Written by Peter McDevitt. B/X, For “cautious low-levels” Huge mound in a forest. A notable sage or occultist has uncovered an ancient map showing the location of an ancient temple. Go forth and bring back any interesting scrolls or ritual objects! OR It’s in the hex the PCs just entered. Who can’t resist opening a door in the earth with a dead bird nailed to the front? You’re darned right, module. Screw hooks, there’s a burial mound with a crucified raven in front of the PCs, if the players don’t immediately move to explore that I think the dungeon master is required by law to rip up their character sheets and flip the table. Ideally follow that up with noogies all around. Once the players heed the call to adventure and enter the mythic underworld they’re immediately confronted with a vast echoing chamber, its only feature a looming dark monolith with gleaming amber eyes surrounded by bones. It’s a demon of corruption and disease, of course. What follows, involving gnolls and giant spiders and a few missed opportunities, perhaps won’t fulfill the great promise of that beginning, but holy cow is that an intro. The module is neither mussed nor fussed about format; single-column, Times New Roman, above intro, brief blurb on the setting, then into the keys. Monsters are statted (and hp rolled) when first encountered in the key sequence. It’s a pretty simple area, but the author does a great job sprinkling in little details in the descriptions. The guy alive in the spider’s cave? He’s wily but treacherous. First of all, good show having a prisoner to rescue, but secondly great description, I can run that interaction in my sleep (and he also offers the location of his hideout, hooray hooks). Everything has that little extra umph, like the careful order of battle for the gnolls’ ambush. Not a ton going on but I can clearly run everything that’s on the map from memory now. The map itself is…somewhat anatomical. The mound is largely vertical, which is not exactly the same thing as being 3D, the central shaft of the spiders provides some back-and-forth but the rest of it is pretty simple, just walk downwards bonking gnolls. That still massively improves things from a horizontal dungeon, dangling up and down shafts is objectively exciting. At the beginning there’s going to be a frantic, interesting encounter that points for sure to one of the ways downward, and probably to both paths, the dungeon will flow in a fairly simple circle after that most likely. Very nice initial encounter, at least as outlined…the gnolls wait until that cool spooky monolith has drawn the players forward, then boil out of trapdoors in attack, trying to push the invaders back to the pit trap that leads to the spider-hole below. There’s a morale point for the gnolls breaking and retreating, there’s a reaction of the spider if someone falls into her webs, all very nice. Giant black widows are a very nasty threat so it’s nice she gets thrown as the fail state. And hey, there’s a bone-pile beneath ragged cobwebs, you can’t say that’s not been telegraphed. It’s a small site, but with a spider-victim to rescue, pit traps, trapped chests, layered fights…a lot of good content here. The only thing that’s a little sad are a few missed opportunities. Cutting out of the webs? You fall into the spikes further down the shaft. I’d personally run it with sharp shards of bone down below, and coins among those remains, but sadly, it’s just spikes. The place could use a few more opportunities for loot like that. What’s there is good, hidden or trapped, respectively, plus the monolith’s gleaming eyes being valuable chunks of amber with scorpions trapped inside…now that’s a nice treasure. A lack of magic on the loot ledger is defensible for the low level aimed at, I’d just have a couple other spots for cash money. What I do like is that some of the loot, the aforementioned ritual tablets, are not only fragile and valuable to an occultist, but they also “hint to a second unholy fane deeper in the wilderness”. Now that is a valuable find, like a treasure map with a price tag. Heck yeah. Why on Oerth is this site not already in your game world? It’s a secret ancient shrine in the middle of a forest, of course you can place this somewhere. And you really, really should.
1 Comment
Stooshie & Stramash
2/28/2024 03:26:01 pm
I've been away for a couple of days and haven't read through the recent reviews. This can slot into almost anybody's game, looks fun and your review suggests that it needs a bit of polish to buff it into high class vanilla.
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