The Barrow of Bhalagrim

By G.A. Mitchell
Self Published
OSR
Level 1

A barrow has sat on a hillside for centuries, unnoticed by all save a few grazing cattle. But in recent years the barrow has grown a reputation for darkness. Suspicious tales are whispered about a malevolent creeping spirit that steals from the barrow at night to eat livestock and carry off the unwary. Yet that is not all. Strange men came through town of late, all heading in the direction of the barrow. Who knows what cruel and evil god these new arrivals worship, or what fell machinations they plot from within the old barrow’s halls.

This eleven page adventure presents an eleven room barrow. It’s a weird mix of classic fantasy, almost from folklore, and standard dull fantasy. It’s trying, but the designer hasn’t quite mastered the skill of writing a room description, both from the read-aloud or DM text.

I love me a barrow adventure! Ancient hills with crumbling standing stones on top and weathered lintels leading to narrow tunnels. Sign me up! And this adventure uses both the word verisimilitude AND effluvium?! Someone is going for that old school D&D vibe! And that comes through, well, in places. There’s this nice little encounter inside, in a natural chamber with a pool in it. And a harpy, luring the party in to drown. Yeah, the rooms al little small and Ms Harpy aint gonna succeed well, I suspect, against a full party, but it really does a good job, in its presentation, of converting this kind of classic fantasy vibe, free of all of the RPG bullshit. Likewise, we have a giant spider, who talks, and her daughters, in one room. And she’s got this cultist trapped in her webs, who’s kind of an idiot, who they are keeping alive because he’s a fool. At least temporarily. Yeah, yeah, I like talking animals. But, also, the VIBE from The Hobbit is a really good one. Maybe a little too clean, but that’s the way I rumble. And the talking spiders really communicate that vibe. You can like different things, I don’t care, but I think this kind of thing really communicates situations in which the party can be free thinkers, and rewarded for it, instead of just rolling a fucking number from their character sheets. And that’s the atmosphere I want in my game. 

I want to point out, also, a description of a bubbling cauldron which appears in one of the final rooms: “A hissing pool, thick with creamy brown slime bubbles with slithering movement. Worm-things spasm and groan beneath the fat-skin on the surface of the font which faintly glows, casting lurid whispering shadows about the vaulted hall.” I can get down with almost all of that. The hissing pool. Thick creamy brown. Slithering. A fat skin. The whole casting lurid whispers thing goes a bit over the top for me, but the rest of it is pretty decent. 

But, alas, the rest of this is the usual that we find in adventures. The baddies are cultists of the worm god, although, that whole worm god motif doesn’t really come through much at all. Just a veneer, really, with little vivadry. And the read-aloud is italics, which is hard on the eyes for long sections of it. And the DM’s text contains a lot of room history that is irrelevent to the play at the table. The entrance tells us “This is the doorway into the barrow. It was smashed open with prybars and picks and hauled open by Kizvin and his cult followers two weeks ago.” Yup, the entrance is usually the entrance. And the backstory here is the third, or fourth, time we’ve been told it in the adventure. It all comes off as a rather staid location rather than a dynamic one, full of mystery. 

And then there’s the timer. The adventure tells us its a timer. It’s actually more a timeline. Days one through seven, with different things happening each day, like the spiders eating the dude and then on the final day the worm god being summoned forth. But, this has a problem. While timelines are great, they move things and make the world seem alive, timers are different. Timelines usually give a hint that a timER exists. You learn that you need to deal with the situation or something bad might happen. The timer here, if we can call it that rather than a timeline, doesn’t really give any hint at all that The End is coming, and thus there is no way for the party to know. Any tension that was possible is not present. Further, certain aspects of the timeline actively work against the fun of the adventure, like the spiders killing the dude they’ve captured. Realistic? Sure. But the point is fun. And if killing him (the spiders killing him) detracts from the fun then why do it? He’s not a resource for the players. They don’t know the spider will kill him. There’s no race against time, at least not one that the party knows about. I make wanderer checks in the open, and openly advance the wanderer time wheel (Goblinoid Games, if memory serves?) It’s the tension. You have to know you are making a decision in order to feel the tension from that decision. 

There are elements here that show promise. Some interesting encounters and a decent description or two. But, also, a lack of focus on the keys and it slips in to a kind of staid cultist/tomb vibe. 

This is free at DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/491280/the-barrow-of-bhalagrim-jem1?1892600

That’s the fucking way you explore a fucking barrow!