{"id":10275,"date":"2026-02-14T07:11:00","date_gmt":"2026-02-14T12:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=10275"},"modified":"2026-01-22T09:34:16","modified_gmt":"2026-01-22T14:34:16","slug":"the-cursed-cave-of-one-billion-bats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=10275","title":{"rendered":"The Cursed Cave of One Billion Bats"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By Dale L Houston
Duck and Crow press
OSR
Level 3? Tourney\/One-Shot<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
You have a treasure map that strongly suggests there is a pile of loot for some forgotten god just waiting to be extracted from Nightmaw Cave. The locals are all like “don’t go in there because the cave is cursed.” WHo are you going to believe? Idiot villagers or your map. Grab your sword, ready your spells, ignore all better judgement and prepare to delve!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This twenty page adventure features about 21 rooms in a vertical dungeon with \u2026 billions of bats. As a tournament adventure it succeeds well, being interesting with special mechanics and a scoring system. Nicely evocative and with special encounters that don\u2019t feel set-piecy, I feel the designers charms are lost on the tourney market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If I write an adventure and tell you up front its AI slop with no real value and you should not buy it, then is it fair game to review it any other way? Likewise, if someone writes a tournament\/one-shot adventure and advertise it that way is it fair for Brycy Bryce to bitch\/review it any other way? Fuck if I know, but I do know that I\u2019d love to see some real adventures from this designer and\/or they are doing a right bangup job in being the GOLD standard of tournament play.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Cover? Fucking great. Love that bat on the left with the red mouth and the shocked expression. The map layout here? Fucking great. It\u2019s got verticality to it. Either small rises between rooms, think climbing up to a ledge, or shafts up\/down between rooms. A traditional map is supplemented by a pointcrawl map which is one of the better uses of a pointcrawl map, in this vertical environment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The adventure introduces two new elements. The first is climbing\/up down. Securing ropes through freeclimbing and\/or the people behind you climbing those ropes. Basically an unsecured vs a secured climb, that can be an easy route or a hard route. We\u2019re making some \u201cclimbing checks\u201d here. Clever monkey, labeling it all OSR systems and then sticking in your favorite modern contrivances. Anyway, you\u2019re doing some climbing in places. Then we\u2019ve got this Bat Cloud mechanic. Certain rooms have LOTS of bats in them. The more light you carry the more likely you are to set them atwitter, which results in a Take Damage Every Round system. 1 point for a PC, 1d3 if you\u2019ve got a light. So, maybe, you cut down on your light sources in order to have a lesser chance of setting them off. So, you\u2019re going to maybe fall in a hole in the ground or miss a ceiling hole\/climb\/exit, or have more trouble \u201csearching\u201d by increasing the difficulty. Ahum. No, I have confirmed that there is no 5e version of this. There\u2019s a few other weird things going on mostly through the wandering table, crystal rooms, \u201cThe Song of the Night\u201d and such. It;s a good mix of eerie and mysterious. The entire adventure is supported by a one page town, if that, with the demeanor of \u201cdefeated\u201d and a sheriff who will pay you 1000gp to NOT go in the dungeon and just leave. Cantankerous, clever, and always eating mutton or something else greasy. That\u2019s a great fucking NPC! Or \u201cMorgan Krawk: Minister of the Sepulcher of the Holy Carcass. Balding with long hair. Excellent elocution. Steals from offering plate. Doesn\u2019t like Witch Gulbon and thinks Sheriff Johns is incompetent.\u201d man, I wish every notable NPC in an adventure were written like this! And the town is really just a blow off, a a place to enjoy the rumors and get warned off by the sheriff, which, is a great little bit of preamble to the adventure. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Rooms have a couple of sentences up front that summative them. And they can get purple sometimes \u201cA sour smell of guano and fear wafts from the darkness.\u201d Sour guano is great, but fear is a bit purple, yes? \u201cThe squeak of bats is deafening. Ankle-deep guano crawling with insects covers the floor. Stalagmites dot the chamber.\u201d Noice! How about a creature description? \u201cA billion bats, eyes glowing red, circle a towering creature. A humanoid-bat giant, a sword jammed into each eye, pivots enormous ears, and emits a piercing shriek!\u201d And, same dude, in the appendix \u201c15\u2019 tall bat-human hybrid. Eyes have been gouged out with swords, wings are ragged, covered in filth; it sheds bloated maggots.\u201d Maggots for the win! But, nice touch with the swords jammed in his eyes bit. Moving some of the appendix description to the room would have been better, I think, so we don\u2019t have to consult two places, but, whatever. Descriptions are solid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Magic items are great, although, I might comment, wasted on the fact that this is a oneshot and\/or tourney adventure (with scoring provided! Get loot, explore the dungeon, break the curse)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There\u2019s a miss here and there. One room has a living statue in it. Pretty much all we get is \u201cThe living statue can barely interact, its pro- gramming corrupted with age.\u201d t\u2019s supposed to be \u201cstanding guard\u201d but there\u2019s nothing like that present. It almost feels like something was left out. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe Stone: The hum and vibrations emanate from the oval stone, as do slight variations in temperature. This is the stone egg-coffin of an ancient Ophidian praefectus. Opening the egg-coffin will flood the chamber with malignant energy causing 1d10+10 damage to every living thing in this chamber each Turn. The bones of the praefectus will writhe and release this poison for 1000 years.\u201d Well, that don\u2019t seem good! This is, I think, a decent example of the interactivity present, as well, perhaps, that statue. There are things to look at. There are things to open and search. The Man Bat is introduced to you by a bloody rabbit carcass dropping to the floor at your feet from the ceiling. Perhaps, we might call it, a great intro song to entering the ring. The adventure does a great job with that, as well as with other things that seem weird to poke and prod and look at and wonder about. Which is to say, it\u2019s a hack. I mean, yeah, you need to navigate the ups and downs and not trigger the bats, and it\u2019s a tourney adventure, so, you know, ok I guess. It\u2019s it certainly not, though, and empty guard room with 6 kobolds in it. As hacks go it does a decent job of presenting an interesting environment and interesting creatures with some fun bits here and there, like the dead rabbit, to introduce the combat. But, in terms of mysteries to solve and things to do, it\u2019s a hack.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And I don\u2019t think I\u2019m complaining about that, at least not in a tourney adventure and not given the quality of the window dressing. This could, however, make things difficult, in future adventures, when moving over from a tourney\/one-shot framing to a more exploratory\/longer-term adventure mindset. But, that\u2019s a bitch for a future review. I\u2019m Regerting this one, just because Tourney\/one-shot is niche, IMO. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is $10 at DriveThru. The preview is seven pages, a good mix, and shows you encounters and some additional specials. Good preview. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/en\/product\/540652\/bloodbath-dungeon-1-the-cursed-cave-of-one-billion-bats?1892600<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Dale L HoustonDuck and Crow pressOSRLevel 3? Tourney\/One-Shot You have a treasure map that strongly suggests there is a pile of loot for some forgotten god just waiting to be extracted from Nightmaw Cave. The locals are all like … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10268,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[15,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10275","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-no-regerts","category-reviews"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/540652.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10275","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10275"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10275\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10276,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10275\/revisions\/10276"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10268"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}