The Goblin Bathwater Incident

By Marius Brunner
Self Published
5e
Level 1

Goblin Bathwater, a magical drug, has taken hold in a sleepy coastal town at the edge of the Empire. As the characters investigate the origin of the drug, they uncover an international criminal conspiracy, wild and ancient magic, and a threat to reality itself.

This 54 page adventure uses about 35 pages to describe some political intrigue in a town and a couple of dungeons around in, in the usual sort of plot based “investigate and stop it” adventure. The designer has an interesting ability to slot in some relatable and gameable details, although the entire thing ends up being too complicated to get a good handle on. Which doesn’t make it impossible to run, but rather hard to get the fully intended effect. Also, it’s one of those modern D&D worlds where no one is human and everyone is half-genesai, blah blah blah etc. It really has no impact on the adventure though.

New in town, the party shoots a man in Reno just to see him die. Locked up for the night, they are told the next morning to go look in to some ghouls that appeared in the local graveyard. The trail of which leads to a farm. At which time the party is sent to look for the farms missing kids. At the old wizards tower. Who wants them to go to some caves. [Interlude with some events that can happen in town while the party is investigating something] And in the caves the party meets the creator of all goblins, and a magical portal to Cthulhu-land … bringing in some of DCC “Meet Gods at Level 1!” vibe. I won’t ask if 5e players ever get bored saving world every adventure; whatever floats your boat man.

What’s supposed to be happening is that the goblins are selling the bathwater from their creator-god (which lives in their cave, asleep.) Some guy in town is using is to sell drugs and take over the town from the other boss in town who controls the other half of the town. This rivalry creates the initial bar fight in the first scene, as well as being the instigator the ghoul shit and is SUPPOSED to serve as what the party is investigating … which I guess is supposed to lead to the weirdness in the goblin caves. This sort of breadcrumb investigation and then base assault is the usual part and parcel of modern plot games and this one does go the extra mile, throwing in a few more stops along the way than the usual adventure. In principle, the idea is not too terrible.

But before I get in to it, let me note some of the high points.

The designer seems to have knack for putting in relatable things and or the farcical, or, perhaps, ALMOST farcical sorts of detail that a DM can leverage to really bring a game world alive. We get little one liners scattered throughout the adventure that really do a good job conveying things. Each 5e character background gets a potential hook, with the Nobles being “You won a sizeable plot of land in an auction in the capital. Little did you realise just how far south this ‘rustic farmstead in the foothills near an important local travel junction’ would turn out to be.” So, a little bit of wit which does a great job conveying information and tone. Everyonein town belongs to one of the two factions …with a dumpling town guard. Kids who will pass along information for a swig of booze (which then leads be say “or cigs! Or cigs!” Thats what good writing does, it excites you and leads you to other places.) A wizard who watches the town in his scrying and treats it like his own soap opera. Or a found note right out of Jr High where one kid is asking another to be his girlfriend. It seldom forces the DM in to the farcical, but it does tend make the mind leap to there, and the possibilities for play it implies. And that’s a good thing. When the writing is doing this its strong. The ANCIENT cleric who everyone discounts because he’s so old. And the kids that trick him in to creating new effigies for his Temple of the All Faiths. GOLD!

And now for the rest of this is (according to the ad copy) “beautifully made” adventure with “faceted intrigue” and “balanced and devious encounters.” I have noted, in the past as general advice, that putting adjectives and adverbs in front of verbs and nouns can spice them up. Used too often though, or in ad-copy, and it raises my cynicism eyebrow.

The maps are in a .rar format (Do people still do that? I guess they do?) that my on rar unarchiver can’t handle. So, I don’t get some of the maps I guess. The hooks, one for each background (Yea!) are a little open-ended. Like the sage coming to town to research an ancient civilization. They could be a little more self-contained. Don’t get me wrong, great idea … but just a bit LARGE. The read-aloud says things like “Newcomers, eh?” and does other things that betray players with more local characters. Read-aloud, especially around the first barfight, is a little bland and there are leaps of logic … like the ghouls travelling three hours from the graveyard to the “special” farm and a Pegasus showing up out of nowhere. That, combined with the goblins in the cave system having two captured basilisks to turn loose on the  characters, feels a little too 4e/5e to me, and not in a good way. I wish there were more examples, in the barfight for example. And, things like the local tax collector assessing a 50% fine BEG for some stabbing … which I guess is not a desired outcome since there’s no guidance in that area.

But, no, the big thing is that the plot doesn’t really come through at all. There’s supposed to be this faction rivalry in town, and some drugs stuff going on. That feels VERY disconnected from the surface level main plot. In a bar, a boxer goes crazy, the crowd goes wild, the ghoul uprising. Leading to the farm. Leading to the tower. Leading to the caves. You don’t even actually need to get involved in the faction/drug thing at all. And it might not even be obvious that IS going on. The adventure doesn’t push it enough. There ARE town sections, and there ARE mentions of it, but it just doesn’t come through in a coherent manner. 

But it tries. It takes ten pages to cover a barfight, getting failed, and looking in to the disturbed graves. That’s too much. There too much extraneous detail, background, and motivations. The adventure jumps back and forth at one spot, with the farmers sending the party to the tower, and then the farmers telling the party, maybe, about a dream that leads to the caves. But this isn’t in plot order it’s in location order … so he post-tower section is also in the pre-tower section … both under the farm. TO be clear, you COULD organize things this way, but if so it just needs to be clearer … and it’s not. 

This could be a delightful little thing. The jaunt in to the tower, or to the political bosses lairs, or little events in town …, there’s a lot here that’s not actually required but could be delightful spice to an adventure. But, when your rumors says “the city council is corrupt” then you need something about that. And the space that could be used to support that, or to make the adventure clearer, is taken up by a lot of padding. This thing really needed a lot of focus to bring its true possabilities out. 

It’s clear, I think, that I found some things in this to like. The little bits of local colour do a lot to liven it up and those little bits are what are missing in A LOT of whats commonly sold. And, along with this, little bits of relatable content, like one of the boxers drinking before the out, the bluster and bolster to psych up. And then there’s he extra effort this thing goes to. The additional vignettes and areas and the “not just Yet Another 4 Hours Adventure” length, going just a bit farther. And while 25-30 hours to complete, as claimed in the intro, seems a bit long I can see this being 16 or so hours without much trouble. And then, toss in the ending with both the goblin creator … which you can totally fucking kill, and some Guardians Of The Cthulhu Realm shit … yeah, I can take an element of the fantastic, dcc style. It just needed more clarity and more integration of the political element and the actual plot and a trimming of the BS.

This is $8 at DriveThru. The preview is seven pages. I might suggest the fourth preview page (adventure page 8) as an intro to the writing style that you can expect. 


https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/365528/The-Goblin-Bathwater-Incident?1892600

This entry was posted in 5e, Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, Reviews. Bookmark the permalink.

18 Responses to The Goblin Bathwater Incident

  1. 3llense'g says:

    “The maps are in a .rar format (Do people still do that? I guess they do?) that my on rar unarchiver can’t handle.” This part is unclear, did you try downloading WinRAR?

  2. squeen says:

    Great review! Full of all sorts of curmudgeonly old-school goodness. I particularly liked The Man In Black reference, but also:

    “Also, it’s one of those modern D&D worlds where no one is human and everyone is half-genesai, blah blah blah etc.”

    Hell yeah!

    “This sort of breadcrumb investigation and then base assault is the usual part and parcel of modern plot games…”

    This is very insightful. It’s also the trope for almost every post 80’s action movie.

    It sounds like the author has some good ideas. Hopefully he’ll do some non-5e leaning stuff in the future.

    Bryce, you still got it.

  3. This is a solid review for sure. Most DMs fall into two categories. (1) Those who want to use a product verbatim and (2) those wishing to mine gold and rearrange extensively. This review not only describes the adventure nicely, but identifies which of these might like it more, peppered with asides that offer good advice for any designer. Useful and well done for sure…

  4. Anonymous says:

    Good to see you back here Olde !

  5. Oswald says:

    >tiny wory goblins selling bathwater of their God
    Is her name Belle?

  6. Anonymous says:

    Oswald! When is your next release?

    Your stuff is crazy good

    • oswald says:

      Probably in 2-3 months actually. Thank you! I got an adventure I started working on but my home campaign’s keeping me on my toes.
      The goal with the next thing is to try to push for “the gm always has all the info they need on the page” and quick to absorb for a DM that has game in 2 days but is putting in extra hours at work and needs something with meat on it’s bones.

  7. Graham says:

    I just realised that the cover stockart is the same artwork that was used on the cover of ‘Night Crystal Pass’.

  8. Anonymous says:

    Awesome! Looking forward to it!

    You use your home campaign to author/ use as the basis for modules?
    Gabor does that and I really think it makes the work better

    • Oswald says:

      I think it’s shameful to publish something without having playtested it. A home campaign gives the material to see what works and what doesn’t. Though tbh, what I publish is very, very much more polished than my home game.

      • Oswald says:

        Though I’ll be honest, it really blackpilled me on the adventure writing industry when I realized there’s award winning modules that never got playtested. I assumed people’s home campaigns are where they make adventures and then they publish stuff out of it. How else would someone create good material if they don’t have players to run adventures for?

        • Playtesting is important; but it doesn’t necessarily have to be a home campaign. We’ve published several unique systems, none of them compatible with the OSR or any flavor of D&D; and we’re only running one of these (Pits & Perils) with any regularity. That said, while most of our published scenarios came directly from our home campaign, a few were playtested at conventions (The Vines of Atarak at KantCon 2015 and The Snow Hag’s Aerie, at PretzCon 2013). The rest were tested using pre-gen characters unattached to any campaign…

          • Commodore says:

            I don’t think anyone is going to criticize a playtest at conventions or for a slightly different system version, I don’t think that’s what Oswald is talking about. Just get your adventure in front of players, somewhere. It’s shocking how many modules never hit any table anywhere before they publish and ask for money for their work.

Leave a Reply to squeen Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *