Night of Blood and Teeth

By Shane Lacey Hensley
Pinnacle Entertainment
Savage Worlds

It begins with a shipwreck on a cold, gray night in Lankhmar. The Temple of the Shark God has come to Lankhmar. They teach “the Way of Predation,” an extreme version of survival of the fittest. The city begins to take their message to heart. Tempers rise. Violence flares. And the city burns. Is the cult the cause of the troubles? Or is there something more ancient, more powerful at work? Your scoundrels, rogues, and heroes must find out before everything they know vanishes in…A Night of Blood and Teeth!

*Withering Sigh* Someone asked for this. I agreed, based on my recent good experience with Lankhmar. Then I realiazed it wasn’t DCC Lankhmar.

This 32 page adventure has five scenes in Lankhmar. It is boring. Lankhmar is boring. Mostly because the designer doesn’t really understand Lankhmar, even though they state in several times things that imply they do. As if the designer knows what they should do but are unable to do it.

Ok, so, shark cult brings a talisman to Lankhmar that brings bad luck. Scene 1: There’s a shipwreck. Scene 2: Some vignettes around town. Scene 3: Save the Beggar King Scene 4: Steal talisman from Shark Temple. Scene 5: Take a boat ride. Scene 3 is completely useless. The party is hired by the thieves guild to go save the beggar king from a mob that the shark cult has instigated. There is no real meaning to this encounter. It serves no purpose. It does not advance the adventure. Failing it does not throw up obstacles. It just wastes time. Scene 5 you take a boat ride to drop the talisman in to the sea. Of course, the shark cult arrives JUST. IN> TIME. as you perform the ritual. There’s no real reason for the party to go on the boat ride; you’re on some anti-shark cult ladies boat and shes the one doing the ritual. It’s a fucking meaningless scene that exists only to have a big final battle. Scene 1 has the party “saving” the survivors of a ship wreck. The hook is that some people come in to your bar, you learn of the shipwreck that is happening right now, and that they were merchants with a lot of gold. Thus you could be heroes that save people or just want to loot the still breathing bodies. This is the best you’re going to get in this adventure for Lankhmar attitude. “You could be a hero or for more larcenous, you could steal from the survivors as they fight the waves while drowning.” The rest of the shit is all do-gooder stuff. One of my favs is the beggar king thing; if you refuse to be hired then the DM is encourag to have the party at least go out to watch what is going on for this meaningless thing.

There’s no grit. There’s no dirt. There’s no squalor. There’s no larcenous thieves. Tis could just as well be written for a 5e game … and, I guess, that’s kind of what Savage Worlds is anyway, a popcorn reality, so, you know … why the fuck would you play this when there are other Lankhmar adaptions available?

It’s full of column long read-aloud in italics to convey information. Long italics sucks shit and is hard to read and no house style should contain it in 2021. Likewise, no long sections of monologue to convey information. You write the fucking adventure so it comes out over time. This is basic, basic design shit. And yet here we see Yet Another Publisher engaging in it. Fuck your editors and Fuck your house style. Make a fucking effort.

Mixed in to the long paragrapgh style encounter descriptions are, of, lets, see, a quarter page of backstory, in random places? Like, how does that advance the plot? How is that backstory actionable or leads to gaming moments? Oh, it doesn’t? THEN WHY THE FUCK IS IT IN THERE?! To meet pay per word requirements, no doubt. Look, I don’t know that’s true, but it is generally true in the industry, so, yeah, lets be evil and slap it on here also.

I don’t know. The temple raid is nor interesting. It gives the DM several options. A straight up fight, sneaking in, dressing up as acolytes, etc. But then it doesn’t really support those styles at all. It just says you can do it and goes in to the (boring and long) room keys. 

There is essentially no thought given to running this at the table; how the DM would use it, making it easy to scan and so on. I guess that’s not a surprise. Are there ANY major publishers that do this? I mean, basically, once you publish an RPG and it has ANY popularity at all then all you have to do is shovel out adventures and people will buy them. Why invest in making them good, or easy to use/run?

Why do you even license something like Lankhmar for Savage Worlds? I guess I know, money. I’m not even sure market demand counts here, unless it is induced. 

This is $6 at DriveThru. The preview is six pages. The last three show you the start of the first scene. Enjoy that shit. It’s the highlight of the adventure.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/247786/Lankhmar-A-Night-of-Blood-and-Teeth