Shadows of the Sunken Dread

By Michele Toscan
Self Published
5e
Levels 3-4

The incessant floods engulfing the region have forced the young Maddalena Malatesta, the wicked Lord’s niece, to leave Montefiore Conca Castle without her cat, Cerasus. Since Maddalena was brought to the ancestral Malatesta residence, she has grown weaker and weaker, yearning only for the company of her little companion. The company of soldiers from the house, sent by her father Ferrantino to recover the cat, never returned from the mission. Psychic storms prevent any form of foresight around the castle, which has been shrouded in a shadow of terror for days. Lord Malatestino I Malatesta has decided to enlist a group of assorted heroes to retrieve little Cerasus. But is that his only objective? And why did the previous expedition never return?

It’s the holidays and I’m in a generally generous mood. So I decided to accept this review request. I have regrets.

This complete and utter mess of garbage uses … three pages? To describe … a castle? Maybe?  It uses very general terms to describe a few things that might happen. Except, my description is WAY too concrete to actually represent what the designer has done here. This isn’t even an outline of an adventure, or a summary of an outline. Maybe an idea for an outline would be a fitting description.

Ok, so, floods ravage the lands. Some dude hires you to go check out a castle of his and report back. Also, his daughters cat is missing in the castle and please bring it back. You might have an encounter on the way to the castle. Inside you meet some mercs. Underneath, in its dungeon, you find a cthulhu that has woken up. It’s served by some etruscans. It made friends with the cat. The end. 

Come now Bryce, you can do a better job os describing the adventure than that! Ah, but, gentle readers, I cannot. For that is not a summary of the adventure. That IS the adventure. I’m being serious.

The opening journey through the flooded lands tells us that “Feel free to add as many chance encounters as you like to the journey that begins on the Roman Flaminia road and then

climbs into the southern hills. The hills are full of bandits. An encounter with the ghosts of Guido del Cassero and Angiolello da Carignano might lead the character to understand Malatesta III has well deserved the name Guastafamiglia“. We get another paragraph when we arrive at the castle describing the mercs and how they sent out a messenger. The implication, I guess, is that he’s lost and you should find him. But there’s nothing more than that. No messenger notes or anything. Then it tells us that under the castle are etruscans and their leader, this cleric dude named Velma. Again, I’m no exaggerating to say that’s all there is. It’s another four sentences. That’s it. Then it just morphs in to a table, without any heading at all, to describe a kind of random element in the tunnels. IE: they have been abstracted and you roll on a table to discover the room you are now in and what happens in it, until you roll “the final room” and find the cat and his buddy the cthulhu. Let’s see, you are rolling a d20 and there are seven possibilities. Enjoy.

The rest of the adventure is six or so pages of pregens and monster stats and a three page background overview of the campaign setting. 

Did I mention that the read-aloud section is long and in italics? Did I mention that the entire thing is in some weird ass fucking font that’s hard to read? Or that it appears on some kind of background to give the appearance of an old and weather newspaper, which makes it even harder to read? I fucking HATE that fucking people do this. I’m not gonna struggle to try and comprehend the written fucking words of your adventure. Why not just write the fucking thing in Italian and make me struggle to figure it the fuck out? It’s the same fucking thing. I would love nothing more than to torture each of these people with each others adventures. Hand them some other dude artsy fartsy K0oL font and background adventure and sit them down in front of people and tell them to run the fucking thing. 

There’s no fucking adventure here. “Hey, there’s a castle with some mercs in it. Five of them. They sent a messenger to someone” That’s supposed to be a fucking adventure? No map? No real indication of how they treat the party? I didn’t even know they were baddies until I noted that their stat blocks lists them as Enemies. 

I don’t know what the fuck is going on here. This looks like an idea I might have for a nights play before I started fleshing it out, generally, with a few extra sentences scribbled down. It’s not a fucking adventure. 

This is $3 at DriveThru. The preview is three pages and you get to see the artsy fartsy background/newsprint and fancy font and a few paragraphs of text for the background. That should tell you more than enough to let you know to stay far FAR away from this.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/458682/Shadows-of-the-Sunken-Dread?1892600