Written by Grützi. AD&D, Levels 2-4 One (1) hobbity tavern, lightly orc-infested. Fifty years ago the renowned halfling adventurer Trim Lipply decided to settle down and open a tavern. Build into a small hill near a busy trade route the tavern soon became a mainstay of the local merchant scene. All was well for another two decades, until a fire claimed the building. While his wife and children managed to escape, Trim and much of his treasure was lost in the flames. Long has the tavern sat abandoned in the wilderness, but a few months back a group of orc marauders made the old Inn their lair. Trim’s eldest son Gav meanwhile gathered some trusted friends and ventured forth to reclaim his legacy. Mines of Moria are a dime a dozen. Every tasteful campaign has a Lonely Mountain, ideally with a Mirkwood in the way. Any wizard’s tower is grasping toward Orthanc, while a city under siege must recall Minas Tirith. But what if the dungeon we must delve is…Bag End? It’s a question I’d never thought to ask, but since Grützi submitted Lipply’s Tavern I’m now wondering why ever not. Hobbit-hole crawls are a tragically underutilized niche, but here’s to changing that. The setup is great, old burnt halfling inn filled with treasure and a marauding band of orcs, plus a section filled with giant spiders. The late halfing proprietor’s son is set up outside with halfling buddies, working up the courage to go a’delvin, while a final plot point of a trapped devil, an ancient bargain and curse, and the ghost of the proprietor provides a final twist. The adventure is generally well-written, focusing on usability first but filled with evocative little touches, like the charred entrance still having a chalkboard out front proclaiming “We are open!”. There are a lot of nice bits of writing like that all over the text. The format is a standard two-column, no distasteful bullets present but with plenty of bolding for a highlight. While there’s no random encounter table in the main text of the adventure, but there is a keyword “Ruckus”, highlighting where making a loud noise draws the nearby rooms’ inhabitants in 1d3 rounds. Monsters and treasures aren’t bolded, underlined, or in italics, which is a defensible decision but does slow the speed of parsing somewhat. The organization of history-> current setup-> bestiary-> key is pretty standard, with the notable omission of explicit rumor/hooks table, and the aforementioned lack of random encounter table…because that’s over in the map. All of this is to say that the adventure site might be slightly overstuffed, just a little bit ambitious for the page count. Content is great, but that scope creep is why it had to slop over to the map page. The map itself is great. Color-coded by zone, well-marked for doors, chimneys, windows, and up/down points, it’s information-dense without making it hard to understand the content and flow. And that flow is great, there are a dozen ways into the top level of the inn with varying levels of risk and detection, plus three methods up/down into the cellar. A big chunk of the upper map is webbed, cleanly shown, which means with my players a big chunk of the upper map is a flaming mass of webs and screaming spiders after about ten minutes of interaction, an eventuality (inevitability) which is in fact acknowledged. There are going to be issues running the map with a mapper, the arcing/curved hallways imply that Mr. DM will be drawing the lines. If that’s the worst that can be said for your map, that’s pretty good. Just a mild frowny-face penalty on the extra written content being shuffled to the map page. I can clearly see how this thing runs, and it’s a blast (literally in the web area, of course). The spiders are at détente with the orcs, allowing anyone wearing a red armband into their area, which is a nice reward for diplomacy (interrogation) with the orcs. The halfling’s kid and his band of four halflings (making up a single doubling) are a fun complicating factor, the kid doesn’t want to cut in a group of murderhobos but he’ll be willing to play ball with proper diplomatic finesse. His pops secretly made a deal with a devil who he later trapped in the cellar, unfortunately of course a trapped devil led to madness and the original burning…which the kid knows nothing about. If you get to talk with pop’s ghost then all this comes out, otherwise it’ll be a straightforward crawl, albeit one with lots of clever traps and artfully placed treasure. The treasure is wonderful, a wide mixture of simple coins, hidden neat things (a rot-filled bathtub with a skeleton who has platinum teeth), heavy loot (wine barrels, silk, fine quality pickles, etc), and nice magic items here and there (ring of feather fall in a boot, etc). I am a sucker for ancient cheese as a treasure and it’s great to see Grützi is a fellow man of culture as well. The tavern is loaded, easily a level-up for a group of level 2’s that survive, and still a good pile for level 4’s…and getting all the big stuff out is its own adventure. Again, scope is enormous for the scale. I’d be hard pressed to not find a place to stick Lipply’s Tavern in my game. Retired halfling adventurers should not be difficult to find in any standard fantasy world, and the whole place is getting seeded into my map even now, let me tell you. I’ll be astonished if the players manage to deal with it in a single session, though…even after they set half the place on fire. Again.
3 Comments
Stooshie & Stramash
2/20/2024 12:54:41 pm
This looks great, lovely maps and the wee encounter table is good too. Ten out of ten. An innovative take on 'Orcs in a Hole'.
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GRützi
2/20/2024 01:04:23 pm
"Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort."
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Looks like a great little 'venture; having interacted a bit with Grutzi over the last few months, it would seem reflective of his sense of humor.
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