Zjelwyin Fall

Posted on December 25, 2024 by Bryce Lynch 
By Anthony Huso
Self Published
1e
Levels 2-3

Sages assume Shodredh Dhachod, the Gringling Lich who conceived and constructed Zjelwyin Fall, must rest inside, dreaming his sidereal dream. But Dhachod’s wards are such that knowledge of the Fall’s location and trajectory are forgotten before they can be put to paper; so it hurtles unwatched, a spindle of otherworldly beauty, a ruby comet tracing the limits of the Astral Plane.

This 52 page adventure uses about twelve pages to describe seven set piece puzzle rooms in a Lich lair on the astral plane. It manages a fine level 2-3 dungeon in a non-traditional environment and shows, I would assert, the power of 1e done right by someone who understand it.

Mr Lich has devised a lair on the astral plane in which only folks less than 4HD can enter. This is a rather interesting way to construct something otherworldly … it’s an astral dungeon! Not only do you get the exoticism of the location, but it also places limits on the infinite ingenuity that a well seasoned group of players can bring to a puzzle dungeon. Husoo remarks that the origins are his experienced players needing something from the liches lair, but, unable to enter, use some low levels to go get it for them, outfitting them with a few magic items and gear Nystul’d up to survive the astral transition. There’s no real reason why this has to be on the astral plane, magic being magic, but it makes a lot of sense in that context. 

This is a puzzle dungeon. After a “short” astral journey (DM makes up to 24 wandering monster checks … that, thankfully, Huso has provided some set creature encounters for) the party ends up in room two of a puzzle dungeon. Solve the puzzle in each of six rooms and you get to room seven, the lichs lair, where he lies dreaming. You’ve got a few rounds to grab all the loot you can while avoiding falling to Pandemonium, until you decide to dump out floor trapdoor. Unless you wake the lich, in which case, game over. 

Puzzle dungeon isn’t quite right and my characterization of it as such is not quite fair. Set piece dungeon might be better, but, also, that implies centerpiece combats, which tis doesn’t have. You enter a room, do a thing to get to the exit, or fail at it and go back outside to enter again. Set piece dungeons feel like combats to me. Puzzle dungeons to me imply the environment of those boring old challenge dungeons with blank grey walls and a potion on a pedestal. These, however, are complex and well integrated rooms, with a theming of time and sometimes space. It all feels right to me. 

You’re going to be a glass dome like room. Outside the dome is chaos. Inside is usually some form of red sand, blowing, drifting or some such. You must do something, frequently trying to get somewhere in the dome, avoiding some obvious sand issue (blowing sand area, sand falling through hourglass hole area, etc) and facing some creature obstacle, either as a matter of course or as a local fail state. It feels like a complete picture.

“PCs arrive in a staggering glass dome. They are ranged (at positions A) around a gleaming silver ledge that encircles and overlooks an expanse of red sand some ten feet below. The dunes in this crimson pit transition to blue at the center, where they collapse into a horrifying central funnel. The glass dome keeps a churning but beautiful storm of red cosmic dust at bay.” Red generally signifying bad/go backwards and blue success/go forward to the next room. In this case you’ve got some Migo hanging out in some pods on the ledge opposite the party and a dune walker running about inside the sands. There’s also a little bit of treasure on a dead b ody on a ledge. Dump your ass in to the blue sand hole. Avoid waking the migo. There’s treasure on the balcony, at a nearby spot, and a dune walker almost directly under it. Thus going to the obvious treasure gets you it, and a clue, but then immediately jumping to the sand from there gets you the dune walker. Surveying your environment may walk you over the hanging migo, thus waking them. This is a well constructed room. They all are. 

Husos descriptions are a little oblique, with a baroque kind of structuring of the phrasing. Generally fine but perhaps not the most readily received by the cortex. “A platinum knife with skull pommel and diamond settings” or “jeweled footmans flail” being typical treasure descriptions. One of the astra encounters is solid enough that I’ll use it as an example “A slender man with ash-white flesh floats in lotus position. Gray robes curl kelp-like around his body while a pale gemstone flashes, blue facets gathering light at the center of his forehead. His pupiless eyes are set on the elusive Astral brilliance.” A Gith! A GREAT description of a Gith. It’s a dude. It plays up the aesthetic thing. A monster description that stays grounded. I love a good zombie description that portrays it as a person, the horror of the walking dead, instead of just something to stab. Anyway, descriptions are fine, if a bit tortured and/or cumbersome.

The text overall though is a bit strained. Huso has done wonders, it would seem, in keeping things in check from what I REMEMBER of Night Wolf.  Things FEEL tighter here, even though the rooms run longer. (Three pages for one of them.) Decent formatting keeps things together though, with easily located sections in a general logical order. He is a little too explainy for my tastes, even beyond the necessary greater length that rooms like this must dictate. And there are certainly places in the text where another pass through would help tighten things up, both literally and figuratively. The migo presence gets tacked on to almost the end of that sand room. “Their worrisome forms can be seen from the ledge’s northern circuit but they will only take flight if molested or if the ledge directly above them (at M) is walked on” Seems like that is something to mention in the initial description of the room. And that kind of “dump in pertinent information at a far later place” is not uncommon here. He also gets a bit conversations a bit too frequently with phrasing like “Oh course the lich …” and so on, padding things out in places in which they should be tightened up. 

There is the issue of a split party, which can happen in several places. Going down the funnel one at a time will almost certainly be a disaster, at least for the poor DM trying to run an engaging game. And there are places where I could NOT figure things out. “PCs who re-enter the sand take more dmg and go again to location A.” I don’t think they do? I can’t find any reference to that? 

The rooms here are well constructed. These are not throw away puzzles. This is the epitome of a dungeon for experienced PLAYERS, at low levels. I wish things were different here and there, making more sense, a little tighter, descriptions a little less cumbersomely evocative. Seven rooms? With an overland? Huso claims three sessions out of this, and I believe him. But it’s a GREAT work. Made all the better by what is by far the best of  Daniele Valeriani art on the cover, which for some reason reminds me of Klimt. 

The PDF is $18, with hardcopies also available through Lulu. I don’t see previews anywhere. I do like a good preview that helps me make a purchasing decision where $18 PDF’s are concerned. 

https://stonehold.gumroad.com/l/loiqj?layout=profile

Posted in Level 2, Reviews, The Best | 31 Comments

The House of 99 Souls

Posted on December 23, 2024 by Bryce Lynch 
By Danilo Frontani
Hellwinter Forge of Wonders
OSE
Levels 2-4

Until two hundred years ago, Brightmoore Manor stood as a beacon of splendour and harmony. It was home to the noble Lord Faulken Brightmoore, his enchanting elven wife Lady Narielle, and their children. But envy and fear of mortality twisted Lord Faulken’s heart, leading him toward forbidden magic and unspeakable sacrifice. Now, the manor is a shadow of its former glory, shrouded in a curse. Somewhere beneath its decaying halls lies the Orb of Souls, a malevolent artefact that feeds on life itself. The adventurers are the final piece of this haunting tale. Can they unravel the secrets of Brightmoore Manor, break the curse, and end Faulken’s ritual before his ultimate ascension — or will they, too, be consumed by the darkness within? Enter the manor, uncover its horrors, and face the price of immortality!

This 36 page adventure uses about twelve pages to describe 22 rooms in a ruined manor house. It’s going for a Spooky Haunted House vibe. The writing and interactivity are quite poor though and it comes off as a forced effort.

I am clearly missing some piece of pop culture knowledge, either in film or fiction. The large number of adventures featuring some person in an abandoned manor collecting souls/making sacrifices towards some demonic-laughter-end can only mean that there is some famous book or Hammer film that I never caught on to. In any event, this this another in that genre. Old decrepit mansion and 99 people need to die inside of it and 95 have died when the party shows up. 

There are a couple of the usual things to talk about with this, but before I do that I want to focus on one of the hooks. I know that a decent number of people don’t care about them, but, also, I want to use one of the adventure hooks as a note on human behaviour and the suspension of disbelief/verisimilitude. One of the hooks here has the region being abandoned and settlers moving back in to the area. Everyone knows about the house but “no one has yet dared approach it.” This is not human nature. Everyone has dared approach it. _I_ would approach it. Jewels? Gold coins? And that’s in a world without magic carpets and djinni in lamps running around.  A draft adventure I saw once has villagers knowing that their kids were in an abandoned house, and yet they hired the party to go in. Nope. That’s not human nature. They mob up and go in. Maybe a bunch of them get killed, but they mob up and go in after their kids. This outright blatant ignoring of the way humans work is So distracting in an adventure. Sure, we all want to play D&D tonight so we ignore it. But the word verisimilitude runs around the RPG circles, and the OSR circles in particular, so much for a reason. It puts the players in the game in a play that is invaluable. Getting the players investment, instead of the characters, is so much more valuable to a rewarding game.

Ok, so, old manor house. Doors slam shut and lock behind you when you enter. And, also “All the doors and windows leading outside are magically locked and impossible to open or pick.” So, we’re off to a strong start here. Also, no mention of burning the place down. Not that any of that really matters, because thee’s no description of the manor as you approach. You looking for a backdoor? A veranda? Widows walk? Old well nearby? How about ANY description of the house AT ALL from the exterior? Nope. We just start out on room one. I find it hard to believe that this was ever playtested; those notes would HAVE to come back. 

A feature of the adventure is the clock in the first room. It counts the souls, on its way to 99 and the looming evil about to be unleashed. A centerpiece of the adventure with a section all its own, we get this magnificent description of the adventure cornerstone “7’ tall, is made of wood except for its single hand, crafted from an unrecognisable black metal.” Revel in the opulence of its description! Now that’s what I call music! But, let us not cherry pick! “As soon as the last PC crosses the threshold, the heavy

entrance door slams shut behind them. From this moment on, the curse of the Orb of Souls prevents the adventurers from leaving the house. There is no light within the manor. Frescoes depicting rural scenes adorn the walls. Two curved staircases lead to a balcony on the upper door. To the east and west are two large doors. Between the staircases stands an enormous clock. Two skeletons are seated, slumped against the wall near the entrance door“ The skeleton thing isn’t bad. Slumped is a good word. The rest of the description though is just a dry factual description of the room that fails to give us the vibe that the adventure is so desperate to communicate: creepy haunted house. 

The houses interactivity falls in to two categories. Either something creepy happens or you need to stab something. There is VERY little other than that. A rooms window is dirty ”: If the PCs attempt to clean it, the face of a young human girl appears for a brief moment.” I’m going to excuse the if/then clause, but I still think it should be rewritten to remove it. Anyway, that effect is irrelevant. Its just meant to be creepy. And so, so many of the encounters are just that. “Bed: Finely crafted; the mattress appears sagged, as though someone is resting upon it. When the PCs move away from the bed, they hear a faint, mournful whisper saying: «Free me!».” Sure thing buddy. 

In another room the floorboards are weak! “If they fail, they must save vs paralysis when moving through the room; on a fail, the oor collapses under their feet, and they can’t move for 1 round” Yeah, You don’t actually fall through or anything. I note that in Strahd, in the appendix starting adventure, my kids used their crowbars to go through the floor to get to the hidden basement instead of going all the way to the fucking railroad attic to get there. In another place, the kitchen, there’s a sink. If a “PC dips a hand in the water, a skeletal arm grabs it and begins to pull it in, trying to drown them.” I don’t even know how that works. The sink is … eight feet deep? Four feet deep? I mean, good energy here. Creepy. But how the fuck does that work with a kitchen sink?

I could go on and on with the irrelevance of the creepy stuff, but let’s cover combat. I’m pretty sure everything here is undead, as I recall. Almost all 1 HD with some 2 HD scattered in. If the baddie wakes up he’s 7 HD, so that a TPK, I hope four people don’t die inside the house before then. Anyway, 1 HD and 2HD undead. Do we all see the problem? What’s our level range again? Two to four? That an auto-turn at level 2 for 1 HD and and auto for ones and twos at level three, the midrange points.  I swear to fucking god, it’s like people have never played D&D before. 

So, no good descriptions. A mostly lack of interactivity beyond stabbing. The stabbing is vulnerable to clericing. Gimping the party and no real effort in creating a holistic environment to adventure in. But, hey, go hard on those production values, yeah? That’s a pass.

This is $3 at DriveThru. No preview is available.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/503147/the-house-of-99-souls?1892600

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The Shrine of Sruukor

Posted on December 21, 2024 by Bryce Lynch 
By Steve Gilman
Sundered Blade Games
S&W
Levels 1-3


Long ago, the kingdom of Aranure was lost in a war against the minions of Malak, the demon lord of hate. Pilgrims have recently repopulated this land in hopes of finding peace and an easier way of life. A farmer has gone missing from the village of Rockcrest, and heroes are needed to answer the call!

This twenty page adventure details a dungeon with nine rooms. It is the old wound my lord, full of loose writing in a conversational manner and full of backstory with nothing really going on except stabbing things. The bare basics, stretched out.

Ah, the days of old. When a ten year old adventure was new, and not hiding out on my bookmarks list. In between Stalker2, I’m cleaning things up in celebration of an upcoming anniversary. And this old gem fell out of my todo’s.

Let’s see here, we’re starting out on page five, always a good sign, with the village description. It’s your typical village. Nothing special. At this point you could just list businesses and their owners names, along with maybe a quirk, all Ready Ref Sheet style. It would certainly be much better than what we have here. A page of text. A page out of text out of any novel. Just words in some paragraphs. No attempt at reference material at all. Just dig through to find whatever you want.

The adventure has a farmer go missing. His wife says he was watching little creatures go in and out of an old mine. Uh huh. Inside we find goblins, hobgoblins, and giant rats. And, of course, the farmer still alive. Can’t be heroes without rescuing someone, yes? Bad form to have the goblins stopping his brains out with spoons while he’s still alive. They would make them demon worshippers or something. Oh. Wait. They ARE demon worshippers in this adventure? Frankly, I think I would make a MUCH better demon worshipper than 99.9% of the demon worshippers I see in these adventures. I’m a think outside the box kind of guy. You think your demon lord wants some morons worshipping him, bestowing power upon, or you think he wants the dude who isscopping out still living brains with a spoon?

Anyway, nine rooms in the dungeon, about a third or so empty. Oh, wait, before I get to hat, there are some wilderness encounters. You knowhow I love those, right? Here’s the DM notes for one f them. This is the complete notes, I’m not cherry picking here. “Long ago, this graveyard was a resting place for the early people of Aranure. Through many years of disuse, the graveyard has become overgrown, and something sinister has awoken the dead here. The skeletons here are of the long dead, but the zombies, with their flesh still intact, must have been more recent deaths.” Yup, just getting attacked by skeletons and zombies. Nothing more. With a lot of padded out text. Nothing more. Nothing evocative. Nothinginteresting about the combat,

And the dungeon is the same way. Worse? Rooms have monsters, right? Not according to the read-aloud. So, maybe we can forgive that. The read-aloud in one room concentrates on some statues in the room. And then the DM test tells us all about the status And ,then, at the very bottom, that there are, like eight goblins and four giant rats in the rooms as guards. NO! NO! No! NO! No! No! We put the most important things first. That might be the status, that the th party see, but then it’s almost certainly the screaming goblin hoard. Yes? “This room was once a dining hall, but all that remains of the old furniture is some rotted and broken wood.” Then how do we know it’s a dining hall? HThta’s read-aloud, if memory serves me correctly. Why is it a dining hall?

There is nothing here but combat, It’s the goblin caves from B2, expanded to twenty pages. Except with WAYYYY less treasure. Good luck leveling. Also, the titular shrine, the dungeon, is one room with some chaos goblins in it. Have fun.

This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru with a suggested price of $2. The preview is five pages and shows you the town. Enjoy that.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/147743/the-shrine-of-sruukor-swords-wizardry?1892600

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Gods of the Forbidden North – Volume 1

Posted on December 18, 2024 by Bryce Lynch 
By Robert Alderman
Pulp Hummock Press
OSE
Level 1

On the arctic frontier, at the border between the mountains and the wastes beyond, looms Castle Thar-Gannon. For centuries, the Skull God ruled his domain from his blackened throne. But 20 years have passed since the routing of his armies, and now the castle lies abandoned with riches unclaimed. Yet, death still lurks in the shadows of the ruins. An ancient doom arises from the depths of this place…

This 482 work of hubris describes a city, wilderness hex crawl, and five dungeons in the frozen north, all working towards an end-of-the-world adventure path. Excellent worldbuilding, pretty decent hexes, and absolutely no understanding beyond a 3e level of what an adventure is, in design or formatting.

I’ve been reading this and ruminating on it for a week now [ed: a week and a half now.] I’m not sure what to think. Well, no, I do know what to think: there’s no way in fucking hell I’d ever run this and only a masochist would read this for fun. But the worldbuilding is there and it’s got some interesting parts to it.

We’re gonna ignore the lengthy backstory for the most part. There’s this void-worm thing devouring the world, evil sorcerer king who rules the land goes away, settlers move in. Ultimately this appears to be a kind of adventure path. The adventures all kind of lead to each other and its all leading to this sorcerer king reappearing and the void worm thingy in volume three, I suspect. To that end we’ve got a city homebase described, a bunch of wilderness rules/tables, a hex crawl, and about six interconnected dungeons that get to level four or five by the end. And that’s all gonna take FIVE. HUNDRED. PAGES.

I don’t know these people. But they put out FIVE HUNDRED PAGES. I could never do that. They put it out in a way that looks like an adventure. For some definition of “layout” and “editing”. Those things were done to a level that, at first glance, seems chill. I’m going to be very critical of this thing. But, the folks involved did a professional job on it, for some definition of that word. Just not the “Adventure” definition of it. 

The worldbuilding here is great. I mostly ignored the lengthy backstory, so I didn’t pick it up from there. But the individual locations and encounters, those do have a way of building on each other. There are elements of mystery and hinting at things in them that is excellent. It leads to wonder and be excited. (This is complimented, in places, by the art. There are some pieces, at times, that do a great job at giving a sense of scale. Cyclopean, the way you imagine Moria but few can capture. It’s a small percentage of the art, but those pieces are GREAT.) 

This penchant for worldbuilding is interesting. I wondered frequently if this was an over-investment in, perhaps, a home campaign. Whatever the case, the worldbuilding and the hex crawl combine to produce some stellar outcomes. If you think about it a bit, the qualities overlap a lot. You’re trying to build something interesting, a citation, in a hex crawl encounter. And yet you need to keep it somewhat short; you’re doing scores of them in a typical hex crawl, at a minimum. And the hex crawl here is memorable because of that, the combination of worldbuilding, and its associated flavor for real and hinted at, and the quickness of the hit and ability of the DM to then riff off of it. 

“The domed Shrine of Taggarik looms over the desolate mountain wastes like a tomb. This structure of ice and stone is carved into the side of a windswept peak. Its entrance archway has been marked with two square pillars etched in swirling symbols.” Inside is a giant ice throne with a cyclopean figure seated on it, surrounded by trophies. “They are both a source of incredible pride and agonizing shame.” Saumen Kar. So, demon, pride and shame, goes on benders sometimes and terrorizes the countryside till he chills out. Talks to the party a bit probably.Some of the trophies are malnourished young children frozen in ice.It seems one of this favorite pasttmie is tormenting a nearby village full of orphans. He killed at their parents. They worship him for food and sacrifice of their number to him. It’s all they know, there is no other worldview for them (I’m describing two hexes here, the demon shrine dome and the orphan village.) Escape? The wilderness outside has the 12 Black Wolves of the Garngat. Do I know what that is? No, but it sounds fucking awesome, yeah?!  And I’m leaving a decent amount of awesome shit out!

Also, the demon is fifteen hit dice. Also, JUST the demon dome, and it’s one room, go on for two pages. His stat block takes up a column. Did I mentioned the three eight HD golems? Levels 1-4! The demon, the nearby village, there are situation here. And that’s what a hex crawl should be. And they are flavourful as all fuck. But the designer CANNOT shut his fucking mouth. This is one of the more critical flaws in the adventure. Dude will NOT shut up. I am not wading through three pages of text to run a fucking encounter. NO ONE is going to do that. This this five hundred page adventure is something that get read, and might get purchased, but will not get played. Is that what the designer really wanted? Adventure writing is technical writing. You need to communicate just enough. You need to inspire the DM to take what you’ve written and run with it. But it needs to be terse, so they can scan it at the table and run it. You can’t run a fucking encounter if you have to stop the game for ten minutes to read it first. The phone come out. The players lose interest. Write terse. Write evocatively. Leverage the fact you’re got a DM to riff on what you’ve them. Specificity, not detail. Hint at backstory. Leave room for wonder. That adds so much to mystery and the flavour of a game. But this ENDLESS droning on and on … Man, a quick hit on how to run an NPC that the party meets can last a column. 

The books credits imply that a lengthy cutting of text was involved. It wasn’t enough. And the layout and formatting were NOT up to the task of managing such a huge word count. Our starting city a fucking mess. It is close to being a generic-ville (and, in fact, I’d say the theme of the Northlands is generally lost, in spite of lengthy sections on terrain, weather, and the natives. It just doesn’t come through.) There are some brief moments in the town that are ok. The gate guards of the “wealthy” gate turning people away to other gates. A weird obsession with hookers appearing throughout. (I think maybe every word on that 1e DMG table was used here?) But there IS the kind of specificity, in places, that cement a locale and help bring it to life. It’s just surrounded by a MASSIVE glut of words that obfuscates anything interesting. And forget about finding anything during play. Your ability to locate a specific tavern or, say, a tavern in general, is going to be close to nill. It’s just a stream of text with very little overriding organization behind it and WAY too many words for each item. 

As for the first adventure,  “An innovative feature of this mega-adventure is the step-by-step character creation process packed into the starter quest’s beginning.” *GROAN* Ok, sure, but I can live with that. WHat’s harder to live with the generic “throw in every trope possible” for this first adventure. A pickpocket chase?! A guard captain with a job?! A LONG ass tavern section? “The heroes awaken next morning, eat breakfast at the inn—eggs, goat’s milk, and a hot helping of caribou sausages—and get ready to explore. It is an overcast day outside without rain” *groan* “When ready to continue, read or paraphrase the following text aloud to your players:” The designer, editor, and layout never saw a word or turn of phrase they didn’t think to include in the adventure. This first one is just tropes and has none of the characteristic flavour found in other sections. You do get to tell the guard captain to put a homeless kid to death though. Also, kid has 95gp and a full weeks worth of food costs 5gp, so … 

Anyway, in the middle fof this mess of a third adventure, here’s some typical text “Second Wave. Zarcand expends his word of bones ability to summon 4 loam gauntsA. The gaunts burst out from under the muddy road pavers and rise from the earth. This creates muddy groundC hazards in their wake. The battlefield is getting treacherous! Zarcand directs the undead to attack the amulet wearer and his allies. The gaunts claw at heroes locked in melee and loam lob everyone else” The battlefield is getting treacherous!  And you can see from this an emphasis on these battlefield tactics. Terrain restrictions. Long stat blocks. MOSTLY combat. This is 3e. More than a few of the rooms have “It attacks!”, as the dungeon exists only for combat, it seems.

The first dungeon is this weird death trap puzzle. It’s got a nigh unstoppable enemy and poison gas at the end, so you work your way through this tomb and then run for freedom.  Then there’s this raid on a slavers stronghold, with two islands and “The Guzzler”, a literally unkillable enemy on the second one. The monster as a muzzle, so to speak, or obstacle. There’s a barrow that’s pretty simple and then a lighthouse like thing, a tower. The first, in particular, is pretty overwrought with text with things settling down a bit in the others, but, still, I don’t know how I would run slavers island assault as written. There’s some REALLY good details in places, like grasping hands coming out of a door, but it ALL runs on for far too long. And, to no good end. It’s not the worldbuilding, its the conversational tone. Almost every undead is a generic one with no soul to them. That’s really too bad. It’s just there to stab.

This is clearly a heartbreaker. I suspect volume two, already out, is more of the same. EXCELLENT worldbuilding. But a 3e style of dungeon and, more than that, the dungeon AS a puzzle, as a whole. That’s a little too perfunctory for me. There’s a slavish devotion to format/layout even where it doesn’t make sense. WAY too many words, three paragraphs are used when two sentences would be much better. This IS a real adventure, but I don’t see how you can run it without a stupid amount of prep. And I can buy something else, far cheaper, that will be far easier to run and even more fun.

This is $35 at DriveThru. The preview is nineteen pages. It shows you nothing of the dungeons, or the town, so you’ll have no way of figuring out if the content is for you. Just that someone paid for layout.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/451792/gods-of-the-forbidden-north-volume-1?1892600

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The Black Ruins

Posted on December 16, 2024 by Bryce Lynch 
By Corey Ryan Walden
Self Published
OSR
Levels 1-3

Blackened esoteric obelisks, henceforth known among most folk as ‘The Yore Standing Stones’, dot a strangely unnatural hill. The runes are inscribed with runic scripting, but it is what looms below the forlorn hill that should chill any good serf to the bone.

This twelve page adventure presents a few hexes as well as a small dungeon with eleven rooms. It reeks of that od&d charm from when things had not yet been homogenized. Light on treasure, heavy on frameworks over content, it does know the meaning of the words ‘specificity.’
I was poking through the depths of my bookmarks and found this hanging out where it shouldn’t be, next to Mary Ellis and Volante. Only in my head does a nine year old product not count as “old stuff.” 

This is, I think, a hex crawl. With three hexes. I THINK you start out in a small town. The adventure just launches in with a description of hex one, and it has a small town in it. Well, ok, the hexes have A LOT of shit in them. If the art shows four terrain types then there will be at least four different things int he hex. Our town hex has a fetid swamp full of frogmen and degenerate humans, the town, the western wood, and the badlands full of hillfolk. Also, the fucking wilderness, man! The fucking wilderness is DEADLY. Like 1-3 nixies or 1d6+1 frogmen deadly. Anyway, I’m jumping around a lot. In town you learn of Rolff of Haris “… wanted for murder, rape and thievery, being a particularly bad sort. Rolf may be identified as being without one ear and possessing three absent fingers from his left hand. He was last seen heading west into the forest. There is a half crown reward (5gp) for his immediate capture.” I love this. That’s fucking specificity. A half crown. Three fingers and one ear … dudes had a life. And then we throw in the cute little “a particularly bad sort.” Later on, in the hex with the local castle in it, we find Rolf on the wandering table for the hex “Rolf of Haris will be hiding in the woods weeping. He has a dagger but fights like a serf.” Fucking a man! That’s great! Whatcha gonna do now about ol Rolfy?

The town is full of shepherds. “Knights from nearby Zhairmont are oft located a few miles up the road in a lodge where the occasional men-at-arms may be hired for an …” Of course they are. They aren’t hanging out at the serf village. They are out at the hunting lodge with their fellows! Later, in the castle hex, they ride out to meet you and challenge you to a joust … what matters is not if you win but if you accept and are a good sport. Then they might charge you with finding, in a nearby cave “A creature known as ‘Leatherman’ inhabits the cave. Leatherman fights as an ogre.” The Leatherman. Not an Ogre. A creature known as the Leatherman. This is 100% what I mean when I talk about named creatures. I loathe the abstraction and genericism of excitement and adventure. This sure as fuck ain’t doing that. It drips with that specificity and verisimilitude. “A shabby trails runs through town.” Of course it fucking does, it’s a village of sheepherds! And it’s full of mud and sheepshit.” 

Elsewhere we get a ghoul in the forest wanderers, “seemingly dead.” Lots of adventures try this, especially with skeletons. But, finding a body in the woods? That’s something that you might expect. And THEN it comes to life. In the dungeon there’s a lake. “The Carrion Crawler often swims within the lake, and is incredibly creepy, startling all but the most perceptive” It’s almost, like, the environment was imagined first and then someone found a D&D book and found the best thing that fits. Which is what the fucking game SHOULD be like. “Any gold or silver placed within the lake turns in to platinum.” Fantasy.

Oh, also, there’s a cult in the dungeon. It’s a druid and two berserkers. They worship the crawler. Cause they crazy. Also, he knows sleep! There’s a fucking TPK in the making! Wow! 

Okok, two more then I stop. “Interlopers in the wood may discover an unnatural hillock atop which dreadful black obelisks, inscribed with runic scripts, are perched. A grassy dike runs around the centre with an earthen ramp to bridge the still-deep gulf. A lone statue of a loathsome being can be found among the stones.” A dyke. Just like ALL obelisks have. But, also, one room in the dungeon has “a dozen living elephant trunks along the southern end of the room” Yup. Living elephant trunks. You can reach inside of them for goodies … if you dare! 

This thing is rampant with imagination. It delights in it. Single column. More of a framework than an adventure. Deadly the way only a true “who gives a fuck” old school wilderness can be. I can’t recommend it. It’s just too .. loose. It needs just a bit more structure to it. But when this thing is hitting it is hitting hard. The definition of that terse, evocative shit I go on and on about. Situations. Imagination without books to get in the wya.

This is $5 on Lulu

https://www.lulu.com/shop/corey-ryan-walden/the-black-ruins/paperback/product-22150228.html?page=1&pageSize=4

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Wall-Top Lair

Posted on December 14, 2024 by Bryce Lynch 
By Nickolas Zachary Brown
Five Cataclysms
Five Cataclysms
Level ... 5? 8?

The carcass of a dead city is to many, a ruin. But to others, it is an opportunity. Where tens of thousands of still bodies lay, necromancers and their ilk shall flock.  This is the way of things. The perimeter of this city, like many of the great cities of old, has a wall. Atop this wall are two towers. Day and night, an ominous green glow emanates from the larger tower, where an undead animator toils away, creating horrors for its master.

This fourteen page adventure is a twenty five room hack in a two-tower gatehouse full of undead. A little wit, a straightforward style, some interesting things to stab … for what it is it’s doing a decent job.

I do complain about hacks, don’t I? I think this falls in to the same category as how I treat tropes. And, I suppose, a hack is a trope in D&D-landia. A throw-away isn’t going to land with me, but if you put your heart in to it and really make it your own then I’m probably down. For all of the “Bryce doesn’t like X” shit, I think I’m really quite generous. Just make it not terrible, and I don’t really care how you go about doing that. 

So, “A local cleric was able to interrogate the fallen undead [abducting people from their beds], who revealed to him thus: A lich named ‘Father’ has made the southern gate-fort its lair, and is collecting bodies for its evil work”  I could bitch a lot about this. The skeleton knows he’s a lich? The cleric does? “Evil work”? Is that what old skelly said? I’m much more amenable to Widow Agnes, dead a year now, telling the tale, and so on. You want some specificity, some color. That’s what being a designer is, adding those boots that bring the thing to life. Sure, the DM has to run with it, but you need to give the DM something to run with, something to get the ol brain juices going. And in a generic vs specific battle it’s hard to see how the generic could win.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that the town militia and local soldiery is always busy in one of these adventures. And the local pretext here for this adventure is a great example of a couple of principals.  “The local militia has their hands full with stirge mating season in full-swing, thus the Mayor has implored the adventuring population to …“ There’s some absurdity here, at just the right time. It’s the pretext to get the party moving, and we all know it, so let’s hype it up a bit. It more than grounds the DM in some things to introduce as vignettes in the parties village journey, imagine the possibilities or stirge suits and stirge nets and giant DDT vats and so on! We’re playing D&D tonight and the DM has introduced a pretext and ir running with it, acting like its serious. I’m down! A little silly at the start can help to do this. Yes, the villagers are idiots. Of course they are. That’s why you’re here. 

The map here is, well … It’s a set of gates with a tower on each side and a couple of bridges across to each other. You go up a flight in one tower and then over to the other side and then up to the other side and so on. This gives a linear progression to things, as you journey from the ground to the top of the tower and the big green crystal sphere on top. There’s a side room or three hanging off of each level as well, but it’s mostly linear.

I don’t know where to go from here. Descriptions are kept terse but in an interesting way. “A blackened blood smear runs across the stone floor and up the stairs. A lever is attached to the eastern wall. The opposite north gate has also been smashed open, long ago.” or “Human corpses, stacked like logs, the stack reaching chest height. Stripped of all gear & equipment, there must be at least 40 corpses here. The most common cause of death is a slashed throat” I can quibble with an over-reveal or aside in these, but they are not terrible descriptions. And, to the adventures credit, it generally understands that the most important thing should come first. If the door to the room is trapped then thats the first thing in the room description. Major features comes before minor ones, and so on. And then, when needed, a cross-reference comes in to play, noting, for example, at the entrance, that the skels in room sixteen fire down on the characters if they draw attention to themselves … instead of putting that information in room sixteen. 

And our creatures. Oh my. For a hack … Well, there’s a decent assortment of 1HD and 2HD skeletons. No problem. One group chucks a barrel down the stairs at you. And what does a necromancer do with their extra blood? “BLOOD OOZE – Ah, what to do with this extra blood? Put it in a barrel and animate it, of course.” Again, that sly little wit. Or, the Weakened Wight “Scrawny. He’s got a goblet,for reasons unknown” Well, yes, he should have one, obviously. That makes him more wightlike. Did I mention the hair monster? “Attacks by shoving itself down the target’s throat, suffocating them. It becomes more and more difficult to get it out.” There are also an assortment of non-traditional skeletons, including a giant spider with a max full of sharks teeth, the hand of a true giant and what feels like an endless variety. Even the wight (above) and a shadow gets little bit of a special treatment beyond the mere ordinary book thing. And then, sometimes, it goes and does this “12 x UNDEAD MONKEY – A barrel full of monkeys! Sort of. They’re vicious” A bridge too far! 

I’m not mad at this. If I wanted an assault mission I’d be happy with this. It’s got enough going on with its hack to elevate it beyond the normal ones. The descriptions are interesting, the treasure tries a little bit, the monsters are horrific. It’s not bad. 

This is $5 at DriveThru. The preview is six pages. You get to see the first three rooms on the last page. SO, it’s an ok preview. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/258178/wall-top-lair?1892600

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A War in the Valley

Posted on December 11, 2024 by Bryce Lynch 
By Thom Wilson
ThrowiGames
D&D? No. Shadowdark :(
Level 1

Two tribes of humanoids are warring within a small valley. Goblins, having just arrived on the western side, are trying to push out the eastern cave-dwelling Kobolds, who have been in the valley for many months. Each clan has been bringing reinforcements in to assist in winning their little war. The Goblins are likely to prevail unless the Kobolds’ latest plan can succeed.

This thirty page adventure uses seventeen pages to describe about 22 rooms inside some humanoid caves. Badly done OSE style descriptions, a hodge-podge of monsters, and no real interactivity beyond stabbing. I think I’ve seen this film before, and I didn’t like the ending.

Let us wander through the DriveThru listings for D&D, OGL, Classic D&D. It’s been awhile. Ah, here’s one! It’s listed as D&D! Game on! Oh, wait, it’s not D&D. It’s Shadowdark. Which is a fine game, but has now attracted the attention of the masses … and their own conflicting intents. Like $$$$$$$$$$.

It’s a cave. There’s a big central-ish room with goblins on one side and kobolds on the other. The goblins have a drow mercenary. The Watcher in the Water is sitting in a pool outside the cave, worshipped by cultists that show up twice a day. I don’t know, maybe you can do a Yojimbo, but the adventure is NOT going to support you in those endeavors. Not in any way other than to say “the kobolds will give you a jewel for helping.” Fucking great. The DESIGNER should be DESIGNING the adventure. They should be doing DESIGN things. I can roll on a random fucking table and pretext pretext pretext. But, dumping shit in to the adventure to facilitate interesting play? That’s fucking DESIGN. I shall resist the temptation to rant more about this, but it’s just so frustrating. No one cares. Not anymore. Ever. Anything decent that comes out is just a fluke, to be treasured. Perhaps because what is defined as decent has shifted to keep up with the top 3% ?

Ok, so, no real design here. It’s just a bunch of shit thrown together., Oh, goblins. Oh, drow mercenary. Oh, kobolds. Oh. the water in the water. Oh, cultists. Like, wtf?! The watcher, ok, maybe. It’s a pool of water and sticking a monster in a pool of water is time honored tradition, and we all know I love a well done trope. It’s not well done here, but, hey, you can’t win if you don’t play. But the fucking cultists?!? LIke, why the fuck are they a part of this? They show up in exactly one place, the lake in the valley (where the water lives) that the caves are by. What possible reason is there for them to be there? “Well, I rolled a white dragon, so I guess it’s there …” Yeah? Ok, sure, I guess we come up with a reason?  I DO believe in random rolling as inspiration. But not to the point you’re ruled by it, and certainly not “as rolled.” Shit just seems to be thrown in here. 

Let’s talk descriptions. Lest I be accused of being an asshole, here is a good description from the adventure: “Murky, sludgy pool. Brown water with thick slime along top. Filthy rags. Stained cloths discarded poolside. Facedown. Murdered Goblin floating face down in rear of pool.” Murky and sludgy? Awesome! Brown water? Great! Thick slime on top? Cool! Filthy rags and stained clothing are both ok. And a body floating facedown in it? Fucking rock on my man! 

And, then, in other places, we get a terrible OSE style description. “Paid the price: two goblins lie dead in pools of blood on the floor.” Oh fuck off with that paid the price bullshit. 

In other places we get such exciting descriptions as “Short cave opening. Four feet in height and width. Skull pile. 1d20+5 skulls of goblins, kobolds, and humans nearby. Filth. Humanoid excrement, thrown out of the cave opening.” It’s just bullshit, this intro keyword bullshit and then the follow up detail. If done right I think it can be effective. But this isn’t done right, at all. 

Run around and stab shit. Very little to do beyond that. Bad descriptions. Just another adventure for the pulp mill.

This is $3 at DriveThru. The preview is six pages. You get to see a very small part of the first encounter, so, no way to make a purchasing determination from the preview. Which is the purpose of the preview. This means that the preview is a bad preview, not accomplishing the singular purpose of its existence. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/503255/a-war-in-the-valley?1892600

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The Lost Garrison

Posted on December 9, 2024 by Bryce Lynch 
By Stephen Smith
Mister Smith Design
OSE
Levels 2-4

200 years ago, Goshawk Keep was overrun. It has been mostly buried for generations—the hidden underbelly long forgotten. But deep within the darkness life goes on…some things lost…some things found!

This thirty page adventure uses about five pages to describe eighteen rooms. It is overly simple, both in description and interactivity. A minimally described dungeon turned in to thirty pages … somehow?

This adventure is boring. It’s not altogether bad. There’s not enough content for the adventure to be bad. It’s just boring. And it’s boring in a very specific way. There’s this way of describing a room. It’s a minimal description, like “12 rats in a bedroom” or something like that, something close to Vampire Queen. But, it IS given an actual description. Something like “A Victorian bedroom with a dresser and 12 rats in it.”  The description doesn’t really do anything for the room. It doesn’t add anything. It is not really evocative and doesn’t really lend itself to the actual play of the adventure. That’s not an altogether uncommon complaint of mine in an adventure, but the degree to which it pertains, the … lack of other issues? Really brings it into focus. Which kind of makes sense; if you’re not really saying anything in a description then there’s really not much room for me to complain, is there? 

Let’s look at one of the rooms in the adventure. “Dispensary: Abandoned medical storage area” Are you not inspired!?!? There is a DM notes section, the DM text. It says “Treasure: 2 potions of healing, 1 scroll of neutralize poison, 1 scroll of cure serious wounds” I mean, this IS vampire queen. The description simply defines the room name. Yes, a Dispensary is a medical storage room and, yes, we ARE in an abandoned ruin. I’m not fucking around and being hyperbolic. That IS the complete room description. Can you put in a fucking rooms that says “Empty” or something like that? Absofuckinglutly you can. It’s just the … perfunctory nature of this that offends me so much. It’s a room that COULD have something interesting in it.And, in fact, it DOES have some decent treasure in it. But that was not enough to deserve a room description. If that doesn’t deserve a room description then what exactly DOES deserve a room description?

I note that this is just an extreme example in the adventure. It’s much more likely that the room would be something like this one “A small chapel with rows of stone benches facing a raised votive alter. The walls are painted with chipped and faded landscapes.” And then the DM text ONLY tells us that you see a ghostly figure float down the hallway. It takes a lot more words than that, but it doesn’t say anything more than that. It is EXACTLY the fucking same as those fucking chess players in Dwimmermount. This is, essentially, an empty room. Can you give an empty room a description? Yes. Can you put a weird thing in the dungeon? Yes. Can your dungeon consist primarily of this? WHhy the fuck did you write the dungeon then?

I know what this is. This is essentially the same as a random dungeon. You rolled on the back of the 1e DMG tables or something and that gave you list of monsters and treasure. Then you got a list of random room names to put on each room. Then you gave each room like a one sentence description. Done! That is the closest I can come to accurately describing what this dungeon is.

Can you write a dungeon like that? Sure? I Guess so? I mean, who the fuck am I to tell you what to like? But this just seems so … I don’t know. I mean, there is a small section at the end for amping up play. It says thing like “Maybe the kobolds are bullied by the orcs.” Well then why the fuck didn’t you put that in the actual fucking adventure? I mean, that IS the value that you, as the designer, is adding to the adventure. I can roll on the fucking random tables myself and say “looks like a sea cave theme to me.” But the actual shit beyond that? That IS the value that a designer is adding. I think that’s the joy, also, in creation. Is it just drudgery to get through so you can move on to the next thing? What the fuck would the point of all that to be? A school assignment? A futile hope to generate revenue? 

In spite of the thirty pages, there is almost no content here. A simple definition description of a room. DM notes that are as minimal as are humanly possible, to the point of “12 rats.” There is almost no interactivity beyond a simple trap “Block trap: 1d10 damage” or stabbing something. I just don’t understand at all what the motivation for writing something like this would be. 

This is $5 at DriveThru. The preview shows you eleven pages of spread, so about 22 adventure pages. Good preview. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/494867/the-lost-garrison?1892600

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Across the White Marsh

Posted on December 7, 2024 by Bryce Lynch 
By Olav Nygard
Cyclopean Games
Blood & Bronze
Intro Characters

The White Marsh is a great waste of caustic sludge. From a distance it looks like a wintery swamp, but it is arid and hot instead of wet and cold. In the summer months, the rapid evaporation causes the pale mire to coagulate into an ice-like crust of saline crystals, thick enough to carry the weight of an army. The marsh is corrosive and houses nothing but horrors, so travelers avoid it at all costs. Still, a caravan has gone missing, its tracks disappearing into the dreaded waste. No-one knows what madness or desperation led it there, but reasons matter little—what does is that its cargo was valuable beyond comparison.

This 48 page hex crawl with 10×14 hexes, details a salt swamp and the parties search for a caravan full of tribute. It’s a frustrating combination of great hex crawl content that can’t sustain itself over the full range of hexes. It delivers on those Akkadian vibes, but I suspect can be used in most wildernesses.

I’ve had a brand of Gilgamesh in cuniform for thirty years, that I get redone every ten. My home wifi is called humbaba. My truck says Enkidu on its plates. My passphrases are from a tablet. I played QAGS at a convention just so I could be Gilgamesh, and then framed the character sheet and hung it on my wall. This adventure setting is the land between the rivers. I may not be the most objective reviewer. Also, it’s for Blood 7 Bronze, so, I’m kind of reviewing this as a hex crawl that one might use in a more traditional D&D system … meaning some judgements could be wonky.

Weirdly enough, I also tend to start my new Dungeonland games with a missing caravan of gold. And, I also have it disappear in to a marsh, the Bleakmarsh. As the intro to this adventure states “It is but a matter of time before someone else will venture out to salvage the wealth; the adventurers’ only advantages are their speed and their willingness to recklessly travel where others are reluctant to.” It gives the party something to chase to get started, before they start running in to people and situations that expand the game. So, a decent little thing to get the party moving through the hexes. Likewise, the rules for hex crawls here are relatively decent, terse and yet covering what needs be. Get your ass to some dry land at night (the map is supposed to help here, I think, but I can’t for the love of me figure out the dry land portion of it) , what you can see next door, how far you can move. It’s all pretty simple and effective enough without becoming simulationist. 

Hang in there as I describe what’s going on. We’ve got an aristo traitor, leading the caravan, in cahoots with some bearers. He got it in to the swamp with the intent of some swamp creatures/environment killing most of the caravan and making off with the gold. But the guide was too good and now he’s lost. The guide is still wandering the swamp, ol DeCaprio from the Revenant, on a revenge mission. (50% chance that when he dies he doesn’t actually die. Driven by hatred as he is. Nice simple but evocative mechanic to describe his passion.) We’ve got an invisible witch that can ride your back in the swamp, a necromancer up to some Make A Deal evil, cockroach people, brigands in multiple forms and desperados wanting to join them, as well as soldiers in the swamp sent to hunt them down. All with some potential clues scattered around on where the caravan is as well as the usual assortment of random danger and weird shit in a marsh. Rumors abound, with everyone getting one. Unless you’re a courtesan, then you get two. That’s the kind of specificity and idiosyncratic I can get behind! I think it adds loads of flavour when an adventure does that.

There is a main bandit camp. “Safe in their knowledge that no deputy will pursue them here, the raiders have painted their houses in every color and hung gold and silver from the ridges of their twigroofs to parade their illegitimate wealth. In their back-yards, water is slowly boiling in large bronze shields heated by the sun. There is a 50% chance that all raiders are out, leaving only the kidnapped women that are their wives and serfs” And then it goes on, for one of the NPC women “Despite her status, she hates her captors with passion but is prevented from action by her child with Yarosh who lives in his house together with Hamala. Has a small vial of poison and a dagger that she traded her soul for with an old crone promising her vengeance.” Now that is the kind of old school revenge drama/revenge thing I can get behind! FOr sports sake I spit my last!

The adventure is great when it has these little citations going on. Either some kind of a relationship between hexes or something interactive in a hex. And it is substantially less interesting when it abstracts or goes all Isle of the Unknown. “The soldiers are led by a deputy.” Well, fuck me. The adventure has no problem naming people and giving a brief personality to others, but not this very important dude. And then ethere are hex entries that are “An ossified tree from the time when cyclops ruled the earth.” That’s it. Or “Shubbery.” Ok. Sure. “A tunnel, leading straight down into the ground roughly five feet across and perfectly round. Its edges are dripping with pink slime.” That’s it. No more. Yeah, sure, every day is not Disneyworld, but, also, we’re looking for content here, and these things stand out given how good the NPC’s and situations are, and what a fantastic job it does communicating the overall vibe. I’m also more than slightly annoyed at the lack of … treasure? We don’t get anything on the hoard, just notably that 1/3rd of it is left at a certain location. Or that another group has a few urns worth. Worth of … ? I’m guessing that this all makes sense in Blood & Bronze … but its also a bit of a disappointment in the loot category. I guess maybe I’m a power gamer at heart?

That aside, I don’t think the Sumar & Akkad thing is necessary here. While I think the theming is spot on, I also think you can easily fit this in almost anywhere, as long as we’re doing a vast wilderness thing where we can have the unknown abundant and civilization pushing at it. 

This is $5 at DriveThru. There’s no preview. And that always makes me very sad 🙁

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/215459/across-the-white-marsh?1892600

Posted in No Regerts, Reviews | 3 Comments

Cult of the Sky Titans

Posted on December 4, 2024 by Bryce Lynch 
By Into the Weird Blue Yonder
Self Published
Knave
Level 1

A blight creeps across the land. Trees blacken and die. People disappear in the night, only to return taken by madness and rot. The spirits cry out for heroes.

This is a deceptively dense 36 page adventure that uses about eleven pages to describe nineteen rooms in some cultist caves … during caveman times. It is doing almost everything right, only getting a bit long in some encounters and needing a little more work in the appendices to make them more accessible. Weirdly niche, though. 

The designer has a supplement, Fire&Stone, that I assume describes neolithic roleplaying for Knave or some such, and this adventure is meant for that. Hence the weirdly niche comment I made. I’m going forward with a review though since we can always dump in a lost valley setting or some such; I’m not sure anything here precludes that. 

The setup here is that a hunter gatherer tribe has returned to a certain place. Near the mountain where they bury their dead, and the once lush valley is now not. Or, as one of the hooks puts it “A party member knew this place in their youth. It was once lush and verdant.” I think that’s a pretty decent hook. Simple, Moody, to be sure, and a pretty decent pretext. The adventure outlines three “camps” near each other. They each have a little bit of information and the third one has a VERY sick child. People have started disappearing. Once has come back, the child. Let’s see what the adventure has to say … “A bibilious child reeking of death, covered in  failed poultices. His veins are black, eyes and hands crusted over with black tears. He lies in  the dirt; writhing, screaming in hoarse tongues.” Yes, that would seem to be a fucking problem, ey? Great little fucking description. Writhing. Screaming in hoarse tongues. Fuck yeah! There’s some showing instead of telling!

The designer has a knack for this. The NPC’s are pretty well described, terse, but with explicit Wants, Needs, Knows sections. A couple of little vignettes in the camp that bring a sense of unease to things. This is married with a kind of omen table that has something like “a single fish, no more. It is filled with black glass shards.” Well that’s not cool, eh? And we don’t have a perfect society here, we’ve also got a vain woman and charlatan fortune teller. “You shall meet a tall dark stranger with exquisite feet.” The reason for the season is not forgotten in this adventure, with the designer inserting these little moments here and there. It’s got this excellent vibe, of a worried tribe. The omens are appropriate and help build the setting.

Ok, so, old dude who tended the graves up in the mountain burial place is dead, so, no help from him. Up you go.  “A thick fog shrouds this rocky clearing. The icy bottom layer soaks into your legs and conceals something that darts between the rocks.” Pretty chill, eh? That’s a good ominous description, especially for the entrance to the caverns. All of the rooms start with a little thing like that, impressions, but tied in to the actual room elements further described below. They are pretty decent, being terse, giving good impressions, and yet also having the elements you need, or that the players should be paying attention to, to ask further questions of the DM. It’s not perfect perfection, but it hits pretty well most of the time. This knack for using descriptions appropriately extends to creatures “Scars healed and reopened too many times crust on a wretched face, converging on a malformed mouth and a bloodshot beady eye. Infected piercings cover all else.” Hey man, aftercare instructions, yeah? “Wants; Bloody violent entertainment. Failing that, entertainment.” Me too buddy! (Both the sequel and gameshow version of Squid Game are abhorrent misreadings of the theme. I’ll watch them anyway.)

I note that the rooms start with a little description. Then they go to “Connections” the dreaded Bryce “where the exits go” text. But, in this case “To the west two rows of black bloody  footprints flank a red-black smear leading to …” and “To the north the occasional glimmer can be seen from …” and so on. A vibe, a hint, a decent but terse description. Those are exits I can get behind! 

For interactivity … we’ve got some fuck around and find out shit going on. Fuck with the deep pool and get The Evil Eye and maybe summon up an abomination from the depths. Wade through chest high water and maybe kick loose something from bottom … that maybe you should chase after. Some decent amount of stabbing, and/or rescuing people with a surprising amount of potential talking. Some psychedelics and environment features add to the mix. And the weirdness. A cavern, with thick rolling mist and a suffocating stench of blood. Putrid mists and a strange stillness. In the center sit two cultists, eyes and hands locked together, a cord tightly wound around their hands, breathing incredibly subtly … with one appearing pregnant. Ok man, are we trying to save them or just executing them? I know what I WANT to do and what I SHOULD do. The strength here is that the should competes against the want, the preamble camp and so on helping to build empathy. The whole thing just builds and builds and lyrics on top of each other to create more than the sum.

There’s a turn of phrase here and there that isn’t great. In some spot we’re told that this is where cultists try and funnel intruders … which is really something that should be in a general notes section and not in a room description. It’s deceptively dense for an eleven page 19 room adventure. And the rooms can also sometimes get quite dense and/or full. Too much, I’d say, for any one location given the formatting used. And not just the page long central room. The formatting IS working well to help locate and run things, but it’s WAY leaning to thick side.

This thing is just full of great things. It’s doing just about everything right in the way it does it, and I think that excuses a little bit of the content being a bit flat or samey. I have no idea how you would use this in a “normal” game, but its certainly worth the ol college try, perhaps with a restating and a bit more treasure to match your chosen level range.

This is $2.50 at itch.io. The demo is just the map. And the sample page is white text on black background … which is not present in the adventure at all. I think, though, otherwise, that’s a good sample of the room content of the adventure.

https://weirdandblue.itch.io/sky-titans

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