Cursed Blood and Cold Steel

By A. Umbral
Cthonic Creations
OSR
Level 1

Beneath the shadowed walls of Crow’s Keep, treason festers in whispered secrets and quiet deals. The war-weary King Uldred fights to hold his crumbling throne, while unseen forces conspire in the dark corners of noble halls. The city’s watchful Reeve has sent word to a handful of expendable operatives—those desperate enough to gamble their fate on a mission veiled in secrecy. Their charge? To infiltrate an uncharted cave deep in the foothills, where a bandit faction has taken root. But steel alone will not be enough. Beneath the carved ruins of forgotten empires, something far older stirs. A hidden temple lies buried under the earth, its walls heavy with serpentine scripture, its chambers thick with the weight of ancient curses. Lady Rinwolde’s network has already reached this place, her spies clawing at long-lost relics of unfathomable power. Blood will spill in the darkness. Trust will be tested in the fires of ambition. And in the ruins where mortal and monster meet, the truth is as sharp as the blades that gleam in the dying torchlight. Will you uncover the mystery before Crow’s Keep collapses into war? Or will you vanish beneath the earth, another forgotten name swallowed by history?

This thirty page adventure uses about four pages to describe about 45 rooms across two levels of a bandit lair/snakeman temple. Abstracted and minimalistic in the dungeon, while trying its best to hit all of the marks of a good adventure. I am generally left confused on the choices made for an adventure outline.

Communicating the vibe of something is hard. I generally push in to hyperbole, trusting that my intelligent, good looking, and humble readers can follow along. In this case, what if you had a Vampire Queen dungeon of 45 rooms over a few pages, that really aggressive minimalism that showed up there. And, then, as preamble I stuck in a modern intro and hex crawl and then in the appendix included a massive rumor table and monster stats and lore and so on. There would be this massive disconnect, right, between the amount of detail that The Main Event has vs the supporting information. It’s not that the dungeon MUST be the main event; it could be a village social thing or it could be a hex crawl thing, with the goal being a small dungeon or some such with The Thing in it you want to get. In these cases it would make more sense for more effort to be spent on the hex crawl or the social village elements or some such. But, if the dungeoncrawl IS the adventure then I must point out the obvious disconnect. COULD you write a five page dungeon that is great inside of thirty pages? Sure. Does this? No.

Ok, you’re level ones and the default hook is that the local reeve is sending you to check out some bandit caves. Seems you’re convicts and you get a pardon if you do well, whatever that is. You’re sent to spy, learn information, and so on. Absolutely nothing in the adventure is going to help you do that, that’s unsupported in every way, but that’s the pretext. You’re taken by a ferryman (with some decent read-aloud, all in italics, alas, but nicely done) across the water to your start point. You’ve got three days of iron rations and he’s coming back for you in five days, no more no less, and not waiting around for you. You’ve got a two day “hex crawl” in front of you till you reach the bandit lair. This is all looking a little rough for level ones … a strict timeline doesn’t really mesh well with the hit and run away vibe of squishy characters. It’s a very structured “hex crawl” in that the DM is essentially rolling for wanderers at the appropriate time but everything else is very controlled. Roll on the weather table. Heal a HP if the night was chill, you enter a mountain hex, etc. The wandering monster table for the dungeon is also a bit more than I expected. “1 Escaped Prisoner – caught by bandits. Could be adventurers, possibly allies.” or “Standing Water in Passage – water pit, 5 feet deep. Slows characters. “ These are both ok things. I’m in a pretty pleasant mood at this point and looking forward to the dungeon.

Then comes the dungeon map. This is a half page thing, full color, mage in Dungeongrapher or some such. Lots of textures and tables and shit on the map. It’s a disaster. Too small, too much detail and overlapping textures. There’s no real complexity to the map, but, also, it’s barely legible, which is a problem.

Next up comes a summary of the various rooms in the dungeon. This is something I sometimes come across. I understand the goal, but I think it seldom works out the way the designer wants. In this case, it’s presented in two column table format. The first table column has a room name and maybe a couple of details why the second table column has a few notes about the room. “Entrance Tunnel” and then “Narrow stone passage littered with old bones of animals. A makeshift barricade with a single guard.” So, sure, that’s fine. Sometimes the first column has a few more details, things that might be obvious to be seen and so on. 

Oh. 

Wait.

That’s not a summary.

That’s the actual dungeon.

Mind you, room two, which I’m about to quote, is INSIDE a cave: “Guard Watchpost – each tower has a Bandit Guard “ That’s the first column. Then column two of the table says “Elevated overlook where scouts track movement. Two small wooden towers.” Repetition. Minimalism. Abstraction. Sometimes monsters (bandits) show up in column one. Sometimes in column two. There are never more than a sentence or so of words. “12 Hall of Murals “ and “Bandits have partially uncovered ancient serpentfolk murals-some have begun whispering in their sleep. “ These are ideas, not encounters. You’re stabbing folks. There’s no infiltration here, there are not supporting notes for that of any type. Stab Stab Stab! Sure that’s fine, I guess. Sometimes. 

How about an EXTENSIVE rumor table! “Whispers from the Past” – “Superstition” “True (Cave Wraiths whisper in lost languages, and some bandits are driven to madness)” Uh. What? What’s the purpose of the rumor title? Am I missing something? There’s two fucking pages of these. I don’t know, forty, fifty of them? Like I said, a minimalism dungeon supported by everything you would want in a lot of detail. But, in a weird fucking way. I’m not sure I know how to use that rumor table. It’s like the heading title is supposed to have more information or something? But it doesn’t? I don’t know.

One of the rooms has a trap. “Door Locked with a simple trap.” That’s it. You want to know what the trap is? Do the work yourself I guess. No order of battle. No infiltration notes. No real tricks or traps, given a definition of what a trick or trap would generally be agreed to. 

Unless you REALLY know what you’re doing, pay attention to the main adventure. That’s where your effort should go. I’m at a loss as to how that can be a mystery, but, there you go.

This is $10 at DriveThru. The preview is seven pages. You get to see the intro, hex crawl, and the first seven rooms. No, that’s not a summary. That’s roughly 20% of the dungeons rooms. Good preview?

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/530730/cursed-blood-and-cold-steel?1892600