By Stephen J Jones
Unsound Methods
OSE
Levels 1-7
The Halls have now returned. The great brass doors can be opened. But the elders say that the Disintegration Engine that moves the Halls out of phase is broken, and without a large supply of noble metals, it will be impossible to reactivate it. Regardless of that, many are eager to discover what has happened to the world in the intervening century. Groups of explorers are equipped to set out and return with the knowledge or goods that Sanctuary needs to survive.
Warning: Bryce likes SciFi and Post-Apoc especially. Gamma World and Chtorr are favs of mine.
This 124 page supplement presents seven dungeons on a large island in a post ‘alien’ invasion campaign setting. Interesting situations abound with mysteries to unwind and weird ass people and place to interact with. It suffers from a lack of a campaign perspective and perhaps is in need of tighter editing, but in general is an interesting place to adventure in.
This is solidly D&D, in spite of all of the SciFi elements I am going to mention. What was that 3e supplement, Midnight? Where evil won? Ok, so samesies, except this time the bad guys are The Glass Spiders. Everything here is done without much exposition, the tale and history mostly unfolding through the dungeons and their keys. (At least until you get to the timeline in an Appendix.) The intro, from a Common Knowledge perspective, is that a hundred years ago there were some meteors and then these Glass Spiders showed up and started killing everything that lived. Their numbers were overwhelming, with victory after victory. The characters ancestors retreated to The Halls of Green Light, a site/dungeon nearby that phases in and out of existence. It soon phased away and, now, a hundred years later, it has phased back in. The elders say that the DIsintegration Engine that powers it has run dry. You need to bring back base metals to power it. Gold, silver, copper, electrum, platinum, and jewels. Wel, there’s your gold for XP! 500k later the Halls can phase out again, saving the refugees inside. Thus we have a little campaign of a word overrun, weirdo survivors, and the party going from level one to sevenish or eightish.
And weirdo’s they are. Turns out that after a diaster the weirdos are the ones that survive. We’ve got drow popped up from under the earth and the anger-fish people (in pressure suits!) that are their mortal enemies. Stone men, scholars. Ghouls (the spiders ignore the undead) who harvest people. Elves locked in their last city behind a force field. The serpent-men, thralls to an white egg that controls them (an alien AI!) I don’t know what else I’m forgetting. Oh! The actually “alien” fortress of crystals, and a giant obsidian cube hovering 300’ over the ground … a scoutship. Yes, there IS a mothership in orbit. It turns out something like this planet is a mi-go experiment, they have been harvesting dead souls and sending them to the moon to birth an infant god (as the mi-go are wont to do). Their rivals find out and send the crystal spiders to the planet to stop them, the mi-go sacrifice themselves to bring the the god to life, which kills all f the mi-go and the actual alien rivals, leaving only the crystal spiders … who are systematically killing everything, as per their last orders. That’s a lot! But, it’s all still mostly fantasy, with few sci-fi elements, although it is a version of fantasy that is not typical, with twists to the drow, the kuo-toa, and many other things.
The dungeons are packed with loot. The weirdos want things, which are generally a mix between “help us kill our enemies” and “save our children.” How very Maslow! One encounter that sticks out is a hidden family, a farmer and wife and kids. If he learns you are from a safe community then he offers to sell you his daughter in return for a metal spear or some such. How horrifying! And how real. (The adventure generally doesn’t ‘Go There’ with morality plays, so this is one of the more extreme encounters in that regard, for those worried. We get a still-living dude on a hook, missing a leg, ready to be carved further by a ghoul chef, and things like bodies that have committed suicide, but it doesn’t linger too much, giving you the impression you need for your own tastes.) But, beyond this, the varying situations of things going on is quite interesting. You get to an ancient dwarf fortress by climbing 50 feet up arched steel girders on to thick chains that span magma over a volcano! And, then, inside, you can find a room with a bathysphere chained up over the volcano magma! Dare you enter it and journey down to the BOTTOM of the volcano?! (Fuck you people argueing logic. It’s D&D bitch!) Once at the bottom you can see a metal box outside the window! Ow to get it?! Inside it you will find some weird metal objects, that turn out to be the keys to the treasure vault! It’s just presented here, with little plot or prescription. SOme suggestions are made for common things the party might do, but it is otherwise presented as an open-ended thing. And that’s how many of these things are, presented as an open-ended situation, with perhaps some guidelines for the DM, for the party to interact with.
But, also, this is the main issue with it. We get these open ended situations but not a lot of supporting information to help guide us along. The order of battle for most of the dungeons doesn’t exist, though the inhabitants are both intelligent AND wary of attacks. And then on an even more basic level, the reactions of the various folks is a little less than stellar. If you hunt then you can find, scattered throughout the book, how the various factions/groups will react to the party, but it’s not in your face at all. Further, as an example, there are situations in which WAGONS of gold/ore/treasure/refugees must be transported, and perhaps a long way, back to your base. Your base/city that you don’t want the “aliens” finding out about. There are wandering monsters. There are hexes with terrain types. But you’re going to have to do the heavy lift with little guidance beyond that. It needs, I think, just a little more guidance. An overview of linakes between the sites, that refugee/wagon/loot thing, and a few more tidbits. I’m not looking for pages, but a paragraph each might be nice.
The formatting here, for the rooms, is not bad at all. It’s a traditional paragraph form, with a subject heading for first impressions that is not too long and evocative enough. We might get a sentence or two in a Further Exploration sections for non-obvious things, a stat block, a loot section, or maybe a trap section. “the chamber’s entrance gapes open, its iron gates twisted and broken. Inside, the air hangs heavy with dust. Polished stone benches are overturned and coated in grime. A jumble of dwarven bones, bleached white by time, rests before the altar, a rough-hewn slab of grey stone. On the altar, reflecting the party’s meagre light, lies a faceted sphere of crystal.” That’s not a bad description at all.
I find this quite the interesting booklet. It IS a campaign for seven to nine levels of play. The dungeons are great. There is no real “plot”, so we don’t have to worry about the usual Adventure Path railroading, but things are related and you can follow up on things and go to new places. The dungeons and their interactivity is the strong point here. The “tying it all together in to a campaign” portions are the weaker sections, if they exist at all. It’s not BAD, per se, but it’s also not going out of its way to lend a hand. But, also, I’d count this as a success. It’s an interesting campaign idea, executed well enough at its poorest form and great in its best. I’d fucking run it!
This is $12 at DriveThru. The preview is 29 pages! And shows you several dungeon/encounter sections. Great preview!
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/512632/survivors-of-frith?1892600