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Level 13 - The Caverns of Slime
By Alex Schroeder, Lior Wehrli, Chris Roberts
Level 8+

The waterfall from the mushroom forest above passes through this area of powerful myconial
magic. The fungi undulate to a silent music, while phosphorous lights and dancing glow-bugs illuminate dancing shrooms and glistening towers of fungal growth on the steep walls.

This 23 page adventure details level thirteen of The Darkness Beneath and it’s … eleven major areas? It is a magnificent framework in which to die, and is perhaps most similar in play style to D3. A glorious jumble that is all I ever want in my life to be happy.

There’s an overview of the level up front which thankfully details what a typical jaunt in to the Caverns of Slime might look like. Briefly, you descent the Fungal Fall and travel through the Shroom Lords lands to the Spider City. From their you gain river travel on the River Styx, visiting the Bone Crusher and its roaming ghouls and two Panzerships. Perhaps diverting to the Prison of Dis and past the Shark Den (having orcs riding flying sharks …) you can hit up the wizard Gar at his titular Vats of Gar, who can maybe get you out of this place. But you’ll need to get past the Bubbling Stench to the Damn of Ix to disable its blocking power. Past the Eternal Swamp is the passage to the Ooze Lord (feature a 99 foot tall statue …) and, therein, the black door to the last level. You follow all of that? Essentially we have the party stuck on the level and eventually learning what they need to do to get off of it. They travel around to various areas learning things and making friends and enemies until the epic assault, via Ajax, on Mongo.

Essentially, each of those places I mentioned is a little … encounter area? A little place to have an adventure? A little town with shit going down in it? I’m not sure how to describe it. You end up at place X. You poke around, find some shit out, pick up some things or people. Get in to a greater situation going on there and somehow navigate it to end up getting what you want. I’m not sure I would characterize this as a fetch quest or gathering the six parts to the Key of Time. It’s a great big place that you can wander around in a non-linear fashion (although linearly makes sense) and do shit, eventually with the goal of escaping. I don’t know. Nothing I’m describing here is helping, is it?

The Spider City opens wilth a little red-aloud, and then covers some themes for this area for the DM to work with: Darkness, spiders, silver lights, ropes, webs, living on the ceiling. Some bullet points on more theme-like things, like occasional ropes reaching down to the cave floor or the floor being covered with broken bones and husks. Then some typical spider names, a little overview of the area, and a longer section covering events that can happen in the city. This takes up a page and is weird as all fuck. And this is a friendly area.

Everything here is familiar yet bizarre. Like that first level of Darkness Beneath but amped up. Crocodiles, Spiders, Orcs, but amped up and twisted. You could, i suspect, run an entire campaign on this level, or something close to it? That’s no doubt hyperbole, but it feels like it. The bandersnatch fits in well here, and the rolling ceiling fireball maybe just a little too mundane.

An open ended adventuring area with greater goals than looting the dungeon? If each of these was a separate kingdom, above ground, and the party needed to achieve some goal, using them as resources, that might cover this place? But it’s far far weirder. Without, I think, going in to gonzo territory. Whatever that is. I’m gonna sleep with this one under my pillow, even though you’re gonna have to bring every ounce of DMing chops to it. It could, not doubt, be organized and described better. And I don’t give a fuck. It’s magnificent.

The Catacombs under Old Samora
By Phillip H.
Levels 1-3

Generations ago, they were home to a small circle of acolytes that worshipped the powers
of the underworld, Hades foremost among them. Affluent citizens had their dead interred here and the priests performed burial rites and tended graves. With the decline of the city, the place was eventually abandoned and largely forgotten

This ten page adventure details about 45 rooms in some old catacombs/funerary complex. A solid contender and something I’d be happy to run as a drop in.

Ah, Ye Olde Levels 1-3. That’s a rough market. Everyone and their brother has dumped an adventure out for that level. Your adventure competes with past classics, current classics, and things released that the fuckwits don’t yet recognize as classics. This is a tight adventure/dungeon. And I’m reviewing it right after an issue of Ultan …

Catacombs under a slum section of a city, an old mausoleum entrance. Not exactly a secret but not well known either. Inside are graves, prep rooms, some places for the (now gone) priests to maintain the place. And, of course, an evil priest who likes to stretch his legs and visit the place when he needs a short break from his studying about sacrificing babies. Oh, and the drug addicts. That is one of my favorite parts of this. I mean lots of it are pretty good, but that drug-addicts are rock star. It’s a slum/tunnel/sewer hole/mausoleum. OF COURSE there are drug addicts hanging out in it. Or, as they are called, the sewer-folk “These squalid, drug-addicted humans live in a near-animalistic state in the sewers below the city” I love this kind of shit. There’s something so real about it. It grounds you. It gets you out of that bullshit fantasy orc stabbing mindset. What’s real, what’s a threat, what’s not a threat? If you went wandering around If you’re out doing some urban exploring, entering those holes in Pogues Run, what find you run across? Some kids. A large group of them? Are they dangerous? How about some homeless? Just homeless? Drug addicts? Desperate and looking for an easy score? Are you an easy score? Wanna posture some? Does that make things worse? WHat else is down there? This is great.

And, it does that thing that certain adventures do where you get fucked up coming OUT of the dungeon. Maybe some thugs out to score something easy. Hope one of those sewer-people didn’t tip them off. Or, the law, looking for a cut and kickback tax. This is all so great!
Oh, and did we mention that the sewer people are afraid? Some of them go missing … yup, it’s ghouls! Yeah ghouls! As serial killers/conpiracy/urban folktales! And the place has HORDES in it. There are some places where there are A LOT of ghouls, or a ALOT of jerlamaine/rat type people in their lair. And, of course, we all know that the lair is where the loot is. As is the tomb of the elf dude that is dangerously trapped. No pain no magic armor you murder hobo wannabes!

Writing is a little on the mundane side. Not bad, just not good. “Enormous empty washing basin cut from grey marble. Bas-reliefs on the basin walls depict a paradisiacal afterlife. A cracked painting of the night sky on the domed ceiling.” There’s nothing particularly wrong with that. It doesn’t overstay and it doesn’t pad shit out. It a decent solid workmanlike description, which makes it better than 90% of the shit being published. I’m just always hoping for a little more. The designer does, though, do a pretty good job of noting specific details. And, of course, specificity is the soul of narrative. In a room with a well “Claw marks in the hard earthen shaft were made by creatures climbing up and down” GREAT detail! SHould scare the fuck out of the party. Provides a hint. That’s all good D&D. In another place there’s a door with a raven carved in it. Fuck around and the raven comes to life to attack you. And when/if it dies it leaves a jewel. The overloaded context here is WONDERFUL.

The map is good. Decent detail, same level stairs, statues and so on. The locked/secret/concealed doors do get quite a bit hard to read, but, otherwise, the map is a good one. Hand drawn, which has its own charm and I kind of prefer. Except you do have to take care that things are legible. Like those fucking door codes, which are NOT.

Overall, a good little dungeon. Solid. It’s not winning an award, but it’s a good example of what you do. Platonic, even. It’s only ten pages long. And it does much much more with those ten pages than adventures four or five times its length.

Fight On! #15 is $5 at DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/489776/fight-on-15-spring-2024-pdf-version?1892600

Billman
Novis Ludis
OSE
Levels 2-3

The monks who used to live in the Monastery of the Unknown Path followed the teachings of Vyncis, a charismatic philosopher-cleric of Fharlanghn who founded the monastery centuries ago. Vyncis was a devout, somewhat militant and disciplined acolyte with a unique philosophy of how to honor their god. Essentially, Vyncisian monks were devotees of Fharlanghn who actively and persistently tested the skills needed to truly follow unknown and potentially dangerous paths, as directed by their deity

This fifteen page adventure uses seven pages to describe about forty rooms on two pages of the 1e DMG sample dungeon. It does not live up to the gygax sample rooms, padding boring room entries. The lessons of the sample rooms are lost here.

Yes, this is Yet Another attempt at the sample dungeon in the 1e DMG. It does appear to have a significant hold over gamers. Or, at least, gamers of a certain age. I guess ol Skull Mountain had quite a bit less impact on folks; sorry Domed City, no one loves you! Anyway, this is yet another attempt at the Sample Dungeon. It uses a fucked up format.

Basically you get a little room description (more on that later) and then some section headings. Monster. Treasure. Trick/Trap. Two monsters in the room? Then you get two Monster headings. The problem with this, at least how its implemented here, is the severe disconnect between the room description and the other sections. The description might just be of, say, idk, a throne room. And maybe a relatively long description, at that. And then the monster section tells us that there are 123 guards in platemail and a 33rd level fighter on the throne. And then maybe the trap section tells us that there is a giant chasm across the middle of the room. There’s no integration of the room description and the other objects in the room. I like to talk sometimes about the most important things appearing first in a room description. If the door to the room has some special quality, like it it made of obvious gold or is an obvious trap, then that should come first in the room description, not last. It’s the first thing you are going to need when running the room. Likewise if the small room has an ancient red dragon in it then you probably want to say that up front in the room description. It’s the first thing that the party is going to notice/see when they open the door. When you dump this important shit, like a monster or an obvious treasure, down low in the description then you’re making the DM work A LOT hard. “Oh, yeah, uh, I know you said you entered the room, but, also, there’s a ancient red dragon in the room …” Or, you have to read the ENTIRE room description before integrating the entire thing in to your head and then rephrasing it to describe to the party. No. What a good description doe is integrate things so that the DM can run the room, with an initial description, almost immediately. Then, as the party is mulling things over the DM can read further in to the room description. There is no way in fucking hell I am running a game in which I have to take a minute or two to read a room description and pause the game while doing so before the party gets a chance to act. This is NOT a trivial amount of time, to read and grok and rephrase an entire room description, put together in your head. It’s fucking boring while the DM does it. It’s part of a boring game.

And the room descriptions here are not real solid. Let us look at this gem: “Approaching the door is enough to hear a haunting, moaning sound that rises and falls in an irregular way. The goblins forbade the bandits from entering this room because they feared the moaning sound was a ghost, and the goblins did not want the ghost disturbed.” That’s great. It tells us almost the fuck nothing about the room. It’s long, full of backstory, it’s awkwardly worded and padded out. And all it tell us, in terms of gameable content, is that there is a moaning sound coming from the door. What are you doing man? What value does this add?  “the hobgoblin corpse was part of Lurantu’s gang (see areas 35-38) who went off exploring on his own, got mortally wounded by the ghouls, and managed to escape here before dying of his wounds.” NO ONE CARES ABOUT THIS!!!!! It doesn’t add anything at all to the game! And the room descriptions are full of this shit. It distracts. It’s a waste. The designer focused on this instead of a real, gameable, room description. And when were not getting backstory then were getting something like “The tomb of a former abbot of the monastery is in the small 10×10 room down a tight, 5’ wide hallway” That’s your room description. That’s it. Exciting for the tomb of the former abbott, eh? And, then, sometimes, the cross-references are off. In one room you can turn things white colored, bleaching them out. And the cross-reference tells us this could be useful for room 29. Except, the way to get in to room 29 is in the description for room 28. This is pretty obvious stuff. This is why we have external editors or playtesters who are not the designer. The designer knows what is going on because they created it. The rest of us have to rely on what the designer typed up to help us understand it. There’s not really an evocative description in the entire thing. 

Finally, a note about the room design. There is, I think, a notable difference between the gygax rooms and the rest of the rooms. There is a tendency, in dungeons, to put one thing in each room. This is the thing that this room holds. We can contrast this with rooms that have multiple things going on in them, a far far more interesting way to develop and present a room for play. And we can see a couple of examples of this in the first couple of rooms that gygax presents here. In room one we have those spiderwebs in it. And the spiders in the webs. And then tha bags in the room. And the yellow mold on the bags. The treasure, and then a stuck secret door that has swelled. Multiple elements in the room. Lots ot explore and discover, all in one room, without it feeling like it is empty room. And the descriptions for the rooms, presented by gygax in the sample dungeon, follow on to this. Multiple things in the room, and yet the rooms feeling natural. As opposed to most of the rest of the dungeon presented here, or in most products.

This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru, with a suggested price of $1. There’s no preview, but, it’s PWYW, so, you know … I might also note that there is no level description present on the cover or marketing  …

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/493535/a-sample-dungeon?1892600

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

By Stephen Smith
Mister Smith Design
BECMI
Levels 1-3

A peaceful village of fisher folk and artisans. A friendly community safely perched high above the raging sea. On the surface life is grand, but who knows what trouble lies below?

This 54 page supplement details a small seaside village and an even small cave/dungeon, using eight pages to describe about fifteen rooms in it. There’s an ability here, to describe a decent scene, but it’s squandered on a weird disconnect between the vibe of the room and the DM notes for the room. I’m not mad at this, just a little puzzled at what it’s trying to do.

Nice production values on this, with clear easy to read maps of the dungeon and a layout style that is not overly busy but does a decent job of focusing the attention. This is combined with some art that I don’t hate and in some cases kind of love, but I can recognize that some effort was spent on it and making it try to fit in to the vibe. And I say all of this and lead off the review with it because I was fully expecting a load of garbage. Those things, plus the obligatory background story/boring page, plus all of the title page crap didn’t get me in a place where I was expecting something good. And then the hooks started in, with the usual variations of “you are hired to …” … I was pretty much dreading what was coming. And then I got to the missing child hook. Where mayor dickcheese offers to replenish your food supplies if you find the missing kid they think went in to the old sea cave below. And that hook ends with “ (SPOILER ALERT: Little Timmie was hiding in the tool shed the whole time).” Woah … ok. The kids name is Timmy and he’s in the shed while the party is getting gutted? That’s my kind of twist! Things are looking up!

The next set of pages is devoted to the small village, its places and people. This goes on WAY too long. But, also, it’s going on too long in a weird way. So, the map of the village is keyed, which doesn’t help much, you have to refer back to the text to find out where something is on the map. And the various buildings/businesses don’t really get much of a description at all. Just a sentence or two. Props for not droning on, but those descriptions are VERY generic and don’t really say anything at all interesting about the place. So, then, what’s the point of the description? Let’s take this one “1. Fishmonger — fresh, smoked, dried, and salted fish, scallops, shellfish.” Did that add anything to the description of “Fishmonger?” And while it’s a single sentence, a few others go on for two or three or one long one. But they don’t really add any value to anything. Except, then, you run across “Naturopath — Ocean based dietary aids for allergies, headaches, fatigue, chronic pain, sleep and digestive disorders.” Well … ok. I’m noticing a trend here, of the designer slipping in, slyly, some pretty good shit. But, also, there’s a tackle shop, with a description? What’s the purpose of that?

And then there’s quite the long section of the people in the town. Again, this is mostly bullshitty useless padding, telling ups in a sentence or three why this person is the typical generic fantasy villager. And then we get to “Ongoing lunch feud with a pelican.” or “They and their twin always dress exactly alike” or “practices flirting with seagulls.” That fucking shit is great! That’s what I’m buying a D&D supplement for! I don’t give a fuck about generic bustling fantasy tavern. But the barmaid learns her flirting skills by practicing on gulls? GOLD! And the fucking thing takes a turn here. Every NPC in the village has this kind of shit for them. It’s great! It’s just like Pembrocktonshire, except the fucking entries are padded out uselessly and it takes far more space, thanks to that clear formatting/layout, to cram in the same amount of people.

The dungeon is about fifteen rooms, half sea caves and half carved out. The descriptions here range from ok to useless. The first entrance room is ok “On approach of this hollowed fissure, the sound of the crashing waves echo against the sheer rock face. Although once much larger, the passage is now choked with rubble. The gap is low, narrow, and just wide enough for one person to enter at a time. The rocky walls are slick with saltwater and the tangy odor of brine fills the air.” I get what the designer is going for, and it’s an ok job. The “Although once larger” thing is cumbersome, and the entire thing could be edited to get that vibe across a little better. But, also, it’s not terrible at all. Each room has something like that, not exactly read aloud, but more communicating things to the DM. Which is generally fine. Until we get to something like “K) The Morgue Several stone slabs serve as a temporary holding space for the recently deceased. Presently empty” Supposed to fire my imagination? Indeed DEVO, he doesn’t smoke the same cigarettes as me. 

What follows, after this little not-read-aloud text, is something called “DM Insights”, for each room. This would be your DM text. For that Mortuary room it says “Shadows. (see Bestiary on pg 41) Treasure: Potion of Diminution” And this is the major disconnect I’m having. I don’t understand this. That room, in particular, is essentially as minimally keyed as Vampire Queen. The others do have a bit more description to them, but the DM Insights are almost always this kind of minimal keying. It’s more than a little rattling to come across, and I’m not sure why. It feels disconnected from each other. As if the room proper and the monster/loot somehow are not integrated at all. There are hints, here and there, of things. One room, wet, has a milky substance spread out in it … and it turns out there are giant spiders in the DM Insights section. So, sure, I guess that ties the two together? I kind of get what the designer is going for … a strong enough initial section and then a DM section that just clarifies things. I don’t think, though, that the initial sections are really strong enough on their own. 

I might say that I can draw parallels to the dungeon as a whole and the town also. The sea saves turn in to a mortuary complex, turn in to a temple for Deep Ones. It’s a kind of linear map (but with monster names on it for reaction purposes. Yeah) But the entire thing feels pretty disconnected from each other. Not like you are in zones but rather “and then heres the mortuary complex!” for some reason. And, then, the inclusion of the town, or, rather, the amount of length spent on the town description. That’s a lot of text to support a small fifteen room dungeon (with some 5HD bosses in it …) It just feels like things are disconnected to each other and that they don’t vibe well … it’s not as blatant as a funhouse dungeon, but it sticks out. 

This would have been MUCH better concentrating on the unique parts and minimizing the “typical fantasy” parts. A better integration both in the dungeon format, the dungeon proper, and the dungeons relation to the town. There is clearly a sly wink attitude here, which is wonderful, and the ability to turn a phrase to describe something. But the rest of it falls down. It’s not terrible, but I’m not sure why I would select this to play.

This is $8 at DriveThru. The preview is eighteen pages with a great selection of town, dungeon, and bestiary. Great preview!

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/479070/a-problem-in-port-haven?1892600

Seba G.M.
Dados Tostados
Knave2
"Low Levels"

Apollo and his son, two masters together, Wouldn’t know how to mend me; their craft has failed me, Goodbye, pleasant Sun! My eyes are stuffed, My body descends where everything is disassembled. ~Sonnet posthumes, Pierre de Ronsard~

This forty page booklet about skeletons uses twenty pages to present an adventure with three scenes that takes about four pages to describe, generously. There’s nothing here.

This is a supplement that deals with skeletons. New spells about skeletons. Some new skeleton variants. A dude that really likes skeletons. And a skeleton based adventure. Or, rather, “adventure.” Someone has been digging up graveyards in the region. Duke Lotto sends you over to the this town of ropemakers to guard their graveyard. Scene one is arriving at town, fucking around with the townfolk, etc. Scene two is a group of skeletons digging up the graveyard that night. Scene three is the party fighting a wight, back at the skeletons home base, which the party needs to track the skeletons back to. 

That’s your adventure. Three scenes. All of which are completely straightforward. And describes, I must say, in few words. I’m gonna give you the scene two descriptions. Skeletons come marching out of the forest in to the graveyard. They have tools to dig it up. One skeleton seems to be in charge. I am NOT fucking around when I say that the detail, beyond that, is not really present. That’s your fucking scene. Fight them. Follow them back, it’s up to you. 

The whole execution of the adventure is not really an adventure, at least not by my taxonomy. “Hey man, I had this idea last night that some skeletons could dig up a graveyard!” That’s all this is, some VERY general ideas of what could happen. And by “what could happen” I mean “go to town, dig up a graveyard, fight a wight in charge.” Because there’s nothing more to be done other than that. 

There’s a map! Of the village! It doesn’t make sense! There are, if I recall correctly, eight locations on the map. The legend says things like “the bridge (over the river)” or “the hunters lodge” or “the westward road” or “the hemp farm”. (No doubt the villagers talk incessantly about how Lord Jefferon grew hemp …) None of the locations are described, so, it’s not that kind of map. I guess you could ad lib some shit about people working in the hemp fields, or something like that. I’m not morally opposed to this. I’m also not especially thrilled for an adventure to take this approach when there is absolutely no content at all for the main part of the adventure. It feels like some amount of effort could be spent on the rest of the fucking adventure instead of this watercolor-like map of a village with locations. Similarly, the valley that the weight lives in has a map, but it no keys on it. And some textual mentions of a kind of underground abandoned city that the wight lives in. No other detail/maps/etc described. I think, perhaps, even worse though, is how the map actually seems to conflict with the text in a few places. The graveyard is on the western side of a river. The village hugs the eastern shore. The skeletons march out of the eastern wood. So … they march through town? Or, do I have my directions mixed up? There is no compass on the map, so, … maybe the skeletons march out of the woods right next to the graveyard? Also, the weights lair isn’t on the village map, not even with an arrow or something. It’s like all of this shit is just an afterthought. 

I don’t know what else to say here. There’s no real text imagery to speak of. It does use skill checks. Tracking the skeletons back through the forest “deals d4 damage unless the characters pass a Constitution Check (TN 16.” I hate that shit. First, haven’t there been abot fifty bajillion articles on this kind of shit and why its bad, thanks to disaster that was third edition skills? You know, every one in the party has a +50 to spot hidden, and shit like that, which leads to an arms race in checks vs ability, and the min/maxxing that a decent portion of the population these days  thinks D&D is? Hmm, that was a long sentence. I must really dislike that. Not to mention perhaps an even more egregious sin: the abstraction of fun. Why have the skill check instead of just having a scene that the party can work to overcome? Why just abstract away the fun to a die roll? If you’re ok with this then why not just have each party member roll a d6 at the start of the game session. 1-3 you live and 4-6 you died on the adventure. Then at least you could all go drinking or something. It’s the same fucking thing. The game is what happens before those die rolls, the journey through the forest, the obstacles overcome, the wacky plans, etc. That IS the game of D&D.

This bullshit abstraction makes me feel cheated, Mr Lydon.

This is $6 at DriveThru. The preview is seven pages. All title pages and shit like that, with one page of backstory for the wight. Shitty preview.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/492386/graveyard-dirt?1892600

By Vanessa Nairn
Snail Song Studios
OSE
"Low Levels"

Jebediah Bigby is a meadmaker extraordinaire, famous throughout the region for his delicious mead. The secret to his success is simple, ‘Big Bees make better honey.’ However, rumours run wild as to the true secret of Bigby’s success. Now that shipments have started going missing, it’s your job to delve into the meadery and find out!

This 34 page adventure presents an underground brewery with bees and goblins with a small above ground section. A rather A rather standard fare that doesn’t overstay, with the usual issues. Where ‘standard fare’ has the usual low-interest meaning. 

So, there’s nothing special about this adventure. It’s the usual go in a room and stan things kind of affair. This comes along with poor text/descriptions, etc saving grace being the text doesn’t drone on and on. But, also, I had this idea …

What’s going on here is the halfling Bigby (no relation) runs a meadery. Another halfling meader rival, Penelope Smallby, hires a hobgoblin and his goblin band to raid it and get the secret recipe. It’s not Love. Turns out ol Bigby has been running his mead through a fishtank with slopfish in it, which infuses an unnatural happiness in his mead. And in stronger doses it makes you not be able to feel ANYTHING ut joy, even during the greatest tragedies. Also, Penelope doesn’t want to pay the goblins. Also, Bigby is cheery and morbidly obese. There’s an entry on the (aboveground) wandering monster table that has a group of halfing nature enthusiasts about and about enjoying watching the bees. The giant bees. …  I hope you’re thinking what I’m thinking! There was an opportunity here, that I initially thought the adventure was going to go down, for a REALLY good adventure. Murder, betrayal, suicides in town. Extortion. Bribes. Cover-ups! All of the seediness of a small town coming out and being amplified. You can imagine Poirot at the end emphasizing “And all for a mead recipe!” The cheeriness of the halflings. The absurdity of the situation, juxtaposed with the awfulness of the consequences of the actions taken. That’s an awesome fucking adventure!

But this one is just your normal fare. Walk in to rooms in an underground area. Meet a goblin. Or rat. Or bee. Maybe talk to a goblin. Stab everything else, probably. The height of interactivity is finding a key behind a painting (nice!) or following some pipes behind a wall. Again, nice. But these are very isolated examples. The vast majority of it is just walking to a room with very little for the DM to work with. You know the deal, just one thing in the room. And the thing is simple. And it usually doesn’t have implications for things further/deeper in to the dungeon. There’s no build up or mystery.

This isn’t helped much by the words. What we get, time after time, is some text that looks like read-aloud but is really a kind of narrator’s commentary in a movie or tv show. “Normally, the ground floor of Bigby’s Meadery is well kept and serves as a bar and storefront. However, ever since Glurgak’s band took over, it looks like a hurricane has hit it, with broken bottles and furniture scattered about” I can imagine the narrator in those old Discworld Tv Movies. Or “A decorative garden that offers one of the sources of pollen for Bigby’s Giant Bees.” That’s more of a name, rather than a description? The text should inspire the DM to greatness, to plant a solid idea in their head that they can then riff off of, making it more than the sum of the its words. 

This isn’t an offensive dungeon. It’s hard to imagine something this simplistic to be offensive. I’m not even sure its a dull dungeon. It’s more of a … staid dungeon and/or adventure? I wish it were more. I wish the giant bee/honey/mead thing was more prevalent in more rooms, and really lent a vibe of being immersed in it. But the descriptions just aren’t evocative enough for that.

This is $5 at DriveThru. The preview is nine pages. That gives you the background info that I though would be great as a tragedy, but it needed to also show some rooms so we can get a sense of what the core of the adventure looks like.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/491923/trouble-at-bigby-s-meadery?1892600