Into the Many-Towered Twilight

Posted on March 18, 2026 by Bryce Lynch 
By Nikoline
Self Published
OSR
Levels 2-6

Kurhan has three hills: Tell Os and Tell Hyr and Tell Kur. Of these, it is Tell Kur who is oldest and most feared. She is mother to the rest; it is on her windswept summit, girt with castles of black stone, that the dead are left for excarnation. Many are her towers, product of pre-human hands; and many are her pits, where in silence the dead of former days await dissolution. Of all these tombs, greatest is the New Necropolis. The veil is thin here; things watch hungrily as it wanes. Even a careless breath could tear it down. And then all would be washed away, into the many-towered twilight . .

Hey, go check out the preview and get excited by it.

This 75 page adventure presents a mound/barrow/graveyard/necropolis complex with, oh, 150 or so areas. It’s dong a pretty decent job of the whole “melting of the afterlife in to this one” thing, and dumps in some other factions, in camps, to spruce up the living element. The situation is complex, the factions complex, the environment complex … there’s a lot going on.  Needs more focus, but absolutely something worth checking out.

“Oh, Bruce would give Thracia threshing!” Yes, I would. And I would also say that you should check it out. And I’m gonna do the same here. I suspect this is everything that we all hoped in our hearts that Bree and The Narrow Downs would be. It’s also wrapped in a degree of obscure that does little to help the DM out, in spite of an obvious attempt having been made to do so.

The map here is quite interesting. Let’s imagine a barren hilltop. Arrayed on and around it are a variety of barrows, monoliths, towers, and earthworks and mounds. There’s a kind of three-tiered works here, with the earthworks having some gates in them. This results in some large open-air areas surrounded by towers and doors/entryways in to mounds. Maybe three dozen mounds and towers in all. This results in an interesting way to approach, fro an adventuring standpoint, with many of the areas almost being stand-alone little endeavors. Once, that is, you can negotiate the various factions who have made camp and are running around. Each little section is almost like a stand-along tomb, with a few chambers to explore. Shades of that tower adventure by Gillspie. And then there’s the underground section where things get weird, maybe half the size, in locations, but made up of (among other things) massive corridors and areas. 

The individual environments are interesting. A tower, with no entrance, gaining the top shows yo stairs choked with rubble and urns. A collapsed dome you can enter through. Do some drugs and have the world twist and leer at you a little and see new doorways to explore. A combination of mundane entrances excavations and climbing, and hidden paths opened through mystical means. You’re not handicapped here, at all, by a designer imposing their will. It’s just an environment you can explore, and sus out how to get where you want to go. Including shovels and sledgehammers. You are, literally, tomb robbers, and will be well-rewarded with things like skulls whos eye sockets have been filled with molten lead. A lance, in a corpse, pulled out you can dig out the spearhead from the cavity, and the still gooey intestines. That then crumble to crust. Hmmm, wonder what is going on there? And, of course, noise has consequences in many places. There’s a lot of hidden depth here, from the easy nd obvious to the obscure. All waiting to be exploited by a smart party. IN room 3, “If the gleaming spear-point ( 0c ) is driven into the crack in the east door, …” well … that’s a stretch?

The rooms are dense. Treasure, noise, environmental things, barriers, creatures. It’s extensively cross-referenced, thank god, given the interconnections. And it’s also pushing the line of what is and isn’t easy to dig through. The writing doesn’t help much, with padding words. Not the usual over-description, but rather A LOT of if statements, like the “if the gleaming spearpoint” and so on. That could all be reworked to be more direct and to the point and ease the cognitive load. It’s also leaning a bit purple in places, with phrases like “A ring of standing stones made crooked by time, A round tower, black against the sky..”  or, for our clauses “If one of the flagstones is removed (STR 40 total), underneath is a skeleton bedecked in finery of soapstone , jade , and gold ( 600c ). In its ribcage is a live, warm liver. It crumbles to ash if removed.” Not the most evocative writing but there has clearly been an effort at trying to bring some life to the environment. 

There’s a timeline for the factions, they want things and will pursue them and are not generally hostile, at least in the beginning, to the party. And then also there’s a major point of the various gates in the complex being opened. As you do so the description of some rooms change, based on how many gates have been opened. “I The e?gies sway and creak; bones weft through them rattle. The branches above block the light. ? If shone with torchlight, they cast back lifelike shapes on the far walls. After 1 turn, these begin to move as 1d6 shadows , seeking blood.” (Imagine an offset bullet point there) That’s the effect after one gate is opened. You get little vignettes in some places, and  real effects in others, hidden passages and so on. Delving too deep may require sealing the gates again, temporarily with blood and wax seals or through human sacrifice for a permanent deal. Ouch. Nice consequences for those shamelessly plundering tombs. 

I’m a big fan of this. It’s relatively rare to see something with both this breadth and depth to it. You can come back to places for more. The factions add even more. There are shades of here of classic adventures, and the exploration element is front and center while still containing those moments of terror from the monsters … and people. Every time you go to buy something large THIS is what you are hoping to find and which you seldom see. The faction elements could be a little stronger with perhaps reinforcements to keep them fresher, and the writing is a little too dense to be immediately scannable. But it absolutely rewards play. This is a good adventure. And to think, it keeps a tomb-filled adventure from getting stale! Thisis 100% going in to my Dungeonland game tomorrow.

This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru with a suggested price of $2.50. The preview is eighteen pages. It shows you the aboveground map and several encounters. Great preview! And, worth more than the $2.50 of PWYW. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/557063/into-the-many-towered-twilight?1892600

Posted in Reviews, The Best | 7 Comments

Orestruck

Posted on March 16, 2026 by Bryce Lynch 
By Amanda P.
Weird Wonder
Cairn/OSR

Orestruck is an adventure module for Cairn and other adventure role playing games. Adventurers arrive in Pact, a village in the Tannic Forest, and discover multiple problems: a corpse thief, a cruel gang leader hunting a privateer and her crew, and a miner rescue mission into the nearby Capellia Cavern where a monstrosity gnashes victims with pincers made of stone and bone.  Within the Forest lurk two minor gods, the Dreamers, who seek mortal servants to enact their bloody wills. 

This 44 page adventure presents a three-level mine/cavern with about seventeen rooms, supported by a small overland area and town. It leverages several situations going on to create sine factions play and has a decent amount of interactivity for its small main dungeon size. Evocative writing could be a bit better, but a solid adventure that is, perhaps, just a little off with its timings.

The crux of the adventure is this line in a backstory: “Captain Enid raided a smuggler’s ship and stole something precious from the city lord Melchior.” This puts Enid on the run, having letters of marque retroactively revoked. Power comes from your ability to enforce your will, and Melchior (offscreen) has hired a mercenary band to bring in her bounty. She’s fled to known ground, a place she grew up, a place where her sister still is, and where her former lover now rules as a lord. A lord who is still in love with her, in a way; ala “I’ve always got a thing for the chick I was infatuated with in high school. Oh, and my spouse is now dead …” Thus the mercs are in town trying to find Enid, and will kidnap her sister eventually to serve as leverage, as well as being generally a rough group of almost-outlaws. The Lady in charge has an issue also, with her mine nearby having been overrun and miners now in town lamenting and licking their wounds and she needs that mine problem solved. Oh, and, as a sideline, it would be great if you found Enid for me. Which is a delicate matter she dances around. And then there’s a huckster who has dug up a local grave to see the finger bones as charms of protection against the mine monster. And, the mine/surrounding area has a history and the recent bloodletting has reawakened an old god/spirit who’s got an agenda also. This is the backdrop for the party getting to the mine, meeting pirates, mercs, miners, god-servents, and the rest along the way in the mine and on the way to it. This is all supported by a little timeline to help the mercs, in particular, drive things forward with their kidnapping of the sister, etc.

This is the way you do factions and complex environments. People want things, they are running around with their own goals, and you stick the party into a dungeoncrawl that is enhanced but the party’s navigation of the social aspect to it. These are enhance with little snippets of specificity. So, the miners are motivated by making money to send back home to their families. Historically accurate, very relatable, and lets you run them with their worry and angst. The guy who had his dad dug up? “Symon is a boatman but his father was a musician who left him debts and a tuning fork.” Well, we can see from that how he probably talks about his dad. A “non-hostile) troll lives under a remote bridge in the forest, a bridge that has been destroyed and he is rebuilding. “but runs, cursing his if attacked or menaced. He has many petty grievances.” Gonna help him rebuild his bridge? Or at least commiserate with him on his petty grievances? The villagers include this snippet: “No villager will spend a night in the forest if it can be avoided due to half-remembered superstitions. Locals often utter sayings like “Tricky as a Dreamer”””. A hint to the forest spirit/godlings. This is all great specificity and adds to the fun. It’s relatable, and when an adventure is relatable it helps both the DM in running the encounter and in the party relating to it. The town and overland are mostly going to be opportunities for the party to learn, make friends, enemies, and so on. You can get in to trouble but the bend of the encounters tend to be a trigger happy party getting in trouble and a calmer one picking up a side-quest or getting some kind of advantage. Mamma spider wants someone to carry her (fist-sized) babies out of the swamp to dry land. She doesn’t SAY that, but the way the encounter plays out is that way if you are cautious and don’t start stabbin. And if you can figure this all out you’ll get a decent magic item from mamma. There is A LOT of fun to be had in the town and overland ,and it’s one of those things where you, as the DM, can just SEE how things are, gleefully, going to play out. You’re looking forward to running them. And that’s fucking good. Lots of weirdness. It’s great.

Inside the three level mine/caverns have a few ways between levels, waterfalls, chasm bridges, statues to fuck with and a lot more. Some skeleton dudes want to eject you from the dungeon in order to save you. Those fucking godlings were handing out side-quests in the forest and now the payoff comes. Surprise! They are assholes and there’s consequences to their seemingly-benine tasks. Miners and people trapped. The pirate crew moored in an underground lake firing cannon at a swimming undead monstrosity. Frankly, the dungeon stands well on its own, but when you add in the mercs, their leverage, and a great beast rushing through the caverns gobbling up anything it finds, its pretty damn good. 

Text is decent. “A natural bridge, 10 feet wide, spans the natural cavern chamber which is 5 feet across. There is a roaring subterranean river 15 feet below. A waterfall thunders to the south. Stalactites hang overhead. Mushroom clusters and puddles fill impressions in the stone.” Not the most evocative, but it covers the ground well, leaning towards facts rather than relating the emotion of an environment. There could, and should, be more of that. I can quibble at the cannonfire and flashes from it not going on outside its own room. And the great beast rushing around, almost as an environmental hazard, could use a little bit more. Treasure is light on the coinage side of the house, this being for Cairn, so a little beefing up there would go a ways as well. 

This is a decent little adventure, both with and without the factions running around. You’re not going to fall over yourself to run this, but I think it’s th kind of solid adventure that I wish we saw more of.

This is $12 at DriveThru. The preview is the first twelve pages. You get to see the factions, town, and a few forest encounters. I would have preferred a page of mine/cavern encounter also, but I think you get a good sense of the faction possibilities from the preview, and a bit of the forest weirdness.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/534673/orestruck?1892600

Posted in Reviews, The Best | 10 Comments

The Thicket (Arden Vul)

Posted on March 14, 2026 by Bryce Lynch 
By Richard Barton
XRP
OSRIC
Levels 1-3

The Green Fang kobolds have existed on the fringes of the human settlements of northern Burdock’s Valley for decades, secure in the strange, thorny thicket surrounding the Broken Knob. Until recently they were content to hunt, forage, and generally avoid human contact. But reports of open assaults on merchants, caravans and travelers using the road from Gosterwick to Deepton are mounting. The formerly timid kobolds seem to have become aggressive and hostile. Why? Eusebia, the Archontean thesmothete in Gosterwick(AV AK-23), has had enough. She has quietly let it be known that she is willing to fund an expedition to cleanse the Thicket of this scourge, once and for all. It should be easy work – after all, how much trouble can kobolds pose?

This 55 page adventure uses about thirty pages to describe about 66 rooms inside of a thorny thicket, and some tunnels underneath it, full of kobolds and plant monsters. I might call it an exercise in self-indulgent backstory and explanations WHY. 

This is an expansion of the Arden Vul product, providing some outdoor areas to expand the area around the dungeon proper. In this case it’s a magic thicket with some kobolds living in it, and in some tunnels under it. There’s a druid spirit controlling it and he feels protective of the kobolds so he’ll manifest some plant monsters if you fuck with them. There are a few connections to Arden Vul, like the kobolds sending prisoners to the Beast Men and such. 

I do not like it Sam-I-Am. I know a bunch of you like to suck off Arden Vul. I thought it was ok. This is not that though. It’s been awhile since I reviewed Arden Vul, but I can’t imagine giving it any kind of decent grade based on the issues that are all over this thing. I don’t know what’s going on. Same designer. Same editor. But the writing style here just feels COMPLETELY off and different from Arden Vul.

Primarily this comes from a degree of text verbosity achieved through explanations, backstories, whys, for whos. This is present to an absurd degree that seems self indulgent to the extent that we’re paying for fiction rather than an adventure. I really mean this The fucking hooks take up three pages and that’s not because of the specificity provided to help the DM run them memorably. 

This thing engages in backstory for just about everything. Worry not, sturdy DM, for if the players ask WHY there’s a rock you just ad-libbed in then the adventure will provide the context! Here’s a rom with a couple of ghouls in it: “Backstory: The ghouls are the corrupted legionaries from a konturbs of the II Legion (Sheepshead Rangers), whom the Archon Adrienic deputed to accompany Ingerikos on his expedition to this area. They employed a local guide called Wulthrith. Told to wait in the cellar while Wulthrith and Ingerikos inspected the barrow doors, they became trapped in the cellar after Wulthrith betrayed and killed their master (see BV1-16, BV1-28, and BV1-35) and then collapsed the upper story of the villa. Abandoned and trapped, the legionaries consumed all their food supplies while waiting fruitlessly for assistance, before some finally turned on the others in desperation; having killed and eaten the others, eight of the twelve killed rose as ghouls.”  Whats the fuck man?! What the fuck is the point of any of that? I don’t need to know this shit. Maybe describe the fucking ghouls as legionaires or something, but all of this? 

The adventure does this over and over and over and over again. Its favorite hobby is doing this. Here, I pulled out this one in the dungeon below. It runs across two pages, taking up more than a column of space. TO NO FUCKING END. There is absolutely no point to any of this. MAYBE some of this can eek out as a room description. And the “takes a dim view” thing is nice. But the rest of the, the vast majority of over a column of text, is just garbage padding to no end. This is all trivia. It serves no purpose in any way other than a phD paper or maybe a museum exhibit. Hey, did you want to know, in the backstory, that “During her lengthy sojourn at the Knob, Grishia lightly modified the interior of the barrow and added a colossal statue of Phagtro atop the Knob (BV1-36).” That’s not even room backstory, that’s introductory backstory. Who the fuck cares about any of this?! “Oh, I like it!” Fuck you. Fuck you all to hell. This kind of self-indulgent shit is the ruin of tabletop adventures. I could maybe understand more if this were a singular work, but its got an editor attached, Joe Browning. There’s no way he doesn’t know better. What was the effort here, spell checking?I’m just aghast at seeing this in 2026 from XRP. I’m stunned.

And then there are things that just don’t make sense. Yeh yeah, D&D, elves shooting fireballs from their asses. No, in a different way. Those ghouls? They are trapped in like a one room basement. For several hundred years. They didn’t dig out of the fucking basement? And they have tools with them! And are roman soldiers! It’s fucking nuts. Whatever, you wanted ghouls there, got it. And the layout of that room? You have to get to the cellar to learn that the ghouls plead to get out, not in the room  above the cellar where the he voices of the ghouls would be heard. “Uh, oh yeah. I guess you heard some people begging to be let out, as you remove the last beam.” It’s fucking maddenning.

The kobolds cover their entrances, their WELL USED entrances with a 2’ thick mat of thicket thorns. This hides them like a secret door. Fuck no. You don’t get to use something in the natural world frequently and remove and replace a 2’ thick mat of thrown frequently and have that remain well hidden, magic thicket or not. And I’m not saying this from a nit-picky standpoint, I’m just giving this as yet another example of shit in this that just don’t make sense. Lots and lots and lots of backstory but for all that explanation there’s just stuff all over the place that just doesn’t make sense from a design standpoint or a suspension of disbelief standpoint. 

The spirit in charge of the thicket can manifest up to EIGHT 3HD plant monsters PER HOUR. THREE HD. In a level one to three adventure. And it will do this if you kill four or more kobolds. And any combat with the kobolds is 20% likely to manifest the 3HD plant monsters. 

There is no fucking way this was playtested AT ALL. How do I know that? Because there’s no way you can toss a bunch of 3HD plant monsters at the party, along with Tuckers Kobolds hit squads, at a party and not get a TPK. Not at levels one to three. It’s fucking impossible. 

The kobolds have cleared the land around the thicket, so you pass through open meadow to approach. They have guard posts up in trees all over the place. They have false entrances. They have ambush spots. They have hit squads. They have trained giant weasel and trained giant fucking boars! At levels one to three! Along with, of course, all of those 3HD plant monsters, eight per hour. If you are gonna put in a 100HD orc in the middle of a bunch of 1HD orcs then you have to telegraph that shit. 

I can’t imagine what work there was done on this prior to publication. Not on the fucking map of the thicket, proper, which is a pain in the ass to read. It took me forever to find entry “4” on the fucking map. 

Ok, so, the kobolds have some prisoners, one of the hooks says. We’re gonna ignore that. And it’s hard to burn the place out, magic thicket that regrows and all that shit. (it takes FIVE TURNS to chop out on 10×10 area for passage) And, of course, the kobolds and plant monsters. But, still, I think haunted housing this is best. Bring in a hundred hired hands, set up a camp, systematically burn it out with oil, and then flood the underground with the stream in the thicket. Then go pay the cornice to sift the ashes for loot. 

Doesn’t that sound like fun? It sounds more like a hex crawl thing to me. Beyond the text padding shit, and that this is mostly a hack, it sets the party up for failure. You’ll have to warn them, very heartily that this one is different and needs to be approached differently.

This is $15 at DriveThru. The preview is seven pages., You get to see some backstory. Don’t worry, you’ll get to see a lot more in every room. Poor preview. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/553194/the-thicket?1892600

Posted in Reviews | 14 Comments

Plundering the Athenaeum of Ilth

Posted on March 11, 2026 by Bryce Lynch 
By Dale L Houston
Duck and Crow Press
OSR
Level "Veteran"

A festering swamp steeped in ancient mystery, treasure-hungry lake pirates scouring the region, angry alligator people defending their holy sites, and weird dungeons exuding a sense of impending doom. Seriously – what more do you want from an adventure? Explore and plunder the ruins of the Athenaeum of Ilth before it is too late!

This 48 page adventure presents a faction-laden “alien” complex with an overgrown swamp persona. You can see hints of greatness in the factions, although the room descriptions tend to have a weird lack of overall vibe while noting specifics well.  Needs a little shit-stirring with the factions to give the dungeon some pep.

Ok, we got this BIG ass lake with a swamp over on one side of it. Rumor has it there’s loot in them there hills! Or, there was a giant light beam that shot out in to the dark sky, or there are pirates there. The people in town on the west side say that there ARE pirates to the west of the lake. Oh, and to watch out for crocs. Turns out there are some crocodile people living in some ruins in the swamp. Very interesting ruins. A giant ziggurat eventually, but some minor sites before you find the ziggurat. O, and the pirates are there looting (with a pirate town provided !Yo ho ho!) So, you gonna wander around till you find the swamp ruins, go in and out of them, meet pirates and crocodile people and so on. Until the AI in order detects trouble in the alien ruins and beams down some creatures to ‘decontaminate’ the site. AKA: monsters kill absolutely everything in a few hexes. Turns out the croc-people were once far more advanced than they are now. Oh, and maybe they created humans by feeding magic potions to apes. Shades of that last Alien movie I saw with the engineers and black goo and shit. 

What this brings to the table is some mini-ruins of a few rooms, a larger ziggurat complex, cros-people with a couple of factions, pirates with maybe a couple of factions, a stranded/captive linguist, and enough room to breathe, for the most part, to let all of this play out. The adventure provides some wandering tables for different regions, to support you travelling to the nearest settlement and then on the adventuring sites, either by boat or foot. And the wandering tables and rumors slot in the adventure well, theming it pretty decently. From there perhaps you discover a ruined campsite, and the ruins nearby. Which MIGHt kick off clues to other sites or start the party on the “decontamination” part of the adventure, the timer to finish things off with. You may find out about the pirate camp, or even the pirate town, opening up new opportunities that are supported by the adventure. Or meet the croc-people, learning they have two factions. And then perhaps they bring out the captured linguist, who can tell you they refer to all humans as “talking food.” Well, that certainly recontextualizes our relationship with the friendly faction … The more you explore ruins the greater the chance the decon protocol gets triggered and monsters start beaming down. Forcing everyone to once again look at their priorities, who they will befriend and what they will allow. Ith hex travel taking a day, and “exploration” rolls revealing multiple levels of information in a hex, maybe four smaller ruin sites, a pirate camp, town, pirate town, croc-people village, the main ziggurat site and the decon process there’s enough room and time for relationships to change. This is the kind of sandbox-type environment, with relationships, that you need to support this more in-depth and complex play style. 

The rumors tables are different based on who you are talking to. There’s a pages of DM support checklists to track faction relationships and progress to decontamination, as well as a host of other things. Paying attention leads to clues to other things. For, maybe, fifty rooms total in about fifty pages the hexes and relationships make this a potentially dynamic environment in which the usual “page count to encounter count” ratio I look at breaks down. The support information ALL contributes to the actual adventure and is a part of the adventure rather than just being useless fluff. 

The descriptions of the locations are a little hit and miss. Or, rather, they don’t start off strong but their individual elements have that specificity I’m looking for that brings a site to life. There’s a brief offset section at the start of each location that has some descriptive bullets, followed by some DM information. So, for one of the ruin locations, we get this as an “outside” description: “A leaning, 2-story tower in the center of a reedy pool. Crude struts hold it in place.” That’s some good details. Reedy. Struts. And then for the DM information we get “Entrance: The first floor is damp, but not flooded. A rusted iron gate (open with a Standard Strength Check) blocks stairs leading down.” These are ok. Terse, tells you what you need to know. But, also, you don’t really get “ruins in a swamp” out of it very well. And that’s what I mean by the general environment just doesn’t come through very well. The more general atmosphere for each location just isn’t there. Not that it doesn’t hit, it just isn’t there. In another nearby room inside we get “This chamber is rather warm. Horse-sized stones with flat tops scattered evenly.” The chamber, proper, isn’t present in that description. There are some general notes about “Inside the ruins all surfaces are metal. Corridors are 10’ wide and the ceiling in all areas, unless otherwise noted, is 12’ high.” But, again, those general notes don’t hit in combination with the room description. 

And this weirdly continues in areas like treasure. I think it’s quite low. Yeah yeah, compatible with all OSR systems. It’s Veteran level, we need some cash. And yet when we look at the Power Cores, looting central to the adventure, “Each core is a cone 8” long. The base

is a 5” diameter circle stamped with cuneiform of the station name (Adap, Kish, or Lagash) or a numerical code. Each core is worth 1500$.” As a curio? “A pillar displaying a golden mesh.” How much for the gold? No clue. 

So, for the croc-people we get some great specificity like “Even basic and failed attempts speaking their Ilthtori will be well received.” That’s great! But time and again it feels like there is just a little bit missing, in almost every aspect. One room will have waist-high water leaking from the ceiling, or unidentifiable shapes scurry away under the water. Another will have “An enormous corpse covered in scavenging creatures” and nothing else about it. The factions are laid out well, and you can get very excited them. But they lack dynamism. Great overviews. Long term plans. But the short to mid term plans of them are missing a few ideas to get the DM going.

Blarg. Duck & Crow, and Dale, are doing some great things here. There’s just a little bit missing, a little bit out of place, keeping these from being some of the best 

This is $12.50 at DriveThru. The preview is fourteen pages. You get to see those referee tools, the factions, some overland, pretty much everything EXCEPT a few rooms. It really need to include a few of those to be a great preview. Still, I think the preview is enough to get you excited, just not enough to let you know what to expect.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/540651/plundering-the-athenaeum-of-ilth?1892600

Posted in No Regerts, Reviews | Leave a comment

The Lair of the Bog Lich

Posted on March 9, 2026 by Bryce Lynch 
By Andreas Wille
Medora Games
OSR
Levels 1-2

A village deep within the steaming marshlands is experiencing strange phenomena. More and more villagers rise from their beds at night in a mindless stupor, wandering out into the bog never to be seen again. The desperate villagers have promised a great reward to anyone who can find their loved ones and stop whatever dark magick stole them away.

This eight page adventure uses three pages to present six rooms inside of a small dugout/ruined basement. It is trying to do the right things, generally, but confuses form over function, resulting in a muddled mess of rooms in which you generally just stab things.

My complaints here seem familiar to me. Which must mean that I have reviewed this publisher/designer before and then picked something else out to give them another chance and see if the issues I had were a trend or a fluke. And then forgot what I was doing when I rolled back around a couple of weeks later and ended up thinking “wow, this seems familiar.”

Only three of the five pages are actually used for the adventure. Meaning that all of that effort from the other five pages could have reasonably been put in the actual dungeon instead of the support material for the dungeon. THE ADVENTURE IS THE MAIN THING. Spend your fucking effort on the actual adventure. THEN, after you have created a masterpiece, you can add in some support material. 

At the start of each room is a little sentence of two in italics. Is it read-aloud? Is it a room summary? Fuck if I know. Sometimes it seems like read-aloud and sometimes it reads like a room summary for the DM. “You spy a ruined tower behind a curtain of willow leaves, naught

more than a collection of crumbling stone walls.” That seems like read-aloud, right? I mean, it’s in italics and thats shity and it’s in second person and that’s shitty and it’s got that folksy shit and that’s shitty. But, it seems like read-aloud? But then in other places it seems more like a DM room summary? “Behind the gate, a long rectangular room holds a pool of thick,

oozing mud in the middle.” If the room had people screaming in it, or was brightly lit with a broadway show going on, or had an obvious huge ancient red dragon in it then that little summary section would not tell you. But it seems like in read-aloud it should? So … I’m confused. What the fuck is the point of the the italics text that kicks off every encounter/location? I don’t get it. Not read-aloud. Not a DM summary. I don’t know, REALLY bad read aloud?

Because, again, there can be a shit load going on in the room that the read-aloud/summary text just does NOT cover. The description up there is just fucking weird.

After that comes a lit of bullets. Yes, this is the “we use bullets for everything” kind of adventure formatting. That’s not necessarily a good thing and does NOT always lead to better idea presentation. Anything, used too much, becomes cover. If everything is a bullet then nothing is, right? And therefore nothing is emphasized for presentation to the DM? The same with the bolding that occurs INSIDE each bullet. It’s not that all information needs to be bulleted and each noun or whatever in each bullet needs bolded. The use of formatting is for emphasizing and highlighting, calling out to the DM certain things that are important or that they may need to find quickly or something like that. “Hey, this thing here is more important than some of the rest so pay attention to it. “ And you can’t do that if you use the techniques for EVERYTHING. 

The random tables here are weird. Here’s a six entry random table on alternate names for swamp. Fen, mire, bog, etc. Why do that? Why not just present the data if you want to do that? There are, I don’t know, half a dozen of these sorts of tables taking up space. A waste of space, IMO, And in other places, like the wandering table, the entries are doing something. Yeah! But it’s so mundane that they might as well not be. “Crocodiles, laying in wait,” Ok … “Carcass crawler, digesting its last meal.” Sure. There’s no specificity there. A body half sticking out if its mouth? Ok, I’m down with that. “Laying in wait.” B O R I N G. What put it in at all?Bt, then, in a work of genius, on the map page there’s a little three-entry table for “who is held prisoner. “ Things like “pox-riddled peasant sobbing quietly.” ey! Great! War veteran missing limbs. Great! Thief trying to pick the lock. Great! Each has specificity. And that makes them worth putting in. Likewise the “random gore” table on the same page is great. It’s like those two tables were done by someone else because they are the only two that really stand out as interesting and actually adding value to the adventure. 

“Once a watchtower used to survey the area, time and weather have left it in ruins.” That’s one o the bulleted items in the DM text. Background. Telling us what once was. And the adventure is full of this. The entries are full of nonsense. “How to make an entry seem long but not actually add any value” Window dressing effects. “It glows blue” Backstory. “Once a watchtower used to survey the area, time and weather have left it in ruins.” Shit like that. But, ultimately, all you do in the rooms is stab something. As one would expect, I guess, in a six room adventure. “I remember a time in America when an eight page adventure contained the Steading of the Hill Giant chief, with two dungeon levels and a gazillion rooms that made sense together!”  Nostalgia is a terrible thing. We remember Steading, one of the best adventures ever from many standpoints, but forget the hundreds of shitpiles that existed also. There have always been shitty adventures and this is just the latest version of them.

I did, however, find this HILARIOUS. “Thelich cast a ritual to reach out into weak-willed minds nearby.” Yeah yeah, there’s a lich, a weak one, and it’s summoning weak willed people to its lair to like suck the life out of them. (Hey baby …) But, then, also in the hooks section: “A random party member begins hearing the lich’s call and is driven towards its lair.” BURN! Your character is weak-willed!  Suck it Galdalf! 

This is $1.50 at DriveThru. There’s no pREEEEEVIIIEEEEWWWWW! You gotta put in a preview man, so we can tell if we want to buy it or not. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/555050/the-lair-of-the-bog-lich?1892600

Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

The Sunken Fortress of Varkooth

Posted on March 7, 2026 by Bryce Lynch 
By Christopher Wilson
Self Published
OSE
Levels 1-6

For over a thousand generations, the sorcerer kings of Varkooth held the valley between the Schelus Mountains and the Gray Hills in an iron fist, until the War of the Heavens saw their mighty fortress sink into the very earth. Now, nearly 1,600 years later, that fortress has once more been discovered. Can a group of adventurers stop the evil contained within from spreading once more?

This 103 page adventure uses about forty pages to describe an overland journey and five levels of a dungeon with about a hundred rooms. It is essentially a minimalistic hack expanded to a hundred pages with meaningless trivia and padding. More so than usual.

Characters opening the door should make a Wisdom Attribute check. If they fail then a butterfly flaps its wings in China.

Two weeks away is a dungeon that some archeologists have found, a fabled site. They encountered some trouble and thus the party is hired to come clean the place out for them. You travel overland for two weeks entering many mundane towns and villages (the first forty or so pages), and then explore the five level dungeon where you stab things (the last forty or so pages.) 

I found a few things interesting here. On the journey you may encounter some rangers. They are framed as, perhaps, game wardens who fine or arrest the party if they have been hunting in the area. That’s kind of an interesting framing for rangers. A little out of place given the monsters running around. Maybe they have better things to do given what’s going on? No? You’re gonna write me a ticket anyway? Sure. But, still, nice low fantasy idea. It also puts the monsters on the map with brief notations, great for a DM judging reactions from the next room, and in one place explicitly tells us that the party can hear chanting from behind a closed door. Again, related to the monsters on the map, the dungeon room does not exist in a vacuum, and helping the DM describe what the party senses up ahead is a great then in an appropriate environment.

I feel like this adventure is a textbook example of how to expand an entry without adding any value to it. The result ends up being overly long and obfuscates any meaningful data in the description. We can start right off with a wandering monster table. Here’s the entry for Raiders: “Raiders: Regardless of which kingdom one may find themselves in, there are always those that wish to cause strife. In the Border Lands, raiders are usually from the Kingdom of Beiria, though they make sure to wear no livery.” We have started with “Raiders” and then went on to define what a raider is, “Regardless of which kingdom one may find themselves in, there are always those that wish to cause strife” Yup, that’s what the word raider can mean. Noting the cross-border issue and lack of livery is good, but it would be even better if this were meaningful to the adventure. It is not. There are no cross-border tensions in this. Or, how about a wild boar? “Wild boars are a frequent site in the forests and fields of the Border Lands and the Glaustian Empire. They are frequently hunted by villagers and farmers, though they can prove to be dangerous prey. Wild boars tend to be aggressive and territorial, being encountered in groups of 3d4.” So, 4d4 aggressive and territorial wild boars, with a lead in telling us what a wild boar is. 

It also engages in explaining the mundane. You pass through a non-trivial number of towns and villages on your way to the dungeon, with each being described over several pages. Each. You want to know what a Fishmongers market looks like? It’s in here. It has no relation to the adventure, other than being a place  in the town, but it’s here. No? How about spending a decent sized paragraph describing what an outlying farm is and how they sell their excess on market days and how they pay their taxes? Again, this is just some rando shit in a town along the way. I did mention “text book example” didn’t I? Of adding words but no value? These things are common in this adventure. 

And then there’s the trivia. Imagine if you constructed a room via the DMG1e tables. You rolled for monsters and put in 2d4 kobolds. Then you rolled for furnishings and you got a Stone Throne. So you put this in: “Stone Throne: Dwarven characters will immediately recognize that this throne is of dwarven construction, however, a successful intelligence attribute check, a detect construction tricks check, or a lore check will inform the characters that there is no known connection between Varkooth and the dwarven clans of the region. This begs the question of where the throne came from. It is obviously thousands of years old and will need much further research.”

And this is where my comments about butterfly wings come in. Over and over and over again. “Failure causes the left arm of the statue to break off, in a similar fashion to the right.” Ok. And? Nothing. You come across a bloody altar: “As to the location of the altar’s victim, there is no sign.”  over and over and over again there’s a feature of the room that gets a decent description, as if it should be meaningful and important to play, but it is not. It’s just describing a rock that is in the room. 

And then there are missed opportunities. The adventure ALMOST gets there in some place. “A detect construction tricks check can determine that the room is not safe but will likely hold for some time longer. The stonework of the circular stairs should give anyone pause, as there are several stairs that have crumbled away to gravel. A successful detect construction tricks check can determine that the stairs are sturdy enough for descent at a half movement rate, however” And if I don’t half move? And time and again there are places and things that SHOULD have an impact that get no explanation or description of effects at all. I’d waste most of my characters lifetime restoring and making offerings at altars in this without effect. There are intriguing possibilities that are just ignored while shit like that stone throne, which does nothing, get a description. 

There is little in the way of an OOB. I mentioned monsters on the map, which is good, but nothing beyond that. People stand in their rooms to die. Eve the drow that show up don’t do anything but stand there. “The bugbears have a 2-in-6 chance of hearing the characters coming down the hall, unless the characters are successfully moving silently” Yeah, that’s what move silently does. In one instance there are kobolds that may react: “however, they may be drawn to the sound of fighting above them.” That comes from some kobolds at the bottom of a stair. They would be reacting to the room above them, so to find this and employ it in the adventure you have to actually look at a room on a different dungeon level. How the fuck m I supposed to to that during play? Treasure in rooms that the monster visit, but that they have not looted? Sure! Why not!

There is, actually, very little to set this apart from a hack like B2. Minimal room descriptions expanded upon to column length with little actually adding to the adventure. Is B2 bad? Meh. But I can tell you that B2 expanded to a column per room would be bad if the added text didn’t add anything.

This is $9 at DriveThru. The preview is the first six pages, which shows you absolutely nothing of the adventure. The preview is meant to help us determine if we want to buy it, so it should show what the encounters, etc are like.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/554271/the-sunken-fortress-of-varkooth-ose-edition?1892600

Posted in Reviews | 6 Comments

The Hollow Tower

Posted on March 4, 2026 by Bryce Lynch 
By Nicole Mattos, Icaro Agostino
Angry Golem Games
OSE
Levels 1-3

In ancient times, the region was crossed by famous trade routes, and many nomadic groups passed through on their way to distant destinations. Today, the area lies mostly deserted, though it still bears traces of the once-great Anhurak. Among the sunken ruins, a few half-buried houses remain visible. At the center of the settlement rises the Hollow Tower, once home to the fabled Star Devourer.

This sixteen page adventure uses two pages to describe thirteen rooms in a tower with a one room tomb nearby. Overpowered opponents and lots of backstory detract from simple, plain rooms, also full of backstory. Worst of all, for a book telling you how to devour stars, there is no instruction on how to devour stars. 

Ok, so, there’s also a small number of hexes. The giant ant hex is a page long, with ¾ of it being backstory and explanations.  It ends with “When reaching the lair, roll 4d6 to determine how many Giant Ants are there. If the PCs find a way to explore the lair, it’s possible to find 1d10 × 1,000gp of gold nuggets, mined by the ants” That’s what you get. That’s what you get for a page. 

And that’s the story of this adventure. There are TONS of backstory and padding. The first real page of the adventure is number six, with backstory, with the tome up till then full of forwards and title pages and the like. I get it, PDF pages are free. But the actual adventure has to the focus on the writing. All of this trade dress, the seemingly deriguour of putting together an adventure, simply distracts the designer. You odn’t need it. Any of it. Put the effort in to the actual adventure.

Another hex has a simple one room tomb of The Star Devourer. Open the casket inside and you meet the 6HD AC2 dude. “He will speak to the party, pleading his case and complaining of the injustice he suffered.” I’m not sure why he is pleading. He’s already been freed by the time you speak to him. But, whatever. He sets about destroying your level ones. 

The main focus here is a small tower in a ruined city. We’re looking at four floors with about thirteen rooms. Exciting rooms such as “Kitchen: Where the servants plotted the coup. Contains three wall counters, a large central table, and flour sacks. 1d6 x 50 gp wine bottles are on the counters. The first time a bottle is taken, a Yellow Mold releases a spore cloud.” The coup being the plot to trap the dude in the tomb. Backstory. A very plain description. “ervants’ Quarters: Dusty, abandoned, and filled with simple beds.” Look, these sorts of rooms can work. Empty rooms serve a purpose in an adventure. And, certainly, an empty room doesn’t need to have the most evocative description ever written. But when the ENTIRE adventure is like that I have to wonder, where did things go wrong? What led someone to think that two pages of rooms in a sixteen page adventure was a great idea? 

We’re told in one place there are ghostly sightings in the garden. There are no ghostly sightings in the garden. There’s a room with three doors. “Right door” leads to a cold, frozen, empty region.” Huh? There’s a fucking stone golem in the tower. Level one?! Sure, sometimes a monster is actually a trap or a special, but this isn’t that. This is just a small tower with a stone golem in it. How do you do this?

The dude, the dude in the tomb, the central point of the adventure, The Star Devourer. Yup, he ate all the stars. Hope your game doesn’t have any. But, more to the point, room one has a book in it called “How to eat the stars”, detailing how to eat the stars. That’s it. Nothing more. Well, how do I eat the stars and what happens when I do? Yes, I realize we’re told the book is incomplete, but, what if I follow the instructions anyway? 

There’s no real adventure here, not really. There are some things to stab. There are some keys to find and doors to open. But it’s all in this extremely minimalistic style that provides absolutely no specificity at all. And, of course, all surrounded by lots of backstory.

I gave this one a shot because of the whole Star Devourer thing. I was wrong.

This is $5 at DriveThru. The preview is the first seven pages, which means you get to see all of the boilerplate shit and a page of backstory. Bad preview; it needs to show us what we’ll actually be playing so we can make an informed purchasing decision.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/540864/fortnightly-adventures-0-the-hollow-tower-ose?1892600

Posted in Reviews | 4 Comments

The Howling Tomb

Posted on March 2, 2026 by Bryce Lynch 
By Andreas Wille
Medora Games
OSR
Levels 2-3

Endless is the punishment of those that dare challenge divinity… Deep within an endless steppe, a weathered mausoleum stands alone. Its ancient walls, once adorned with beautiful carvings, are naught more than blank stone, marked by time. It would be entirely unremarkable, were it not for the incessant howling spewing from its darkened depths.

This eight page adventure uses four pages to describe seven rooms in an old tomb complex. I can get behind the concepts of a couple of the encounters, but the text is abstracted, the tomb small, and the treasure pretty much nonexistent. 

Endless punishment for those that dare challenge divinity?!?!  Qui audet adipiscitur!

This is a small tomb that always has a howling sound coming from it. It’s got a couple of things inside of it that are almost quite good. We’ve got some undead trapped in a room, screaming, their hands reduced to bloody stumps from clawing at the walls to get out. In another, undead beg to be released from their curse, holding armsfulls of charms and amulets and stuff draped from their hands. Very nice specificity there. That’s a great example of brief specificity that can really ground an encounter and make it come alive. IN another place you’ve got these two desert nomads trapped in a room, jailed there, so to speak, by the local nomads while they try and figure out what to do with them. One “Kidnapped multiple infants and left them to die in his anger about his own lack of children.” and will backstab the party if they find any significant treasure, while the second killed her brother in cold blood and “Stands by what she did, will help in a fight but is headstrong and does not like being challenged.” Again, great specificity that really gives the DM something to run with while playing them. If the entire adventure was like this then I’d be in a much different mood this morning. There’s also this little wandering table for an encounter in the desert leading to the tomb. The people encounters on there are integrated in to the rumor table, so, if you give the nomad, who is asking for water, some then he will give you a rumor. That’s a nice touch.

But, alas, it is not.

The tomb is quite small, with its seven rooms. These small adventures don’t really have room to breathe, so encounters like those two nomads are not really going to have much room to play out. There are these limitations that come with these short dungeons and they don’t mesh really well with the more dynamic and potential energy that something like the nomads could bring. And, of course, there’s not much exploration complexity here with only seven rooms. You’re looking at a simple star design, with a central room and six rooms hanging directly off of it. The central room has a puzzle that opens the last door, to the core heretic, so there is at least some not stabbing here. 

There’s a disconnect here between the dungeon environment and what’s actually going on inside. The setup is that the tomb “howls”, but you don’t really get any howling until you open the final door. Those undead clawing at the doors? Nope. The nomads locked in their room? Nope. This should be a noisy place but you’d never know it from the text. I really don’t like a “oh, yeah, you hear a lot of yelling” that only happens once you open a door and the DM gets to the text they need to read. This kind of light/noise/monster reactions are a sort point for me, in review after review. A room is not stand along thing, it exists in an environment and the DM needs help understanding that environment without making a lot of map and margin notes themselves. 

Each room leads off with a short one to two line sentence (in italics. UG! Tis the old wound ..) that is … I don’t know. I don’t know if it’s read-aloud or a summary or what. “The mausoleum’s ancient stonework is slowly succumbing to the elements. Spine-tingling howls echo from the decaying doorway.” This is not the most evocative description ever. “An angelic statue sits behind a stone sarcophagus that emits the constant, ear-piercing howl that gives the tomb its name.” Nor this. “Four statues of ancient gods adorn this long, dry chamber. Their judging gaze falls upon an elaborately carved door at the far end.” It just seems abstracted to me. A summary of the room, not a brief description. Maybe the lack of adjectives or adverbs to liven them up? The entrance is super bring, that “slowly succumbing to the elements.” It has a bend of fiction writing to it, rather than adventure writing, a common ailment with designers. I know evocative writing is hard, but this is something else. Like people are afraid to actually write a description of the room that means something. 

And the details of the room fall in to this same problem. Ancient gods? Which ones? How do I know they are ancient gods? Gods of what? It’s like someone write “there’s a temple to a god here,” Uh. Ok. That could mean anything, and it’s little better than ‘you enter a room.” 

Trease is light. VERY light. This is, I think, a symptom of “OSR.” It can mean just about anything these days, from treasure light to gold=xp or something similar. “Each deserter holds d4 religious paraphernalia such as charms and rosaries worth 5gp each.” We all know the real treasure is in the lairs, but this IS he lair. The final room does get you some magic plate and sword, but up till then it’s mostly drinking money. 

It’s constrained by its size and the descriptions tend to be abstracted. Good bulleting to help the DM run it, but the lack of specificity is jarring. And, space is wasted on explanations. Spending a third of a page on the heretics backstory buys us nothing. Wasting space on a shrubbery table doesn’t help us. This needs to be trimmed and the extra space focused in. The end result of this is a rather bland adventure.

This is $1.50 at DriveThru. No preview. Boo! Show us an encounter so we can make an informed purchasing decision. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/555055/the-howling-tomb?1892600

Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Bergummo’s Tower

Posted on February 28, 2026 by Bryce Lynch 
By Scott_M
First Era Adventures
OSRIC
Levels 1-3

In a lonely glade stands the abandoned tower of a once-legendary wizard. They say he kept great wealth and magical wonders hidden inside, but he vanished long ago and with him went the secret location of his treasure. Is there something to these rumors, or is the tower merely the sad legacy of a dead wizard?

This nineteen page adventure uses about twelve pages to describe about 35 locations in a small wizards tower and the dungeon underneath. Hidden depth without extreme obtuseness, it follows up on classic hiding place and delivers on both Ruins vibe and Magical Wonder vibe. 

I’m gonna botch some, right up front, and then tell you about the things this does right, which is quite a bit. This needed a very hard pass in editing to trim the text. It’s not really engaging in any of the classic bloated text issues, it just needs a real hard pass to get the focus tightened up and perhaps just a tad more in the way of formatting to help focus the DM in on the important bits. I think the text is probably just a tad too conversational, which combines a bit with a need to work on the evocative writing.  The evocative bit gets a pass, it’s hard, I know, but it also needs to be there. Here is “Kitchen”, for example: “Between a pair of open windows on the NE wall stands a battered iron stove with a toppled pipe. Next to it is an empty coal box. A pile of debris and smashed furniture clutters the SE corner. More kobold tracks enter and exit the room. [Para Break] The debris includes the remains of pantry shelves, a butcher’s block, and a shattered porcelain basin. Concealed under the pile is a trapdoor in the floor which opens into an enclosed stairway down to the cellar (T12).” Focusing just on the writing, this isn’t terrible but the sentence structure is a bit passive in places. “Between a pair” , and almost certainly irrelevant. It needs a few more adjectives tossed in and a bit of the padding tossed out. It’s decent, but I always want to see magnificence. \

There’s also this mania present, that is seen from time to time with certain designers, with dimensions. “Throughout this adventure, measurements are described in terms of feet (‘) and inches (“); dimensions in terms of length (l), width (w), height (h), depth (d), diameter (dm), and radius (r); and cardinal directions in terms of North (N), South (S), East (E), and West (W). Map grid scale = (5’sq) in the tower and (10’sq) in the dungeon.” Dude has some unresolved trauma, obviously, the same way I do with Castle Greyhawk. 

Ok, done bitching I guess. 

The vibe here is really old abandoned wizards tower. Like, three stories high. Walls crumbling, Holes in the roof. Getting close to “mostly ruins.” And those tower levels really bring that vibe. Vines growing about. Weakened floors if you cross over the middle of them, treacherous stairways. Dust. A giant spider lurking. A couple of centipedes. It has that classic ruined gatehouse vibe going on, with debris and vermin. And then, if you pay the fuck attention, it transforms. You might gain entrance to the dungeon level. Which is a full on Colored Mists.archways/magical effects everywhere place, complete with illusory wizard welcoming you. Congrats, you made it to the ACTUAL adventure! All of that hard work and cleverness up top in the ruins paid off and now you can really dig in to the twenty rooms in the dungeon. 

I’m really up on the classic elements, especially up top. Holes in the walls and roof, vines up the side of the tower for alternate entry points. The center of the floor being weak so you better walk along the edges. A chimney, with giant centipede up it if you go poking around for treasure (which there is.) Old moldy ragged falling apart carpet, waterlogged. With a key hidden under it. And the vines up the side? Poisin fucking ivy.  Whens the last fucking time you saw poison ivy in an adventure?! I fucking love it. You are embedded in the mundane rather than exoticism, at least in the tower ruin. The whole of the encounters, the challenges, work to create this awesomeness of a grounded vibe.

Are you paying the fuck attention? Cause upstairs, in all the dust, is one spot in the floor WITHOUT dust, that contains an invisible cabinet. Downstairs, in the kitchen, that pile of debris? Did you move it? Cause there’s a trapdoor under it to the basement. And if you find the trapdoor, and the invisible cabinet, and some other shit, then, in the basement, you can find the entrance to the dungeon.

And we have a full on wizard illusion in the entryway that is all “Welcome Adventurers!” He’s hidden his great treasures here … and it’s a puzzle/challenge dungeon. Not my favorite genre. But, as there things go, not terribly done. 

“Surrounding the central column but concealed by dust and found only by sweeping the area clear, is a pattern of 16 wedge-shaped stones (10’dm).“ You did sweep the dust in the room, right? To find the concealed holes on the floor? No? This isn’t Knutz bad, as far as the hidden depth shit goes, but it’s also very clearly for people paying attention. The puzzle rooms can get long, think a page or so, and there are decent number of them in the twenty. There are clues in the dungeon in one place that lead to solutions elsewhere. Obtuse clues. “Anyone viewing the tapestry for more than 1 round sees the scene animate: The wizard and his mount race alongside two more horses that enter the frame (3 horses total). This is a clue to the button code in D7 (Summer = #3).” 

But the magical effects here are wondrous also. In that same room, a gallery, there’s a picture of a knight and green dragon battle “The viewer sees the figures animate in battle, but when the dragon rears back and unleashes its breath weapon, an actual cloud of chlorine gas fills a (20’dm) area in front of the painting. Anyone in the area must save vs. Breath or die. If all affected creatures make successful saves, the cloud transforms into a shower of 500 gp instead.” That’s fun! It FEELS like magic. The puzzles are tough. The place is deadly. But it doesn’t feel unfair or gimpy, just unusual in 2026. . 

I’m going to leave you with this room description. You tell me what’s interesting.”Smashed furniture, dirt, and leaves pile up against the walls. Between the open windows on the SE wall stands a mildewed stone fireplace, long cold. The floor is filthy, though a moldy, rotten rug covers the middle. Pieces of a wooden chandelier dangle limply from the rafters.” I’ll wait, lah lah lah. Tradoor under the debris. Centipedes up the chimney, along with a treasure. Key under the rug. That’s a decent amount of interactivity in one room.

Classic ruins, classic dungeon. Decent enough room descriptions with great interactivity. Hard as fuck, from a “are you paying attention to findthe hidden shit” standpoint. Could use tightened up, a lot, and maybe a few more adjectives sprinkled in. 

This is $4 at DriveThru. The preview is ten pages and shows you the upper rooms and several dungeon rooms. More than enough to get a chance two see the two vibes, the hidden depth, and what the puzzles can be like in the dungeon. Great preview.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/553734/bergummo-s-tower?1892600

Posted in Reviews, The Best | 7 Comments

The Whispering Tower of Elyrium

Posted on February 25, 2026 by Bryce Lynch 
By Jason Youngdale
Youngdale Productions
OSE
Level 1

In the heart of the Wyrwood (the forest that surrounds Caladorei), veiled in mist and myth, stands the Whispering Tower, a slender spire of obsidian stone said to house the secrets of the vanished Archmage Elyrium. The tower is not defended by monsters but by his love of riddles, clever traps, and illusions. The adventurers must navigate its winding stairways, decipher cryptic puzzles, and avoid ancient snares to uncover a long-lost magical artifact: the Mirror of Untold Memory. None that have ventured there have yet to return!

This 26 page single column adventure uses about eight pages to describe fourteen linear rooms in a wizard tower. It’s a one-dimensional puzzle dungeon where you answer riddles out loud. 

I didn’t know this weeks theme was puzzle dungeons, but I think this is the second in a row now. I think I hate them? In general? I suspect, though, that I hate one-dimensional dungeons. All fighting. All social. All puzzles. I’m sure I do have somewhat of a bias towards the classic exploratory dungeon. You know, a little social, a little combat, a few puzzles and traps, things to discover, and explore. I can accept a plot adventure, they don’t need to be one-dimensional. It’s these sorts of blunt instruments that I loathe.

I knew the job was dangerous when I took it and read “The tower is not defended by monsters but by his love of riddles, clever traps, and illusions.” This then was the first sign I was in for it. And then, in the intro, I got “Success is measured by cleverness and character growth, not treasure alone.” Yeah, how much fucking XP is cleverness and character growth worth? Cleverness happens in order to get the XP with low risk and character development, not growth, is a side effect. 

How about a table of a dozen hooks? Hooks such as: “Scholarly Commission: A reclusive gnome sage hires the party to retrieve the Mirror of Untold Memory from Elyrium’s tower. Lost Kin: A local villager’s child has gone missing, last seen wandering toward the tower. Dream Calling: One or more adventurers began having dreams of whispered riddles and a spiraling multi-colored tower.” These must be the most hackneyed hooks possible. “You have a dream!” or you’ve been hired! More is not better. The sushi buffet is not good. 

Inside is the usual assortment of mistakes. “A huge iron door with no handle or keyhole seems to be the front door of the Tower.” Is it the fucking front door or not? Is there another door? No? Then that’s the front fucking door. These kinds of mistakes are all over the place.

Hows about that interactivity though? “A well-worn plaque on the door reads: “I am not alive, but I grow; I do not breathe, but I need air. What am I?” Answer: Fire” Thrilling! Adventurous! A place of wonder and delight! 

No? You need more? How about confusion! “Dusty tomes float midair, circling a pedestal with a glowing closed book on top of it. Puzzle: To reach the real book (a purple one), players must read verses in a particular order (clues hidden in nearby inscriptions) that spell out “TRUTH”.” That’s the room. It’s a fucking synopsys for a room, not a room itself. But, that’s what you’re getting here. Just a brief overview, abstracted, Nothing specific. Take your “1001 room ideas” booklet and just turn it in to a dungeon! 

Still not enough? “A circular room with twelve stone columns, each marked with a symbol of a zodiac. The floor is made up of mosaics also depicting the zodiac signs (12 in all). Players must determine which symbol is missing on the columns that is on the floor (it’s “Virgo” — which is on a floor mosaic among the other zodiac mosaics on the floor).” Twelve symbols in the zodiac. Twelve columns each with a zodiac symbol. Twelve pictures on the floor of the zodiac. Which one is missing? Uh … none? Twelve and Twelve? I guess one repeats twice somewhere, on two different columns? I’m not even sure I could name all twelve zodiac symbols, good thing the adventure is helping out there!

Still not enough? You want more pretension?! Well, ok! “Each character must look into the mirror and speak aloud a personal revelation. They must reveal a deep dark secret to the party. Those who accept their truth may take the mirror; those who reject it are teleported outside the tower, taking 1d4 Psychic damage.” What the fuck does it mean to reject the personal revelation you just spoke out loud to everyone? You voluntarily spoke it, I think that means you accept it? I don’t understand the fail condition at all. I don’t even see how lying fails this room. 

You want some of that sweet sweet treasure? “Scrolls of Elyrium: 1d4 rare spells or ancient arcane theories. These can be in Elyrium’s Study.” This is lame.

Everything here is just so absurdly low effort. Not even bothering to come up with some spells? Not listing the zodiacs? There’s no specificity. The riddle rooms are inane, just read a plaque and answer a riddle? Really? 

This is what D&D is. A game of telephone, played from the early 70’s till now. Fifty years of people subtly changing the message, in purpose or by accident or ignorance, until the original intent is lost. Look man, I can accept the storyteller garbage, at least as an activity if not a game. It’s not for me but I can see some Baron Muchhousen shit. But this shit? No. 

There is something wonderful about free will and the lack of barriers. You get to do it. YOU. No one is there to stop you. The myth of the rugged individuality that is our soul. But, I believe the existential assertion also says that you must KNOW you are without meaning. You are condemned to be free, and you know it. This is what it looks like when you are condemned to be free and don’t know it. Sure, you CAN just off the cliff when faced with the boulder, but maybe also prepare a little and figure out what an adventure SHOULD look like and what makes up a good one before flinging your own shit out there.

This is $10 at DriveThru. The preview is five pages. You get to see a part of the first room. Shitty preview. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/555314/the-whispering-tower-of-elyrium?1892600

Posted in Reviews | 10 Comments