Masters of the Elements

By Mauricio Rosel, Robert Pech
ND Hobbies
5e
Levels ... 2?

Quest in the Spirit World. A short adventure in which the adventurers must visit the plane of spirits to seek elemental weapons to face a demon. Shadows in the forbidden temple. In this ninja-alike adventure, a group of adventurers must rescue a boy, using stealth and subterfuge. Seven Temples. The adventurers will traverse each of the seven temples in a frantic race against a dragon to reach the summit and confront it.

This 24 page booklet presents three adventures in an asian setting. The one I was interested in had a decent idea, but didn’t really execute it in a decent manner. It’s too abstracted to run correctly, being an outline expanded to several pages.

This thing popped up in the OSR section. I had no interest in “A short adventure in which the adventurers must visit the plane of spirits to seek elemental weapons to face a demon.” Short. Spirit world. That’s not gonna be good. Then there was “The adventurers will traverse each of the seven temples in a frantic race against a dragon to reach the summit and confront it.”  Frantic race against time? Let me guess, there are guardians who want to test me in order to pass? No thanks.  [ED: yes: “This temple is guarded by a Couatl, who has sworn not to let anyone unworthy pass. To prove their worth”]  How about “In this ninja-alike adventure, a group of adventurers must rescue a boy, using stealth and subterfuge.” Fuck yeah! I love stealth and subterfuge! 

Turns out though, upon cracking said booklet, the jokes on me. All of the adventures have that vague mashed up asian setting. And, it’s not OSR, it’s 5e, they just slapped it in to the OSR section to drum up a few more sales. And, you’re the baddies, I’m pretty sure. The gods created a ninja order to behead and slit throats of the samurai rulers. .GOV has finally won the shadow war, wiping out the ninja and taking the last ninja, a boy I guess, as prisoner. The god of wind recruits you to go break the boy out of the fortress hes being held in. You get to make all stealth checks automatically if you are at half speed  and he gives out four ninja items: a smoke bomb, 2 shuriken, a set of climbing claws and something else I can’t be bothered to remember. 

Ignoring all of my pretextual bullshit, the heart of this is going to be the stealth/subterfuge. You need Ways in. You need guard schedules and patrol routes and all of that stuff. And it LOOKS like you get that. There is a map. The map does have little notations on it for the guards. It shows the viewing angles of the dudes in the watchtowers. It has a little dashed line for the guards to walk on patrol. There’s even a pretty obvious “sewer entrance” and a little note about a merchant shipment coming to sneak in on. 

The merchant is, though, a good example. You’re outside, casing the joint. Maybe you’ve come up with a plan. And then a merchant shows up that you can pile in to the back of his wagon. That is an impromptu action. You might plan, in town. You might arrange for it, or you might figure out when the wagon shows up. But, as a random event it clashes with the otherwise stealth/subterfuge nature of the adventure. If a guard is alerted then you should kill the guard and/or have an opportunity to silence him, etc. If he AUTO-ALTERS the compound then that’s no fun. It clashes with what otherwise the vibe is. (I’m not saying that auto-alert happens here, it’s just an example of clashing vibes.) We have these buildings in fortress compound, but no real floormaps or detailed keys for them. The entire operation is really getting and finding the appropriate building, amongst three or four, that the prisoner is on. (The samurai are overwhelming opponents, so a general alert means game over, though the party could, if they cooperate, take down one.) “The party must avoid being discovered at all costs. If they are discovered, Jirou will be executed as soon as the alarm is given” This is the condition that the party is trying to avoid. And if we’re ok with that, as an outcome, then we could run this as given. 

But the data presented isn’t really enough to run that. It’s not arranged in such a way to really give an opportunity for a stealth mission to happen. You just have to kind of be hand-wavey because of the amount, or lack, of specificity given in the area of this. I guess I am just unhappy with the lack of floorplans and issues for the party to handle. You just have to, very simply, say that someone is not looking so you can sneak past them. It doesn’t feel like the information presented is “designed” for this, though it is present in some way. 

Bah! I’m having a hard time here. There is little to no subterfuge opportunities in the adventure, especially supported through the text. The stealth aspects feel not well supported, as if it is handwaved a bit too much for me … which doesn’t seem right given the lookout views, the guard patrol paths, etc. It just doesn’t seem to match the more nuanced and explicit needs of support that a stealth infiltration, an explicit stealth infiltration, would seem to call for.

I’m at a loss. I’m not satisfied, but having a very hard time to articulate it. I’ve come back to this three times now and I still cant. 

This is $5 at DriveThru. The preview shows you a few pages of the first four room dungeon. WHich is enough to get an idea of that specific adventure and the general writing style. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/482305/dungeon-snap-masters-of-the-elements?1892600