The Webs of Past and Present

By Gabor Csomos
First Hungarian d20 Society
OSR
Levels 4-5

A group of adventurers took a job they were unable to finish. They went into the ruins of Túr Eridenal, an abandoned elven palace of some kind, and never returned. The characters’ mission is to find out what happened to them, rescue the survivors, and – if possible – finish the job they started. Besides the predatory creature the adventurers were hunting, the ruins are overrun with all kinds of monsters, and corrupted by a sinister curse. There are survivors, however, whom the party may rescue if they are smart… even more than just some lost adventurers. All shall be caught in… The Webs of Past and Present!

This 26 page digest presents a two level elven manor with about forty rooms. It’s got that OD&D vibe with idiosyncratic things and a natural way of encountering things in the dungeon that just make sense. Decent writing, terse, with good descriptions and interactivity that seems effortlessly varied. This is the way you do an adventure.

Nostalgia is a terrible thing, smoothing over rough edges and amping up the joy. When you think back on old adventures, Thracia, Dark Tower, Amber, Silver Princess, Wilderlands … there is this kind of wonder you experience in your memories. Those products, or at a minimum the memories we carry of those products, conveyed a sense of D&D that feel things can match. Some  kind of deadly whimsy? Or a sense that you were in another world experiencing weird things? Certainly you’ve entered the mythic underworld, as the DM, and are experiencing a kind of heightened reality. I don’t quite know how to put it. But I know it when I see it. And this adventure does the exact the same thing. Except it doesn’t have the benefit of the beer googles of nostalgia. Looking at this with the much stricter standards of today, this thing lives up to those grandiose memories of past. And it does it while bringing all of the knowledge of the past forty year to bear on itself. Effortlessly and seamlessly.

It’s an elf manor, a place for elves to go to regain their joy for the world when they grow too weary of the Works Of Man. Or, it was, a couple of hundred years ago, before some asshat elf fucked the place up by doing the whole Summon A Cosmic Entitiy to Deal with Mankind thing, that elves are wont to do. The manor falls to nature and the vermin set up shop. In this case, spiders, mostly. (Although, man, fuck those giants wasps!) So, the sad ending of a bunch of elves, with some nature and evil mixed in. And, I must say, this thing does the melancholy end of the elves quite well. Capturing the majesty and ruin, a kind of sadness, suicides and such. As well as the glory of the elven MAGIC ITEMS!!! 

This thing does vibes GOOOOOOD. Its full of that fourth pillar, design. Things in this make sense. To a degree seldom seen in adventures. Mostly it’s all “let me pick a monster from the book and slap it in.” But not in this. Shit makes sense to be there. The vargouilles. That’s not what they are. They are the heads and entrails of dead elves. And you can run them like vargouilles. Or, the giants wasps. Those fucking giant wasps. Outside the manor, as you perhaps creep to find balconies and terraces as alternate entry or to perhaps avoid an encounter or corridor. There they fucking are! Assholes. And of you fuck with a body they’ve killed perhaps it explodes with babyones swarming out! Or, if you’re inside the manor, next to a giant wasp encounter outside, and open the window then the fucking wasps come in. Of course they do! That’s what SHOULD happen! It makes so much sense. Or, magical runes on a door, barely visible. Want to disarm them? Just smear them. Duh! There’s a ladies bath area, a spa thingy. With skeletons in it. And a vial, a potion. What kind? Poison, duh! They fucking killed themselves in the bath! Shit makes sense, it’s not disconnected from itself. There is just tons and tons and tons of interactivity in this, from puzzles to things to fuck with to MEANINGFUL things to figure out. And, of course, a stalking monster that is gonna FUCK. THE. PARTY. UP. Really good job with that one. And, an ending room that turns the adventure upside down for play again. You can run back and forth across this place, inside and out (there’s a small section of grounds covered also) and it all FEELS like a D&D adventure. A glorious glorious D&D adventure. Imagination first and then the fucking book stats.

Magic items kick ass. Book, with a few words more to bring them to life. A +3 shield so gleaming you can use it as an actual mirror. A warhelm that protects you from three nat 20’s. Again, they make sense and aren’t just the same old shit everyone throws in. 

The writing here is good enough. Slender columns. Curved balconies. Overrun weeds, untended hedges. Carcasses instead of bodies, in some cases. The individual entries are by no means a masterpiece, but the overall effect is to build up a picture of the place entry after entry, and that works well. The descriptions are, however, the place where the adventure is the weakest. I do not pretend that this is easy; it’s the hardest part of an adventure, I think. They are more than workmanlike but not so good as to receive gushing amounts of praise. Which is weird. Because I’m in a gushing amounts of praise mood considering most of the rest of this. Well, some of the entries get a bit long also. There is good formatting for most of the adventure, a bolded word here or there, appropriately so, and some bullets here and there to help with things. Entries are written generally in order of importance and the order, in a room, in which the party will encounter them. If I scan an entry then the first sentence (of … on average, eight?) and a glance at the bolded words will be enough to get the room going for the players white I scan the rest, which is how an adventure should be written. This gets a bit cumbersome in some of the longer room entries, of which there are but a few. I could bitch, also, about the map in a digest sized adventure. The one in the book is a bit small and the gorgeous giant map that is included … I don’t know how to use that during play. And I prefer, for a print product, for wanderers and or reference material (the grand illusion changes?) to be someplace easily referenced .. the front and back inside covers, a fall open middle page, etc. 

A magnificent effort here. I am prone to hyperbole, but, I think you could make the case that this is the best levels 4-5 adventure written. Seriously, and if not then it’s right up at the top. Design and imagination forward. Shit makes sense. Interactive exactly the way an exploratory dungeon should be. Room after room adding to the vibe and history of the place. Easily one of the best.

This is $10 for the print & pdf version at the bigcartel web store. Normally I’d trash the dude for no preview, but the level range is on the cover and we’re dealing with a well known quantity here. Still, it would be fucking nice …

https://emdt.bigcartel.com/product/the-webs-of-past-and-present