Secret Vault of the Windswept Island

By Gabriel Ramos
Wonder Twin Harmony
OSE
Levels 1-3

On the lonely Windswept Island a death cult’s dungeon hides the path to an extraplanar vault with a macabre ritual. Within that dreadful vault rests a powerful sword imbued with the soul of the death deity’s most fervent fanatic.

This forty page adventure uses twelve pages to describe seven rooms in a puzzle dungeon. Intricate rooms with some decent imagery, but it all feels like a video game, with confusing descriptions.

Member when, back when there were these video games that were co-op, in a certain way? Maybe split-screen couch co-op, and they were advertised that you could play them with your girlfriend, cause girls don’t like to play videogames. And you’d run along in your own little separate splitscreens and do things in one area to help the person in the other are get past some obstacle? Portal was kind of the same thing, except it was just you. This adventure is that.

You walk in the front door of the dungeon and the doors slam shut behind you (sigh) and the giant statue says something like “go get the magic sword and present it to me and I’ll let you out.” (sigh) Anyway, you’re supposed to figure out that a party member needs to kill themself. Then you can use the green orb in the room to turn them in to a ghost. They then have a limited amount of time to walk through a wall and pull levers and so on. In some other room (that you don’t see till later, remember you’re trapped) there’s a fresco that implies you can bring them back to life again. So, stuck in a room forever with some vague riddle telling you to kill yourself. Until you do so. And use the green orb right. 

From there things get a bit confusing … I swear I have gone through this multiple times and, just like that fucking dam thing in Zork 2, I cannot figure out what the fuck I am supposed to do. I THINK the ghost goes west to pull a lever, which unlocks the room with hints in it, and then you go east to get a key and then put the key in the lock in the hint room and then get the sword. I THINK. I note that this is all outlined in a summary section and individual parts are noted in the room descriptions, but I STILL can’t really figure out if that’s the correct reading. The whole ghost/no-ghost thing is also a mess. Oh, and, also, remember, fuck around too much and your ghost buddy dies for realsies. 

That problem, the one of confusion for the DM, is a trend in this adventure. At one point there’s a text description that has some references to cones and spheres, I think, and then says something like there’s a malnourished cube down in a pit. What the fuck is a malnourished cube? I read and reread and then skipped it … only to find, at the end of the room entry on a different page, that it’s a malnourished GELATINOUS cube.  Ohhhhhh! That makes sense! And now the algae line on the wall makes sense also! So much more now makes sense! And these are not isolated examples, in a seven room dungeon. The text, the DM text, is cumbersome. It’s using some formatting where room exits are very important and high up, so shit about the room that might be important is further down, sometimes on another page, and it’s not always obvious that the text continues. So you look at it thinking “huh. What am I missing?” At one point there’s a note that the green orb can tell “A creature is given the time of its lingering life force potential were it to die.” After puzzling that out for a great long while I think I decided that it tells a ghost how long until it does for realsies. I think.

And the individual rooms tend to be set-piecy. It feels for all the world like you’re in some Portal stage that you need to clear to move on to the next one. That’s not the vibe I’m going for in D&D. But, hey, I recognize that could be your vibe. For some reason … If you like rearranging blocks on the floor to spell a death gods name while skeletons come out each round to fight you until you’re done. It’s just TOO blatantly a puzzle. Like you just handed someone a crossword puzzle and told them to solve it to cross the river Styx. 

There’s some good stuff in here also. There’s a decent overview, in most rooms, which could be read-aloud, which generally gives a very strong impression of the room. Cherry picking room five “Chained skulls hanging from the ceiling emit a pale blue light, illuminating a long hallway of constantly rippling sand. An obsidian altar stands before a barred archway.” Not the best, from a “where is what? “ standpoint, but still a cool room description that cements it and really makes you feel like you are somewhere. Although, it is leaning towards “stick a cool adjective in” syndrome. Yet I will the admit the line is fine between sticking in a cool adjective and good writing. 

I’ve got a lot of nits around treasure, with skeletons with diamonds for teethe not getting any worth. But, also, the hook treasure map only is readable on moonless nights. Groovy! And a severed hand in a box wears a ring. A cursed ring! I like it! And in other places we’ve got heads of kings with their golden crows nailed to their heads. Ouchies! Or their wrists bound with rusty barbed chains. But, then again, the entire “explore the island” section is really perfunctory and kind of a museum tour.

If I excuse the set piece nature, then more focus on the text could have solved the confusion issues. (Where was that editor?) And there is clearly a bit of talent for conjuring up a memorable scene and at least describing it initially. Yeah, needs more focus, both on the wilderness sections especially and in the dungeon in general. And the concept it kind of lame. But, given a non-lame concept I would be interested in seeing something … say, a full on dungeon/adventure? 

This is $8 at DriveThru. The preview is six pages. You get to see the ritual overview I had trouble with, and some of the island … for which there is no map. Not a great preview, since there are no rooms, but not a terrible one either.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/489237/secret-vault-of-the-windswept-island?1892600