You show in a village. The people won’t talk to you. They will grunt at you. They will make arm gestures. Some will write notes. (Booo literacy!) But they won’t talk. Every time someone tells a lie then the bell in the old ruined monastery rings, louder and louder. Popping on over you can go up the bell tower, which contains only the bell, or you can go down in to the dungeon and it’s small handful of rooms. Down there you will fight a few 1hp undead, a few skeletons, and meet the ghost of a chick burned alive who cursed the monks. The bell contains the essence of a demon, which is why the monastery exists. The chick was a part of the monastery, the monks lied and got her burned. The curse infected the bell. Destroy the bell and the demon gets out. Kill the ghost of the chick and the bell cracks and the demon gets out. You’re supposed to find the one-charge hammer of banishment and use it on the ghost, putting her to rest while the bell remains intact and freeing it of the “lie and the bell rings” curse. 

The hooks are the usual low-effort stuff of get hired, with one having the party just arriving at the village and stumbling in to things. One of the best parts of the adventures is a throw away line in that hook that has an old woman attacking the party with a broom if they speak. That’s the kind of specificity that makes an adventure shine. It’s short and fits in perfectly with a bunch of scared villagers. Another line has advice to the DM in making the bell ring every time someone in the party tells a lie. A nice touch. Finally, n the dungeon are a number of cubbies with bones in them, catacombs like. In one cubby the skeletons still have jewelry on them! Time to get a lootin! Except it’s a cube, the remains of other adventurers in it. Very nice integration of a classic monster in to an adventure in such a way that makes it a surprise. All of those “empty” bone reliquaries pay off in a nice monster attack. That’s how you lure a party in to a classic monster.

The descriptions here are not terrible, although they are not really evocative either. The Sacrist reads “8. SACRISTY Wardrobe: There is a rotting wardrobe containing 1d4 robes for mess. They are damp and filled with holes, but they will prevent the skeletons from attacking.  Box: Used to store religious tools for the mess, which have been hidden in the secret treasure room when the monastery was abandoned.” This has some line breaks in it, I’m condensing it here. It’s easy enough to follow and, while the length is not great it’s also not a burden. It comes across as rather mundane, and doesn’t really do a great job of painting an evocative picture of the room, being more fact based than impressions. Note that there is no room summary, and in some places this gets awkward, such as in one room with zombies that only show up at the last sections. These sorts of things, the most obvious thing or something likely to be of import immediately, should really ne higher up in a description. “Oh, yeah, there are also some zombies here” is not the way to run a D&D game. This means takingin the entire room description before relying it to the party rather than a descriptive style that builds with first impressions and follow on detail. Thus the text length does come  to play when as being of note.

It doesn’t feel like a spooky monastery with shit going on, although thats what it is. The titular bell tower, while having the mostimportant thing in the adventure, the bell, is almost an afterthought, with the focus being the dungeon under the tower. The bell tolling helps, but it needed more build up or, interestingly, less, almost as an aafterthought. Either would have worked better, I think.

This is an EASL adventure, with some AI to help with the translation, the adventure discloses. This is probably fine. I suspect some of the mundanity in the descriptions comes from its EASL nature, but that’s to be expected.  “Grave chamber: It is an undecorated tomb with a single simple grave in the middle.” is a good example. Like, a dug grave, in a catacomb? I suspect we mean a stone sarcophagus? But, also, not exactly the height of evocative writing. There’s not a whole lot wrong here, it just doesn’t stand out as something I’d like to run. Also, put the level range is IN the adventure. Put it on the cover or in the marketing blurb.

This is $3 at DriveThru. The preview is the first three pages. Another page of encounters would have been nice, to get a true sense of the adventure keys.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/581426/lies-at-the-bell-tower?1892600