The Island Cairn

Joseph Mohr
Old School Role Playing
OSRIC
Levels 2-3

[…] Fostrid has suggested that the adventurers meet him in an alley outside of the Gray Goblin. The Goblin is a tavern of ill repute near the Thieves Quarter. If the adventures meet him there perhaps they can negotiate a better price or learn more information from Fostrid. Many of the greatest citizens in the Free City made their fortunes plundering the cairns in the hills north of the city. Perhaps the adventurers can do likewise…..or perhaps they will meet their doom……

This 27 page adventure uses about seven pages to describe ten rooms, and several burial niches, in an old cairn. It’s got a few undead and a lot of altars to different gods. Just another tomb adventure with boring and padded out writing.

A dwarf wants to sell you a treasure map. He wants you to meet him in the alley behind the local shotty and dangerous thieves bar. If you don’t go then the adventure is over. If you do go you find him dead in the alley. If you don’t search him well then the adventure is over. If you do search him well then you find the map in his boot. No word on what happens if you get the map and don’t go to the location. I guess the adventure is also over? Obviously. My point here is that there is a lot of writing in this adventure about things that don’t happen. What guidance if my party holds their breathe while sitting at a table in a bar during a perfectly normal evening?! The obvious fucking thing happens. We don’t need to know about the obvious non-event. We don’t need to know what to do if the player decides to drown their character in a river on a whim. We know what a kitchen looks like. We know what a normal inn looks like. We know that the adventure is over if the party doesn’t follow up on the lead. This is not the point of adventure writing. The point is to tell us what is unusual and different and interactive for the players and their characters. This adventure spends a lot of time telling us obvious things. 

There a lot of weird descriptions here, not relevant to the room, or running the room, and in some cases referring to another room. The cairn is on an island and the island has a dock. “An old stone dock was once used by boats.” Yes, that is the definition of a dock. But then, also, we’re told in this entry about the door to the cairn. In the dock entry. And the entrance description, a couple of keys later, explicitly tells us to go look at the dock entry to learn about the entrance door. This comes up normally when an entry tells us that a certain room reacts to another room, instead of the text appearing in the room where the reaction s generated from. Keep the information relevant to the location in the key description to that location, not randomly somewhere else. 

In another location, in the DM text, we’re told “It appears that the builders of this place may have been shackled to the walls and left to die of starvation.” There’s nothing here to indicate that, other then finding some bodies shackled to the wall. And nothing “appears” to the DM, and the conclusion can’t “appear” to the players without something to support this, which is not present. There’s nothing behind this except padding. General worldbuilding which will not impact the game at all. And that should be avoided. 

Otherwise, you’re gonna stab a few undead here and confront A LOT of religious altars that you can pray to, clean up for blessings, etc. Good gods, evil gods, etc. It’s a bit of a mishmash. How you understand you need to donate 10% of your total wealth to get a boon is beyond me, and beyond the adventure text.

The map is linear, with a lot of the rooms behind one secret door. The map keying is in a very light font which doesn’t make finding the room numbers the easiest. 

There is a tomb/niche inside labeled “Sir Garin the Unjust.” It’s got an undead dude in it. It’ tickles me that, yes, inside the “Unjusts” tomb you will find an evil undead dude. What dod you expect? I love it when an adventure telegraphs what is going to happen and the party is like “DUH!” after the fact. A smart party will prepare and a clueless one will fall in to trouble, which is exactly what should happen in a D&D game. 

Yes, it’s a Mohr adventure. It’s slightly better than most of the stuff Mohr cranks out and he’s STILL doing a great job marketing; I buy one every now and again by accident just because of the marketing (and not looking at the author too closely. My bad.) Old School Role Playing is a publisher, not a genre type Bryce! It’s still, though, just shovelware.

This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru with a suggested price of $3. No preview. How hard is sticking in a preview?

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/585359/the-island-cairn?1892600