Lost Man’s Trail

Posted on February 23, 2012 by Bryce Lynch

The trail east from Modron to the Coast, known as Lost Man’s Trail, has been a source of mystery for some time. Adventurers have a habit of disappearing from the trail. Are they lured away by some enticement, or waylayed by the legendary Skandik Raiders? The only safe place to stay, The Fat Deer Inn, offers good ale, soft bedding, and an assortment of characters; each having their own reason for being there.

Four more hexes for the Wilderlands. Encounters are limited to four or five major ones rather than the hex crawl sentences. A fine example of a regional sandbox building block.

I generally don’t review regional settings. Or rather, I review everything I purchase and I don’t generally purchase regional settings, so this one is going to be short. I stumbled upon Lost Man’s Trail because it was Bob “Judge’s Guild” Bledsaw’s last work prior to his passing. There are maps for four more Wilderlands hexes; this time between Modron and Tegal. The hexes feature a trail from Modron to the Fat Deer Inn. All of the encounters provided take place in this last hex. Essentially, the inn is a base for the characters while they explore some of the juicy rumors they hear there. The inn takes up about 1/4 of the pages in the book and is described enough to provide some good play. What I mean by this is that each room is described, however the primary descriptions of the various rooms tend to be the occupants and what they are doing at the inn and how they react to the players and so on. What this gets you is a rich set of people interacting with the party, an absolute necessity for any type of social portion of the game. They have relationships to each other and their own motivations outside of the party. That’s what is going to bring the inn alive and make it a memorable place.

There are about four different sets of bandits roaming the hex with the inn, along with a potentially friendly encounter with a hermit and a small/simple four-level cave system. The bandits are all very different, even though one set is humanoids (ug!) One of the sets of bandits could be called the focus of the adventure, and their defeat probably leads the mini-dungeon and it’s 20 or so rooms/encounters. It’s full of what one expect from a Judge’s Guild product: great atmosphere. Cages made from human/animal hair, great item/jewelry/magic item descriptions, non-standard magic items, and freaky non-standard creatures. This is exactly the sort of detail I’m looking for. I don’t want orcs, I want weird fungus pumpkins that waddle along the floor, or giants slugs that secret strange gasses. That’s the sort of personalized, idiosyncratic whimsy that I’m looking for in a module.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/85053/Lost-Mans-Trail-2010?affiliate_id=1892600

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Stonehell Dungeon

Posted on February 19, 2012 by Bryce Lynch

Beware All Who Enter
These Benighted Halls of Stone.
Within Lies No Solace
Nor Any Comforts of Home.
Toiling For Our Crimes
We Must Dig Where We Dwell,
With No Freedom or Mercy
In Our Vast Stony Hell.

-Inscription over the entrance of Stonehell Dungeon

A megadungeon. A wonderful wonderful megadungeon. A good megadungeon makes you forgot all your troubles and all of the nonsense you’ve seen before. W wonderful wonderful megadungeon.

This is certainly one of the best works to come out of the OSR. It’s a megadungeon and it’s close to perfect. The dungeon was once a prison and now, hundreds of years later, has evolved in to something else. The place _feels_ like it has history. There’s about an eight page section in the beginning that describes the history of the dungeon, an overview of what’s going on today, and how to integrate it in to a campaign. I wasn’t that excited when I first saw the length however I must admit that it works. The concept of a megadungeon has always been a bit implausible and now 40 years later we have to examine everything through the lens of what has come before. This one works. The history makes sense. Not just enough to get by but enough to make Stonehell feel like a real place and completely plausible. This extends as well to the creatures found within the dungeon. Not only the vermin and oozes but also all of the other creatures. Why are there cannibal berserkers? Because they are the descendants of the former inmates. Why are there kobolds? Because they were the former slaves and ingratiate themselves as servants to whoever is in charge. Why are there undead? The tombs of the former dead inmates. Why are there hobgoblins? They are setting up an advance base in order to take over the dungeon and invade the human lands. Why are there ogres? They are bachelors who’ve come up from a tribe lower down, having a great time drinking, gambling, working out, and living a life free of their pesky ‘betters.’ My clumsy descriptions don’t begin to do justice to the realism and plausibility of the humanoids situations. The key point here is that everything works together.

I should talk a little about the general layout. There are six levels presented if the surface ruins are included. Each level has two pages of introduction most of which is made up of a large map. There’s also a small introduction and a list of monster stats for the creatures that appear on that level. The map is divided up in to four sections and each section is then detailed separately. Each of these section also has a two page introduction which details what’s going on in that section. Then there are two pages which contain a large map of that section, a wandering monster table, and the encounter descriptions for that section of the dungeon. This is a near perfect format. It allows the encounter descriptions to be short and to the point. The entire thing is very similar to the one-page dungeon format. Just to be clear, each level is composed of four full maps, each maps having 40 or so keyed encounters on it, for a total of about 150 encounters per level. This takes place on each of the six levels. And that’s just the first half of the megadungeon! There’s supposed to be another booklet that details the next six! The maps themselves are wonderfully complex. Lots of cool design features, lots of stairs up and down, slides and pits that deposit you on different levels, and so forth. There’s lots and lots of room for the party to ambush and be ambushed. I LOVE these sorts of maps. They all have a different feel than the others as well, which is a pretty major accomplishment given the quantity.

The encounters are excellent. There are lots of things to play with in the dungeon, potions and labs and temples and other things to get in to trouble with. The creatures are all  generally doing something when encountered. Getting ready to go raiding, beefing up the “larder”, and so on. Oh, there are guard posts and the like as well, however the encounters are all done in such a way as to bring them, and the dungeon, to life. You really get the feeling that this is not just some static place but is a real living and breathing environment. Something like “Southern Guard post: Signs of regular traffic. Smells of cooking. There’s a 50% chance that the guards in room #25 are watching this area.” or “Dank Room: Mildew on walls; musty stench in the air; broken furniture sprouting sickly mushrooms. Empty.” These encounter descriptions are short (remember, you have to fit 40 or so, along with  nice large map and wandering monster table on two pages!) but do a great job of providing the DM with just enough detail to set the scene. This is EXACTLY what I am looking for. Just enough detail to get me going so I can run a good room, I can fill in the rest.

There are factions GALORE in this place. The party will routinely run in to the kobolds, who can be a great source of information. There’s an evil guy in the crypts who really just wants to be left alone. There’s also some evil acolytes in the crypts who are looking for the evil guy because they think he’s their leader. He’s hiding form them and leading them in to traps. There’s goblins on the surface who are hiding out and sulking because their tribe was massacred by orcs. There are HUGE numbers of creatures to talk to, hire, and get in to trouble with, and most of them are looking to get one over on almost everyone else. This is great because it provides so much more depth to a dungeon, the parties not limited by just kicking in the door and hacking the occupants. There’s also a wealth of new creatures, magic items, and spells. These are detailed in the two page intro for each map, so it puts the data right where you need it.

If I were to nitpick this I’d say things could be improved in four areas. First, I would have liked it had the monsters been bolded or highlighted in some way in the encounter descriptions. This would help me pick things out much more easily. As it is I would probably need to take a highlighter to the encounters in the book. Secondly, although there is a great deal of new magic items there are also a great quantity of “book” items. A little personalization in this areas as well as the gem/jewelry area would be nice. There are space constraints, so perhaps I should be content to use my own tables to work up some personalized descriptions. [I do this ahead of time for gems & jewelry. I print off a page of gem descriptions and another of jewelry descriptions and then just mark a description off the list when the party find a “50gp gem”.] Thirdly, more map notes would be great. If the guys 50′ down the corridor in the next room are noisy then a note on the map, something like “#18/Fighting” would be helpful to clue clue the party in on environmental/sound/light issues in nearby areas. Finally the entire place could use just a bit more whimsy. This may be because I’m just coming off of Demonspore, but a few more things that are truly freaky and whimsical would add a nice air to the place also. Maybe we’ll see a machine level or the faerie dragon level on the second book?

This is a monumental book and sure to be a classic. Pick it up. You won’t be sorry.

Posted in Level 1, Reviews, The Best | 12 Comments

Demonspore – The Secret of the Shrooms

Posted on February 16, 2012 by Bryce Lynch

Established in the subterranean cyst left by their dead god, a zealot band of Shrooms, a race known for bizarre projects and subtle objectives, have now been working for decades on the strangest task in their strange history.      … They are growing themselves a new god.

Yeeeehaw! This is enough alien and bizarre stuff in these modules to drive a bucket of eels through! This is an OSR module done right. I love it!

This is one awesome ride in to the idiosyncratic depths of the OSR. The encounters and environments in this module are unlike those that many of us have to come expect, even i nan OSR product. They are, however, the very core of what I consider to be the OSR. The modules contains two adventures: Throne of the Toad-King and Stone Cyst of the Shroom Priests. Throne can be used as a lead-in to the Stone Cyst or they can be easily used as stand-alone pieces. Both modules have some pretty tenuous hooks; we’re talking G1/G2 territory here. There’s the briefest of ideas of how the party could stumble upon the halls of the Toad-King and then a brief note in the adventure that can link it up to the Stone Cyst, much in the same way G1 had a small note in it that linked it to G2. There’s a slight reliance on rather generic magic items that’s a toad disappointing. (Get it! Get it! Toad! Hahahahahaha!) There are more than a few freaky items to play with, but there’s also a pretty large quantity of mundane magic. Maybe those items make the freaky stuff all the more freaky, in contrast? Maybe, but I don’t think so. Other than those two points the modules are as close to my platonic ideal of OSR as I’ve seen.

The halls of the Toad-King have about 43 encounters in them. They are situated in a kind of natural stopping point in the underground world and so the toads are somewhat used to getting visitors. In fact, the party can pay the sentries and stay for up to a week in the visitors quarters! Unfortunately the once-proud race of the toad people has fallen in to Chaos. Our toad friends are being corrupted. The party could approach this as a hack-fest or try to loot the place while they are visiting. They can also get approached by a (friend?) in the halls who wants them to look in to something for him. This is a great set up; the party is not forced in to a linear combat of room after room, they can instead venture around “peacefully” and get themselves in over their head! Perfect! I don’t usually like humanoids but I’m making an exception with the toads. They are given enough style and depth that they actually feel like distinct people. They go about their lives with their buckets of eels or fish guts and are pretty close to having a real culture presented; without the Harn-like exposition that is generally provided by authors trying to do this. The detail of the toads is mainly presented in the encounter text, which is exactly where I want it. There are a couple of pages in the beginning that describe the general lay of the land in the halls, but no real lengthy exposition to suffer through. There’s also an excellent wandering monster table. A great many could be described as events instead of monsters, and combat is seldom forced. They are very interesting though in a way that lets the DM expand on the nuggets provided to bring the encounter to life. That’s exactly what I’m looking for in a wandering table.

The halls have multiple opportunities for the party to find some allies. This can add heaps of fun to a dunegoncrawl: rescuing prisoners, intrigue with people you may not be able to trust, and mini-quests to gain allies. This is yet another example of “Stuff to do in a dungeon besides kill things.” The more of that “stuff” then the more likely it is that the adventure is a good one. There always has to be the threat of the Wrath of the Dungeon coming down on the parties heads, and thus the tension of the party trying not to screw things up enough to make that happen while grabbing as much as they can. Along those lines there are also a pretty decent amount of things for the group to do while in the dungeon. Lot’s of things to talk to and, notably, an alchemy lab for the players to push their luck in. “I drink from the fountain. What happens?” should be a staple of every OSR adventure. The map is better than average with a couple of different options to choose from at any given point. In addition it has a lot of variety: a lake, river, tunnels, and so on. It’s quite a bit more interesting than almost every other map and almost qualifies as a good megadungeon map. There are several new monsters besides the toad-people, including a pretty cool toad hydra. I don’t usually comment on art, however Jason Shultis did the interior art on tis and it is PERFECT. I can’t image the creatures any other way.

The second adventure, Stone Cyst of the Shroom Priests, takes all of the good qualities from Toad-King and amps them up. The map is made much better by adding a third dimension to it. It’s also larger, containing about a hundred rooms/encounter areas. There are more new monsters, more weird things to play with, and the weirdness/whimsy dial is turned up to 11. Just a description of the main shaft, a weird greenish lava lamp like environment, is more of an evocative environment than most people will have seen in a published product. Once you add in the Green Brains, the Shrooms proper, and all of their various fungi and other creations … wow, the party is going to have a majorly good time in this.

This is one of the finest products yet released for the OSR. Go buy it now.

Posted in Level 4, Reviews, The Best | 15 Comments

The Spider-God’s Bride

Posted on February 15, 2012 by Bryce Lynch


Enter the City of Stone and slay the high priest of Jul-Juggah! Plunder the ancient gold of Namthu! Seek the fabled jewel of Khadim Bey, but beware the nameless horrors of the Al-Khazi desert! Fight the dread adepts of the ape-god, or succumb to the pleasures of the Moon-Juice of Yaatana! Or perhaps you will perish by the curses of Ur-Kharra, the long-dead sorcerer-king of Elder Kuth?

A 200-page booklet full of Swords & Sorcery with a mesopotamian flair. It’s hard to get through at times, but delivers as a solid genre book … if you’re definition is the same as the designers.

I don’t review supplements, yet anyway. I don’t find what they present to be interesting, generally. This product is essentially a supplement dealing with a particular style of swords & sorcery play. I bought it because it because I thought it contained ten adventures. It does … however they are … different. The book is large, 200 pages, and that makes it difficult for me to work with. These days I’m all about simplicity and “small” and “lay flat” are highly valuable to me. Yeah, content is still king but marginal content gets rapidly downgraded when it’s a pain for me to use. This is almost certainly unfair to the designer. It’s akin to a movie reviewer telling you they didn’t like a movie because there were no furry futa’s with balloons in it. In the world of movie reviews you can just go read a reviewer. In this genre though … well, I hope you like furry futa’s with balloons.

The first forty or so pages of this product describe how to run a d20 game with a swords & sorcery feel to it. Human-centric, low magic but vile magic, monstrous monsters and the like. It also presents an overview of a campaign setting that has a decidedly mesopotamian/sultanate air to it. That certainly IS a part of the swords & sorcery trope but not my go to imagery. This carries through to the ten adventurers and is more than little off-putting for my tastes. I think vile priests in dense swamps with giant snakes & lizards and some gorean art mixed in. It doesn’t help that the writing style is more than a little dry. Combined with the art I get the sense I’m reading an academic journal. That’s not the evocative style I’m looking for. It also doesn’t help that there are no maps in the book, you have to go download them. I’m supportive of supplemental material on the web however once day the xoth.net website is going to go down forever and there will be no more maps. It’s also confusing as hell until you figure out the maps are online. Yeah, You’re gonna photocopy them anyway so having them online makes sense, but it’s confusing as hell. The

If you work at it you can get past many of these issues and find some nuggets. What’s presented in the ten adventures are some site-based encounters, but not in the way that term is generally used today. Generally the adventure presents a vaguely arabic location like a home, temple, or the like, and then suggests some reasons for the party to go rob them. There are generally a few more things thrown in as well: a wandering monster table for the journey, or a couple of events that can take place. It’s probably most similar to some of the older MERP products. Those presented a location such as a tower or fortress, and then described a few adventures that could take place there in the various ages of Middle Earth. For some reason this product seems to lack the charm of those older MERP products, It could be nostalgia talking but I just didn’t get the same imagery  from these locations. There are not railroad adventures in the typical sense, in fact many of them are quite the opposite: VERY free form. It’s almost like the designer is giving you some outlines or notes for an adventure that you can then work to make your own. The wandering monster tables are very nice and provide some decent details to the monsters, creatures, and environmental issues you may meet. In addition the adventures of full of advice on what to do if the party does Y instead of X and/or how to reintroduce certain aspects of an adventure. What if the party doesn’t take the hook? Then Y or Z could happen. This sort of advice is invaluable in these third age edition products, given their … goals? of getting the party to the adventure in a plausible manner.

It’s a low-magic swords & sorcery world with a mashup of mesopotamian and sultanate cultures combined with some vile cults and the like. You need to do some work to get through the text and you’ll need to flesh things out quite a bit, however these are some excellent seeds if you’re in to that type of game.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/110168/Legend-The-Spider-Gods-Bride?affiliate_id=1892600

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G4-5-6-7-8-9 Super Giant Adventure

Posted on February 10, 2012 by Bryce Lynch

The giants await, as your meek and humble group assembles to venture forth and defeat them. But to do so, you must travel to distant lands, survive extreme conditions and challenges as you search out their hiding places. But afterward, when you think your job is done, and you have gathered all the treasure you can carry, can you find your way back through the Verbeeg Valley?

This is a compilation product containing the six Giant adventures by R.C. Pinnell along with a supplemental adventure just for this product. The modules are a decent homage to the TSR G1-2-3 Against the Giants series. For the most part they succeed well. I consider G1 one of the best modules ever produced and thus this designers work draws comparisons.

The products contains:
G4 – Sanctum of the Stone Giant Lord
G5 – Curse of the Cloud Giant Queen
G6 – Forge of the Formian Smith Lord
G7 – Giants in the Deep
G8 – Manor of the Mountain Giant King
G9 – Secret of the Swamp Giant Steward
The Verbeeg Valley

That’s a lot of adventuring in this compilation, most of it at very high levels!

G4 – Sanctum of the Stone Giant Lord
This adventure features a little romp through a 34 room temple complex of the stone giants. Like G1, the setup and hook are very brief. The map here is a good one, with lots of alternate paths from one location to the next. This allows the party to sneak about a bit, avoid encounters, and ambush as well as be ambushed. There are some options on the map that should allow the DM to extend the complex to a second level if they wish. The primary opponents are stone giants, with a great number being shamans, fighting above their HD and having cleric spells. This is going to make the encounters a real challenge. The designer emulates the quirky design style of G1 well, with a Hammer of Thunderbolts behind some junk in one of the rooms, and a flying carpet hanging up on the wall in one location. Slaying the high priest in the greater temple is not without peril: he attempts to commune and if he succeeds then the temples demigod shows up to battle the party! That’s the kind of old school logic I like! There’s a boat load of very powerful magic items laying about, but then again this is a module for levels 10-14. I missed not having a wandering table or a second level to explore, as well as the factions in G1. There is an attempt made to make this a living & breathing complex, with the occupants going about their own business before being interrupted. This falls a little flat though, mostly because of the lack of multiple creature types. The lesser creatures in G1, rushing about and in the middle of things, really brought that element to life. This adventure feels a little flat.

G5 – Curse of the Cloud Giant Queen
This adventure is one of the more interesting ones in the compilation. Could giants, allies of some local nobility, have called for help and the party is tasked with fulfilling the obligations of treaty by freeing the queen from the basement of her castle, where she’s hiding. This time the dungeon complex has two levels, although the second level is quite small and contains the cloud giants in hiding. The first level map is another excellent one of the type I like; lots of hallways and linking passages. Four separate wandering monster tables are available, one for each section of the upper level. This time out the encounters feel a lot more lively. The party catches the invading fog giants and cyclopskin in a variety of situations. That plus the addition of the cyclopskin as well as the cloud giants allies in the basement really liven things up. There was a minor plot element in G4 that dealt with the motivations of the stone giants however it wasn’t really fleshed out much at all. This module though has quite a bit more to discover in it, with several of the individuals having a lot to reveal and lots of clues for the party to pick up on. There are dead cloud giants everywhere as well as rampaging fog giants. I really enjoyed those extra details and thought they added a lot. This time out the main villain is not a Drow and is refreshing in and of himself. There’s also a slight nod to G3: the cloud giant king has run off with a vile temptress and his treasury to visit the fire giant king.

G6 – Forge of the Formian Smith Lord
Another of the standouts, containing only 28 encounters. The party descends in to a cave system, following a map from G4. The caves have three distinct parts. First there’s some natural caverns. These have mostly animal-like encounters in them. The second part is a massive cavern system that leads DOWN, while the third os a worked stone complex that is home to the Formian Smith Lord, another demigod. The map for the upper chambers has lots of twists and turns and has a couple of notable encounters: one with an injured adventurer and one with the cast-off experiments of a demigod. The central section is essentially one big puzzle room, or rather a large natural obstacle that the party must figure out how to overcome. There’s a bit of a gimp here since flying and teleportation don’t work, although levitation/feather falling do. I have a long standing distaste for those types of reindeer games. Besides, given the set up of this encounter I suspect that flying and/or teleportation would make the room MORE interesting, in terms of separating the party for what’s to come. The lower chambers could have been better. The middle section seems to imply something interesting is coming up however that promise is unfulfilled. These chambers are the home to the Formians demigod of smithing, along with his assistants and applicants for tutoring. I would have preferred to see something more fantastic than what’s presented. A Beholder is worked in well, however the opportunity was lost to get really creative with the environment, treasure, and creatures.

G7 – Giants in the Deep
G8 – Manor of the Mountain Giant King
G7 and G8 are closely linked, being two levels of the same complex. They are also two of the most interesting in this compilation. G7 starts off with a little Descent in to the Depths of Earth map action with the parties final destination being the gold mine of some dwarves who haven’t been heard from in awhile. Once again the magic of G1 shines through: with only six pages of text the designer provides an underground journey, a couple of warm-up encounters in the caverns, and then a full on adventure in an interesting place with lots to see and do! The two set encounters are quite interesting, both in terrain and function, as is the main entrance to the dwarves mine. I really got a good feel for the environments and the brief text got my imagination going. The story element behind the mine, brief and mostly included in the text as it should be, is quite nice as well.

G8 continues where G7 left off. It seems the dwarves tunneled up in someones basement … in the middle of the main temple. Oops! G8’s maps are the smallest of the pack but still manage to fit in some alternate paths. The shaman giants show up again, and quite a few of the other giants are advanced in HD. Despite the large number of servants in the lower halls almost none show up in this module, which was most notable on the wandering table. A few more servants wandering around would have been a great addition and allowed for some more local color.

G9 Is essentially a hex crawl through a swamp. There’s an annoying effect that dampens magic items and use that consumer far too much of the text, although the designed does note several times that the DM is free to ignore it if it annoys them. The hex crawl contains a fine assortment of swamp creatures including more basilisk. I find this humorous because most of the other modules have basilisk as well. We all have our favorite children, after all … Anyway, this adventure has a nice twist to it and will reward intelligent play much more than many of the others. Uh … intelligent non-tactical play. This is the least *hack*able of the adventure modules and a nice change of pace from the typical G1/G2/G3 *hack* style.

In all of the modules there are couple of things I did not prefer. The text for the entires can run on for longer than I would prefer. That is combined with integrating the monsters and treasure in to the text, sometimes bolded and sometimes not, makes the entries hard to read and run during play. It’s going to take some time with a highlighter to turn the entires in to the ‘at a glance’ type that I refer. The magic items are generally standard book items, which keeps with the flavor of the G1-2-3 series however, not everything G1-2-3 did was good. This, along with just listing monster HP and not their stats, means more work for a GM in prepping the adventure. No more than in the original G1 series though. More notes on how the giants respond to incursions, including an order of battle, would have been appreciated.

All in all, these are very good modules. They suffer a bit because of the inevitable comparisons to G1, however they are very goo din their own right.

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C1 – The Circle of Fire

Posted on February 8, 2012 by Bryce Lynch

Surrounded by swarming giant fire ants, the end appears near and only a smoldering pyre will mark your death. Escape is at hand. Is it salvation or are you only jumping into yet another Circle of Fire?

This module has a slow burn. The party is faced with several life or death situations in an environment with little to no time pressure. It incorporates some classic play elements, such as an ancient tower with many empty, and some strange, rooms to explore.

While strolling through the park one day in the very merry month of May, the parties taken by surprise by a GNAWING AND GNASHING MANDIBLES! *CLACK* *CLACK* *CLACK*! THEM! THEM! Hmmm, fair warning. By ‘park’ I actually mean ‘barren and desolate wasteland’ and by ‘month of May’ I actually mean ‘Fire Ant Season.’ It seems that every ten years or so the fire ants erupt from the ground en masse and go through some strange ritual of creating a giant circle that gets more and more restrictive. And the party is trapped in it. How embarrassing … It seems that there are thousands upon thousands of giant fire ants encircling the party and slowly closing the ring. This being Dungeons & Dragons, the ‘fire’ is literal; the heat is so intense that everything is being burnt to a crisp hundreds of feet prior to the actual ant ring reaching the party. The ring appears centered on a nearby oasis, with an abandoned inn next to it, and the ants should reach it in about eight hours. More than enough time for the party to contemplate their DOOM. The inn has several encounters, all of which are perhaps the weakest portion of the module. The first are sand golems that block the way if the party doesn’t sign the ledger at the guard shack. There are two ways to take this: either as a goofy lark or as a bit of high fantasy. It doesn’t feel like the silly goofiness that sometimes appears in modules, but rather a bit of high fantasy magical economy. That’s a major turn off for me. The second are a couple of encounters with desert dwellers who know the secrets of avoiding the ants. These are some “let’s get drunk and loot the place” halfling and a band of wasteland orcs with much the same goal, if more hostile intent. Neither group will share the information with the party, and thus it seems to be just an excuse to have some hostile orcs and bizarre halfling show up. It could have perhaps been more interesting with some vermin encounters and making the orcs unwilling but potential “allies” of the party, for certain definitions of that word. Eventually the party will hopefully find two things of interest: a pond with some small gold gems in it and an ancient stone archway standing in a barn at the site that has a yellow keystone. Digging at it’s base shows some yellow powder. The party is supposed to crush a yellow gemstone which will activate the portal and allow the parties escape. The party is transported elsewhere …

This second portion of the module becomes much more interesting. The party find themselves on a great floating roadway under a mighty dome with a great tower at the center. All around the floating roadway are piles of rubble and debris; the ruins of an ancient city. And, of course, it’s occupants: The Wretched. These are essential ghoul-like degenerate humans with a kind of berserker frenzy in them. The party encounters a small group soon after arriving and from their elevated position can see more and more coming out of holes in the rubble piles and moving towards the roadway. Thus starts a frantic rush by the party to get to the great tower. Huge numbers of enemies are massing behind them and pursuing while the party will have to negotiate several sections of broken and rubble-choked roadway. Arriving at the tower they will find the massive doors blown off of it, but no Wretched will enter: they are terrified of the tower. The party now gets to enjoy a non-pressured exploration of the great tower and it’s five levels. The vast majority of the towers 57 rooms contain to encounters are are just mundane rooms.  The more notable rooms have some nice freaky stuff for the party to play with, a memorable Curse, and the dangers of the abysmal chasm under the lower floor. Plunging in to a seemingly bottomless chasm will be a constant reminder and threat as the party explores as several areas are open to the chasm and several floor areas are weakened. What’s interesting about most of the tower is that it’s just a routine exploration of room after room of nothing much of note that is then punctuated by brief moments of tension and excitement. Things pick up quite a bit on level 4 of the tower with several of the rooms serving as bait for the party and some sort of elemental creature or hazard at play. On Level 5 the party briefly encounters the enigmatic Phantom Mage who warns them that the tower is about to disappear … which means The Wretched once again come in to play. Or … they could exit through that crack in the ceiling … One blue dragon later they have some blue gems and can make their exit back through a portal with a blue keystone.

The adventure has more than few interesting things going for it. The knowledge of their impending doom by the ants at the beginning of the module sets a nice tone for the adventureIt seems like you have time however there is no escape from the ants relentless efforts. The transition from this pacing to the frantic run to the tower while being chased by an amassing horde of the Wretched is quite effective. It’s seen again near the end when the party has a much more concrete deadline and needs to escape the tower before they fall prey to the Wretched. In between is the exploration of the strange tower which once again repeats the theme: a slow burn of exploration punctuated by brief encounters of terror. The tower represents itself well as an ancient and mysterious edifice that’s partially abandoned and yet remains full of mysteries. There are several new magic items and several objects for the party to explore and figure out. Many, if not all, of the combat encounters in the tower can be avoided. The module is an excellent example of risk/reward and an old school style of exploration. Hope you’ve got rope; you’re going to need it on this one!

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/263893/C1-The-Circle-of-Fire?affiliate_id=1892600

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H1 – Six Feet Under

Posted on February 7, 2012 by Bryce Lynch

Something is not quite right at the graveyard. Old and unused, with the exception of those previously interned, the graveyard has recently become the subject of fear and conjecture. Strange noises and mysterious figures have been reported by those attempting to visit the site. Now rumors have surfaced of an ancient barrow system is to blame. It will take a band of brave adventurers to discover what lies Six Feet Under!

A short little romp through a nicely developed little scene, good for an evening or two of fun adventuring.

Have you ever been part of a D&D party that’s gotten in to trouble? Not just your normal every day kind of D&D trouble but rather the RUN AWAY! and KILL IT WITH FIRE!!!! kind of trouble that looks for certain like a TPK? That’s what’s going on in this module, however this time it’s not the party that’s in trouble but rather an NPC party. I’m happy to say that much fun will be derived from it!

The setup and hooks here are simple: there’s a graveyard that full up and therefore unused except for the occasional visitor. Strange lights have been seen recently. The party will either stumble upon it or be hired to investigate. Not the strongest or most imaginative hooks, or the most original hook or setting, but there’s a good twist involved. It seems that there’s a band of grave robbers at work. They’ve been tunneling around under the graveyard and digging up the graves from the underside in order to loot them. So, not really a band of evil necromancers but rather some lazy greedy goons operating a Paint Your Wagon style ruse to Make Money Fast. So far they are doing pretty well and have looted more than a few graves and mausoleums. They get a little careless now and then, which accounts for the lights the party sees. Then the party shows up and things fall apart pretty fast …

The robbers have a look out that spots the party and the bandits stop work and keep quiet. Well, for the most part, I mean they do have some time to kill, so they open a door they had not yet looted … only to reveal a major undead baddie and his undead minions! RUN AWAY! KILL IT WITH FIRE! And thus starts our little madcap adventure. While the party is investigating the graveyard and poking around in the tunnels the robbers are getting slaughtered and making a last stand. I find both the premise (Grave Robbers!) and the In Medias Res portion nice twists. I’ve always enjoyed a kind of living breathing dungeon that has things going on in it. Walking in on someone looting a tomb, or someone making dunner or repairing his boots. This makes it seem like the dungeon has a life outside of the parties action and that they are not just waiting around for the party to show up and *hack* them. It’s also pretty nice that we get to see an NPC party. These were always staples in earlier games and it’s nice to see the party encounter another set of murder hobo’s.

The idea is that the party will kick around the graveyard for awhile, perhaps hearing some sounds from underneath, until they eventually find the lookout and the passage to the underground tunnels. This first portion of the adventure has a few interesting touches. There’s a random table for determining what the party find if they start digging up graves and looting mausoleums, as well as a couple of nice encounters with creatures that have their own motivations. For example, behind a barred crypt is a wight that just wants out so he can take revenge on his family. He’s no interest at all in fighting the party, just escape. Or a spider that’s just lairing in a building while it hunts around the graveyard. OMG! Creatures that are not solely intent on fighting and eating the party! WTF was the designer thinking! This is a welcome and refreshing bit of naturalistic style that I enjoy seeing. There are a couple of other freaky little non-combat encounters as well for the party to investigate as well. All of the the text tends to be on the wordy side, with only 2-4 encounters per page, however they do deliver.

Underneath the graveyard the party will find the tunnels the robbers have been digging and using. Oh, and the signs of a slaughter. Recall that the undead have just gotten loose and are currently eating/attacking/hunting the bandits. There are three or four notable encounters in the tunnels, all of which deal with the undead having just fed or with them in the process of attacking the evil party. You get the sense of a sense of chaos and desperation as the encounters unfold. The module has 28 total encounter areas on a rather simplistic map and should be a good for a nice evening or two adventuring.

On the down side, the encounter descriptions feature boxed text and are a little wordy for my tastes. I always find the boxed text adds more confusion because I can never quickly and easily find out what’s going on in the room. The gems, jewelry and magic items are a little generic for my tastes as well. “50 gp gem” and “+1 sword” are the norm for module writers however I like a little more details on what the party is finding. It’s a simple thing but adds a lot to the experience of playing.  There are a few new magic items, three I believe, which I do greatly appreciate, as well as two new monsters. This is great because it keeps the party guessing; they never know what to expect when the monster didn’t just come out of the Monster manuel. There’s also the gnolls. I’m not a big fan of humanoids in modules. In this case they seem to be a stand in for “tougher than normal bandits”, in which case I would have preferred to see some bandits who are tougher than normal. I believe that throwing in humanoids as monsters waters down the term ‘monster.’ I want my party screaming RUN AWAY! and KILL IT WITH FIRE! when they see monsters, and humanoids just don’t provoke that.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/263899/H1-Six-Feet-Under?affiliate_id=1892600

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BHS3 – The Shadowed Keep

Posted on February 6, 2012 by Bryce Lynch

An intrepid band of adventurers brave the frigid wilderness of the vast Northern Territories in search of an evil artifact known as the Bone-Hilt Sword, and some only to satisfy their thirst for wealth and treasure. But will they survive the armies of undead, dragons, and creatures of the cold northern lands?

This is a wonderful adventure with an almost dream-like quality. It’s a Fantastic Location and Epic Quest done OSR style and framed by a high quality layout. This is an excellent offering from John Kramer and his Usherwood Publishing.

Zowie Wowie! This module reminds me a bit of an old campaign I once ran. Villages and towns were of the worst sort. Full of the poor and diseased, covered with mud and dirt, barely eeking out a living. Just off the path the glens seemed brighter, the dales mistier and the colors more vivid. It was clear you were somewhere else. It is that feeling of ‘now I’m someplace else’ that this module does an excellent job conveying. The players are going someplace special, someplace Evil. The location feels like someplace special and the encounters leading up to it have an almost dreamlike quality to them. There is a definite feeling of transition from the normal worlds of man to this Other Place. Now understand that there is no actual plane-hopping involved; this is all just a normal overland trip from a village to the Shadowed Keep. The caves where the first two installments took place were full of evil humanoids but they felt like were of this world. The Shadowed Keep though is more of a supernatural force of entropy and evil. It _feels_ like a place of power and evil, and the journey there feels different because of that.

There are couple of hooks provided. The most obvious is if this is a part of campaign play and the party is searching for The Bone Hilt. This object has been referenced in several past modules however this would be the first module in which the party is actively taking part in that hook. There is another hook in which the party hears the story of a band of adventurers who journeyed to this Shadowed Keep and never came back. I have a personal distaste of the word ‘Adventurers’ since it implies a high fantasy world setting of which I do not approve. I do, however, approve of the party hearing stories of other travelers, thugs, mercenaries and the like who went places and never returned. I like the sense of history that it implies.

There are three encounter areas on the way to the Shadowed Keep. They can all be avoided however they also all have an almost dream-like feeling to them. You get the sense that the party is Going Somewhere Special in the encounters. The first is a snowy village. Imagine a village sitting nestled in a forest at the base of some mountains. As you approach over the top of a hill you can see through the trees that something is not right. It’s very quiet, there is no activity, and several buildings are burnt. A snow has fallen which hides most signs of the massacre that that has taken place however the interiors are full of of the evidence: mutiliated corpses, hung bodies, burnt victims and the like. There was a cruelty behind this massacre that one doesn’t generally see described. It’s not all that graphic however you do get the sense that of a palpable EVIL behind these actions. It’s very very well done and extremely evocative. The other two encounters, a graveyard and a guarded pass, are in much the same vein, as if the valley in which the Keep sits and the keep proper. The ruler is undead, and this is an undead king done right. There is a feeling of decay and he commands both undead and living forces in a haphazard way, as if he’s not trying at all. I could go on for paragraphs on the evocative natures of the encounters and settings. The designer does a superb job of creating evocative settings in which I can then fill in with my own imagination. This is exactly what I’m looking for.

The layout is top notch, as is all Usherwood Publishing modules. (See my review of the Shattered Skull for more information on this topic.) I’m not sure anyone does a layout or organization better than Usherwood. John Kramer, the designer of this module and owner of Usherwood, is a layout and design guy for his day job and it shows. There are several new monsters for the party to encounter and the gems & jewelry are detailed in a nice way, with descriptions for each. About half the magic items are given extra attention and/or detail in some way, which I really appreciate as well. It helps turn a good adventure in to a great one when you can provide that extra detail. It does feel a little heavy on the magic items, this being a modules for levels 3-5. That may be mitigated somewhat by players using an old school style of not fighting every monster and avoiding many rooms & encounters. The maps are top notch an interesting, if not very complex, and there is a section for NPC’s and pre-gens, as well as several pages that the DM can use for an adventure log.

As far as I know, Kramer has done Ychyrn the Tyrant, The Shattered Skull, The Shadowed Keep, and Arachnophobia! All four are top notch modules and you should have them in your collections.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/83278/The-Shadowed-Keep-PDF?affiliate_id=1892600

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UA2 – The Awakening

Posted on February 4, 2012 by Bryce Lynch

The dreaded villoi have been awakened from their centuries-long slumber by an evil greater even than themselves. Can your party of intrepid adventurers stop the combined menace before all the lands are over-run? Enter the lands west of the infamous Blood Pass to uncover the secret, and thwart The Awakening.

This module has several flashes of brilliance however the individual encounters tend to be very difficult with no options offered other than combat.

The central concept of this module is rather interesting. In ages past insect-men invaders from another dimension/plane set up several hives and attempted to conquer the land. After failing they went in to a hibernation. Recently one group was awakened by a powerful devil. They formed a mutual pact for greater evil and are now trying to wake their brethren. This appeals to me; far too often non-humans are just depicted as humans with pointy ears, or short humans with furry feet, or humans with pig faces. A truly alien species with alien motivations and an alien culture is refreshing. Unfortunately … these are just humans with insect shells This is a major opportunity lost. In the end the insect-men form another dimension have inscriptions over doorways, cleric classes, and act just like normal humanoids who are all too human. Another example of this are their spears. There’s a small insect that lives in the head and when it hit the insect break off and burrows in to the targets body, doing extra damage each round for three rounds. That’s pretty frigging cool. But that’s where its left at. This is a theme with this designer: there are some very imaginative elements that are surrounded by plot and mechanical elements that are less than stellar, and in many cases a major turn-off.

The hook here is a brief city/town adventure. The party runs in to some insect-men in a local sage shop and are led to a more knowledgable sage by a note in one of their pockets. That leads to the parties journey to the alien hive and it’s extermination. Letters on alien insect-men are lame. Sage shops (MULTIPLE sage shops!) are lame. Shops selling scrolls of Heal, Restoration and Limited Wish are lame. This sort of high fantasy style is major turn off for me. I don’t like this sort of magical economy nonsense. I know we’re talking about a game where guys throw fireballs, but I can’t get past the high fantasy magic shop style. I LOATHE it. The insect-men speaking common and carrying a letter are major detractors from their alien nature.

The alien hive looks a lot more like a spaceship then a hive. It has the usual “you cant teleport or passwall or dimension door in” element that is so popular with this designer. The encounters here are a mixed batch of insect-men, devils, and ogres. There are a whole lot of “they attack immediately” and “they fight to the death” type encounters present. That combined with the limited map options means that this is really just a straight-forward hack. There are a couple of puzzles and quite a few traps, too many of which feel arbitrarily deadly. Too many of the encounters are full of excessive and unneeded details which just bog the encounters down. This is combined with encounter rooms that don’t feel alien, but rather like just another high-fantasy barracks room.

The module has excellent production values, as all Usherwood titles do. There are beautiful maps, pre-gens, an appendix of histories, and so on. Unfortunately the flashes of brilliance are marred by the high fantasy setting and encounters that feel too much like one of those deathtrap dungeons I used to design when I thought it was player vs. GM. I like Save or Die, difficult encounters and deadly traps however there are just too many of them in this and I get a very adversarial sense from the writing style. Not for me.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/56463/The-Awakening?affiliate_id=1892600

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The Rebel Faction

Posted on February 3, 2012 by Bryce Lynch

Well over a century ago, six noble houses from the dark elf city Dar Multai grew tired of the incessant, petty political maneuverings of the seven other noble houses in the city. They eventually discovered a long-abandoned dark elf city organized around the worship of an elder, largely forgotten god in the direct opposition to the Spider Goddess. They are now poised to declare war …

If you can’t find TSR module D3, Vault of Drow, then this would serve as a substitute in a pinch. It lacks some of the charm of that product, especially the diverse inhabitants of the city, and has a certain style that I don’t enjoy. it does however have a few truly bizarre creatures in it, if you can make it the end.

The hook to this module is simple enough, if a bit implausible: while out drinking the party is approached by three dark elves who want to hire the party to find the location of a group of dark elf raiders. This rebel faction no longer worships the spider queen and has been causing a great deal of trouble. They have a base somewhere in the under dark but the other dark elves can’t find it. For this the party gets paid 3,000 coins. The party sets off in to the caverns while the DM examines a map much like the one from D1. The whole module is a bit of an homage to D1-3. The wandering monster table for this section is a bit disappointing. They tend to be a bit on the small side for my tastes and the usual ‘notes’ that accompany an Usherwood adventure are not really utilized very well. In the past they gave some indication of what the creature was doing, as kind of help to the DM’s imagination. This module presents then more a ‘additional wandering monster rules’ such as ‘Male or Female?’ for the dark elf patrols. The monsters in this module all tend to attack on sight, which is a bit of a disappointment. In fact one of the rooms, a barracks, has a group of dark elves asleep, in their armor and weapons at their side, ready to spring up to attack the party when they enter. This is indicative of the style that don’t enjoy; a kind of ‘gimp the party’ style that appears in many other places as well.

The party will eventually find a passage that leads elsewhere. At least I hope they find it: it’s very well hidden (only 1 in 10 chance of elves finding it) and yet the rest of the adventure can’t proceed until the party DOES find it. The groups first challenge will be getting past the guard post. It’s a wall with towers built across the tunnel, with a permanent true seeing at it’s base, manned by multiple F7 guards, two F7/U12 wizards and a F7/C10 commander. Their AC’s hover around -5 with HP in the 60’s. They intelligently summon help via teleports if the fight is going against them. There are multiple glyphs of warding on the doors which require a STR 75 to open. Our parties success looks doubtful, especially if they are using the pregens provided. Gordo the F4/T8 halfling has an AC of 8. Richard the 11th level paladin has 35HP and a mighty AC of 3. It’s very unlikely that any group could make it past this encounter, and there is no way in hell that the pre-gens could.

The passage leads to a cavern with the usual drow city style. Ultraviolet glows, lichens for light, a noble quarter for the great houses, a small slum for the commoners, slave and lizard pens, a mushroom garden, etc. Oh, and the great temple, gotta have a great temple The party can, and perhaps should, bug out when they find the guard post. They have fulfilled the letter of their contract and can collect their pittance of a reward. Screwing with a city of dark elves is not going to turn out well, and the other faction is just not offering enough.

One of the interesting thing about D3 was the many and varied factions in the Vault. This made it possible to get some role-playing in and tackle the problem of the Vault from a variety of different angles. Ally with another house, guild, or faction, sneak about, pretend to be an evil party, etc. That element of factions is completely missing from this. There is no vibrant city the way there was in D3, just a massive number of overly-powerful dark elves who all attack on sight. UN. COOL.

There’s nothing really interesting going on in this vault. The encounters are a bit dull and are generally given with far too much backstory. I also get a whiff of ‘trying to be naughty’, meaning that the depictions of torture and the like have a decidedly “oh, look, I put a sex devil in the torture chamber and she likes to DO IT” feel to them. A kind of being dirty for the sake of being dirty and attracting attention. I should point out that I had no problems with Carcosa and thought that The Book of Erotic Fantasy was very well done, so I’m not being a prude. It just seems … forced? in this module.

Let’s cover one more item before I get to some highlights. I mentioned above the ‘gimp the party’ style of dungeon design that is present. This involves things like doors slamming shut when you enter a room and having the door double wizard lock behind you. Not being able to teleport, passwall, dimension door, is another item that makes an appearance, as well as undead turning at a vastly different level. Footlockers are generally trapped with wizard locks AND fireball spells. Things that can be played with (Lets put on the priests robes!) are invariably magically trapped. This is all a lot of nonsense. The party presumably earned their teleports so let them use them. The prevalence of double wizard locked doors is absurdly high, as are the locked footlockers. No wonder the guards have to sleep in armor with their weapons are their side, once accident during a drill and they’d all be dead from fireballs or poison! If the party takes the time to discover the guard rotation schedule, and where they sleep, and then tries to murder them in their beds then they should have a fair shot at it. The nonsense in this module only serves to reenforce one particular style of play: hack the monster.

The end goal of the module, if the party does not follow my advice about retreating at the guard tower, is to find the temple of the Elder Eye. That’s where the few good things in the module show through. There’s a very nice tentacle golem and some slime/ooze golems as well. The actually avatar of the god is cool also, a giant eye floating over an alter with a bundle of nerve endings hanging down behind it. Those are all pretty cool, I just wish they were surround with a more evocative and less gimpy environment.

Note: The designer tends to reuse some of the elements I dislike the most. The guard tower has appeared in another form in Advanced Adventures #11 – The Conquerer Worm, published by Expeditious Retreat Press. Doors that slam shut behind the party and double wizard lock, as well as “you can’t teleport here” structures appear in modules AA#4, AA#9 , AA#14, AA#18. The Nameless City module, by Mythmere Press, also contains those elements.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/78837/The-Rebel-Faction?affiliate_id=1892600

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