Burrow of the Ghouls

By Kai Putz
Self Published
LotFP
Level ... 4?

Devils of the Old Barrows: a rural community is disturbed by strange figures that sneak around the outer homesteads at night, as well as by howling calls coming from the nearby ancient barrow graves. The people that heard them swear that those are not from dogs or wolves nor from a human throat. Not willing to have superstitions infect the souls of his flock, the local priest moved to the barrows at daylight to see for himself what is going on. He never returned and now the people are afraid to go there themselves.

This fifteen page adventure uses six pages to describe eleven rooms in a lovecraft-ghoul burrow. It suggests a giant fight full of ghouls, and presents way too much text. This combines with a standard paragraph style of formatting, with no highlighting for scannability during play. 

Pickmans Model rises again! What happens if you DO go down that long burrow in the basement? Well, you end up in a dig out place with a bunch of ghouls in it. This is mostly going to be a big fight. You run in to some ghouls in one room and then they all end up swarming you, coming in from multiple sides, as the occupants in the other rooms join in. So, I don’t know, maybe, 20 or so two HD ghouls with a few three HD dudes mixed in? These are lovecraft ghouls, though, so no real paralyzation other than maybe losing initiative because of being repulsed by them. Once you are through this you can use some skulls as an oracle, meet and kill the immobile, bloated and defenseless ghoul queen, talk to an intelligent ghoul who is pretty resigned to being killed. (A stoic to the end, literally, that one) and face the ever popular “do you kill the children” question, which is elaborated on in some designer notes. I don’t know man, your ecosystem involves, as its central tenet, killing and eating people. 

The usual problems. A lack of specificity in the setup and background. “Characters are hired to look after a man who has not been seen for days. Said man …” Abstraction and generalisms don’t suit the pursuit of evocativeness. We do get a short list, maybe two dozen entries on ghoul looks, “thick & scarred; hulking” but this still isn’t great and isn’t a substitute for the designer putting in the work to make a creepy and interesting environment … and ghouls. 

“And you, the refer, may even rule that one is not able to navigate it [the tunnels] in full plate armor.’ I’m free to do a lot of things as the ref. Rock fall, everyone dies. I don’t need to be told what I could do. Again, it’s up to the designer to elaborate and construct an environment. Dynamic in this case ,to adventure in … which may contain tunnels that cannot be explored in full plate with drawbacks and boons for doing so. That’s why we’re paying the designer. There’s a lot of this running around the adventure .At best is a conversational way to relate information and at worst, my rocks fall example.

Another example, of the padding involved would be “Characters that approach the opening to the south will notice that …” which is a very long winded way to say it smells like rotting bodies. It’s all padding. This isn’t academia, we don’t need to coach everything in twelve half-sayings before we get to the point. Just fucking tell us. And make it evocative. Sickly sweet. Putrid cheese. Whatever. Just don’t pad the shit out. “If they have not already dealth with the ghouls in area 2b …” Yeah, that’s what happens. 

This is just SO padded out. About three paragraphs per room, at a minimum, with some taking far, far longer. And to no real effect. The room descriptions are weak and the interactivity almost all a few ghouls that will show up in another room to fight, thanks to their order of battle in swarming targets. 

This is $1 at DriveThru. The preview gets you the primary group living quarters, that they all swarm out of. It’s a decent preview if you know what he rest of the adventure is like. And now you do!

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/513947/gregorius21778-burrow-of-the-ghouls-lotfp?1892600