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A creature stalks the streets of Westgate Town, feasting on the humble lower class citizens. The locals believe the monster to be a werewolf and hire both a famed werewolf hunter and a party of adventurers to seek out and defeat the beast before it strikes again!

This is an investigative adventure in a portion of a large city with a very heavily timeline-based element. The city-based nature will make it hard for a DM to run, like all city games, however the core villain is quite interesting.

In the Baldur’s Gate 2 video game I have memories of walking in to a random house and exclaiming to myself “Holy $%^&! What the $&%^ is this?!” The guys house was full of corpses and skins. Cities are a great place to have an adventure. There are lots and lots of people to interact with with all of the role-playing opportunities that represents. And some of people are going to have secrets. As a DM you have to manage large groups of NPC’s and environments and make them all interesting to the party AND remember where they are and what they do. Then you have to stick an adventure on top of it. A well-run city game is perhaps the hardest type to run but one of the best you’ll ever play in.

This adventure module takes place in a city, or rather, in a section of a city. A great deal of the module describes the various buildings, businesses, NPC’s and homes in that section. A small timeline is then presented. The party is free to do as they wish. In my experience this generally means “make a mess of things.”

Our core villain in this adventure is reaching his breaking point. The woman he has loved from afar is getting married, breaking his heart. The local guild is pressuring him to join … through the use of thugs, thieves and heavies. Then his business evaporates. So far not too bad. Then the statue of a goddess he’s working on starts talking to him, and promising him a solution. He accidentally gets started on a path that leads him to kill and eat people, which will eventually turn him in to a demon. He gets a long backstory, over 1.5 pages, that goes in to his history and motivations. There’s then another two pages that describe his various powers & abilities as the adventure progresses. Essentially, he gets more powerful as he eats people and he’s doing that every night, so the provided charts help greatly in providing his stats, abilities, appearance, and the like. I generally don’t like a long backstory, and I still don’t. The Barrow Mound of Gravemoor had a villain with very personal, and very human, motivations as well, but did it in far fewer words. The story does paint a very good and very personal picture of a defeated man, and that sort of detail is very unusual in a module. Villains tend to be much more cookie-cutter and I much prefer to have them more fully fleshed out. Of course, this has to somehow be communicated to the players to be effective. We don’t want to wander in to the final room only to discover a hidden mastermind we never knew existed. Yes, Lareth, we’re looking at you. The various murders do a decent job of building up the villain, however his motivations remain hidden, probably throughout the adventure, and will almost certainly never be known to the players. Which means a lot of what was written is wasted.

The city section is large with almost 160 buildings, shops, and homes described, along with the various NPC’s that inhabit them. That’s probably 200 people, at least. Each has at least a couple of sentences to describe it, with most having considerable more. Some are weird, a couple have a decent personality a DM can work with, however most are just plain craftsmen and merchants. I like my NPC’s to have strong personalities and other elements associated with them. I find this helps run a much more successful city based adventure. There is A LOT going on, and the DM probably will need to take some time and mark up his map to help run the adventure more smoothly.

The timeline takes place over 3.5 pages. Essentially it details what should happen each day and each evening until the villain goes completely nuts, and then details what he tries to do. This is the section I have the most problem with since it contains lots of phrasings stating that the villain should get away. Combined with a villain that has several shapeshifting and movement powers, it’s going to be very hard for a party to tie him down prior to the completion of his transformation, at which point he just plane shifts away. What we’re left with is an adventure in which the party goes through the motions of doing something, only to have their efforts prove meaningless. This type of adventure is very hard to write because of that very issue. There is generally a Right Way to solve the mystery, and the party can either become frustrated if they don’t catch on, or stumble upon the solution quickly. It’s been my experience that players generally fall in to the former category. Pacing is crucial here, as the module correctly points out, but there’s a lot of room for a busted adventure, and not in a good way.

A pack of vicious ghouls recently attacked a group of adventurers. The party’s ranger tracked the ghouls back to an old cave but dared not go inside as it was far too dangerous. A plea has gone out to any able-bodied adventurers nearby to clear out this undead infestation. You and your allies have heard the call and set out urgently for the cave to end the thread, find some treasure, and hopefully survive the horrors beneath the ghoul lair!

This is a relatively simple and straightforward tomb complex exploration, on two levels, with some interesting magic items and way too much treasure.

The hook here is quite simple. Someone tracked a pack of ghouls back to their lair but wasn’t strong enough to finish them. Word gets out and the party presumably pursues the ghouls in order to Do Right In The World. Not the strongest hook in the world, and it may work out better is the party were to stumble upon some ghoul handiwork a few times and perhaps be attached to a nearby village that is threatened. That might work well, especially with the orcs being masterminds.

Yes, there are orcs. The ghoul lair is an old tomb with the first level being mostly undead the second level having a strong contingent of a local undead-worshiping cult of orcs. I don’t like orcs; they tend to just be “bandits who are bestial” and I’d much prefer that my bandits actually be evil SOB’s and save the term ‘monster’ for the truly bizzarre and alien. I’m sure someone somewhere in the history of RPG’s has created a module with truly interesting orcs however I don’t ever remember seeing it.

The maps are pretty straight forward, as burial complexes go. They are more like catacombs than a tomb, with lots of spots for he commoners and a few nicer chambers for the honored (wealthy) dead. They don’t really have loops, not being large enough to support a true exploration, but they are quite varied in dungeon features and layout. Pillars, statues, shrines, cave intrusion, and lots of “same level” stairs. The wandering monsters fall in to three categories: orcs, undead, or vermin, with the combat encounters falling in to the same categories with a few oozes and a rust monster thrown in. The room descriptions can get a bit lengthy and verbose; I wish most of the room history and usage was left out. It does help the DM flesh things out a bit, but at the cost of downtime. A bolded one or two word description would work as well, I would guess.

The magic items are one of the more interesting parts of the module. Amulet of Borrowed Time, Table of Bountiful Feasts, even a Helm of Invisibility. There are several interesting weapons of the type “+1, +3 vs purple monsters” or armor of a “+2 vs cold saves”. Even a +1 mace with some details on what it looks like. This sort of customization really can make items stand out and add a lot of depth to the game and I always enjoy seeing them. There’s a fine scattering of consumable potions and scrolls as well, which, again, is good. Players should rely on those more and ‘know’ there will be more coming down the pike, freeing them up to use them. The actual encounters, 48 or so encounters over the two levels, don’t have a great deal of interesting things going on. Weakened floors, golem tombs, fake riddles, and a glyph or two are the standouts, but they don’t really add enough to make this an interesting & evocative environment. The whole place is STUFFED with coins, gems, and jewelry. Remember that rule where you can only go up one level at a time? You’re going to be using it. What’s very interesting is that this very fact is included two in the adventure, along with a potential recommendation that the DM limit awards to a certain percentage: 1xp per 10gp, so such. Or … less treasure could have been included!   An explanation is offered: “this is the type of treasure that can be found.” but that really doesn’t make sense to me either.

I’d rate this one average, which means it’s better than the vast majority of modules that exist.  The rooms and environment are a bit lacking to turn this in to a more memorable experience. I’m am absolutly certain that this fulfills its primary purpose: an adventure to pick up and play in an evening or three if you need/want something simple.

Goblins have returned to the area of Westgate, seeking an ancient magical item constructed for their foul kind. In their search, the goblins attack an imperial convoy secretly disguised as a merchant’s wagon. The knowledge that goblins are near must be kept quiet from the public, thus a small band of adventurers is required to seek out the creatures and the stolen magic item, deep inside the warrens of the great goblin chief! But the adventure does not end there …

Do you like American Music? I like American Music. I do not, however, like the 2E style. I will now engage in hyperbole while unfairly victimizing this module while repeatedly shooting the already deceased horse. Then I shall reload and do it again. And again.

Wonder and delight do not come from an exhaustive and historically accurate listing of all the various types of screw head shapes and drive types. There is nothing whimsical about the dictionary. 1E, Unearthed Arcana, 2E, and everything that has followed have added rules and explanations. The more rules and explanations then the more you know how the world works. That is diametrical opposed to the feelings of wonder and discovery that I want to invoke in my games. This is one of the reasons that I don’t like humanoid monsters; they are generally too normal and dilute the term ‘monster.’ This is a reason I like new monsters and magic items;the players have’t encountered them yet and don’t know what to expect. When you draw the sword from it’s hidden place and the sky darkens and a flock of ravens squeak and your arm tingles while the swords runes glow red … well then the party trembles and wonders ‘WTF is going on here?!?’

The party is hired to retrieve a staff from some goblins who stole it in a raid. A search of the caravans wreckage leads to goblin warrens. That leads the group to another location where there’s a power struggle between goblin clans, and a bit of treachery. The caves are anthropoligically accurate and the DM is encouraged to let the villain get away. This is an entirely valid play style that seemed to very popular during the 2E era and I do not want to have anything to do with it.

The hook starts with the party passing under a window in town and having a man lean out and summon them. “You look like mighty fine adventurers! Want to make some coin?” The building is the estate and assay office. This rubs me wrong on in so many ways. “Adventurer” should never be an occupation in a module. It implies things like economy, and that there are lots of other adventurers, that I would prefer not exist. The bad guys have to keep hatching plots so “the Adventurers” can have something to do. Hmmm, that would be a good campaign; the powers that be, and almost everyone else on the planet, hate the trouble caused by adventurers so they fund bad guys to kill the SOBs off and get them out of the townsfolk’s hair. The whole Estates & Assays office is also a lot more Papers & Paychecks than I want in a game. No doubt there’s a business relationship manager somewhere in that building who is talking to the project managers in the code enforcement office about their problems with the new total quality program that they are undertaking.

The goblin warrens(*1) are two levels. They hallways are short and cramped, as are the maps. The scale used is 1 square =5′, which is great for tactical miniature ply but less so for creating an environment for the party to explore. There is absolutely nothing interesting about the goblin portion of this adventure. It is logically consistent and makes sense, to a degree that is no longer fun. The party finds some prisoners and eventually learns that most of the goblins are gone, the party were duped by the guy hiring them, and the shit is going to hit the fan if the party doesn’t stop the goblins. If they choose to stop he goblins then they witness the band that raided the caravan attacking the encampment(*2) of another band of goblins. The party is expected to get the staff from the chief who’s in the middle of a couple of hundred goblins intent on killing each other. That’s the most interesting part of the module to me; making available an impossible situation and letting them use their imaginations to work out a hair-brained solution is a good part of what can make a game fun. The party probably eventually goes back to town to confront the head of the Assay & Estates office, who is meeting with another NPC who shows up out of nowhere and appears to have no other role than to die. And yet he’s presented like he’s a major figure and was involved in the plot all along.

Let me be slightly less of a jerk for a bit and note some good things. The wandering monster table is extensive and while full of humanoids it does have some nice touches. Several of the entires have a sentence or two associated with them to flesh them out, several are with non-hostile such as human patrols, travelers, and merchants. In the warrens one really stands out: a hobgoblin explorer on his own in the caves. Those are all nice details. In addition several of the magic items that appear lean towards non-standard, especially a sword found in a kobold tomb. I didn’t like the tomb, but the sword was nice with a good deal of uniqueness to it.

Needless to say there’s a great deal of backstory on the town, the region, the nature of goblins, goblins as characters, and for each other major goblins and NPC’s to be found in the adventure. The module also serves as an introduction to the Westgate Campaign Setting, so I’m not sure how critical I can be of these details. This feels like some mashup of 2E, 3E, and WFRP. In particular the goblins and humanoids are presented in a kind of WFRP-lite like way. They almost have a culture the way the humanoids do in WFRP. Would I fault WFRP for having their goblins be tinkers? Maybe _I_ would, but that may be irrational since that’s once of the reasons people play WFRP; they like that atmosphere. I know what I like and this isn’t it, but I’m just some tool on the internet with too much money and time and an imagination that’s been beat down by 25 years of life. If you WANT consistent goblins and a 2E like style then this would be a great module for you.

A shaft has been discovered below the old watchtower outside of town. Worse yet, a boy has fallen into it! Your party must race against time to save the boy and sift through the remains of the watchtower on the hill!

This module has a couple of interesting tidbits associated with it. The creatures and locations tie back to each other and to the backstory in a way that few other modules do. IN addition there is a time based element at play related to little falling down the well.

The backstory here is brief and at first glance rather mundane. Long ago a small watchtower was built on a hill. The lands were then overrun by orcs and the watchtower destroyed and forgotten. The lands were eventually resettled and the small collection of large stone blocks on the hill were mostly ignored; there were not enough to them to warrant any worry or prolonged curiosity. Little Timmy … er, Kevin, was playing around the block with a friend when the ground gave way and he fell in a deep hole. His elderly father bursts in to the local pub frantically looking for help. Unknown to everyone, little Kevin has started wandering around in the chambers under the tower looking for another way out. This is a rather interesting hook for a dungeon crawl. The players motivation for exploring the dungeon initially is a frantic race to find and save the boy. Once saved the players will probably continue to explore the dungeon. For some reason this seems both fresh and realistic, or perhaps natural, to me. Certainly “burst in” is quite a common hook element however the time based portion to save the boy as well as the natural progression from that element to looting the dungeon seems to fit together in a much more natural way than most adventure hooks do. I tend to think this was not an accident since there are there are other areas of the dungeon that fit well also.

Little Kevin was knocked unconscious when he fell down the shaft but has recently woken up and is now wandering the dungeon looking for a way out and/or something to stand on to reach the iron rungs in the shaft in the ceiling. Thus the more time the party spends gathering supplies, rope, torches, spikes, etc, the farther little Kevin has wandered in to the dungeon and the more likely he is to meet his end. There’s a nice little table provided to record where little Kevin is and some good guidelines as well as a randomized table on what Kevin does from turn to turn. He’s a small child, so sometimes he just stands there and cries while other times he moves on to a new area or tries to find something to help him and so on. I like this. It helps contribute to the sense that there is something going on in the adventure other than the party looting a dungeon. Unfortunately this is really only obvious to the DM. The party will have no clue, only knowing that Kevin is not at the bottom at the shaft and there’s a dungeon down there. I’m at a loss to figure out how to rectify the situation. The two level dungeon is a static environment, having been abandoned for quite a long time, and any telegraphing of Kevin’s actions will help remove the Search and Find aspect of the adventure. Maybe a strategic apple core or something similar? The search for Kevin does liven up an otherwise static crawl, otherwise this would be just a static exploration with no foreshadowing or build up … since there’s no central villain to build up.

The dungeon under the tower has two levels with about 34 rooms total. The maps are fairly static and simple with a hub and spokes design. The creatures fall in to the vermin and undead category, both of which make sense. There are a number of environmental issues as well, such as the crumbling tower, muddy rooms, and water filled corridors. What’s interesting is the way the rooms link to each other and to the backstory. Keys on a long dead skeleton fit doors in a different section. Logbooks list the names of the otherwise nameless dead. A dead soldier was writing a letter about his daughters dowery. These little touches do wonders to help bring the history of the location alive without an over abundance of exposition. There is also at least one, and perhaps two, encounters that are very dangerous for the party. Very appropriate for an OSR module. There is not an overabundance of magic items however the ones that are present are better than normal. A shield with a bonus vs acid, a sword with a bonus vs avians and bronze armor along with a variety of potions. I like the extra character added to the items; it’s not much however it contributes greatly toward a better adventure. I wonder why more writers don’t take advantage of it?

The magic items, integrated dungeon history, and search for Kevin elevate this from a typical dungeon to something above average. It’s very well thought out and put together.

Perched at the edge of Bear River, the warm hearth of Rainbow Lodge is a welcome respite from the surrounding wilds. But there are troubles all around. Although Bear Valley is quiet at the moment, the gnomes have been driven from Rainbow Mine, and travellers have reported brigands and worse raiding from the Ghost Forest. Your party has journeyed far to explore the borderlands around Rainbow Lodge. Will all of you return to tell tales adventure at the end of the day?

This module is specifically written for younger players, between the ages of 8-12, and is meant to be an introduction to the game. In this respect is is a true DM aid; full of advice on how to run for younger players and having the encounters built for this other style of play. It largely succeeds in both of those endeavors and thus should be considered a successful product. The first of the two adventures is particularly good.

SOAPBOX ON: I would have loved to have introduced my kids to D&D with it. Instead, I went out with a boy who died. Oops, no, I mean I made a fatal parenting mistake. It seemed like a good idea at the time but now I’m forever living down introducing my kids to D&D with 4E. Powers on cards is not a good thing, it’s physiologically limiting. It’s bad enough I have to live with my poor wires 3.5 skill-heavy play options, but to NOT use ones imagination? The little boy wizard has largely recovered, mostly because of magic spells, but the little girls likes fighters and is now forever handicapped. With great effort and dedication I hope to reawaken her imagination, but it’s going to be a hard road. Take some advice from a fellow parent: introduce your kids with something like this. SOAPBOX OFF.

The module contains a small region, the Bear Valley, and the inn that can serve as a home base to adventurers in the valley: Rainbow Lodge. It has two small adventurers and a section which briefly describes each of the more interesting areas in the valley. The lodge proper is laid out in three pages. It has a strong selection of NPC’s available to meet and it very well described. You really get the feeling this place is located in some pacific-northwest pine forest with a big smokey homey inn. THis description of the lodge, along with the front-cover does wonders to create a nice atmosphere. The NPC’s are generally the usually sort: gruff innkeeper, happy busy cook, stableboy, ne’er-do-well, and so on. Some of them are available to hire out to help the party while others just provide local color. None of them have names, which I found very interesting. It’s stated that this is to allow the DM to easily slip it in to their game world, however I found that it very solidly cemented the roles of the NPC’s in my mind. They are the usual assortment with a few secrets, but the first-timers won’t know that and learning that not everyone who is friendly is honest should be a fun D&D lesson.

The two adventurers are very linear, on purpose. Remember, this is for 8 years olds. The first starts with some horses being stolen from the lodge and the local Patrol officer hiring the group to track them down and bring the bandits to justice. It’s linear, with about 11 encounters. The lodge description has a footnote stating that the DM could remove the beer & wine if they didn’t  want to put that in front of their younger players however the first adventure involves killing people. Ah, the joys of D&D! This first adventure has several interesting points. One is the use of skills such as tracking and riding. I don’t approve: skills are a gateway drug to non-imaginative play. I’m also pretty-sure they don’t exist in BASIC unless you roll 3d6 or a d20 under a stat. The encounters ARE pretty nice for younger players. A bandit fires an arrow from behind a tree and runs off. There’s a giant beehive to learn a lesson from. There’s an old tree with a opening it, containing a small hole with a rattlesnake and a leather goody bag. There’s also a frigging owl bear encounter AND a ghoul encounter! Yeah, unit loss is a feature of an older play style, as is running away. Both encounters are telegraphed a  bit. But man, those are rough encounters for first-time players who are 8. The encounters are all described very nicely and are quite evocative. The owl bears cave and the ghouls tomb. I thought the adventure was mostly put together with a great deal of though about younger players. It would serve as an excellent introduction. The second adventure is more of a traditional cave exploration. A gnome miner has gone missing and the party sees his wife crying in the lodge. Hopefully they go find him for her, which takes them to their mine. This section has about 15 rooms in two separate cave/mine systems, linked by a secret door. The locations were not as interesting as the ones in the first adventure. There’s a skull with a key in it, a wet room with a boot sticking out of some yellowish colored mold, and some doors hidden by carvings with levers to pull. Otherwise the encounters are just not too interesting. Plus, there’s an undead troll-goblin, with no description of what it does besides the basics or AC, HP, MC, etc.The section about the valley takes up about three pages and has about 20 locations that could be used for further adventures. Wild onion fields and cave bear lairs, orc encampments, and so on. The pregens provided are probably a good idea as well, lest our young players get too attached to someone they personally identify with. The wandering monster table for the valley, which is not used with the two adventurers, is a bit of lark. Hey kids, who wants to fight a Frost Giant!

Pig-faced orcs and a handful of special trick rooms elevate this above the rest of the mediocre elements.

Orcs! The lands of man are once more under attack by these foul bests. The party must seek out and confront this unusually organized group and confront the demonic forces that whisper to them.

Yes, they are pig-faced orcs. Now THAT’S out of the way …

This module contain a three level dungeon and cave system. The first level is the domain of the orcs, the second an old temple complex, and the third is an extended trap/puzzle with only two real encounters. The introduction is short and to the point: a group or unusually organized orcs is raiding the nearby village and farms and the players are encouraged to stop it. There’s a nice 16 entry rumor table and some notes on adding hirelings to the party. All of this fits in to about 1.5 pages. This beginning section is just about perfect and is pretty much exactly what I’m looking for in an OSR adventure. It’s short, contains a small & simple hook, and has a nice and extensive rumor table taking up almost half a page, or 1/3rd of the introduction. It doesn’t really skip anything either; it has a section explaining the stats, where to get pre-gens, an introduction, background for the DM, how to get to the caves, a camping site, and a section on hirelings. There’s not real information on the village, past the hirelings, and no wilderness adventure, however the rest of the introduction is excellent. It’s JAM PACKED and should serve as an example on how to write and edit a module lead-in.

The first level, the orc caves, is of middling size with 6 or so rooms, and is unfortunately quite linear. It reminds me a lot of the maps for the Caves of Chaos, especially those first few caves. There’s a side passage here or there, but essentially it’s just one long passage that sometimes runs through rooms and sometimes has a door or two to side rooms. This is unfortunate. It turns this initial section of the adventure in to little more than a hack-fest since there is not much opportunity for bypassing or exploring areas. There is a nice list up front of all/most of the orcs in this section so the DM knows how many will be showing up if and when a pitched battle occurs. I appreciate those lists in  adventurers in which the monsters should be making an attempt to repel invaders; it saves me a lot of module prep work. There are A LOT of orcs in here; more than 40 standard warriors alone. Remember those hirelings? I hope the party took advantage of that option … There’s also a nice little note about more orcs showing up to reinforce the caves if the party camps out or returns to town. Again, that’s a nice touch and appreciated; it shows a commitment to a living and breathing dungeon. Unfortunately that’s the only real example of that on this level. This level is really just a series of standard rooms with orcs in them. The last is an exception and contains the Idol of the Orcs.

Smart parties will find their way on to level 2. Again the map is not too interesting. You might think of it as being laid out like a ‘+’ sign, with rooms and doors on each of the four legs of the plus. This level has about eight rooms. It’s small size holds some undead, and animal or two, and two examples of the kid of weird stuff I like to see. Once is a room with ghostly trophies and the second is a magic chalice. Both provide the kind of weird and strange exploration environment I’m looking for. The party gets to play with the chalice and the trophies are … strange. Thee’s also a very nice trap room that’s a near perfect example. It’s freaky, strange, non-standard, and completely obvious once the party figures it out. I like. A better map and more empty rooms to break up the weird ones would have made me happier. As it is the level feels cramped with too much on top of each other. Then again, it’s only eight rooms and there’s only so much one can do with a level of that size.

The third level is really just one big maze with two encounter rooms in it. Those two rooms are VERY well done trick rooms. Those, in combination with the special rooms on the second levels, really reveal some great potential in the author. There’s a nice imaginative element lurking in him that needs to utilized more.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/63033/Idol-of-the-Orcs?affiliate_id=1892600

Deep in the jungles sits the ruins of a mighty city. It’s king and his elite 6 would scour the jungles for hidden treasures and amassed a horde before disaster struck and their city was laid to ruin. Will you dare to explore the Ruins of Tenkuhran?

I’ve got a problem with this module but I don’t know what it is. Something is very much rubbing me raw. The product starts out with a two-page backstory piece of fiction. In my experience that’s never a good sign. Vampire books start that way. I don’t want epic. I don’t want a history lesson, that’s MERPs domain. I want an OSR module and OSR modules don’t make me wade through two pages of a story that has no real relevance to the adventure at hand. This is a recurring theme over the module: it’s verbose in places that don’t need it and terse in places that need extra help.

Cite! Page 3 has notes for the DM. It includes “Classes from the UA text should be excluded unless you choose to allow them.” and “if a paladin is among the party the inclusion of an assassin should not be allowed.” I’m not sure exactly how to classify this type of advice. I differentiate between this type and the “how to run checking for traps in a game without thieves” sort of advice. Perhaps the later is more of an explanation of a play style and the former is … more directly arbitrary? It’s certainly more campaign specific opinion than fact, and for some reason comes over as preachy. The module is rife with this sort of advice and I groan every time i see it.

Cite! The myths rumors and legends table, with 6 entries, actually contain a small story. In essence you can think of it as a small six sentence paragraph with each sentence being a different rumor. This leaves much of the table in an awkward state. Entry #6 reads “Now, generations later, the ruins have all but nearly forgotten, left to decay back in to the earth as the jungle has expanded and crept upon it, claiming it.” Arg! Out of context!

Cite! Repeating, perhaps verbatim, the description of two two different orc villages in two separate places. Two two orc villages get two different descriptions, and the descriptions of both villages seem to be the same. Just to be clear, that;s two location, each of which has two descriptions (abandoned and not.) This is just wasted space.

The adventure proper resembles a wilderness journey, exploration of surface ruins, and a small crawl. The wilderness adventure features a road and an overland jungle trail. The road is disappointing; It’s really just four encounter located along the road. Further, it’s laid out strange. There’s a introductory paragraph describing the encounter lead-in, then a “numbered encounter” along with monster stats. This means that the text of the encounter description, verbose as it is, occurs BEFORE the number for that encounter. Following the number is the monster stats. This seems to be a non-intuituive way to lay things out. All I can think is that this is meant to be some linear plot-type road-trip arc. The layout makes some sense in that context, or rather, at least I can rationalize it in that manner.

Next comes one of the most confusing parts of the adventure for me. There is an orc village. The DM has two options for running it: inhabited or not. If it’s NOT inhabited then the party will encounter about 24 8HD ghoul-apes living in the huts. If it IS inhabited then the party meets good orcs. The ghoul-ape encounters are going to be very rough at the recommended levels. I don’t necessarily have a problem with that, but a party which is not careful is going to hit a TPK before the exploration really begins. I’m not really sure why the good orcs exist. Why not humans? Humanoid monsters are overused in D&D, IMHO, and I would much prefer to see bestial jungle tribesmen and same the ‘monster’ label for the really strange stuff … like the ghoul apes. This is where things get confusing: there are then two more descriptions for orc villages, one abandoned and one inhabited. Much of the text is the same, and I mean copy/paste same, and the setup is the same. I’ve reread the entries several times over the last two days and I can’t figure out what’s going on. It feels like there are supposed to be at least two separate orc villages (the map shows yet another village further on in to the jungle, quite a ways off. I don’t think it’s one of these two villages.) but I can’t figure out how they are related or where they are ini relation to each other. I don’t THINK they are the ‘third’ village; that village may have been overrun by evil, causing the orcs to migrate to their current village location(s)? Anyway, there’s a village of friendly orcs that can used as a base, and a village of ghoul-apes that will rip almost any party to shreds. The organization of them could be much much clearer.

The ruins of the city, near the village(s), are one of the better parts of the adventure. It reminds me of one of the more interesting parts of third and fourth edition D&D. 3E advised that encounter locations be interesting, and perhaps fantastic. 4E pretty much cemented that in it’s published modules. Fights occur in crumbling ruins (DEX checks!) on misty clouds (balance to not fall through!) or in a kitchen with boiling pots (kick a hot soup pot in someones face!) This sort of thing is one of my favorite parts of some of the older adventures. Some random orc would use the goat-leg he was eating as a weapon when the party burst in on him, or so on. Many of the encounters in the surface ruins feel like these little set-peice sort of things. To be sure in many cases it’s because of the monster selections. Harpies in tree singing. Plant-men groves with with animated tree allies, a hag in a crumbling tower, and so on. Lots of monsters with special effects. I like those sorts of things. It adds the variety to an adventure that is needed to keep it from becoming a straight-on boring hack-fest. The 13 or so ruins encounters are on the verbose site of things, with on three or so per page because of their exposition, however they are certainly an interesting assortment of non-humanoid encounters and I approve heartily. It’s almost exactly what I’m looking for in a wilderness ruins sort of exploration. I might have preferred more whimsy and some weird things to play with (magic fountains rule!) but the encounters are pretty good.

From this set of ruins the party will discover another set further in to the jungle, hopefully, and journey to them. The surface ruins in that location are QUITE a bit sorter, really just a monster notation. For example “Mantis, Giant (HP70) This gigantic insect (10HD) is generally benign unless assaulted.” That’s a pretty good encounter description in my book. Maybe just a sentence more on the location or what the mantis is doing, but the length is almost correct. The dungeon beneath the ruins are a deathtrap. In quasi-planer, so each hour each magic item the party has needs to make a save or become less magical/lose a plus. In addition, all spells cast much first overcome a pervasive Dispel Magic aura at 15th level. Ouch! The lose a plus effect is going to be a pain to run and slow the game down. The Dispel Magic effect is very powerful and is going to make the encounters inside all the more tough. The crawl is mostly linear and the descriptions remind me of the Tomb of Horrors. Each room has a detailed description and lots of carvings/curtains/features. In many cases the room descriptions are too verbose for my tastes. Much of the complex is not really interesting and is just an excuse to have a rom with monsters in it. The notable exception is one of the last, which contains a doorway to the throne room of an evil goddess of death. Good Luck kiddies! Sometimes the big red shiny button does NOT lead to a stat increase …

The organization and layout of this could have been much better; having to reread lengthy PAGES to try and figure out what is going on is not indicative of ‘clear.’ The product is also much more verbose than I generally like. The first set of ruins is generally well done but the second needs just a touch more detail. The dungeon and the ape-ghoul village are both VERY deadly. I wish there was more whimsy, more weird things, and more for the party to play with; there’s a lot of hacking and not much exploration.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/86973/The-Ruins-of-Tenkuhran?affiliate_id=1892600