Written by Scott Marcley. AD&D/OSRIC, Levels 3-5 Ettercap lair in a forest. Three oak trees stand at the forest’s verge, overlooking a fork in the narrow footpath. Their leafy boughs are thick with webs, which take the form of a delicate, three-story cottage interwoven among the branches. The cottage features shingled roofs, shuttered windows, flowerboxes, cornices, etc. made entirely of silvery webs. An area at the base of the trees is shrouded in heavy webs, except for a cave-like opening between two trunks. An old hag sits in an open window of the second floor. Only her wrinkled ugly face and long silken silver hair are visible. She beckons travelers to come closer, for her eyes are not what they once were. Aw yeah, take me down to fairy-tale country. Look at that intro. Just lookit. Enchanted old-growth forests, lofty cottages made of non-OSHA-compliant material, and deeply untrustworthy senior citizens…it’s the trifecta. Of course precisely no-one is going to be falling for initial ruse, but a summoned mass of big spiders forces the issue immediately and if (when) the PCs defeat the initial ambush she withdraws behind her curtains shrieking to “go away and leave me be!” Just as exactly nobody is going to be tricked by the beckoning, there are no D&D groups anywhere ever who will not immediately decide to mess with the cottage when told to go away like that. The adventure is written after that banger of an introduction in a much more traditional manner, going from the initial setup to some notes about the location’s web architecture (it’s fireproof because OF COURSE that’s the first thing players will try) to a room-by-room key of the airy four-level “cottage”. Creative flourishes don’t get the in ways of describing a very functional little mini-dungeoncrawl, filled with manful efforts to vary up encounters with “hostile spiders” and “more hostile spiders”. The author pulls a Grützi and shuffles the random encounter table (contents: more spiders) onto the map page, earning one official frowny face of mild disapproval. The map itself is…complicated to evaluate. Looks great, combining the art with a solid legend to make navigating this very 3D environment a breeze. Unfortunately, this very pretty storybook affair is also rather linear in the main, with only one way up on the inside. The scenario of standing off and lobbing arrows at the cottage is considered and shut down, and fair (atter)cop, but I’d have liked to see a bit more addressing the likely scenario of the PCs just trying to climb the outside and slashing their way in…anywhere. Outdoor/open air dungeons always have this tricky element to them, but the map isn’t helping. Very well marked though. Wandering monsters added to the map page, mild ding there. The image of carefully picking our way through a cottage made of thick webs is a very good one, creepy and difficult. Adjoining rooms aren’t visible really, but shadowy creepy spider outlines can be made out to traumatize the section of players for whom Krull was a formative experience. Hacking at the walls is viable but takes time, made worse by tiny Earth-sized spiders repairing the things at the rate of 1hp per round. Meanwhile, defending spiders creepily emerge from walls without damaging them, only costing half their movement speed. Thank goodness there’s no order of battle or the PCs would probably be toast…the final fight is geared to be a very rough pitched battle, multi-story, against Ms. Capp and her minions. Wonderful bossfight to get to the treasures in her bedchamber at the end. Beyond the boss loot hoard at the very end, treasure is on the sparse side. Of course there’s a corpse in a cocoon with loot on his belt pouch, we’re not going to be barbaric and neglect that trope, but beyond that there’s just a tea set in the team room and scroll in the library…except, thank goodness, there are also spider-silk curtains in front of every window and between some of the interior rooms. That’s the good stuff right there, not only worth 50gp per yard but also usable to make non-magical robes or padded armor with extra AC, very nice. Etta Capp’s personal gear and bedchamber fortune are a respectable haul, over 6k in shinies plus good magic items. A custom magic item, Etta’s Fairy Darts, are nice…single-use +1 darts that cast Sleep upon a hit, so a bonus point there. I don’t see many regions where Etta Cap’s Cottage couldn’t be placed. Big ole’ oaks in a spider-infest forest hex, gee, I wonder…frankly, the only objection I could see if less one of location and more one of tone, but if your D&D game doesn’t have room in it for an evil spider-cottage in the spooky woods, that frankly seems more like a you problem.
3 Comments
Thanks for the great review! This spun out (pardon the pun) of a random encounter for one of my 5e campaigns. It play-tested well, and then I reformatted it and ran it again for an OSRIC campaign. The 5e version was a more dynamic fight, while the OSRIC version was decidedly deadlier.
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Commodore
2/24/2024 04:57:51 am
Absolutely man, I really dig the fairytale feel of this one, already have this one in my pocket as a spider witch's lair.
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Stooshie & Stramash
2/25/2024 06:42:13 am
I really like this one, it would fit nicely into my campaign more or less as-is.
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