The Lost Caravan

By R. Nelson Bailey
Dungeoneers Guild Games
OSRIC
Levels 3-5

The annual caravan bound for Insarna Castle is weeks overdue. The lords who rule over this remote castle are worried that some grave calamity has befallen it. Since resupplying the garrison is of vital importance to the realm, this is highly alarming. They urgently seek a group of capable adventurers to locate the missing caravan somewhere in the wild expanse that surrounds the route to Insarna. Time grows short for the missing men and supplies. Can your party of adventurers solve this mystery before it is too late?

This 21 page  adventure has the party following a trail through the wilderness, fighting monsters, until you find an eighteen room cave system with more monsters in it. All you do is stab, in rooms with minimal description. Just a generic OSR “adventure”.

Some copper dragon has gotten itself possessed by an amulet with five demons in it. It attacked the caravan. You track it back, following a path of destruction and finding some people who fled from the caravan. Usually they are being held captive by gnolls, etc. Oh, also, the dragon has a wife who is flying around. She  might ask you to help out. She doesn’t do the job herself, of course. Why this is a part of the adventure I have no idea. The wifey thing does nothing. Well, she does have a cave and the cave has a nice hoard in it, so, youknow, time for a humanoid-centric view of the world. I guess, in the name of XP. Or, you can do your own goody two shoes thing. But, killing her and taking her eggs is more fun. And this adventure desperately needs more fun. 

You wander around this valley and have some wandering monster encounters on your way past the various monster lairs. All of the wandering monster encounters are essentially the same variation of “These wicked lizard folk ruthlessly attack all who cross their paths.” It’s boring as all fuck. It acknowledges that they SHOULD be doing something, but fails to recognize that “they attack ruthlessly”, at every encounter, is exactly the same as not having them do anything at all. 

The wilderness map has a wagon trail on it, so it’s pretty linear. The dungeon at the end with the evil dragon is essentially linear also. That’s always fun. Enter a room, kill who is in it and then go on to the next room to do the same thing. There is almost no interactivity in this beyond just killing what is in the room. 

Examples of the masterful evocative writing style include “Two firenewts each armed with a glaive guisarme stand guard here.” or “Two burst sacks looted form the caravan lie on the floor of this ordinary cave,” That’s D&D for you. An empty cave with two sacks lying on the floor. Is it dark? Moldy? Damp? Running water? Rocks from the ceiling everywhere? Path through it? Shadows? No? It’s just “an ordinary cave.” Abstracted and generic. Boring. 

The descriptions are generally not that short. They fall in to a kind of expanded minimalism category. This is hard to describe fully, but it’s when you wander on and on with the text to no real point. You pad it out with background and other useless trivia that does nothing to help run the adventure at the table. Here’s a great example, from which I have removed the inline stats: “Two aspis drone guards watch the passage that leads out of this cave into the deeper caverns to the south. Each one wields two clubs (1d6 damage each) and two shields which give them Armor Class 2. A wooden pen holds 17 giant aphids These harmless creatures have no means of defending themselves other than to flee if threatened. The insect men harvest the honeydew they produce as a food source (see AREA b, p. 12).”

Note how that description doesn’t really SAY anything. Two drone guard a passage. Yawn. It leads deeper in to the caves to the south. Boring description, and its just telling us what the map says, not adding anything to the action at the table. What they are armed with. Boring. Shield. Boring. A wooden pen is somewhat interesting. Note how its stuck way down in the description. That should probably be the first thing noticed. No way to defend themselves is useless, as is the honeydew background information that is completely irrelevant to the adventure. It’s a WHOLE lot of words that add nothing to play. 

When you finally meet the dragon you get to fight it. But, in addition to the stat block there you ALSO have to turn back to the beginning of the adventure to reference the rules for the demons possessing the dragon. Like, the possessor uses it’s THACO instead of the dragons. There’s a whole section, with table. But you have to use it AND the stat blocks at the end to make everything work right in the combat, That makes sense.

It’s just a boring old stab everything adventure with no real interactivity. Nothing very interesting happens. The same kind of generic stab adventure that has plagued the OSR since its beginning.

This is $5 at DriveThru. There is no preview.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/463632/The-Lost-Caravan-DUNGEON-DELVE-SIDE-QUEST-2?1892600