{"id":9957,"date":"2025-09-13T07:11:00","date_gmt":"2025-09-13T11:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=9957"},"modified":"2025-08-21T08:28:34","modified_gmt":"2025-08-21T12:28:34","slug":"first-steps-descent-into-madness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=9957","title":{"rendered":"First Steps – Descent into Madness"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By Nickolas Z Brown
Five Cataclysms
OSR
Levels: \"Low to Mid\"<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
Deep within the Sunken Fort is a stairway. This stairway leads into an unknowable and chaotic underworld: the Descent into Madness. Alien creatures, chaotic magic, formless order and untold treasures await the intrepid and the bold. They will not return the same as they entered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This 72 page adventure uses 69 pages to describe 252 rooms in \u201cthe first level\u201d of a megadungeon. It is creative, deadly, off kilter, and comes at things from a \u201ccreativity first\u201d rather than \u201crules first\u201d standpoint. One of the best examples of a funhouse, ever, for every overloaded context of the word funhouse when describing a dungeon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I know a secret. Maybe you will also after today. Keep the secret, there must have been a reason, there\u2019s no reason to run your fucking mouth. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
As soon as you crack this you know you\u2019re in for a ride. During our small obligatory hooks section we get \u201cSomeone\u2019s father was turned into a tree in room 55 and needs rescued. All the relatives know is that they were last seen entering this place\u201d or \u201cThe Headsman of room 72 could be emerging from the dungeon to take people\u2019s heads and convert them into trophies to hang on his walls\u201d What\u2019s a headsman? Turned in to a tree? Well, those are things you don\u2019t see everyday. Except they are rather classic, yes? A dude in a black hood dragging a big axe and beheading people to collect their heads? I\u2019m not even sure there IS a more classic trope than that one? And getting turned in to a tree? Shades of so many folklore tales. Nope, there\u2019s nothing folklore about this adventure though, it\u2019s far too random, in a funhouse manner, for that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There\u2019s no pretext here, we just have a couple of words about interdimensional blah blah blah and then we\u2019re in to the keys, as that page count would imply. A page of maps, a page of wanderers for the first area and we\u2019re in to keys. With no fucking appendices. This thing manages to put everything int he text. Monster stats. Descriptions. Magic items. Fuck you and fuck your appendices. Fuck you and fuck your bullshit pretext of a intro. It\u2019s a dungeon, the designer provided the rooms and the fucking DM can get the characters there. Rock on man! None of this 96 page adventure is only six pages of room keys. Every ounce of creativity, every ounce of effort, went in to this dungeon with none wasted on bullshit (not that extra shit is always bullshit, it just almost always is bullshit.) We shall begin now our exploration of the Descent in to Madness with the entrance area: The Maw of Madness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThis is the entrance of the Descent into Madness. It is the domain of living teeth which are born from a fallen giant, animated by a tooth fairy. They have an irrational fear of sugar and must roll morale or flee if sugar is thrown at them\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Well, well, well. Aren\u2019t you feeling like a worthless piece of shit right now, you high and mighty dungeon designer? You will NEVER be able to match this. EVER. Duh. Of course. The Tooth Fairy. Giant. Maw of Madness. And not one of us has ever done anything like this. Room one? Ok. \u201c: Four Giant Incisors hover around a large stone slab upon which gold and gems are heaped.\u201d If you steal any of that treasure, The Tooth Fairies, by the way, then all of your teeth fall out and roll along the floor under the door to room three. Then, other parts of your body begin converting in to teeth and falling off and rolling away in the same manner. Jesus man! In room one! Four giant floating incisors! A pile of treasure, oh so tempting, and a fucking CURSE. Fuck your quest or save or die shit, man that thing is brutal!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cBehind the bars is a giant wisdom tooth, inlaid with a bejeweled golden filling worth 4000gp. However, the tooth is heavily stained and looks quite dead. If anyone touches the bars, a tooth-specter will pop out of the tooth and lunge at the person touching the bars.\u201d Duh. Yeah. Of course. Now what the fuck did you think was going to happen? There\u2019s some place else where there\u2019s a pile of something burning, making purple smoke, that is taking the vague form of a spectre that says things like \u201cYou are doomed! Beware! Your fate awaits!\u201d Nothing else, no encounter. Oh, except, If you snort the smoke you gain +2 wisdom. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
THIS ALL MAKES SENSE. It makes sense in some kind of weird New York Times Crossword puzzle way, but it makes sense. Like in the way the clue \u201cPeter Parker\u201d means banana hammock. That ghost from the dead wisdom tooth, the one behind bars? It can\u2019t get at you. The bars stop it. The ghost thinks it\u2019s still alive and thus can\u2019t get through the bars. Of course. That\u2019s what fucking ghosts do right? They don\u2019t know they are dead? But then some jackass party member is going to say that out loud, and the ghost will recognize it, and then it can come through the bars. There is an internal logic here, from the tooth fairy being in the tooth area, to the ghost, to the sugar vulnerability. Yes, it\u2019s more than a little absurd than normal D&D, but it also has an internal logic to all of it that is so much stronger than the vast majority of D&D adventures. We see hints of this in other adventures, with well written humans, bandits, humanoids, villagers, who do what is normal, or could be, in a situation. This is so much stronger than the run of the mill adventures that don\u2019t do anything like this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is 100% a funhouse. There are zones here, so the tooth\/maw area is only the entrance area and you progress to other areas. But it\u2019s 100% a funhouse. The zones prevent it from being abstracted away to just a node\/line drawing of some completely different vignette in a different room. You can follow, and exploit, the logic of the different areas. And then, of course, on the topic of funhouses, we have the required creatures out of place\/Anachronisms. Like the ogre potters, including the one who doesn\u2019t want to do poetry anymore but wants to turn it in to a restaurant and inn.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019m a fan, as well, of the kind of, I don\u2019t know, basic originality that\u2019s found in this? There\u2019s this manner of viewing the world that doesn\u2019t seem corrupted by Lord of the Rings or forty years of bog standard RPG supplements. It channels a kind of wonder of just a slightly off-kilter world that I typically associate with good OD&D works. I understand that \u201cslightly off-kilter\u201d and \u201cwisdom tooth ghost\u201d don\u2019t go together, but there are many, many examples of other encounters that are not, perhaps, so out there. \u201cThere is a barred-off chamber to the south, a large metal door to the north with a button beside it, and a ring tied to a string hangs upside down from the floor as if effected by reverse gravity.\u201d A ring, hanging upside down from the floor, tied to a string, floating there? That\u2019s OD&D as all fuck. Of course, it then goes on \u201cif a person actually wears it, their fingernail will tear off and begin attacking as an HD1 AC10 creature whilst screaming about all the horrible things its owner has done to it. If they are wearing a glove, there will be muffled screaming and wriggling after a brief painful sensation.\u201d So, you know \u2026 but the ring floating on a string? Great! Well, both parts are great, just in different ways. There\u2019s a tap, a metal tap! You know, like a sap tap? I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve EVER seen a tree tap in an adventure, ever. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I should touch on the format a little. We get a short little intro to each room of a sentence or two. Not quite read-aloud, but enough for the DM to riff from. A kind of introduction to the room. A word or two may be bolded and then those will get their paragraphs below. Maybe, four more sentences per? It\u2019s an effective text based format, not really using bullets or whitespace, but just leveraging bolding and terse written sections, short enough to take in quickly and run from while you digest more of the room. There is an effort to separate rooms by lines between the keys, but I don\u2019t think this works super well. The room numbers are not bolded \u2026 maybe that would help? It\u2019s a minor point but its there. It causes a kind of \u201ceyes glazed over\u201d effect.I would not that the monsters get descriptions that ARE effective. Too many times the appendix has the monster and it\u2019s all ecology bullshit. No. The DM doesn\u2019t need the winter feeding habits of hte creature when the party encounters them in summer. The DM needs the monster description. What the party is experiencing RIGHT. NOW. \u201c2 x BEAR BALL – A bear that ate the spherical fruit<\/p>\n\n\n\n
and became a ball. Moves by bouncing around, and bites with its teeth\u201d or \u201c3 x OVERBITER Disfigured humanoid head with no lower jaw, dripping blood. Its teeth are crooked and rotten. The flesh is pale\u201d or  even \u201cLAPIS LAZULI ALLIGATOR – It’s a big-ass alligator made from lapis lazuli, do you really need a description?!?\u201d Decent description. Like the rooms it\u2019s not overly evocative but it gets the job done, like a well-written 70\u2019s description. We even get a unique attack in the bouncing bear. More than a retheming, the new monster gets a new way to attack. One might argue that this IS the purpose of a new monster. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s all very efficient. It\u2019s all very effective. \u201cPit – (20′ deep. At the bottom are 3 animal-hide sleeping rolls. These are mimics that’ll attack anyone who enters the pit. They do not climb the ladder.)\u201d DUH! Sleeping rolls in the bottom of a pit?! Of course it\u2019s a set up! Animal hides? You mean, like, maybe an animal? DUH! This is the very height of design, telegraphing EXACTLY what is going to happen to the players and then STILL having it be a surprise.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is, perhaps, the most put together funhouse dungeon I\u2019ve seen. It has all of the elements, from new monsters to out of place creatures to bizarre areas. But it all has an internal logic. It\u2019s all got just a bit of a twist on it so it FEELS fresh. The floating ring. The pit. Even the fucking headsman. Why didn\u2019t you think of this? It\u2019s perhaps a little too efficient, needing just a few more words here and there to bring things more to life, but it\u2019s not overly bad in this area and some of the descriptions are more than decent: \u201cIn the center are 3 curved white pillars that meet at the top, forming a triple-archway. Their stone glows with purple and blue veins. From this triple-arch there comes a dribble of motes of light that fall into a shallow pool of shimmering light. Clumps of moss hang from the walls on all sides of the room.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ultimately, you gonna give or die by the funhouse label on this one. And, because you should always be slamming shit, this IS the adventure you want to play, in D&D, if you are somehow attracted to the Mork Borg crowd. This is exactly what they all want to be doing, with their creativity at least. Rater than another eight room minimal mork borg dungeon with one concept that is ultimately a hollow experience surrounded by too much emphasis on production, try a black text on a white background adventure that really has some depth to it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
For everyone else? Well, there\u2019s that secret. That You Will NOT be sharing in public. At least not here. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is $5 at DriveThru. The preview is the first six pages, which includes the map and two pages of keys, five rooms in total. This gets you solidly in to The Maw and you should be able from that to figure out if this is right for you, both in tone and in design.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/en\/product\/284503\/descent-into-madness-first-steps?1892600<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Nickolas Z BrownFive CataclysmsOSRLevels: “Low to Mid” Deep within the Sunken Fort is a stairway. This stairway leads into an unknowable and chaotic underworld: the Descent into Madness. Alien creatures, chaotic magic, formless order and untold treasures await the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9954,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,15,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9957","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-level-3","category-no-regerts","category-reviews"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/first.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9957","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=9957"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9957\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9958,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9957\/revisions\/9958"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9954"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}