By Ben Laurence
Through Ultan's Door
OSR/1e
Levels 1-4
The Apartments of the Guildless, a dynamic pointcrawl through abandoned chambers, ruined temples, arcades and sunken courtyards, where the outcasts of Zyan are hunted by stuttering puppet automata. Visit the convent of the crawling nuns! Hear haunting flutes amidst trembling fungal woods! And much more!
This double issue (two 32 page digest zines) is a … description of a home base and a small region around it? Ben’s shit is very good. I joined his Patreon because I like good shit.
I read some book. It was talking about the cultural heroes in certain societies. It made the point that in order to be a cultural hero you had to 1) be recognized as a part of that society and 2) exhibit traits outside of that society. So, if a Japanese Salaryman represents Japan, then you can’t be a Japanese hero by being a very good Salaryman. You have to be a weirdo artist or something, defying the expectations and conventions that the Salaryman represents.
I take note of this today because of Through Ultan’s Door. We are awash in trade dress. In the 5e DMsGuild templates, for covers. In art styles that all look the same, the generic heroic fantasy of today.
Then you stumble across the covers for Through Ultans Door. Clearly, something else is going on here. Someone has a clear and strong artistic vision in the art direction, which is consistent with the gaming environment presented. You are about to hit something different, the cover tells us. The art absolutely sets the vibe and contributes to it, which is exactly what the art SHOULD do. Yeah, I know, I never talk about art. Because it seldom accomplishes that. But it certainly the fuck does here.
So, I don’t know the fuck how to review this double issue. I’m not sure it’s an adventure, and all I really know how to do is review adventures. I’m terribly excited by this … setting(?), so much so I joined Bens Patreon. The first two issues clearly had site based adventures in them. This one is a little different. It feels like this is the start of a larger world coming in focus, but a game world, meant to play, not a gazeteer. Let us imagine you are publishing a megadungeon and you release a few levels of it. Then you decide that you should also release a home base, a town to venture forth from, as well, perhaps, as the environs nearby that the party might end up in or travel through. That seems entirely appropriate, yes? So if we view Ultans Door as episodic entries in a dungeon, or, in the context of a larger, completed, work, then a home base and the environes for travel seem like something that should be present. Indeed, my own standards indicate that I enjoy a little ‘wilderness’ journey to get to the dungeon. Thus the setting in which we find ourselves in this double issue of number three.
The volumes cover a system of movement through the undercity and searching for secrets, etc, on the way. And what secrets they are! The hidden pirate lair. The witch/hag lair, and the sewer dragons lair. Shades of wandering in to that lich room in D2.
It then transitions, in the second volume, in to a description of a kind of home base, of sorts. A leper colony, full of folks suffering from the weirdo diseases. More like a prison, with trustees and perhaps chanelling that scene in Ridick in the prison (complete with elevator). You have the trustees, the gang of invalids who kind of look out for each other, and then, descending sometimes, the guild of healers, weird beyond pale in their own right. We;ve given mostly the social setting present, with the mundanity of buying and selling not present. This is a place to rest and perhaps get sucked in to intrigue, without gearing up again.
Following that is a kind of regional setting. The locations detailed in issues one and two are noted, as well as a few others that really fall in to less of the site-based-adventure category and more of the “fucked up place to visit” category, perhaps with some motivation to do some stabbing or leverage their own intrigues.
The opium induced environment is strongly visioned, as they have been in all of the issues so far, with excellent descriptions of creatures, weird environments that successfully channel, more than anything else, the AMR Barker and Dreamlands-ish visions that we all hope for when we dig in to one of their vaguely dreamlike adventures/settings. Ben really does an excellent job with the descriptions and in communicating a vision; the vibe is ridiculously strong here. Things perhaps get a little longer in the text here than is immediately comfortable, and could perhaps use just a tad more formatting to help draw attention, but the overall effect is magnificent.
The toad people : “Their pale clammy hide is speckled with pus-dripping carbuncles. Fleshy sacks hang to either side of pot-bellied stomachs, topped by heads like misshapen toads. They wear jewelry fashioned from sewer trash and ill-fitting stained clothing ripped from water-logged corpses … with excellent manners.”
Given the episodic nature of my reviews, and the episodic nature of Ultans door, and in particular this double issue, its hard for to review this. And, I don’t think I have, I have just described it. As a standalone product its hard to recommend. But, seen as the first chapter to a larger dungeon, the base and environs, it fits in perfectly well. I’m excited to see more.
This is $10 at DriveThru.
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/364621/through-ultan-s-door-3-double-issue?1892600