Castle of the Veiled Queen

By Kuba Skurzy?ski
Nerd Sirens
OSR
Levels: Low to Mind

[…]  To protect St. Honegund’s holy site, stone wall and tower were built. Tower became inhabited by owls over one, full-moon night. From that date onward, the full moon was a special moment for the inhabitants of the fortress, as during these nights the foundations of the so-called Moon Tower would light up with a blue glow, as a sign of the divine providence over the castle. Imperial guards still repeat a frightful prophecy to each other, that when no more owls will be nesting here, the whole Karpaki shall be flooded by the infernal heat of the Eastern Sun. So far, legend has never been verified, as despite many sieges of the castle, the Moon Tower has not fallen to ruin, and owls have always been around.

This 44 page thing is not a adventure. Maybe a setting? A castle description? It’s Wall of Text, that’s for sure, with many issues that stem, perhaps, fro a lack of understanding of what the thing they were writing IS and thus how to write for it.

It’s a castle in some pseudo-historical-like central european setting. Gunpowder, Kaiser-moustauches and so on, mixed in with fairies and medieval markets. But, it’s not really an adventure. It’s like you included the Keep portion of Keep on the Borderlands but not the Chaos Caves, but then padded out to many more pages the keep. There are castle rumors. “The tower will fall when the owls leave the roosting!” Hmm, sounds familiar. Anyway, shit like that. Some rumors about the castle, some rumors from servants in the castle, a random guard generator as well as a random prisoner generator. And, a nice little section on the guards. Their hour, rotations, how they respond, and a note that they can also be lazy, corrupt, and don’t necessarily dislike the prisoners so they can be lax and give special favours at times. That’s a nice bit of realism and a nice little appeal to the party interacting with both groups, both to exploit or make friends with. There’s also a decent little wandering table, with things like a soldier or servent trying to witness something suspicious/illegal and wanting to report it to their patron. Decent. A situation, which is what things in adventures should be. Something for the party to exploit and a nice appeal to richer interactivity inside the castle. 

I’m assuming that this is an EASL adventure and it shows through in a place or two in some awkwardness in the language. “The old well was drilled for sieges – on a daily basis it’s secured by brass plate and the castle crew does not draw water from it.” I’m not quite sure what is being communicated here. It IS or IS NOT ever unlocked? The phrases seem to contradict itself. These DO tend to be the things I care more for, I’m chill with some awkwardness but when I can’t figure out what’s going on in it then problems arise. And there were a lot of people associated with this in production. Weird

But, really, the core issue with this “adventure” is that it lacks a purpose. And that the way the adventure is formatted/laid out/described can’t then match the purpose/objective of that part of the booklet/adventure/whatever. We know, for example, that a map/key format is great for a kind of exploratory dungeon. And that other types of adventures, like investigations, or social adventures have other formats that work better for them. But this booklet doesn’t really know what it is so it can’t really match its formatting to it. 

It is supposed to be, I think, a castle setting? This is the local major castle in the area. These are the people who live there. These are various general parts of the castle. And, then, for each part of the castle, these are some Things Going On. So, bandits hiding in one area, caves underneath with more. The blacksmith and carpentry shop. 

There’s no real thrust to any of this. In this way it is very similar to the Keep. You could, if you were so inclined, do something with the various parts. If the part is visiting then you could drop in part of it, or, rather, use some part of it to spice up their visit. But there are a couple of issues. Unlike The Keep, there’s no real reason to visit. In B2 it’s natural to visit the Keep as a home base, and, even, some of the rulers and such have a reason to eventually interact with the party. That larger framing is absent here, so it really is just a place for you tp drop in and use. But, also, it’s not on the borderlands; it’s a fairly major place. So we’re looking more at civilized play/intrigue. And then the various areas inside are not really set up for intrigue. Theres prisoners, in the jail underneath, but no one and nothing to hook you in as a small todo or such. IF you wanted to include a prisoner for your own game then you could insert them and create some play from it, but this is all just a general framing. Do you want to explore the included Moon Tower part of the keep? Why? Well, there’s not much here. Yo uCOuLD place the McGuffin there, or give the party some need to go there and thus do it. Or create your own intrigues in the political realm and thus give the party a reason to hobnob. But, again, with little purpose to it from the product proper.

So, we get the various parts of the castle explained in a very general way. There’s specificity here but no interactivity to speak of. Its missing things to get something going, but provides a setting if you want to add your own. And, thusly, not an adventure but rather a setting. And, given the lack of interactivity in the product, a kind of weaker one at that. 

And, given this focus, or lack thereof, the formatting it off. General descriptions, with some specificity. Lots of overviews and bullets, to the point that I think it becomes kind of a wall of text in places. They are used as paragraph break rather than calling attention to important things and summaries of them. 

The closest I can get here, I think, in comparison is the fortress supplements from MERP. Here’s a place. You could do something here but we’re not really going to provide an incitement to do so. 

This is $10.50 at DriveThru. There’s no preview. Sucker.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/532586/castle-of-the-veiled-queen?1892600