By Nickolas Zachary Brown
Five Cataclysms
Five Cataclysms
Level 1
Souls trespassing into the rogue plane of Akiandor are captured and trapped here, doomed to be tormented by the dark denizens of this place, their souls slowly whittled down to fuel distant engines of preposterous design. This dark and terrible place is full of necromantic monsters built to instill terror, and vicious mechanical traps wrought to imbue fear in every step. Flesh will be torn. Limbs will be severed. Lives will come to a brutal end again and again, only to be cruelly revived by the light of Tirazen, locked in an eternal loop until the day their soul is so tattered from repeat sunderings that their quivering essence joins the chorus of mournful wailing in the chasm of souls.
This 72 page adventure presents a single dungeon level with about 120 rooms in a touch dungeon with lots of challenges, varied and interesting. Imaginative and creative, as is usual with Five Cataclysms, it’s also more than a little askew with a strong funhouse vibe that never turns in to farce.
This is a classic Tower of Gygax dungeon. You’re on another plane, and each time you tie in the dungeon you get brought back to life in the lobby area, perhaps with a little signal degradation, so to speak. You’ve met a black blog in the lobby who has a key to level two, but it’s only giving it to you if you bring it The MacGuffin, somewhere on level one. This is the absolute barest of pretexts for a dungeon designer to be a “starter dungeon for a group of master-level players.“
Ok, sure. And that differs from White Plume how? And thusly we come to everyone’s relationship with funhouse dungeons and/or how much pretext we need to adventure. How much verisimilitude do you need to get going? Is that even a designers job? Isn’t it YOUR job, the players, to find a reason to adventure? Fuck if I know the meaning of life, but we’ll take my attitudes towards it as the norm for players and dms and run with it while examining adventures.
And thusly, how much pretext do I need? How much funhouse can be in the funhouse? How much should the map be an exploratory map and how much is it allowed to be a pointcrawl map? This is not a zany dungeon. I’m not even sure it’s fair to call this a funhouse dungeon. There is not the meta or snark that, say, Tomb of Tog had. I think, maybe, it’s more classic dungeon encounters, over and over again. Maybe an analogy would be Dragon’s Lair?
The individual encounters here are pretty damn nice. There’s a degree of real life to them. Not just verisimilitude but something both simpler and more complex than that. I’m remembering one of the rooms, let me go find it. Ok, so, it’s a tenfoot wide hallway, forty feet long, door on both sides. The door opens only slightly, revealing charred and dented crates just beyond the door. There’s a fucking heavy crate in front of the door. And/or a hallway full of them. This is nuts. I can’t tell you how many times this has happened to me in real life. Well, ok, maybe not the dented and charred part (IE: pay the fuck attention to the trap that was just telegraphed to you Excellent work there!) But the whole “a fucking spatula has gotten out of place and now I can’t open the fucking utensil fucking drawer.” It’s so simple. It’s so immensely relatable.
And it feels like that’s what this adventure, and most stuff by Brown, does. Over and over and over again. There is this ability to create a relatable situation, as if the situation was imagined first, by someone who has never played D&D or heard about it, and then it’s put in the adventure and maybe a mechanic or two attached. Imagination without the influence of the weight of Tolkien and all of that fantasy literature and media since then that has standardized it. I would normally refer to this as “the OD&D way”, but I think it’s a little different here. “Barbed Pillar Atop a multi-tiered pillar is a scepter that radiates magical power. However, the pillar is covered in sharp iron spikes and barbs, many of these strung up with strings & chain with little brass bells suspended upon them. The pillar itself rests on a platform surrounded by the dark streams of liquid. “ This is not a full on 4e set piece, but it is a Special, I think, if we were looking at this from a dungeon population table.
I frequently draw analogies to the Tower of Gygax for some funhouses. It is, I think, because of the ratio of specials to other rooms. When the ratio gets too high then you’re trending to funhouse. There is some kind of middle ground where we find Dungeon of the Bear and other entries like it.
I like almost every encounter in this. They are unusual, varied, many are relatable. I am envious of Browns ability to come sup with these and hit time and time again. And it’s not just the encounters. When it comes to monsters we’ve got “A ramshackle blob of corpses stitched and bolted together, bound with chains and hooks and cords. Stands 8’ tall and roughly 6’ wide, hobbles on 3 stumps of rotten flesh. As it shambles, the clanking of its chains resonate down the halls.” Well, there you go! Great description! But,also, hey, it’s an abomination. How about something more mundane? “A humanoid skeleton whose hands have been replaced with rusted meathooks, or similar. Curiously, they smell like, really bad.” Well, yes, duh, of course! Rusted metal claw hooks for hands. That hits in the imagery department and it hits HARD! Why didn’t you think of that? I guess I’m just a 4e DM and don’t deserve love since I have no creativity at all.
Formatting is good enough, terse and easy enough to follow. Writing is quite evocative, even with a more than a few second person thrown in. Map is decent, large, lots of loops, lots of features. Blah blah blah
I am fascinated by this. Or, perhaps, the question raises. While I admire the raw creativity here and think Brown is one of the best, there is something else going on that I can’t get ahold of. I suddenly realize my own mortality: the line of pretext. Every room a special? Ok. Not much of a setup, or, one that doesn’t make sense? So what. How grounded does an adventure have to be for you to buy in to it? And, if you don’t buy in to it then is it then that arch-heretic: an activity? Damn you Nickolas Zachary Brown! Damn you all to hell!
Meh. Encounters are great. Imagery and creativity is great. I love it them to death. I must also condemn thee to Regerts. Maybe it’s a zones issue?
This is $9 at DriveThru. The preview is eleven pages. You get to see about seven rooms at the end and all the intro. You’re going to have to make a determination from that, and you should be able to.
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/574403/enkori-s-dark-descent-vestibule?1892600
(Actually, I do know the meaning of life, so, you know,)
“I guess I’m just a 4e DM and don’t deserve love since I have no creativity at all.”
Oof, shots fired. Beoric will be along shortly, I’m sure, but for now allow me to be insulted on his behalf: You sir, are a brute.
Yeah, I bought and tried reading this adventure a while back, but found the beginning utterly incomprehensible, and therefore bounced off of it.
Seriously, I challenge anyone to take a peek at the DriveThru preview and envision what exactly Brown is trying to describe. You’ll see that the module starts abruptly, with a rambling overview of an area called ‘Tirazen’s Lobby,’ which I think is supposed to be a sort of base camp where dead PCs can be infinitely revived? In any case, this environment has no corresponding map, and its write-up is borderline gibberish:
“As you exit that dark, forboding place, [?] an abundance of warm, calming light washes over you. As your eyes adjust, you see the area around you is wrought from bright white polished marble. Not far in front of you is a handrail beyond which is a great gulf in which languishes wisps of spectral entities. Beyond this gulf a feat of architecture like none you’ve ever seen stands: immense arches perhaps 2 miles tall from top to bottom, hold up an impossibly large ceiling. These arches form a circle within from which that brilliant light pours. Under this light you see an immaculate city, perhaps abandoned, upon one side of a gulf of its own, [?] and on the other an overgrown structure hidden from your view by dense foliage [?]. This walkway [?] appears to encircle the entire gulf which encircles the grand arches, although twists, turns, and blockages may [???] prevent passage.”
^ This is how the whole thing starts, and maybe I’m stupid, but I don’t really know what half of it means. And as if that wasn’t confusing enough, the adventure THEN immediately begins describing a ‘mock village’ called ‘Tira,’ which is located, of course, ‘here’ (????). No, there isn’t any map for THIS location either, but it seems — maybe –to be distinct from the previously detailed ‘City Beyond the Arches,’ though we have no idea WHERE it’s located in relation to it!
But don’t worry, because within ‘Tira’ is a vaguely-described creature called ‘the Entity,’ which “has the key that leads deeper into the dark descent, within which further keys to other chambers at the end of Tirazen’s lobby [?] may [?] be discovered that lead to elsewhere [?]. If the players ask where the townsfolk went, the entity will gesture to the city beyond the arches, but will mention that the way was locked by a monster long ago.” … So the “way” to the “City” is “locked”? Does that mean there’s a door or barrier somewhere? WHERE?
The module continues to babble on like this, while failing to communicate basic details to the reader. Again, it could be my own poor comprehension, but I had to give up; maybe someone here can make more sense of it all than I…
I’m semi-fluent in cackhanded adventure writing, and I found it rather charming in a straight-from-the-DM’s-notepad kind of way. The proper way to use the module is to nod and smile and then skip to page 5.
Makes sense. I guess the adventure’s central mechanic (“ooooh, a dungeon where the party can’t permanently die, interesting”) being so poorly explained to the point of making me suspect I was having a stroke shook my faith in the whole endeavour. But there’s probably some coherent stuff in the dungeon proper. Perhaps should revisit
Thanks for the feedback.
Although technically the info is all there, it is indeed super dense, rambling, and chock full of stuff you don’t need to know about (why the fuck did I bother mentioning the silent city and the maze of the mysterious masters??) so I can’t imagine being forced to parse through this if you were at a table full of squawking players! Definitely my bad for trying to vomit a campaign’s worth of exposition onto 1 page of an isolated dungeon.
I’m going back now and adding some bulletpoints and highlights and quick notes to make this more digestible. It really is a wonderful dungeon of which I’m very proud, and it’s a damn shame for someone to be turned off at the very start.
Please forgive me, the energy with this one all went into the content, and by the time I was putting together the intro, my energy was on the outro, as it were haha.
Cheers.
Wow, appreciate the responsiveness!
So I skimmed your updated version, and do approve of the bullet points in theory… But my confusion about the look and layout of the actual environment you’re describing remains. I think “Tirazen’s Lobby” is very poorly explained.
[Obviously none of this matters and I should’ve just handwaved past this part of the module, but at this point I’ve reread it like 100 times and feel the need to make good on my investment]
From your expository paragraph, we learn that
1. There’s an “area” (of indeterminate size) made from white marble.
2. Some distance ahead, there’s a “handrail” (of indeterminate breadth) which overlooks a “great gulf.”
3. Somewhere in this “great gulf,” there’s a ring of arches.
4. Within this ring of arches, there’s a bunch of random shit (including a Great City, another smaller “gulf,” or hole, or… and a “structure.” Which is “overgrown.”)
imo there are some problems here. First of all, there’s absolutely no sense of SHAPE or scale to the space. So questions arise: Is this marble “area” a cramped hallway? A vast concourse? Uhhh, an auditorium? Does it stretch onwards, to terminate at a single handrail-fenced opening, as I first assumed (like an aisle leading to one big, flat window)? Or is the architecture more complicated?
Particularly confusing to me is the last sentence, which comes out of nowhere. After a bunch of talk about arches and cities, we suddenly get: “This walkway APPEARS to encircle the entire gulf which encircles the grand arches, although twists, turns, and blockages MAY prevent passage.”
Beyond all the empty hedging and repeated “encirclings”, there’s a pressing question: WHICH walkway??? The existence of a ‘walkway’ was NEVER communicated prior to this sentence’s sudden appearance!! Where is this ‘walkway,’ and where is it going? How long does it take to walk?
After going over all of this several times, my GUESS is that the ENTIRETY of the room— all of “Tirazen’s Lobby” — is the ‘walkway.’ Is that right? Rather than any sort of enclosed chamber, it’s actually a BIG LOOPING BALCONY, which is exposed, and elevated around a central atrium.
As for the ‘mock village,’ its buildings are constructed all along and throughout this wraparound balcony. As for the ‘locked door,’ it’s set into the outer wall facing the railing at some random point, and leads who-knows-where. Do I basically have it?
If so, I think you could make this more clear, by LEADING with the nature of the lobby. If it is a circular walkway, projecting from the walls far above the floor of a great domed chamber, INTRODUCE it to us with that fact. If upon this wide walkway are scattered the houses of an abandoned village, mention that early on! If there’s no obvious path from the gallery down to the city it hangs over, point that out.
Anyways. With that embarrassingly hypocritical rambling out of my system, I’m gonna take a look at the dungeon proper now. Cheers ?
Oh my lord you got me laughing my ass off over here. Yeah that whole area is way too complex to try to describe. I’ll have to go back and make another iteration, just nixing most of that into blurry abstract.
But to answer your question (and help myself write it better), … Oh dear god I don’t know if the lobby refers to the whole area or just this small area you’ve access to. *facepalm.
The accessible balcony portion is approximately 50′ wide from impassable wall to handrail, and perhaps 200 yards long ending in a locked door on one side, and impassable wall on the other. There be a roof above your head maybe 20′ up. The ‘mock village’ is only in this accessible portion.
The whole arched area and that nonsense is something like 5 miles wide and just one portion of an absurd megastructure so let’s just uh not look at that anymore xD I’ll need to do some chopping.
In any case, I appreciate the feedback.
Reads like a kind of abstract or escher-esque, dreamlike space is the intent?
If one IS supposed to grok the scale then references to dimensions or length/height would help. I don’t like to quote feet or yards unless players pace it out but; a spears throw? the size of a boarding house? miles ? a half days march? of a scale beyond comprehension receding into endlessness?
If players aren’t supposed to be able to grok it in normal space time then something like; all sense of scale and proportion are lost, swirling, but you see/make dizzy impressions of …