The Light in the Church

By Christopher Wilson
Self Published
OSE
Levels 1-3

Rumours around the town of Braunhaven speak of seeing lights in the windows of the All Faiths Temple late at night, long after Father Ainsworth has gone to bed for the night.  They talk of seeing fell shadows skulking about the inside of the church.  Is it a foul shade come to the church in search of something lost in its life?  The townsfolk are becoming frightened and somebody needs to investigate…

This 88 page adventure features a dungeon with 44 rooms. Undead and goblinoids stand and fight, with little interactivity beyond that. By which I mean some secret doors and a couple of traps. Disappointing.

This is a basic dungeoncrawl. You’re sent in by an (overly described) priest to see what’s up in the church after dark. Which seems weird since he doesn’t peek in his front door to see goblins ransacking the main sanctuary, but, whatever. The church above has three areas and the “catacombs” underneath have the rest of the 44 rooms. The catacombs are laid out in three corridors, running north south, with rooms hanging off of them. They are connected by another corridor running east west near the entrance. So, not the best exploratory design we’re ever going to encounter. And it’s done in “I used a fancy tile mapmaker” style which makes it hard on the eyes. The doors, in particular, being hard to make out.

Inside we find goblins, hobgoblins, and a variety of undead. There are a number of secret doors and an occasional burial tomb that is trapped. This is the sum of the interactivity in the adventure. So, wanna hack? Here it is. I really can’t stress enough how one dimensional this sort of play is. No talking to folk, no map obstacles or puzzles. Not even an overarching mystery to figure out, since the dudes were sent in to loot by an evil baron and I can’t find any reference, in spite of the conclusion assuming there is one, to the party being able to figure out why the humanoids are in the church catacombs. If all you want to do is stab things, with little sense of exploration, then this is for you. I think that play is sad, but, whatever floats your Wednesday night boat I guess.

Treasure is described ok, at least for the mundane items. Diamond rings, an abundance of tiaras with electrum and emeralds or the like. A holy book of prayers to the old gods. We can see in that last one a lack of real descriptions, as if “a sack with then gems worth 5gp each. A little more in this area would be nice … such as the monogrammed earrings that found in one room. Magic items are generous … a sword of sharpness, a frostbrand and plenty of +1 armours. They do NOT get any sort of description, which is super sad. The allusions to history, prevalent throughout the adventure, do not extend to the magic items. Magic items should have a sense of wonder about them and that’s just not present here. (I note that the Sense Of Wonder comments should apply to exploratory elements as well, which a hack does not generally deliver on.) There are weird misses with the treasure though … I guess youtube to loot the towns tombs? And there are all these gold doors. Which are fake. I thought the doors  were fake but I eventually figured out that the gold is. Except then you encounter some doors with gold inlay … and no notes on how much gold you get for scrapping them off. It’s a weird miss.

Wanderers do something, although it is almost always on patrol or out hunting. Things should drop from the ceiling or creatures be grumbling or some such. Give the DM just a little bit more to work with, to riff on, with your wanderers. The actual creatures get their own page of stat block after each room in which they are encountered, which does a lot to explain the page count; turning a lot of the rooms in to two page affairs. They are full stat blocks, so it’s weird to see continual references to the goblin king and his bodyguards in rooms where they do not exist. Further, there’s no order of battle, so everyone just stands in place and dies. 

The formatting is a little weird. You get the bolded keyword stuff that is common in OSE, with little extra words adding flavour. Then an explicit listing of the exits, then a listing of the treasure, and THEN, finally, a note if there are creatures in the room. This is hella wrong, on many accounts. If the exit is an obvious non-standard feature, like a spiral staircase, then it should be up in the bolded keyword description. Likewise, monsters should feature up high if thats what the party is going to be hit with. A room full of rampaging goblins should not be normally described and then the DM say “oh, yeah, there also a horde of rampaging goblins in it, I guess.”

I don’t hate the OSE style. A main hall (in the title) gives you a framing. Mosaic tiles, dark marble, incense in the air, pews, and stained glass reflections are a good solid foundation for a room description. WAY further down we get the creatures holding flickering cables, shedding odd shadows on the walls. That’s pretty good imagery, if it were up higher anyway.

So, it’s a hack, with above average descriptions of rooms. I wouldn’t be happy with this if it were the main quality of the OSR produced adventures. But, nor would I be raging mad and feeling ripped off like I usually am. It’s a disappointment, but one that could be improved upon. Except, maybe the map. That needs some major rework to turn it in to something. Oh, and also the interactivity. Which sucks.

This is $6 at DriveThru. The preview is six pages. You get to see shit. Just the first six pages, which is the “what levels  is this for” thing and a blank page included, at that.. Crappy preview for determining if you want to buy the adventure.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/420874/The-Light-in-the-Church?1892600