The Grey Citadel

By Nathan Douglas Paul
Frog God Games
S&W
Levels 4-5

In the city of Dun Eamon, demons roam the streets, criminals rule the night and an important local power figure has gone missing. Can your heroes unravel the clues that lead through every social element of the city–from the heights of the Grey Citadel to far below its streets and even into the hearts of its inhabitants? Or are some mysteries better left unsolved?

This one hundred page slop of garbage from the Frogs presents a four level dungeon in about forty pages with … sixty(?) rooms, as well as a short investigation, all in an overly described town/city. It’s a wordy wall of text that focuses on combat. 

Ohs Nos! A wizzo is missing! Looks like there’s a succubus hiding in the caves under the city. And a gang of thieves being controlled by her. And a anti-paladin kinda under her control. And a rival adventuring party. And chickula is a succubus so she’s got some simps. 

[I diverge: Looking at the succubus from a more nuanced perspective, there is an opportunity here for something more interesting. Thralls being played as yes men, eager to please, wanting to get laid, etc. I’m sure we’ve all met the type, either online or that dude you knew who is not around anymore cause he’s up some chicks ass. This could be mined for some really good play. It’s not gonna get anywhere near that here, but, it further solidifies my idea of a monster manual based on that kind of description, the themes of the monster and how to represent it. And no culture warring you fuckwits; I’m talking about the dudes without boundaries exhibiting unhealthy behaviors.] 

Have no fear, as soon as you step foot out of your inn you are summoned by the Lord Soliloquy, who gives you a column long read-aloud monologue describing several small things going on in the city and asking you to investigate. You wander around a massively over described city and have some timed events until you find your way in to the sewers, err, I mean caverns under the city. On level four you find Lilith and stab her. It? Whatever. 

I don’t know what to say here. It’s peak Frogs. Long read-aloud. You can drive to detroit and back before the DM finishes the read-alouds. You know all of those morons who bitch about the players being on their phones? It’s of shit like this. I’m not sitting through a fifteen minutes read-aloud. You get a couple of sentences. That’s it. 

Almost a page of text to describe the sawmill. Which has one dirty old man in it. Fuck me man, that’s a shot paragraph at best. And everything in this is like that. You get word after word and sentence after sentence of description about shit. “the corner of the area opposite the entrance are two bodies (an Ebon Union cutpurse who failed to make it back home safely one night, and a beggar who refused to inform for the Ebon Union” That’s one long section in the middle of a HUGLY long description describing a room. And then, of course, we get a detailed description of everything they carried, including the lint in their pockets. Look man, I appreciate some whimsy in shit like this, something to keep the mood a little light or add some mystery. But I don’t need a fucking victorian laundry list of the rotation of the bedlinens. For the last 23 years.

There’s little in the way of actual useful formatting to break up the text and make it usable. There are PAGES full of condensed stat blocks, for S&W, that take up, I don’t know, a fifth of a page for a stat block. In S&W? Uh huh. It’s all in a small font, in that fucked up font they use. It is Wall of text, absolutely it is.

I wonder, did anyone ever try to run this fucking adventure? Anyone at the Frogs I mean. From this booklet. Not the designer, they are too familiar with the adventure. But some rando. Did anyone ever try? Did they tell anyone that this entire thing is useless POS? It’s hard to read, hard to run, and, I think, not the most fulfilling. Unless you like hacks.

Rooms in the dungeon have names like “JUST A FUN GUY” I’m not an asshat. I enjoy some levity also. But, also, you’ve given up any opportunity to bring more context to the rooms you’re describing. To start things off with a framing that will cement everything that follows, leveraging it in to something else Instead, though, we get equipment porn. And tactics porn. Cause that’s all D&D is. Stabbing. Instead of evocative descriptions and interactivity we instead get “You are

free to come up with colorful curses such as “can eat only insects” or “can speak only in single syllables”. You fucking enjoy that. Enjoy the slop being shoveled down your throat without any thought as to what an adventure actually is and how it achieves it.

It seems clear to me that this is a conversion of a Pathfinder adventure. That’s the vibe. I don’t give a fuck how you play D&D. You wanna play Pathfinder, that’s fine. But I give a great many fucks about my basic D&D game. And this shit ain’t it. In any measure of an adventure.

This is $19 at DriveThru. Nineteen fucking dollars. For a PDF. Which might be ok, but its from the Frogs so you know your gonna get ripped off. They got the cover right, at least. The preview is six pages, the first six, showing you just a couple of overview pages. So, not really useful.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/335344/the-grey-citadel-sw?1892600