The Mystery of the Moon-Haunted Spire

Posted on July 23, 2025 by Bryce Lynch 
By Scott Craig
Cutter Mountain Simulations
B/X - Shadowdark
Levels 1-6 (?)

For hundreds of years, the Lunamancer conducted his magical research in the pinnacle of his tower, hidden by potent illusions. Whenever he needed rare components for his research, he relied on the Greater Crypt Thing in his tower’s lower labyrinth. This labyrinth was well known by adventurers far and wide, and they regularly entered its dark halls for loot. The best and brightest of these adventurers the Crypt Thing would set a geas upon to procure whatever the Lunamancer required. And so the years passed… Until one fateful night when the moon waxed full, and the Lunamancer made one small error in his calculations. Then something filtered down from the night sky to terrorize him in his very chambers, and his illusions suddenly faded…

This six page adventure uses two pages to describe six levels of an illusionist tower. Yes, six. Its heart is in the right place, if only it stopped stopping drinking a bottle of rumplemintz immediately upon entering surgery for its organ donation and then immediately passing out on the floor and vomiting all over itself. 

I’m a big fan of hubris here at Ten Foot. You go Icarus! Fuck the rest of those asshats! Try new things. Iconclast those safety regulations on the reactor! Build your truck campers bed frame out of aluminum and then put your 300 amp battery ¼” from the frame! And, of course, get criticized harshly for the foolish decision you’ve made! This is the way designers of singular vision advance the art. Or die trying.

 The six pages here reflect a title page, a fluff page full of “WHAT BOLD MEANS” and other dumbass boilerplate, a monster reference sheet (Huzzah!) with some general notes as well, A page of four maps for the six levels (one maze map being reused three times) and the two pages of keys. For six levels. I think that means something like 46 keys. Plus a decent number of portcullis, curtains, statues and other features. The maps here are at least interesting. If Scott is a mapmaker then he does a decent job with room descriptions and if he’s a designer then he does a decent job with his maps. Even a dumb-as repeating maze level gets a decent amount of interest on the map. We’re not talking talking rock-star, there’s a lot of symmetry here which is a cop out, but they are more than just a throw away basic effort.

This means we get descriptions like “ Strangely clean…” for a room. Or, perhaps “Entrance – Scattered Leaves and twigs, muddy footprints leading all directions.” Or, straight out of The Borderlands caves “2 ORCS laze about on a pile of smashed furniture and soiled rugs. One wears a GOLD TORQ (65gp).” There are a couple of longer rooms, “. Moon-Lens Turntable Machinery Room. 2 SERVANTS OF APOC’L’TH examine a forest of arcane tubes, gears, and pistons that actuate the forcefield projectors holding the MOONLENS atop the spire. The spiral staircase ascends to area 24.” But, I’d argue that, other than a couple of riddle rooms, these are actually just further examples of the ORC LOUNGING room. CREATURE verbs OBJECT. Room interactivity might be something like “Central Hall. A stone FOUNTAIN gushes clear, refreshing water. A marble STATUE of a robed philosopher stands with hand extended in friendship. If statue’s hand is touched, statue speaks loudly (once per adventure): “Harken! Behold, a river!” Secret door is opened by pushing statue’s arm downward.” At its heart that’s not bad. A little magical wonder, a classic pull the arm down.  But, also, marble statue of robed philosopher is not exactly the most evocative. But, also, to be fair, that strangely clean room is foreshadowing a Cube, so, fuck me and my criticisms. 

It’s an ok adventure. “The LUNAMANCER appears as friendly, ELDERLY WIZARD in moonlight. Otherwise appears as the lich he truly is.” That’s the kind of shit you want in your adventures. If every adventure I reviewed were at least as good as this one then I’d be bemoaning the blandness of the environment and lack of complexity. Most adventures are fucking train wrecks and this one isn’t though. But it IS a bit bland with some lack of complexity and depth. The core concepts are good but the dungeon size (six levels … of like eight rooms each) and the artificial constraint shows through. Dude has his thing and his thing is a six page adventure. Got it. But the artificial constraints imposed by that decision will mean that the chances of a Spawning Grounds, Hyquatious, or other classic adventure coming from a one-page dungeon, Stonehell (half marks for building depth over depth), or a six page dungeon are rather low. It is serviceable, but it’s hard to see it rising to greatness. Especially when squeezing in six levels, as this adventure does. I’m not going to say move to a longer format. Sure, I’d love to see something from this designer that had a map with room to breathe and descriptions and interactivity that had that room also. But he’s doing a six pager. Which means creating an adventure that can truly excel in those six pages. No, not a fucking lair dungeon. I’m gonna puke if I have to see another one of those five room shit holes. How do you create a six page adventure that can be magnificent? That, good gom-jabbars, I leave as an exercise for the designer. For I am The Watcher.

This is $5 at DriveThru. The preview is interesting. It’s one image/photo, but it shows the map, the two keys pages and the general info/summary page. You can get a sense of the formatting, but zooming in makes it too blurry to read. I appreciate the attempt, but I suspect shoing a portion of the keys would have been better. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/528166/the-mystery-of-the-moon-haunted-spire-compatible-with-shadowdark?1892600

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Knight of the Corpse Trials

Posted on July 21, 2025 by Bryce Lynch 
By Odinson Games
Self Published
Cairn

Sir Zebadiah was once a war hero, celebrated for purging witches from the Wenderweald. Now he exhumes his subjects and puts their corpses on trial. His squire begs for intervention before her liege damns the barony entirely. You’re sent to capture Zebadiah alive—but the villagers want him dead, his loyalists stalk the woods, and the dead themselves rise for justice. Will you bring the heretic to justice or suffer his corpse trials?

This fourteen page adventure features about eighteen locations in a village/woods pointcrawl search for an errant and fanatical knight. It has a decent premise and detail in places, but it falls down severely when it comes to locations. Cutsy layout detracts from what otherwise could have been a decent adventure.

“You must arrest the false knight zebadiah and bring him to justice.” Well, actually, I think he IS a baron and knight, so, not really a false knight. Basically, dude burns witches. He got cursed and is now REALLY on a tear, digging up bodies, trying to find the last “real” witch he burned, his sister, who he thinks cursed him. The villagers get pissed and the dead are rising in revolt against having their graves molested. He runs off with his men in to the woods to look for more bodies. So we’ve got a village on edge with soldiers about, and a fanatic in the woods. In comes the party. 

I’m not super down with the hooks, they are all very honor, faith, justice oriented. I’m more down for some RealPolitik framings in situations like these. What was that runaway bridge adventure where the lord said something like “if you can do it without violence then I guess that’s ok also”, or “tie up the loose ends.” Essentially the hooks presented are all the same, with the party being of mine moral character, and I prefer to see some variety. Sure, a fine moral character hook. But also a RealPolitik one, or some other mood variety. Otherwise, it doesn’t really matter who hires the party, you’re just wasting hook space to describe essentially the same hook with different actors.

The general set up and specificity, especially around the village proper, are pretty good. We get some key NPC’s and a little villager generator with a two part name generator, trait, personality, and quirk. Excellent, although a page of these pre-gend would have perhaps been better. There’s also an escalating tension table which serves as a kind of event generator. You really feel the reality of the situation the villagers are in. “Grieving villagers claim their dead at the graves and squabble with tense guards.” or “Moreina doles silver to grieving widows outside the keep.” or “Jaanus leads a mournful family to collect their exhumed dead gibbeted in the square.” or “Edvin leads flagellants around the Temple, crying “Repent! Repent! Repent!”” Excellent window dressing to communicate mood and perhaps even spur some deeper play. “Several stockaded villagers beg for water beside it.” With guards about this could be fun. 

The dude is hiding out in the woods, running around digging up graves, and he’s got a short little three-day timeline associated with his actions, which ends with him razing the village after burning his niece alive. Ouch. 

The overall framework, the situation, the window dressing, this is all great. But things fall apart when we get to the keys. This is one of the, few, locations and typical for the location descriptions: “Rainrot Pit:  creek runoff drains into the cavernous hollow. Dappled light catches on gold down there. + A hex-smuggler stashed 300 gold pieces in a dry bag but the draw-rope was cut.” All of that fabulous situations and specificity , etc really don’t show up at all. So this is not a bad location description: “The Breedpool: mosquitoes cloud the reeds and algae films the still, black water. Helm-sized eggs float in the pool.” But then there’s nothing there. Yes, a monster has a 50% chance of being there, but that’s just a stabbing. The more interesting play just isn’t available. Dude has a timeline and he might be at one of these locations, but then the location is just which screen the Mortal Combat match has a backdrop, with it contributing little to nothing to the play.

And this is a shame. I suspect that there is MORE than enough room in the fourteen pages used to provide just a little more depth to the various keys.  Even if they are meant to be used as backdrop, they could be made in to more interesting backdrops. But it’s gotta use one of those modern hip edgy layouts. And it’s gotta use a fucked up font in place in order to make things hard to read. I just want more out of this. As presented it falls in to something like “a large social situation” adventure, which I can dig. But the way the material is presented doesn’t really help that too much. It seems like it is fighting against that. We need locales, people, timelines, situations, ad then a little bit on using them all together, as the DM, to put it all together. You’ve got this situation and the designer should be giving you the tool sections to help run that in the loosy goosy way that these things usually play out. And there is an attempt at that. You can see the village map and brief descriptions, the forest map and loose descriptions. The NPC section, the events section. But it just never gels to come together in the way I would want it to. It’s like, I don’t know, half a page of text is missing (in addition to the locales …) 

At the conclusion, you need to capture the dude to get the full payout. But, also, “The villagers will be enraged if they see Zebadiah captured and will demand his death, descending into a riot.” Noice. A couple fo extra sentences there would have been ice.

This is not a train wreck. But it also just misses the mark of what I consider decent enough to run.

This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru with a suggested price of $2. No preview, but it is Pay What You Want, so I guess the whole thing is a preview.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/527846/knight-of-the-corpse-trials?1892600

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That Old Familiar Song

Posted on July 19, 2025 by Bryce Lynch 
By Crumbling Keep
Self Published
OSE
Levels 1-3

Your mother used to sing you a song when you were young about circling birds, but it would always end with her tears. Now you find yourself in a forest of crawling dead things and strange happenings, and the events of the song are coming true! What does it all mean? And what is the creature that stares at you with your own eyes?

This fifteen page adventure has five populated hexes, one with a small five room keep. It’s got one of those bullshit narrative game framing devices. Otherwise it’s just fiveish simplistic hexes in a font/layout optimized for your phone. 

Time marches on. We’ve seen responses to various trends in D&D adventures over the years, such as the inclusion of VTT maps, hyperlinks and so on. This time we’ve got an adventure ‘optimized for mobile.’ In practice that means a GIANT FONT on a small screen size and some hyperlinks in the adventure to make moving around it easier. I can’t imagine ever using this, but, it exists so someone somewhere must need it. But is it GOOD? 

No.

Let’s looks at the opening page: “Dim light filters in from a sun that struggles to rise over the horizon. It’s early, perhaps earlier than you’d like, but sleeping was not easy last night. It’s eerily silent as you all mill about, gathering your supplies to get back on the road, and a low mist gathers around your legs, obscuring the ground. Suddenly, a large group of crows rises out of the woods, their caws rising in an insane chorus as they fly in a circle before heading northwest. Ask: Which PC’s mother used to sing them a song about circling birds?” Yup. It’s one of those. A narrative bullshit thing. The followup question is “Why did you think she would cry after singing the song?” So, even better, it’s got some trauma dumping shit attached to it. This is not fun and is inappropriate to put in to a game. The trauma shit. I think the narrative shit, explicit as it is here, is lame as fuck and tends to not fall in to my definition of what a ‘game’ is. It’s a fucking activity. But, if we are going to go down that path then FORCING your players in to some kind of trauma dump is bullshit. Yeah, I think the trigger warning shit is general nonsense. “Someone dies.” or “There are snakes.” But, also, if you’re gonna put crap like this in your game then, yes, you get to trigger warning it. And, further, if you feel the need to trigger warning something then you probably shouldn’t put the fucking thing in your game. This is all edgelord bullshit. You write a couple of decent adventure that I would consider Best, then I’ll ease up on my diatribes and consider that you might be able to stick something edgier in. But, again, we’re all here for fun, not for trauma bonding in a group circle where we work out our feelings. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. EXCEPT WHEN IT HAPPENS IN THE FUCKING D&D GAME. “Sketch the symbol your mother had tattooed on her wrist that she never explained.” Go fuck yourself. I’d walk the fuck out of this nonsense and demand a refund if I stumbled upon this at a con.. 

The style is OSE. “Birds flying over head (squawking ominously), Bones litter the ground (animal and human, clean and unmarred), Stone Altar (northern end of the field, ancient, crumbling” It’s fine. OSE Style is easy to do. You still have to write a decent description. These are ok. Nothing special, but also not terrible. Meh. 

There is, though, a lack of understanding of what a D&D game that infects the encounter keys. Let’s look at one of the encounters: “Pained Man (half embedded/phased into the rock wall, there’s no way he should be alive, can only wail, has lost his faculties)” You getting nothing more than that. Seriously, that’s it. Has the designer never played D&D before? This is clearly an element one wishes to focus on in the room. The party WILL be investigating. And, yet, nothing more. It’s just fucking window dressing. Similarly, there’s a chasm in another area. Down below are a lot of bodies. Absolutely nothing to do in the text mentions that again. The party WILL be fucking going down there. They WILL be searching. If you didn’t want them to then don’t fucking thell them that there is shit down there to do and look at . You put something there, so you need to help us run the inevitable situation where the party goes down to investigate it. 

Oh, I didn’t describe the adventure. You start with that rad-aloud from above, do the trauma dump thing, and then, for some reason, wander around in the woods. I guess cause those birds circling and your mom? Whatever. You wander hexes until you maybe stumble in to one with an encounter in it (five of them) and hope you don’t wander off the edge of the map. IE: I’m sure it was playtested as a railroad rather than a hex crawl. Eventually you find a cave with some abomination in it that looks like your twin. Whatever. No explanation. Just a mystery. 

Garbage adventure with nothing special going on except some pretension. If you’re gonna do some pretension in your adventure then fucking disclose it so we can avoid it.

This is $3 at DriveThru. The preview is three pages. You get to see the start with the narrative nonsense. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/528159/that-old-familiar-song-a-tinderbox-mobile-adventure?1892600

Posted in Reviews | 27 Comments

The Ruined Abbey of St Clewyd

Posted on July 16, 2025 by Bryce Lynch 
By Gavin Norman, Yves Geens
Necrotic Gnome
OSE
Levels 4-6

The once-proud Abbey of St Clewyd the Refulgent has stood in ruins for a century, wracked with weird energies and haunted by wicked spirits. Several missions have sought to reclaim the abbey and quell the tides of Chaos. All have failed. What treasures lie untouched within, ripe for the picking? Can the mystery of the abbey’s ruination be unravelled and the forces of Chaos be vanquished?

This sixty page adventure describes a ruined abbey with about twenty locations above ground and thirty below ground in two major zones. It’s got a creepy vibe, with real consequences and rewards for a campaign while not apocalyptic. Creepy happenings create an interesting environment with just enough interactivity beyond undead killing to bring some extra life to it. While I’m generally a fan of the OSE style, it does show some weakness here, but, overall, this is a real adventuring locale and solid piece.

I reviewed the upper level of this awhile back, from Wormskin, but never hit the follow up issue so didn’t review the dungeon proper. It’s now out as a standalone product. Originally thought the upper ruins were a bit sparse, as a standalone adventure, but was a big fan of the spooky vibe. The vibe remains strong and the upper ruins serve as a good intro to the lower ruins below.

I am a fan of most of the hooks here. The first is essentially a treasure map “PCs come into possession of ancient Liturgic documents detailing the fate of the fabled crown of Prince Gaspar of Brackenwold, believed lost for 900 years..” That’s a great localization of a treasure map, with the notes providing a little more specificity. The second has the church getting the party to retrieve relics from the ruins and “ Successful PCs are appointed as leaders of a sect responsible for warding any retrieved artefacts. They are granted four followers (Level 1 clerics) and funds to construct a shrine in a settlement of their choosing.” At level four to six we can see how this plays in to the stronghold elements that should be popping up about then. This is a great appeal to the players egos, parades from the locals always go over well, and feeds, again, in to the power levels that the players characters should be approaching. (Similarly, the consequences section in the end of the adventure provides some nice impacts to play that are meaningful to a real world feel but are not necessarily apocalyptic in nature. A refreshing change from the usual “world is at risk” nonsense that infects many adventures.) Thins run a bit long for my taste, but as preamble and post-script that’s not a huge deal. I will note that there is also a section noting the adventures inclusion in the larger world which states “As such, the Referee could use this adventure as part of a wider campaign arc involving one or both factions.” This is something that should have been mentioned in the marketing, greatly increasing the appeal for those playing in that way but there’s essentially no way to know that until you have the product in hand.

We’ve got an abbey devoted to a saint. A few hundred years ago Something Bad happened and it became a no go zone, weird and strange effects abound. Recently things have settled down a bit, leaving you open to exploration. In actuality, an abbot got uppity, did some magic that fused the saint and nemesis. This has resulted in about half of the crypts underneath being a kind of chaos zone and the other half somewhat settled with the remaining monks devoted to caring for their new hybrid/crazy/resurrected saint. Oh, and they get resurrected when they die and are locked in to the complex. And sometimes the resurrection doesn’t take right and they go insane. Thus we have the upper ruins, a kind of undead/chaos zone with a rift, and a somewhat settled zone in the dungeon with the monks. Who have a couple of factions, one devoted to maintaining their watch and another sect who wants out. These three zones provide a decent amount of variety to play and I’m happy to see it, especially in something with,say, fifty room keys. 

The situations here contribute to a spooky vibe, from a couple of different angles. Fans of the Stalker movie will get that kind of unearthly weird vibe from several of the effects. Then there is the outright creepiness that the ruins above provide, that is then augmented by the theming of the religious ruins that hits in several places to build that feeling.

There are children in the upper ruins. In ragged clothes, filthy dirty. Children playing and laughing in such a dangerous place should immediately put the party on edge. Further, you might encounter them digging, with their hands, in the graveyard. Digging up bones. Especially teeth. Mr Rag-and-Bone is their friend! Later we see taxidermy, with them having prominent human teeth in them. This all leads up to The Gloom, something I mentioned in my initial review as a strong point. It remains strong, a collection of decaying crows in humanoid form, charming children, but caring for and nurturing its ‘foster children.’ This is clearly undead and evil, a thing from nightmares. But not done in a ham-fisted way and thus providing some complexity to play. I mean, I’m probably gonna stab the fuck out of it, but, also, hey, maybe it can do something for us? In other parts of the adventure there ARE things/people who can do things for you, (including a fair number of dead monk ghosts who want to be laid to rest and can provide from parting boons) but the adventure misses a little here by not including that data for Mr Rag-and-bones. 

Theming in the adventure is good. Consistent details across several locations leads to a build up and set expectations well. Murals provide some context, and interactivity, but are handled better than murals in most adventures, with specific detail without going overboard. The chapel to a random saint has the saints themes in several of areas without really hitting you in the head with it. 

There’s a big problem to solve in this adventure, should the party undertake it, in closing a rift. Related to that at the faction play elements with the ‘surviving monks’, which could lead to religious conflict, literally, and the head monk perhaps, in duplicity, sending the party on a fatal quest. “If you all jump in to the rift with this magic sceptre then all problems will be solved!” … says the leader of faction that wants to maintain the status quo. As they say, trust but verify. Other places have crypts to open, chains to pull, and obstacles (literally) to overcome. There IS a decent amount of stabbing, but even that is just a little bit more, like opening a tomb first and its coming out of it. Dummy, what did you think was going to happen when you open a tomb in a complex full of undead? 

On to the OSE style … which is hit or miss here. The maps are clear and evocative, but I do wish there was a little more information on sound/light/reacting creatures on them. The style itself, well, it’s OSE and I generally like it for the amount of information it provides in a very scannable way at the table. There are, though, I think, a couple of issues with it, at least as presented here.

First, I’m not sure it’s the best for presenting the sort of creepy environment here. I think most of that vibe comes from the situations rather than the evocative nature of the writing. I don’t think it starts strong with a lead in of creep vibe. Descriptions might starts with something like Limestone walls, charred beams and the like. I might say this is a violation of my general thinking that The Most Important Thing Comes First. A dragon, maybe, if its obviously there, but also the vibe you want to convey. It’s clearly supposed to be creepy but the lead-in is mundanity. That evocative nature to the rooms isn’t lead strongly. 

Related to this is the dragon issue. Generally the creature in the room isn’t in the initial description. It follows later in its own section. I’m not a fan of this at all. We now need to hunt the entire room description to find the things we should be telling the party about, which is the entire point of the OSE style: to not have to do that. “Wait, there are gargoyles in this room? Oh, yeah, there’s statues in here.” you can eventually tell the players when you finally reach that section of the room description. 

But, also, this is a pretty strong adventure. It is a real site-based adventure, and those tend to be few and far between. There is more than enough going on to provide a lot of complex play for your players and their characters. I’d run this.

This is $10 at DriveThru. Hey man, no preview?! Pfffft!

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/527291/the-ruined-abbey-of-st-clewyd?1892600

Posted in Level 5, Reviews, The Best | 1 Comment

Sour Grapes

Posted on July 14, 2025 by Bryce Lynch 
By Stephen Smith
Mister Smith Design
OSE
Levels 1-3

SIPPING ON SHADOWS FROM A BOTTLE OF BETRAYAL! Ardin Winery, once a flourishing estate, is now on the brink of collapse. The Baroness promises a generous reward to anyone who can save her farm from distress. A sobering reality—her recently deceased husband secretly attempted to formulate an eldritch wine and cheat death—but the dark recipe twisted his body and mind instead. It’s time to uncork the truth!

This 26 page adventure uses three pages to describe thirteen rooms in the basement of a vineyard mansion. It feels like 5e conversion crap, though I can find no of another version. It’s nice to see someone making all of the classic mistakes and producing classic shovelware.

Isn’t it fun, the many myriad ways in which adventures can suck ass? Today we have a classic shovelware adventure. All of the trappings of a decent adventure with none of the content to make it so. Dude made 28 pages of content, art, all of those words, and only three pages are the actual fucking adventure. Which is gonna suck ass, but, imagine what the thirteen adventure rooms could look like if the designer had actually put effort in to them? I mean, all of that effort that went in to the other 25 pages. What if THAT effort was sent on the fucking room keys? You know, the art piece of two wizards (one barefoot. No wizard goes barefoot man.) The brothers, a wizard and an illusionist, that have crafted the bespoke security measures for the winery in which the adventure takes place. That art piece. The backstory for them. WHo don’t appear int eha adventure at all and are never referenced by anyone in any way. That effort. What if instead you had spent that fucking effort on actuall doing your fucking job as a fucking designer and made just one sentence in one room key actuall decent? Think about how you could be proud of that one sentence. How you could have contributed to a better world, producing something worthwhile. Instead of spending your time on AI art prompts for an art piece to accompany the sidebar description of the two magical brothers (one of who doesn’t wear shoes. Yes, that bothers me a lot.) who run a bespoke security company. That has no impact on the adventure at all. But, no, you made a different decision. Put your fucking effort in to the part of the adventure that matters. This is almost always the fucking encounter keys, by a lopsided degree. Yes, content and supplemental material like a wanderer table help with adventure. But the fucking keys ARE the adventure. That’s where most of the designers effort should be. It’s not an afterthought.

Hey, have you ever wondered what a farm field looks like? “Rows of wheat, barley, corn, and root vegetables stretch across the gently rolling hills. The land is tilled in organized sections. Rutted paths allow carts to pass through for harvesting.” Yeah, that’s a farm field. Good thing you put that description in there telling me what a farm field looks like. Otherwise I might not know what a farm field looks like. Over and over again, hammering in mundane and worthless descriptions. We know what a kitchen looks like. Tell us why this kitchen is different. 

Line after line of text description background information. Line after line of text explaining why something is the way it is. “During happier times, the fairgrounds would be hosting lively gatherings and celebrations, with several bungalos offering convenient lodging with stunning views. But today … all is uncommonly quiet.” I don’t fucking care. I DONT FUCKING CARE. It is the way it is NOW. I care about that. You know, something that happens during the actual game of D&D. In the graveyard there’s a fresh grave. Part of the tedium says “Before heading down, he pilfered Chuco’s staff (Vintner’s Vine) for protection. Unfortunately he dropped it in the Fermentation Hall.” I’m knocking one point off of this things final score because the designer didn’t tell us what the dead guy had for breakfast. 

Let’s see, level one and two. The ladies maid, to the baroness who hires you? She’s a level five bard. A level five bard is scrubbing the shit out of a womans chamberpot every morning. Yes, I know, but there are only a couple of servants left. The four or five NPC’s all get long paragraphs describing them that is absolutely useless in running them at the table. As one would expect from a high quality adventure like this.

Oh, right, level one and two adventure. The wanderer table has a hill giant on it. And a decent amount of other monsters. For an upscale vineyard, like, Napa Valley long established estate kind of shit. The fucking fairgrounds have a god damned Press Area on them.  (I chose to believe that this is for reporters and not for pressing grapes.) Did I mention that the entire thing ends with finding … a journal! Ah yes, the classic Find A Journal shitty backstory exposition. How have I have missed thee! Too long have I waded through the shit of Ai crap, not understanding the simple joys of ranting about an exposition dump through a journal that doesn’t mean anything to the adventure. It’s like a pair of comfortable slippers.

A Level five ladies maid. Telling us what a farm field looks like and what it is. Meaningless and long NPC descriptions. A journal describing all of the backstory. Backstory for everything and everyone. No real interactivity beyond fighting. Oh, shitty adventures, how I missed you. It’s nice to see people still churning out the same shit piles that were being turned out twenty years ago. I love you always forever

Near or far, closer together
Everywhere I will be with you
Everything I will do for you
Say it, say it again
I love you always forever
Near or far, closer together
Everywhere I will be with you
Everything I will do for you

This is $5 at DriveThru. The preview is thirteen pages.  You get to see everything worthwhile, the backstory, the farm field description, the level five ladies maid description. The first eleven of the thirteen rooms. Great preview. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/525635/sour-grapes?1892600

Posted in Reviews | 13 Comments

Under the Dolmens, Delve

Posted on July 12, 2025 by Bryce Lynch 
By B. Wraven Wright
2Die10 Games
OSE
Levels 1-2

An Audrune hires the adventurers to deal with “what lies below” a particular dolmen and to “leave nothing moving”. He says the party can keep anything of value they find and to burn the place out when done. He provides a map to the location of dolmen and sets off on his way. He is of little words and refuses to entertain further questioning. The dolmen is easy enough to find with a fairly sturdy stairway leading down below

This six page adventure uses three pages to describe seven rooms in an underground dolmen. It’s error-prone, makes simple logic mistakes, and is little more than an excuse to kill things. 

Yes, I know. I say that a alot. But a lot of adventures deserve to have that said about them. I still believe in magic. And, this thing starts with a passing wizzo hiring you to “deal with what lies below” and to “burn the place out when you’re done.” Well howdy! Always a big fan of fire and salting the earth in an adventure. There’s a dude with something going on who, for some reason, doesn’t want to deal with it himself. 

The adventure explains nothing. Just a dour passing dude hires you to, as I noted. There is nothing more. He is of little words, recall, and refuses to entertain further questions. Always a good way to get your job done. Go fuck yourself man. How much extra you paying for the privilege of being an asshole who needs something done? Oh, no notes on what hes paying you or what you’re reward is. Nothing more than what I posted in that intro. At the end of an adventure you, perhaps, find a secret door to the last room. Inside is an invisible old woman. Sobbing. She laments all of her dead children (the six previous rooms being littered with little clay fetish dudes, all broken to pieces. So, she’s hiding out in this secret room, crying and invisible. Until you open the door. Then she “Stops at nothing to leave the dungeon until killed.” Okaaaaay. I guess we’re killing her for some reason? No? She escaped? Then when you exit you find the dude that hired you standing over her, having killed her. Uh. And he wants all of the gold and magic from the dungeon, which he originally said you could keep. Also, he has no stats. This is all a confusing mess, as is the adventure. Except … I wonder if this was supposed to be a domestic violence situation? I’m filling in some shit here, but they start a quarrel for some reason, he breaks the dudes or she has them attack him? He leaves, gets the party to kill his wife and burn down his life. She’s inside, either the victim of abuse or dealing with him having gotten rid of her clay friends (rightfully or wrongly) and she comes out of her sobbing when interrupted by the party, only to flee, meeting him outside. We don’t see the outside so she attacks him or he attacks her? So, he called the cops on his wife and it ended in violence. As presented the adventure is a mess. Me filling in the gaps turns it in to something I don’t think I want to play. 

The wandering monster table, and many room keys, have “soldiers” in them. Actual soldiers? People who we are using soldier stats for? What are they doing there? It’s not clear they talk. Who are they? Absolutely no fucking idea at all. There is nothing here to guide using any way. They are just stat blocks to stab. AND, the killings? They explode for 2d6 damage, save vs half. And there are A LOT of then. I’m not sure thats survivable for levels 1-2? Playtested? Probably not. And there’s a 50% chance, in every hallway, of encountering a fight. This is not a old school thing.

Each room starts with read-aloud. Room one tells us: “ Opening the double doors, soot and ash swirl about the air. A large kiln fashioned from crude, clay bricks is built into the wall at the opposite of the room. Broken kilnlings litter the floor in front its numbered of it. Tables littered with jars and kilnling parts face the walls.” Note that the kilnlings are new monsters. How do you know what they are? This is pretty classic telling instead of showing. Another room has a state of a god in the middle of a pond. We never hear anything more about the statue. The party will OBVIOUSLY be investigating it. To no end, since there’s no information on it. 

And I’m pretty sure there are obvious map and keying errors. Rooms five and six appear to be swapped. This is pretty basic shit. It’s as it the entire thing was written in one sit down and then no effort was made to read through it or edit it or anything. Not that it matter. 6 SOLDIERS and 6 PIKES attack immediately after the cottager dies. They able to narrowly squeeze through the prison bars.” So you’re just gonna be stabbing shit. Regardless of what the designer places in front of the players, the monsters will get to do whatever the designer wants them to do, but fiat. Also, that cottager wants you to kill his bitch wife, so, maybe his wife and not the dude who hired you? 

Anyway, just a complete mess of an adventure with nothing more than stabbing and some domestic violence. What a fun night of gaming ahead of you!

This is $1 at DriveThru. There is no preview. Sucker.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/527686/under-the-dolmens-delve-a-one-shot-dungeon-for-level-1-adventurers-in-the-dolmenwood-setting?1892600

Posted in Reviews | 6 Comments

Emelda’s Song

Posted on July 9, 2025 by Bryce Lynch 
By Scott Malthouse
Necrotic Gnome
OSE
Levels 2-4

The market town of Lankshorn is abuzz with excitement after the cruel Lord Malbleat announces a festival honouring his sorcerous ancestor. Only when the young singer Emelda—famed for her beautiful voice—is reported missing do things take a sinister turn.

This 44 page adventure uses the vast majority of its pages to describe a small fair, manor party, and some underground crypts with around a dozen rooms. OSE style guide gets a little long in this digest, with the investigation half being well supported(?) and the dungeon being a hack.

I don’t know about this. There are multiple things wrong here but they are wrong in such interesting ways. Or, perhaps I mean to say wrong in complex ways? It’s just fucking weird, the kabuki around the actual adventure.

No where in this, I think, will you find a summary of the actual adventure. How the thing works and an expected arc for the party. I’m a fan of Not over-explaining, but, also, that only works for short adventures, and a 44 page booklet is not short. The titular chickula has gone missing and you should find her. You are pointed toward an inn where she frequented. In town there’s a fair going on, with fairgrounds. Associated with this fair is a party at the local manor, exclusive for the nobility and such. Underneath the manor is a crypt where the lord is using a chick to bring a dead relative back to life as the climax to the fair. As one does.  So, you gonna poke around the town a bit and then find an entrance to the crypts in the fair/town or bluff/sneak in to the party and eventually find your way down via the GAPING STAIRWAY MAW in the main salon. I found this rather amusing: “Crypts Entrance – Ancient limestone archway (set incongruously in the northern wall). Arcane symbols and sigils (carved in blocks)”  Whats that? Oh, that is our hosts brain collection. He keeps his 36 ex-wives brains in jars to admire here in the salon. I do love a farce like this, where the folk ignore the outrageous, having normalized it as commonplace. 

The adventure is, essentially, in two parts. First you gonna poke around town, getting up in peoples business and sticking your noses where it don’t belong. Ask around the town, ask around the fair, maybe infiltrate the party. This part is rather well supported. Sections on party guests and their manners and conversations, the town, rumors.  It’s a relatively simple A leads to B leads to C sort of thing where asking at the inn gets you a clerics name, which followed up on gets you someone else’s name, which leads to a party invitation… and there are several examples of that, different paths that the party might follow, with, if I recall correctly, like four different entrances to the crypts, paths that the party could take to discover them. 

Inside the crypts you’ve got some household guards, a few skeletons, an intelligent spider, and a decent number of captured/coerced people. And a distinct lack of anything but stabbing. Yeah, sure, you can talk to a prisoner and they’ll tell you something. Or you can loot a room. But puzzles and specials and interactivity beyond the stab is quite rare here … and every stating its rare is a stretch. 

This puts this adventure in a weird category. It’s a raid. In my experience, all raids start with a wacky PC plan to infiltrate and then turn in to a slugfest when the party gets busted. What is perhaps unusual here is the investigation beforehand. That is not something we generally see in a raid.

So, given that over HALF the pages are the investigation, we would expect that portion to be pretty good. I don’t think it is. Oh, sure, pretty formatting and nice layout. The Gnomes do that well. But in this case there’s a distinct lack of content especially for something taking up over half the pages. I mean, sure, there are places to go and people to talk to and juggling and fire eating to watch, but it lays the window dressing on REALLY heavy and it seems that the adventuring content is pretty light. From this, I can only intimate that the first part is supposed to be a slow and relaxed affair. We take our time. We enjoy the view of the meat on a stick vendors. But I ain’t no senator’s son. I really do not give a shit at all about most of the content in this section. I like the Gnomes formatting and descriptive style, when used correctly, but here its overkill. We get these lush room descriptions for no purpose. And none of that Journey is the Destination crap. I got an adventure to run. The descriptions get long. It smacks, in areas, of throwing things in as boilerplate. “The style guide says we need to note how many pimples each NPC has on their nose, so I don’t care if they don’t have a nose, you need to say they have no pimples on their nose.” Hyperbolic of me, to be sure, but the point I’m making is that hte mundanity of the adventure is taken too far. 

I note this is to a degree in which, three times through the adventure, I’m still not sure I could adequately describe to you the various entrances to the dungeon and how the adventure interconnects to each other. Farmer A knows B which leads to F, that sort of thing. There is no overview, it’s all buried in what feels like descriptive text thrown in because a style guide says to. I’m not saying that’s the case, but it feels like it is. The other explanation is an overindulgence in trivia to the detriment of the adventure, which is the greater sin. 

The dungeon is no better. While I’m a fan of the OSE style, in this case I think its not used very well. I’m thinking specifically of a room with an insect swarm in it in which the swarm is treated almost as an afterthought. This is the initial room description, although I’m not sure my point comes across well with it alone; “Sandstone blocks (walls, floor, ceiling 10′). Dimly lit (large lantern suspended from ceiling). Moss-covered walls (dripping moisture). Humid (nearly suffocating). High-pitched buzzing (whizzing clouds of insects).” And then, near the end of the colum, a colum of insect swarm stat blocks/notes. I’m not sure that giant clouds of insects, large enough to kill you, deserves to be last in the description, even in a dimly lit room. The corpse, the workbench, the vials, everything gets spoken to, except the swarm, which just gets essentially a stat block, at the end. Things are out of order. Correct things are not emphasized. And while I like the OSE style I do recognize that it also takes skill to use and its achilles heel IS just that. It requires that the correct things be emphasized, and in the correct order. The Bolded KeyWord (A couple of more words) isn’t magic. You still have to do the work to put the right things there. 

An investigation that is quite loosey goosy and a town/festival/manor that overindulges in the mundane and its format to the detriment of the actual play. Combined with a raid. This makes this adventure akin to the old investigation that leads to a five room dungeon with cackling villain at the end. It’s not terrible, but its leaning enough that way, or not enough to the good side, that it falls in to the Colored Lights May Hypnotize category.

This is $10 at DriveThru. The preview is sixteen pages. But most of it is useless. A couple of pages of DM background, a page of hooks, a page of players background/common knowledge … a situation overview that is quite poor … the preview needed some room descriptions. That would not, in this case, have led me to a better purchasing decision, but the OSE style is a little jarring and a page showing a typical room would have been in order. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/527293/emelda-s-song?1892600

Posted in Colored Lights May Hypnotize, Reviews | 16 Comments

Mudbones

Posted on July 7, 2025 by Bryce Lynch 
By Scott Craig
Cutter Mountain Simulations
OSE/Shadowdark
Levels 1-4

Amid the blood and flame at the end of empire, the god of this temple was slain. An ancient enemy summoned a flood of soil and stone, and the temple and its holy fount and sacred valley were buried in hardened mud and ooze. Yet with the passing of centuries a forest has sprung up, and wheat has taken seed, and a new people have made a home in the rich floodplain that was once a valley. Ever have the thoughts of men and near-men animated gods both new and old, and thus a fragment of the dead god stirs with the desires of these new people. But the curse lingers still, and a curdled malevolence skulks within the depths of the buried temple…

This six page adventure uses two pages to describe two dungeon levels with about 36 rooms. It covers a lot in the few pages it allows itself, and turns out a better product than the vast majority of adventures. Wisely using some recurring themes, it lacks only that last little joi divie needed to really hit high marks. A great filler for your map.

Hmmm, something sounds familiar here. Six page adventure. Two pages of maps keys. A page for the mp. A page for monster reference and other important dungeon tips. An overview page … all of this sounds familiar. So, clearly, the designer is a genius! But, also, it looks like this is coming from a patreon in which these come out every month, a couple of months in arears to allow for the patreons to get them. 

This is a solid little adventure. You’ve got an old temple, buried under mud and grime, and an entrance to it that has opened up right smack dab in the middle of a ransacked bandit encampment. Inside we have terrified bandits, crazed bandits, some mud monsters, a few undead, and a couple of golems, inactive, just yearning to be active again and restore the temple. (in a good way. Hmmm, can you be agnostic in D&D? Or an atheist? I mean, there’s a fucking god right next to you and miracles everywhere. It’s probably normalized. ‘Pffft. Zeus? One aspect? Just some dude with a lighting bolt implant. I’d believe if I were shown some REAL power …’)

The adventure is pretty tight with a decent amount going on for such a smallish dungeon. It does fit in two levels of about eighteen rooms each. And it does so on a moderately interesting map, attributed to the designer. It’s got a large central dome like area with a circular area/arc around it and then a set of passages hanging off of one side, with the second level being of the same general shape of a square attached to a circle. A decent number of stairs ,secret doors, curtains, and elevation-without-changing-levels makes it on to the map. I mean, dude is putting two map levels on one page, there’s only so large you can go and still remain legible. And, speaking of that, it kind of reminds me of those tower/fortress maps from MERP, but legible. Well, except, some of the secret door icons (and a few others) are a bit rough to make out. Not impossible, but not quite as glanceable as I would prefer. A little work on the icon set would be in order. 

The reference page has a monster stat list as well as the “always on” dungeon descriptions. It also has a small section on activating the golems, cleansing the temple, consequences after the adventure and other general adventure reference works. They are ok, but, things like the consequences are a little rough. Mostly just “how much does a restored temple reappear to be worshipped” its all pretty obvious stuff and without color. The general thrust of this page is good, an overview of how things work in the dungeon. But when it tries to wander in to the territory of “color” then it falls down. 

But, the good first. The various locales are solid. “The bandit camp is easy to find, a cluster of rough shacks ringed by a thorny enclosure. The camp is deserted, and has been thoroughly ransacked. No one is here, living or dead. A gaping hole lies in a clearing between two huts; dirt and cracked stone blocks are heaped beside it. Steps have been crudely hacked into the clay tunnel, descending into the darkness…” And, there’s no more of the bandit camp. That’s what you get. And, I think, its nearly enough. No need to drone on about the entrance. Crudely hacked steps, gaping hole, thorny enclosures. It using its word budget to maximum effect. It’s not quite where I would prefer to see it, its still not giving off mythic underworld entrance vibes. But, its also clearly a description that has been worked and I think it shows and pays off in the way it springs to the mind, which is what a decent description should do.

Inside is the domain of the tersely written description. “2. Scriptorium. 2 CRAZED BANDITS looting. Smashed desks, trampled lead tablets, CHEST w/ 2 TORCHES. Bandit corpse leans against a mound of rubble against the north wall.” A nice little vignette, eh? There’s some action going on. The room has a name to frame the description that follows. The use of ALLCAPS and bolding is used to highlight. Lead tablets. Smashed desks. We’re hitting all of the adjective and adverb marks. Looking a “empty” room, we get something like “5. Hall. Cracked plastered walls; a mural of storm-tossed seas.” Cracked player. Storm-tossed seas. Look, I’m not saying these are rock star level descriptions, but  I am saying that they are way Way WAY better than the VAST majority of adventures that get published. Someone thought the fuck about this thing and tried to both fulfill their vision (of six pages) while maximizing what they could do in that budget. And as a result they hit a good number of design principals hard. Situations. Things to explore. Scan ability. Evocativeness. “Ragged hole has been punched through south wall.” Fuck yeah it’s ragged man!

However … I appreciate the devotion to six pages. But, like all gimmicks, it limits the ability to deliver. The best one page dungeon ever written, or to be written, will never be the best adventure in the world. It can accomplish other goals than being the best adventure ever, but the artificial constraints imposed limit what it can do.

The bandits, crazed and terrified, get short shrift. They could use a few names and descriptions, a couple of words each. This would really bring them alive. Likewise, “A GHAST lurks in the shadows. He wears a MODIUS HEADDRESS of ebon and gold” is not wonderful. I appreciate the headdress, but a description of what lurks in the shadows is better telling me. What’s that? Show don’t Tell? Hmmm … This is a pretty consistent problem throughout. It needs just a few more words for each of the creatures. And for other things. I’m thinking specifically about magic items. ” BALANCE SCALE OF CONVINCING VERACITY”. Come on. This has got to be the result of a name generator. I’m all for generators to help inspire creativity. To get things kicked off. But you gotta work the thing and massage it in to something better. 

Two more points. Sound/light/monsters on the map. That doesn’t happen. It should. Just put one of your icons on it to help us figure out who’s making noise or who reacts from the next room. It helps me immensely when running a game to know who’s nearby and/or what the party can see/hear in terms of light/sound bleed. And, then there’s the mud. Or lack thereof. This place is supposed to have been swamped in mud and ooze. But it doesn’t really come off that way at all. In fact, the “always on” descriptions on the monster reference page tells us that “Walls are of white marble panels, and floors are of glazed blue and sea-green tiles in all Temple Level areas” That’s pretty much the opposite of “ended in mud and ooze.” And then there’s mud monsters. That don’t smear walls and leave tracks evidentially. If this theme were carried out consistently throughout then I think the adventure would have been stronger.

I mentioned, earlier, the constraints of a six page adventure and its content with just a few more words to really bring a few more things to life. But there was a word budget available. The first page is fluff. A short section on OSR vs Shadowdark stats. And the rest a “how to parse this adventure” and “join my patreon” section and so on. Almost nothing on that first page is worth spending the word budget on. Reclaiming it gives you more room. But, wait, thats then five pages of adventure text! The designer wants four, to fit on a DM screen. Moving some of the reference material to the first text page, like adventure consequences, is not going to be the end of the world. It’s less “i need this right now at the table” than the rets of the adventure. Further, the first page of dungeon keys has some bullshit hook shit that is … a fifth of a page?  No need for that nonsense. Just pick one of the three and put it on the first page or leave it out altogether. And, the wanderer table … that sounds like reference material to me! Page four you go! “Catacomb Level, Areas 19-26” isn’t really needed, as a page header, since the numbers are on the page. 

The adventure is focused, but, the reliance on the six pages gimmick means it has to be HYPER focused. My critiques aside, this is a decent adventure. The fuckwits on the internet will say its because its terse and easy to scan. That certainly helps. And those ARE easy things to do for any beginner to improve their adventure. But, the interactivity of an adventure is what is going to make it a fun place to adventure in. The situations and possibilities enabled by the designer. And that’s certainly evident here. Rock star? No. but if you used this as a random place the party stumbles across, or a hex locale, or something like that then you’re going to be more than satisfied with it. It is a great journeyman effort. 

This is $5 at DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/526870/mudbones-compatible-with-shadowdark?1892600

Posted in Level 1, No Regerts, Reviews | 7 Comments

The Lover’s Folly

Posted on July 5, 2025 by Bryce Lynch 
By Daniel Collins
mxplusb
OSE
Level 1

Aeranor is a land of scattered small communities trying to carve a stable life for themselves. Petty Lords squabble over land as neither the crown or the head they sit upon last long for any King. Darkness festers in the deep wilderness. Evil stirs in the dark dungeons below. Rumors of silver and glory stir about. The adventurers are a few of the many who have grown tired of the simple life. They yearn for more than what their father did before them. Barrow elves, witches, dragons, and more await the adventures in the wilderness of Aeranor. Oaths will be tested, the Gods will send forth Omens, but it is up to the party to forge their own destiny. 

This 64 page adventure describes about thirteen mini-locations in a small region. It wants to build intrigue. It wants to be a teaching adventure for DMs. It is dull, unimaginative, and needs to learn how to write an adventure before telling others how to write an adventure.

I am fond of a few things in adventure. Town adventures. Barrows. Gonzo. Generation ships. I try to disclose these at the start of a review. I also have an unnatural hated for at least one thing: the teaching adventure. Specifically, the ones that try to teach the DM. Specifically, the ones that try to teach the DM how to write an adventure. I loathe them. I think this comes from all of the reviews I’ve done, and seeing people follow all of the bad advice. Time and time again a magazine, or published product, has had an article about How To Write An Adventure and its almost always full of shitty ass advice. And then I get to see the fallout from that, as others write to those standards or learns to write an adventure from the looking at the adventures that were written to those standards. I fucking LOATHE it. Hence my descent in to hookers and blow. “For this, we need to make a table. When you make your own, you want enough to be able to run an interesting encounter without having to think about too much during play. Give each a little prompt instead of just the monster.” You learn, instead, the way everyone else has fucking learned: by looking at good adventures that speak to you. Having to be told how to create a wandering monster table is wiiiilllldd. And in a conversational tone as well, no less. This then is the doom of man.

To its credit this product is trying to weave a larger narrative. It’s trying to tie the thirteen populated hexes in to a larger narrative about a stay-at-home-lord, a newly married couple set to inherit the crown and blah blah blah. That’s the right thing to do. You’ve got all of these hexes and you make a handful of them related to the “plot” and the others complications or just things to do. Correct. It also doesn’t really takes sides, allowing the party to do what they will, although it seems that one of the choices it played out more. I’m generally ok with this. We don’t force things down the parties throat, but also, we support the options the most that are the most likely to be taken. 

Hey, did I mention that the Table of Contents has no page numbers? No, it’s not hyperlinked either. Good luck locating any information on those thirteen adventure sites that you need during play! Obviously, there were no instructions to put in page numbers. 

And what kind of adventure can we look forward to? Well, “Lord Eowald has posted a notice asking for any men-at-arms to take care of this elusive “Barrow Elf” who lives near the river to the East. There is a total reward of 50 sp for its head.” Wunderbar! It’s one of THOSE adventures.

The first adventure ,with the Barrow Elf, is generally typical of everything you’ll find in here. It’s got a small Dyson map of ten or so rooms. (Quoting some Sly Flourish advice mahed up with the designers own: “dont worry about finding the perfect map, just grab the first one that looks good enough.” and “go find a free Dyson map.” Both oof which i might take … if I were using this in my home game. And neither of which is good advice for something that you are going to publish and charge fucking money for.

Anyway, on to the rooms. I’m going to do something here I don’t usually do. Yes, I quote room text frequently. But this time I thought I would just include the first six rooms wholesale, so you can get a good look at the context in which the critique is going to happen:

1. 3 Corpses of unlucky victims (Zombies) are scattered on the stairs. They stir if anyone walks past.
2. Still, putrid smelling water. The water will rot away any flesh.
3. Empty, and eerily clean.
4. Zombies shambling around the room where they once rested eternally. Each stone coffin holds 1 keepsake and 1d4 silver pieces.
5. Empty
6. Ulsylmor’s wondrous lyre lay discarded in a stone coffin along with a set of silver plates (25 hacksilver worth). 1 XP

How’s that? You loving your fucking life? Maybe a little less effort in to the bullshit advice part of the booklet and more effort, A FUCKING LOT more effort, on the actual adventure, eh? Unlucky is padding. Once rested eternally is padding. These are backstories that don’t impact he actual play. The designer has confused “backstory” with “useful to play. You could have made them do something. You could have given then a word or two of evocative description. Nope. Backstory. And those rooms, proper! The majesty of them! The lack of evocative description! The lack of interactivity! Look, ok, I’m not morally opposed to room twos still putrid water that rots away flesh. I think it could use a little more. You had, obviously from the comparison to the lines above and below it, a few more words you could have thrown in there, but, not a bad thing. The rest though? Low effort descriptions of low effort room concepts. Shit. And I’m not cherry picking here. Most of the adventure locale keys in this resemble those above. Which kind of makes you wonder what the designer was thinking, devoting, generously, thirty pages to keys and thirty four to padding outside of the adventure. 

The general store, in the starting town: “Talbrak’s Goods: Talbrak’s is the one stop shop for anyone traveling looking to restock supplies.” A boring town, with a sentence per, and nothing unusual or fun or intriguing going on. The local roc lair: “While they do mate for life, the father went off to the mountains to the East to protect his family from another aerial intruder – a dragon!” Sir Not-Appearing-in-this-Film has been a fixture for a long time now. It’s systemic, it’s everywhere.

Hey, that barrow elf? It’s a wight. That’s the first thing you’re gonna fight. A fucking fight. It’s explicit. Well, there’s those four zombies, but the only other thing is the wight in the tomb. 3HD: THAC0 of 17. Energy Drain. Hit by magic and silver only. That kind of wight. I’m not sure if that’s a TPK at level one or not. Hmmmm … And you start, right after the garbage Session 0 advice crap, in media res, right on the journey to his mound. 

This is hard because I generally separate the creator from their work. In this case those, because its to be a learning adventure, they seem inherently linked to me. The advice within is simplistic and the adventure itself not good in the most basic ways, except for the overarching concept behind it. 

This is $5 at DriveThru. The preview is nineteen pages and you get to see the first couple of adventuring locales as well as some of the “teaching.” So, good preview anyway.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/524071/adventure-kit-1-the-lover-s-folly?1892600

Posted in Reviews | 2 Comments

Hyena Child

Posted on July 2, 2025 by Bryce Lynch 
By Markus Schauta
Gazer Press
S&W/LotFP
Levels 1-4

In the 17th century, Alexandria is a city that has endured beyond the promises of its once great future. The inhabitants of the Egyptian port live in ancient ruins and dilapidated villas. The few rich and powerful celebrate in an arrogant grandeur of sad luxury, knowing full well that their days of splendor are numbered. For grave robbers and body snatchers, the port city is a beacon, a promise—for in its bowels, endless tunnels twist and hold long-forgotten treasures. Some fortune-seekers have struck it rich, while others have dug too deep, to where the past lives and antediluvian horrors lurk.

This delightful booklet uses 204 pages describe five adventures and an eight level dungeon in Alexandria in 1632. It is PACKED with things to spur adventure at the table, is easy to use, and contains many situations for your party to get mixed up in, both in and out of the dungeon. 

Warning: Bryce likes a good city.

I was a bit apprehensive in cracking this open. Two hundred pages. $25 dollars. This tends to not be a good sign. And then I hit this paragraph starting on the first column of the first page: “The players may start toying with the idea of involving their PCs in the mummy trade, with the aim of shipping a cargo hold of the dried-up corpses to Europe. This is perfectly fine. However, getting involved in the mummy trade also puts the PCs at odds with powerful Alexandrian merchants and smugglers, who won‘t just stand idly by while the PCs attempt to move in on their profits. Furthermore, the governor won‘t want to miss out on his share of the lucrative business either.” This is a designer with his head in the right place! Clearly he has dealt with players before, and their mad scheming! And, just as clearly, he knows how to deal with them: if there’s a buck to me made then someone else is already making it and they are not going to just let the party sidle in on their profits! 

The setting here is absolutely wonderful. It’s clearly a LotFP type setting, with Alexandria in the 1630’s. Mysticism. Ancient horrors. And science mixed in with the a great mix of peoples from all over the world all hitting the cosmopolitan city of Alexandria. You really get a strong vibe off this. Seedy, wonder, magic, ancient history, spies, agents, factions, opulence and decadence and grit and grime. This is EXACTLY the kind of city I love in a D&D game. 

The city is a small part of this booklet, about thirty pages. Itis also the setting for the adventures and the dungeon and a home base. Each of the about thirty locations is clearly oriented at driving play. Sure, you’re going to have adventures, and in between you’ll interact with the places in the city and each of them has something for the DM to use to directly drive some fun play. The focus here, the ability and understanding of what is needed in this environment, is wonderful. Even something as base as some old pillars near the sea. There’s a hermit there. The locals venerate him as a saint. It is said that his feces can break a curse. And, in fact, it can, four in six. Curse breaking? Of course you need curse breaking in an adventure in Egypt! And this is a perfect way to do it! Old beggar woman? Down on her luck? She’s got fleas! And you might also if you help her (a lot of fleas in this adventure …) But, also, helping her might get you a very trusted retainer who knows a bit of the healing arts. Everything, every single site, has something to play off of for the party. That IS the purpose of a description in a city/town/village. I don’t care what fucking color their cloak is. I want things to drive play, even between-crawls play, and this does it, spicing things up. It’s perfect. Maybe a sentence or two long in places, but not in any way droning on.

The focus here, on gameable content, is remarkable. The appendix is only thirty pages. And even that is composed of Factions, Day & Night encounters in the city, rumors and the like. Only a VERY small portion of the entire volume could be considered padding. And I hesitate to even use that word. The number of words, pages, etc and their absolute focus on contributing to actual games at the table is truly one of the more remarkable efforts I’ve seen. Virtually nothing here is not directly related to a game at the table.

This, also, is one of the earliest passages of text in the volume. “When finally the day is done, the mumia smokers wake from their restless dreams. It is the time of pleasure boys and whores, of the discreet and the drunkards, of thieves and astrologers. Everything punishable by law and God, all that decency does not wish to see; all of that emerges in the pale light of the moon. It is then that the grave robbers and body snatchers shoulder their shovels to plough the cemeteries in search of treasures long consigned to oblivion in dilapidated tunnels; digging ever deeper, to where the past yet lives and antediluvian horrors lurk.” The tone is sets for the city is great. You immediately know the vibe, how to run it. Your mind starts running wild. All of what you do from then on is going to be colored by those words, dripping in evocative flavour. And the adventure does this with its text over and over again. That paragraph is somewhat general, but the others are far more specific, depending on their context, and virtually all of them lend to that same effect. 

So, the adventures. Or, let’s start with  home base. There are a few notes in the beginning about how the party can start in one of four locations in the city. The merchants have excellent palace contacts. The monks have some healing available for the party, and so on, depending on where you might call home to start. Then we move on to the adventures, most of which have some connection to the dungeon, or a specific level of the dungeon. (Except for level eight, a hidden level opened only by discovering things through play.) Let’s see, we’ve got a kind of Stargazer tower adventure. Garden full of sleep flowers and some murderous baboons. And then a tower that is little more alive than Stargazer, with a murderous frankenstein monster in it … that may ignore the party completely as it REALLY wants out of the tower. Where it will begin to kill townfolk, stalking the streets at night and so on. Oops. Actions have consequences I guess. Which, come to think of it, could be the byline of this adventure. We’ve got a dinner party full of intrigue in a manor, the titular hyena child involving a cult and so on. And then there’s the Mummy Raid. The swedes are in town and need a fuck ton of mummies. You can make mummia from it and they need/want it to give to their soldiers to meth them up in their wars in the north of Europe. They know where some is, on level three of the catacombs. You need to take this legless asshat of a wizard down to level three, find the mummies, and then he’ll teleport them all to the cargo hold of a ship. Bypassing the “official” unofficial trade, and pissing people off. Also, another group is after the mummies as well. Complications abound! As do consequences. The adventures here, more than most, offer consequences, both positive and negative. We’ve seen this in many LotFP adventures where the world ends or a plight spreads because of theparty fucking around with things. But the actions and fallout/consequences here are more timely, impacting the current and future play sessions. Most adventures are just standalone and don’t mention consequences to assist the DM with. Good adventures will offer some words of advice on the subject. But this product really does integrate those consequences, positive and negative, in to the play sessions. This brings the Alexandria alive in a magnificent way. 

I’m not even touched on formatting or the dungeon rooms proper yet. Formatting is clean and clear. Easy to follow, easy to scan during play, which is critical. It’s a summary section of immediate things to notice with some bolded words that are then followed up in their own sections with more detail. 

Who wants to crawl through the statues mouth?!!?1 You do? The obvious happens. Some of the rooms are right out of … I don’t know. I’m thinking of a room with a table with a coil of rope and grapple on it. Pulling the rope fires a blunderbuss under the table. Ouchies! It’s so much more VISCEREAL than your bog standard trap, and so much more relatable. I know it sounds dumb, but, I’m going to relate one of my favorite rooms. It’s trivial, it’s simple, it’s dumb, and I love it. You’re in a dingy room. There’s one exit. There’s a rotting dog carcass in front of the exit you need. The dogs mangy buddy is right next to it, growling, protecting the body. You gonna kill a poor old staving loyal stray dog? Heartless monster! I hope there’s a dog lover in your group! It’s so … real. It’s not contrived fantasy nonsense. It feels imagined and then put in to a D&D game, rather than the the way around. I fucking love it. 

There is so much more that I could talk about with this. What it does and pitfalls it avoids. It is solid. Dense. Breezy. Exciting. It is everything I want in a D&D adventure.

This is $25 at DriveThru. The preview is fourteen pages, and mostly shows you nine of the city locations. That should be enough to convince you. Yes, it’s $25 for a PDF, but, spend your money on something good instead of slogging through shit the way I do.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/525423/hyena-child?1892600

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