The Ruins of Arbel Monastery

By Aaron Gustwiller
Aaron's Gaming Stuff
S&W
Levels 1-3

[…] After the fire, the ruins gained a reputation an evil and cursed place, following the disappearance of several people in the nearby forest and a small group of adventurers that went to explore the site. But even though this reputation keeps people away, there is still much talk about what treasures may be hidden away in the catacombs beneath the ruins

This twelve page adventure uses about six pages to describe a two level dungeon with about 75 rooms. As the room count would indicate, it is pretty aggressively minimalistic, with faint hints of interesting situations that never really play out. 

There’s not much to go on here. This is just a site based adventure, two dungeon levels of a ruined monastery. We’re just told that there are ruins with an evil reputation and told that there are two entrances, one to the crypts and one to the catacombs. So, two levels and not a two-level dungeon. Beyond this, we’re on our own for a framing. This is, I think, fine. It’s a site, it’s a dungeon, off we go. I am more than a bit disappointed  by the environs around the dungeon, just getting a sentence or two description. This is nothing more, really, than just two isolated maps that have been keyed and little framing beyond that.

The maps are by Hartin, and are reasonable. Some small loops on the first one, the Crypts, and on the Catacombs more of a star design from a central room, in layout if not in practice, with a tendency for the dungeon, I think to play out in a more linear form. You go north and keep going north until you can’t anymore. They look pretty and there’s an interesting feature or two, but the core construction is not the greatest, I think. I’m exaggerating when I saw this, but you travel down a long hallway with doors to either side. It’s a little too linear and a little too … isolated because of the central hub design.

The core problem with this is in the room descriptions. While I usually go on and on about adventures with high page counts and a low number of encounters, there is also a thing where people go full on minimalist. If forced to select, I’d go that way also instead of droning on (touche’!) but that don’t mean it’s a good thing. If you’re room description is “There are 2 Skeletons armed with swords standing in the center of the room. “ (and that happens here, and I’m not cherry picking) then we have a few questions to ask ourselves.

Fundamentally, what is the point of a published adventure? I have struggled with my own answers to that, in contrast to what I see routinely published. We just roll on a random table and put monsters in rooms? That was Vampire Queen. The very minimalist approach that was taken in, say, B2 or G1?  And I mention those two specifically because of the range of quality, I think, that exists between them. A minimal description, almost on a wandering table, with perhaps a “ad the orcs are rolling dice” vs a more integrated environment for the encounters with better surrounding context … and yet still tending toward the minimal and terse side of the spectrum. And then go to the other end, with full on page or half page descriptions of rooms. Quarter page rooms. You know the type. Droning on to little purpose, confusing word count with gameable content. Somewhere in here is the right balance. Somewhere in here the designer has done more than I could have by rolling on a table by myself. And, thus, what value, to me, the purchaser? If I grab a map and roll random encounters to populate it … what value is there is a designer does that for me? If we roll on another table, of room features, and put a well in one room and a table in another … has enough value finally been added that I feel like Yes, I Do Not Feel Ripped Off. But I ain’t no senators son and Andrew Eldritch tells me that I need more. “The large, 10ft deep well in the center of the room is dry, with a pile of bones at the bottom” Is that enough? Are you not entertained? Well, maybe it’s better than two skeletons standing in a room? How about “A thin beam of light comes through a small hole in the ceiling and falls on the center of the room, where a knocked-over pedestal lays on the floor. On the pedestal is a broken, rusted iron sundial.” But there is nothing else here. You can’t set it up or repair it to some effect. It’s just like a room with a broken table, or the chess players in Dwimmermount. 

What’s lacking here is everything that would, in my opinion, add value to an adventure. There is little in the way of evocative language used to describe rooms. The interactivity here is almost always confined to stabbing things. And even that feels a little staid  I see anything here beyond a simple roll on a random table for a creature and another for maybe room contents and then turning that in to a sentence or two. It’s very VERY basic in the way it is presenting encounters. Not really any situations at all anywhere in it. Lareth? Nope.

So, I’m not really hating on this. I guess if you flopped this down in front of me at a cone I could run it immediately, which is more than I could say for most adventures. (This being the standard for when I ran games for the RPGA; no forewarning, just “run this” three minutes the game started”) But that’s small praise. No, it’s not a badly written monstrosity. It is instead a rather bland crawl.

This is free at DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/514265/the-ruins-of-arbel-monastery?1892600

Also, I really wish I could find my old RPGA number from … 1979?