The Crimson Caverns

By Joey Brock
Self Published
Cairn

Ariel is now requesting that a brave adventuring party explore the Crimson Caverns and bring back this device, plus any other artifacts of Zeliah’s, for a generous reward of 100gp or possibly one of Ariel’s relics or spellbooks. Enter the Crimson Caverns and explore the abandoned hideout of the evil sorcerer Zeliah!

This seventeen page adventure features a cavern with sixteen rooms and a cave spider. Enjoy what is one of the lamest adventures I have ever come across.

Some asshat in a nearby village hires you to go explore some nearby caverns, the lair of an ancient evil wizard, and bring back a device they were working on. J’ACCUSE! The party is hired. Because all adventures must come from quest givers who give you 100 coins to go do something for them. And while I believe in the social contract, I would also like to think I have a little more free will and personal motivation than being a middle class quest slave my entire adventuring career. 

The caverns were the home to an evil wizard. Except the wizard isn’t actually evil, she just has some traps and people that wander in get accidentally killed. J’ACCUSE! Another adventure in which no one is actually evil. A world of misunderstandings where people don’t get pissed you killed their favorite pet, mean you no harm, and everything is solved by just … existing? I’m not looking for everything in an adventure to be cut and dried, and there’s certainly a place for normalcy to exist. But, also, you have to have SOMETHING in an adventure to get behind? If the normal and expected outcome is just to wander around and make friends with everyone, well, I guess that’s a vibe. But it’s not the vibe that I think most people are looking for in a game.

In this adventure you fight a giant spider. Maybe. If you go down that hallway. And, maybe, you fight two cave crickets, if you fuck with the moss on the wall that they are eating. Otherwise you just wander around and in to traps that don’t kill you. J’ACCUSE! Nothing to do. No challenge. No risk. No contention, or tension, in the adventure. Do you have to hack everyone down, like in a raid? No, certainly not, but, again, there needs to be some risk and tension in an adventure. 

“Pressing any incorrect glyph causes 1d6 skeletons to appear and attack the PCs.” Mind you, this is in a room without any skeletons in it. J’ACCUSE! This is abstracted. The monsters are not even in status, to let you know that fucking up will case consequences. Youjust push something and some skeletons “appear.” Skeletons in the room, bones, alcoves on the walls with bones in them, these all provide the smallest bit of framing for the encounter that will soon occur. But not here. Just *poof* here they are!

“On the floor is the corpse of an adventurer, clearly dead of blunt force trauma.” J’ACCUSE! Again, abstracted content. This is a conclusion. The oldest piece of writing advice is to show and not tell. The description is one of conclusions. We want a description that makes us think “Ah, an adventurer that has died of blunt force trauma!” Or, even better, a description of a body, and then further investigation by the party reveals that it is an adventurer and that they died of blunt force trauma. The key flow in a game is the back and forth between the party and the DM. They ask something or take an action, the DM follows up. That causes the party to further follow up. This back and forth is the heart of D&D. But not if you deal in abstracted conclusions.

This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru with a suggested price of $1. No preview, but it’s pay what you want, so, you know …

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/504028/the-crimson-caverns?1892600