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The Lizard Men, once peaceful, are now raiding the towns, mines, and logging camps. Can the party negotiate a peach treaty?

This module is most similar to portions of the Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun, the portions without the freaky stuff. That means a home base and murderous humanoids to slaughter in an open-ended assault.

This module has a few very good things going for it. First, the players start off in a boom town on the frontier full of miners and loggers. Recent problems with the lizard men have caused an influx of “lizard killers”. These are essentially mercenaries, adventurers, and trophy hunters. The goody two-shoes mayor wants the party to seek out a nearby settlement of lizard men and negotiate a peace treaty. The camp is very loosely described, maybe twelve entries with half as many NPC’s. A goodly number have a strong dislike, or more, for the lizard men. While the module never describes it as such, I got a very ‘Deadwood’ vibe from this section. Temporary structures, guys riding through selling lizard heads, and so on. NONE of that appears in the module however that kind of atmosphere is one that’s seldom encountered in RPG’s and this would be the perfect place to introduce it. Think of all the role-playing opportunities in a Deadwood like RPG village/camp! It could be a perfect little base of operations and much more interesting than the traditional feudal lord settlements that traditionally serve as home bases. All of this comes from the brief section describing the recent boomtown nature of the site and a few brief mentions of the Lizard-Killers. The actual town is full of middle-class morality. Uh … I mean 2nd Edition morality. Mixed races living together in harmony, leaders who want the party to find peaceful solutions, etc. Too much time is spent on the backstory of villain. The camp is much more interesting and could have used a whole lot more description than the two pages that the twelve entries get. This being a module for 7th level characters I guess a home-base town would be wasted. However, the seeds of a very good idea are in that town and if the DM puts forth some effort they would get a much better payoff than most modules. There’s a very brief wandering monster table to get to the Indi^H^H^H ^H Lizard Man village; six daytime and six nighttime entries. It’s full of your typical swamp encounters; undead, ooze, vermin, and a catoblepas. The only thing that really stands out is a swarm of thousands of rats, the rest are pretty mundane.

The lizard man village is full of noble savages who are just misunderstood. A diplomatic party will learn that it’s a new aggressive splinter tribe that’s causing the trouble, and how to get to them. The parties overnight rest will be interrupted by an assassination attempt on the shaman by a lizard-killer. Once again,2E morality raises its head: the assassin isn’t evil but stepping on CE lizard man eggs is. Go Figure. Anyway, all of this is really just a lead in to the second interesting part of the adventure: the assault on the splinter tribes compound.

The splinter tribe is lairing in an old abandoned city complex with water on one side and a mountain tunnel on the other. In the center stands the palace with the Evil High Priest. There are prisoner and slave corrals scattered about. The party can walk in and get an audience with the Lizard Man EHP, which probably ends with a pitched battle with 25 or so evil combatants, most of which are 2HD. This is the way the module leads you. I’m not sure that’s really a challenge for a 7th level party. In any event, there’s really not much of an Order of Battle beyond the palace guard, which is a real miss in my book. A lot more detail on the rest of the compound, the guards, barracks, patrols, etc, could have turned this in a great little sandbox assault on an EHP compound. Prisoners in several places. A possibility for a revolt. Guard patrols and watchtowers. Barrels full of gas, uh, I mean Lamp Oil, to explode. Then stealth becomes a real option, as does a prisoner revolt, as does an assassination, as do so many other hair-brained PC plans. THAT would be cool. Instead we get an EHP+minions battle …     Just like the town, with a little work the DM would turn this section in to something really interesting, which is more than most modules can claim. There’s a short little section after this that’s meant to be the climax of the adventure; a solo boss battle with the evil half-dragon/half-croc that’s masterminding everything from a temple a short distance away. It’s not really very interesting, and swapping it the adventure so it comes before the lost city assault would probably make a better adventure.

There’s really not much in the way for treasure to motivate a 7th level gang. A few +1 magic items and a little coin/gems/jewelry. Some of the gems and jewelry are described, which I appreciate; it saves me from generating a description. The most interesting magic item is a broach of shielding that is actually a headdress. I wish more designers would do things like that, the added detail really makes items and the adventure more interesting.

Who’s up for omelets!

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/25763/The-Divine-Alligator-OSRIC?affiliate_id=1892600

Two half-orcs and a noblewoman enter a bar. Straight away one of the grim half-orcs approaches you and says in perfect common: “Begging your pardon sir, my lady wishes to speak with you, would you be so kind as to follow me to her table?”

This is a brief investigatory adventure with a small dungeon attached. The party will hunt around for clues, enter the dungeon, and fight a group of thugs, all in a high fantasy fashion.

How much are you willing to suspend belief? Last night the wife and I broke out Baldurs Gate Dark Alliance 2 for the PS3. The two room tavern has a rat problem in the basement (UG!) and you go down to solve it. The basement cellar is approximately 8,456,432 times larger than the first floor. Ok, it’s just an excuse to press the ‘X’ button and kill things. How about a town large enough to support an exotic bird importer but small enough that a fired servant has to leave town to find work? And with a dungeon under a house that has all the families wealth … in the form a solid gold peacock statue inlaid with 10 diamonds worth $500,000 gp? This sort of high fantasy style is a real turn off for me. I’ll take dirt farmers and fields of fairie dragons all day long however this sort of realism kills things for me. Once you try to be realistic you give me permission to poke holes and look for flaws. If you instead go PoMo, well, there’s no way anyone can argue with that.

The party is hired by a noblewoman to figure out how to get at the legacy/treasure left by her recently dead husband in the family dungeon. It’s guarded by traps and puzzles and he neglected to leave instructions. The idea is that the party will go to the dungeon, search around the house, go back to the dungeon, search around the house, go back to the dungeon and then get the treasure, the aforementioned gold peacock statue. Poking about the house likely reveals some clues as to how to get in to the dungeon and how to get at the treasure, as well as the fact that things are a bit off in the house. Then, of course, there’s the family friend who eventually approaches the party to let them know that the noblewoman is an impostor … The 14HD stone golem and 10HD fireball trap are NOT going to be the roughest part of the adventure for the party; it’s going to be the ambush when they come out of the dungeon. The dungeon is small, only six rooms, but it is pretty deadly with the stone golem and fireball.  That portion has a nice OSR feel overall; repeated excursions to the dungeon and some trap/encounter avoidance. At the end the party is almost certain to face an ambush by one or perhaps two groups of thugs. This could be a rough encounter if they also faced the golem and fireball on this dive.

It’s high fantasy with some good role-playing opportunities in the manor house. There are some absurd portions of it, but just like that PS3 game, the fun will probably show through in the end. And unlike that PS3 game, this module is short enough that it won’t overstay its welcome and become a grind. The many and varied NPC opportunities should ensure that.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/23337/The-Andwan-Legacy-OSRIC?affiliate_id=1892600

The seventh cousin to a nearby Dwarf king needs to be escorted through a mountain pass. As a blizzard sets in the party seeks shelter in a local inn, only to have things take a frightful turn for the worse.

What makes a module OSR? Is it enough to slap some THAC0 in a product, and is there a difference between “OSR” and 1E, 2E, Basic, Holmes, OSRIC, S&W, etc? There is to me. OSR means weird stuff, idiosyncratic rules, whimsy and the FANTASTIC. The High Fantasy style that I associate with 2E onward just doesn’t qualify. This is the same old boring stuff that has been coming out since the end of the 1E era. I don’t like it and I feel betrayed when I buy it. I have only myself and my irrational exuberance to blame.

The hook for this module is very long and involved. The party is contacted by a dwarf who wants escorted through a mountain pass. The pass is patrolled by a band of orcs. The party goes in to the pass, is confronted by a blizzard, and retreats to an inn in the pass to wait it out. During the stay their customer is assaulted/replaced and the some really mean orcs break in, threatening to kill their charge. An investigation reveals someone has recently left the inn and the party needs to track him down to save their customer from the orcs. The party sets off to a local tomb to find the evildoer.

That is a lot of build up for a hook, and yet hook it is. Everything needs to happen so the betrayal at the inn can happen, the suspect flee, the orcs break in, and the party pursue to the tomb. There’s a decent amount of interacting with NPC’s and yet there is no freedom involved. If the party doesn’t do what they are supposed to then the adventure will not happen. The villain is armed with a boatload of portion to make his task of treachery easier: invisibility, sleep, gaseous form, etc. FOLLOW THE PLOT. GO TO THE ADVENTURE. It has to happen. That’s a hook, not an adventure. I would suggest glossing over as much as possible and pushing the party along to the core of the adventure: the Deadly Ice Tomb.

The tomb is that of an ancient evil king. Our evildoer is hiding in it, having killed his guide and entered with some of his gaseous form potions. The tomb complex has about 20 rooms and is laid as a kind of hub & spoke map with four spokes, one of which the party enters from. There’s a few vermin outside of the tomb, and some Ice Warrior guardians inside the tomb. I doubt any of it it going to be a challenge for a 4th-5th level group. That’s just about it for the tomb. There’s one or two interesting things just before the party gets in to the tomb: a walled up passageway to be cleared and a narrow bridge crossing a crevice. Otherwise, this is really just a historically accurate representation of a burial complex with a few ice guardians. While on the subject, I’d like to pick a nit about those guardians. The idea is that if the party messes with certain things then the guardians rise up from their tombs and attack. Pretty standard. But if the party opens the tombs first and destroys the bones/skeletons and THEN mess with the stuff … then the skeletons reform and attack anyway. WTF?!? This is no way to reward intelligent play. This reminds me of that “Bad Video Game Gamemasters” meme that floated around awhile back. Why are you punishing the players for thinking ahead? In fact, MOST of the adventure seems to punish the players and railroad them. If they guard their customer really well then the DM gimps them anyway so he can be replaced and the adventure can go on. If they think ahead in the dungeon then the DM gimps them and ignores their actions just so some crappy ice skeletons can attack. That. Is. Not. Good. The tomb has almost nothing nothing going for it and is uninteresting except to an anthropology/archeology major. Most of the magic items are of the “+1 sword” variety. Not counting the ice skeletons there are two new monster types: a snow troll and a whitemonk. The troll is a troll with a cold breath weapon. The whitemonk is more interesting. It’s a small pac-man like rodent with 2 legs and a GIANT MOUTH WITH TEETH. It looks like it came out of Malifeux or something, a really nice little monster.

That orcs that are a part of the hook are presented as a noble band, probably more so than many of the PC’s I’ve played. I’ve toyed with this idea in the past however I still think I’d prefer my orcs to be subhuman beasts who rend and tear small children as snacks and do other odious things … if I were to use orcs at all. I’d much prefer to use human tribesmen who rend and eat small children as snacks.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/24073/Deadly-Ice-OSRIC?affiliate_id=1892600

A minotaur, which no one has seen clearly before, has gone mad and has begun kidnapping young boys and girl from the simple farm community near his lair. The thing is that this monster has lived in his maze for 80 years and never hurt anyone before. What is behind these events, and what is driving the minotaur?

This is a light adventure module that’s sparse on combat and has an ethical dilemma in the end. It’s meant for four 3rd levels characters or one 6th level Paladin.

This module fits in to two interesting sub-niches: 1-on-1 play and Solo Monsters. I like solo and 1-on-1 modules as a nice replacement for a 2-player board game. The wife and I played Grave of the Green Flame over and over again with Holmes-edition characters and I received a nice collection of 1-on-1 adventures in the RPGgeek Secret Chthanta program that we’re looking forward to breaking in to soon. Likewise, 100 Bushels of Rye may be one of the best modules ever produced, and centers around a small village with some issues and single monster in his lair. I think these solo monster products build up a lot of tension; the players explore and talk to villagers which provide a lot of roleplaying and foreshadowing, and then venture in to the monsters lair to confront the beast. You know Smaugs there. You know he’s powerful and can kick your ass 12 ways to Sunday, and yet you go anyway …

The module was written as a 1-on-1 for a single 6th level Paladin, who is included as a pregen. Each section has some notes on how to convert it to group play however it’s almost always unnecessary; the bulk of the changes are just rewording the boxed and removing some references to this being the Paladins home village. There’s about two pages of introductory prep that includes backstory, synopsis, hooks, and so on. None of them are particularly strong, and it’s quite wordy, however the kick-off is a pretty good one: a farmers young son has just been chose by lot to be a sacrifice to the minotaur and the farmer is vigorously protesting. The other farmers are advancing. What do you do?

That’s a good kick off with some strong opportunity for role-play. There are a couple of other things the party can do in the village: talk to the elder, visit the wise-woman, and talk to the villagers. Eventually they will end up at a cave entrance on a hill where everyone knows the minotaur lives. This is the start of short little 26 room dungeon. The dungeon map is not the complex looping designs I prefer, however it is nice & varied and the different sections have different feels, which is always a good thing. The caves section has three of the seven encounters. The lab portion feels like a wizards lab, the maze has a minotaur in it, and so on. I’m actually very impressed with the map … but since the dungeon is a Solo Monster, most of the rooms are empty. There’s a minotaur, an animated sword, some vermin in the caves, and that’s just about it, except for the twist monster. The complex is very realistic in the way I like my solo monster lairs to be. This is required since otherwise you end up with a very boring little adventure. There has to be a lead up and in this case the empty dungeon is it. I would have preferred a bit more foreshadowing on the minotaur proper to build tension even more. Maybe some body parts, or deep horn gouges on the wall, or the like. There’s an interesting room or two in the dungeon, the initial ‘scarecrow’ stands out as does a wall of force trap, but for he most part it’s just going to be some empty rooms. Eventually the minotaur will be found, along with her babies. So Mr Paladin man, whatcha gonna do? Two babies detect as evil, the boys, and the other two girl minotaur babies do not. Whatcha gonna do now?

This is a no-win situation for a Paladin and falls clearly in to a “The DM is fucking with you and not in a good way” bucket. I have strong feelings on this topic. I am well known for playing a Possible Worlds Paladin: “In some possible world, this is a good act! *hack*” I actually have a custom T-shirt that reads “Don’t impose your western Judeo-Christian value system on my characters definition of Lawful Good.”  And if you’re my DM and try to mess with me because of it then please allow me to say FUCK YOU. The only reason this nonsense exists is to mess with the player and that’s not fun. I’ve seen Paladins dealt with well in exactly one instance; some Dungeon Magazine adventure I think, where the Paladin was a drunk and always on the edge of loosing their paladin-hood. THAT was good portrayal. So how should Mr Paladin deal with those babies? By hacking them without a second thought and moving on. If the DM wants to use it as a future hook that’s fine. If they want to punish you because you didn’t do what they thought you should do then feel free to ignore them. YOU get to play your character, not the DM.

Hmmm, that took a turn, didn’t it? Anyway, the module also has a crazy man in it who’s creating a minotaur army to take over the world. Only he’s not evil, he’s mad. But rational enough to be fully functional. Uh … Moral Quandary time again. Can a Paladin *hack* someone who’s just mad and not evil? The Supreme Court does not deal in theoreticals and neither does my Paladin.  Fully rational & functional AND breeding an army of evil monster warriors is not even CLOSE to the line, if that even mattered at all.

*HACK*

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/1952/The-Minotaur?affiliate_id=1892600

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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