By Vance Atkins Leicester's Rambles OSR Level: Various?
Welcome to Goldrun’s Grotto, a cave complex out in the wild lands. The complex was originally developed in honor of Zaliel, an out-of-favor minor god of woodlands and rain, with an open-air grotto filled with trees and a hidden shrine in the caverns. Over the years, the complex has been claimed and reclaimed by numerous occupants.
This ten page adventure presents five different interpretations of the same ten room cave map. It would have been FAR better to have done one, well.Cause these are minimal junk.
Five versions of keying the same cave map. “Various Levels” says the intro, but none of the dungeons give any guidance on that. They all starts with a five entry rumour table and then move on the dungeon keys, ten of them, that generally fit about seven or eight to a page. The titles are all “the one with the snail” and “the one with a lot of skeletons”, so, enjoy that. And, to be clear, this isn’t five versions of the same map throughout time. There’s no How To Build A Dungeon thing here. It’s just five different keys for the same map. An evolution, through time, could have been interesting, either as a standalone or as a time travel adventure. There have been a couple of those so far, but none, if I recall correctly, that really stood out. Instead we just get five half-hearted attempts at a dungeon.
None of these dungeons are going to be very interesting. While the room entries DO tend to have something interesting in them, the writing is just not solid enough to hold up a nten ine room dungeon. “A pair of giant crayfish lurk” or “Warning glyphs are etched in to the cavern wall, indicating poison” are the general extent of the room descriptions. This is nowhere near the degree of evocative writing I’m looking for in an adventure. There’s no indication of the room, or passage, and what it FEELS like. There are, here and there, things that are a little more interesting. “Lantern Pool: The chimney of Bretha’s Lamp (Area #5) lies in the muddy bottom of the pool, faintly glowing. If a character enters the pool without holding the body of the lantern, the water solidifies to a glass-like consistency, “freezing” the person in place.” The imagery of a pool of water with a faint glow in the bottom is relatively nice, and a classic. The interactivity here, freezing someone in place, is interesting as well, and its handled, mechanically, just with what you see and a note indicating that dispel magic will work. But, no, “A beehive sits at the south end of the grotto. The bees have absorbed some beneficial energies from the old shrine and its trees” is what we can expect, time and again from this. I note, also, the effort at explaining what is going on in the room, in the beehive example. This is not uncommon in this adventure, and totally unneeded.
There are other minor things. The entrance is noted as area two, when its actually area one. The pools of water are described as being between knee deep and waist deep … a decent difference, and it’s handled by one sentence at the start instead of noting it in each room. The lack of that detail, or not caring about it, harkens back to those very minimal, if nonexistent, room descriptions and lack of interest in providing an environment to adventure in. A mighty sin.
One dungeon, putting all of ones effort in to it, would have worked out better. As if, this is just another novelty product.
This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru with a suggested price of $2. The preview is six pages. You get to see the first two dungeons (!), so, good preview.
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/455013/Five-Visits-to-Goldruns-Grotto?1892600
Another lazy DM not willing to make original maps. Why not take the 5 levels, stack them, and make a true dungeon out of it? Or it would have been more interesting to fill out one of the original dungeon geomorphs if you don’t want to create a map.
Now that you mention it, a time-travel dungeon could be compelling. A town and the great monument next to it, at the time of its ruin, a century earlier at its height, and a century prior to that when it was just being built. A limited ability to time travel. Seals on doors that can be undone by changing the past. Leave messages and clues in the future to change the prophesies of past diviners. Hide treasure and come back for it 200 years later. Lines of descent and family feuds that can be healed or disrupted by action at various points.
Three Lives in the Crystal Pyramid of Xeen-Thoth, coming… sometime. Well after NAP3 is done.
I’d buy that!
Matt Finch ran a time-travel dungeon game at GameHole back in maybe 2017-2018. Pretty fun time, though he could run the phonebook and make it fun, haha.
I am reminded of two things: Thulean Echoes had the party explore the dungeon in the past and most likely die, with their actions altering it in the present. The earlier Role Aids Crystal Barrier had a planet that oscillated between 6 time periods, with different encounters, defenders etc. depending on the period. Hard to pull off but a worthy target to aim for.
It’s a pity, I actually just did an Atkins review; he’s capable of a decent dungeon with focus: https://coldlightrpgpress.weebly.com/home/crapshoot-monday-this-free-thing-i-found-on-itchio-the-tomb-of-spear-and-smoke
Having focus is important, it feels like keying the same lair five different times is going to spread out all your best ideas for a given space…a better value would be five lairs keyed once each.