By Eric Hoffman Castellan Publishing OSE Levels 1-5
For as long as anyone can remember, the strange hedge square has stood just outside your small town. It is large, thick and seemingly impenetrable. A curiosity to be sure, but one that the locals have gotten used to ignoring. That is, until recently! The hedge doesn’t seem so thick anymore, small gaps can be seen in the verdant wall. And even stranger, a corner has opened up! An imposing iron gate now stands where only a sharp corner of thicket used to be. Inside, a heavy fog obscures much past the entrance but marble buildings of ancient design can clearly be seen! Such buildings from a long lost civilization have been known to contain fabulous treasures, and even better, wondrous magics!
This 36 page adventure details a maze using dungeon geomorphs; about ten geomorphs with about seven or so encounters per geomorph. It’s inoffensive, and makes good use of its selected format, but lacks both depth and the evocative descriptions I’m looking for.
I want to talk mostly about the descriptions in this one, but I’m going to cover a few other things first.
This is a magic hedgerow maze. The usual stuff, like a thick fog and self-repairing hedge are present. But, more interestingly, it purports to be a mae. It does this by centering the adventure on ten unique dungeon geomorphs. Each one has a few encounter locations on it; I’d say the average is six or seven per geomorph. The idea is that as you exit one of the geomorph tiles the DM rolls to see which one you enter next. Hence the maze aspect. Each geomorph is detailed on two facing pages. You get a little dungeon map, with keys, a level range, a wandering monster chart, and all of the monster stats, at the end of facing page, along with the keyed location descriptions. Thus you get just about everything you need to run a few rooms, except maybe detailed magic item description (in the appendix) on the two facing pages. Bolding calls out monsters and treasure. It’s quite the effective format. Having everything in front of you makes running the locations easy. You can see, immediately, whats near the party and what’s there, from the key in front of your face. Stats, wanderers … it’s got it all. I can continue to quibble that noting sights, sounds, and reacting monsters on the map, proper, is still a good idea, but the idea behind the format is a good one. Dude thought about how to run an adventure at the table and fit the specifics of his adventure conceit, the geomorph tiles, in to a format that would work for the DM at the table. And that’s exactly what the fuck a designer should be doing. I note, perhaps, that the things is a little art heavy, which detracts from the real estate available for the keys. Likewise, I think I prefer, but do not insist, that monster keys ar eon a reference sheet I keep on my screen or printer out on a paper, so as to also have more real estate for text. This makes sense, to me, when you limiting yourself to just two pages per group of encounters.
There’s some decent treasure, but, also, the monster balance seems a bit off. The intro geomorph, for levels 1-3, is full of ghouls and wraiths on the wanderer table and in the keys. And you might find yourself on a geomorph with a vampire or medusa. I don’t think that the randomness of the maze is quite supportive of low level play, even with Run Away being a tactic. And, I don’t think you’re leveling up, given the size, to be able to start at level one and make it through all o fthe geomorphs. It’s just not large enough or paced enough.
But, the descriptions. And, to a lesser extent, the “design.” The descriptions are really just one level removed from minimally keying. “A green slime hides on the ceiling of this crypt.The tomb is otherwise empty.” or “Remnants of two stone sarcophagi, broken and smashed down to almost nothing.” I’m cherry picking a little here, but not by much. This is not the evocative descriptions I’m looking for. The length is close to correct; I’m usually looking for two or three sentences to get the vibe of a place. And I expect two or three GOOD sentences. Something that puts the image of the place, the vibe, in to my head so that I can riff on it. This is HARD, I think the hardest part of adventure writing. It’s gotta be terse, we don’t want to slog through multiple paragraphs, but, also, we want something evocative that brings the rooms to life.
Similarly, I’m looking for an adventure with situations, rather than just combat, and this one leans hard towards the Simple Hack portion of the spectrum. Check out this room from Xyntillan: “Maids’ Room. Simple beds by the walls, four zombies sitting around a wooden table. Muffled sounds of movement escape from the wardrobe in the SW corner. “ It’s a situation. We get a room description, in the room title, and a brief description focusing on the important bits: the zombies, who have the added bit of sitting around a table. And, then, the situation with the wardrobe. This isn’t exactly the most evocative, from a purely adjective/adverb standpoint, but the situation helps brings the room to life. Which is what you want: rooms with life.
And this doesn’t have that. It’s not necessarily offensive. The format is good. The descriptions are not overly long. BUt, they situations are few and far between which, when combined with the hack forward nature and the lack of descriptive life, will cause me to pass.
This is $12 at DriveThru. The preview is two pages and shows you the two facing entrance page geomorph descriptions, so it’s a great preview to understand what you’re buying. The $12 is, I suspect, paying for the big named artists.
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/439187/The-Mausolean-Maze-of-Mondulac-the-Mad?1892600
