![]() A dungeon by Matt Wuertzer, level 2. Written for Shadowdark Cozy time. Trifolds, heartbreakers, and art pieces are all well and good, but the bread and butter of Crapshoot Monday is found in slightly over-formatted black-and-white three-pagers, where some brave hopeful uses traditional key writing to outline eight rooms filled with a few traps, a few enemies, and geographical feature or two, and at least one new semi-magical item. That’s this, and I couldn’t be more comfortable. In The Hidden Shrine of the Salmon-Men, we have an ancient shrine to a minor river deity, now inhabited by murlocks. Fishing has been bad lately apparently and local fishermen are offering a pittance to investigate the little shrine. Turns out the little dungeonlet has a mutant-making magical effect that has made all these murlocks, excuse me, “salmon-men”, and the fix is in a different room with a little fish icon. There is a pleasing mixture of these aforementioned mutants, prisoners from a previous adventuring party, and various other dungeon denizens that make naturalistic sense. This isn’t rocket surgery…go up into the hills, bonk the mutants, mess with the magic, and wander away with thematic loot. If it wasn’t clear from above, what I liked on this one is quite a lot. There are multiple hidden/hard-to-reach caches of treasure that reward investigation, with the best stuff hidden while the obvious loot is dry. NPC interaction is high, with a table of names that please my dad-joke soul (“Gillbert, Perchival, Finley, etc”) implying that the players will talk to the fishmen as well as the prisoners. A lot of the encounters (gelatinous cubes, hungry bear) have telegraphing and possible solutions are suggested by the setup. The unique treasure of Dwarven Firewater (can heal, but might impair badly), water-walking spear, and Salmon-Scale Mail (has powers but also cursed to only eat seafood) are decent and memorable. Cute map is pretty linear but that’s no sin for something this size, good line work. Really, not much of what can be improved is found here beyond the main room’s puzzle being pretty hard to understand and rather aggressively punishing (CON save or take 1d4 CON damage, if reduced to zero turn into a fishman). Couple with it being during the climactic battle with a big ol’ mass of fishmen, some telegraphing wouldn’t go amiss. Might be nicer to have something about the unnamed river deity too, ideally fitting with the puzzle(s). The teeny random encounter table (d4) is a little random, could be improved. Anything else improving it would be “learn how to make a proper dungeon with at least a couple dozen rooms”, and that’s not going to happen in 2024. There’s a best use case that’s obvious here, and that’s simply making this little adventure site into something that’s on your own campaign map and, mutatis mutandis, that’s precisely what I’m going to be doing. Swiping the bits is pretty profitable too, just a handy little 3-pager entirely. Final Rating? ***/***** just not big enough for a higher rating. This is a fine little product and made me check to see if the writer made anything else, take that as an endorsement.
0 Comments
![]() A dungeon by Jonathan Dersch, levels higher than 1 probably. Written for Knave Huh, I didn’t know that was even possible. People write dungeons…for Knave? I don’t hate the little rules-light system, but it’s more admirable to me as a thought experiment and as a con game than as something to be regularly played at home. It’s so light that there’s no problem at all adapting any number of modules to its simulacrum-of-game-playing state. At least it’s a nove…oh, never mind, it’s sand-buried library #4,825. I’d say it’s a classic pulp trope, but with kids these days its probably more that one episode of Avatar: The Last Airbender left a big impression. What we’ve got here is a classic trifold adventure, this time with a blessed lack of artsy pretense because it’s using its two-page limit to cover fifteen rooms. Terse writing is the name of the game, but it’s well-laid-out and decently evocative at times. You know the plot, I know the plot, everyone knows the plot. There’s a dude who wants the PCs to get an evil book from a lost library. The lost library was buried in the sands and has man-faced scorpions, elemental mummies, and a sealed efreet plus some genuinely nifty tomes of messing-with-elements scattered around. There’s some rumors, a couple mild riddles, a general system of librarians’ special coins being used to unlock things…okay, it’s not a novel setting, but there’s some very solid adventuring to be done here. Eschew reviewer ennui. Honestly topping the list of what I liked are the Knave-specific mechanics, things like librarian robes holding extra tomes, the magic tomes that suck in nearby [element] to be explosively released upon reopening (guy definitely was influenced by The Last Airbender), special glasses that boost spellcasting, and a dust cover that lets a tome be used twice a day. All very Knave, and taking advantage of what I think was the unique bit of design of the system, the spellcasting system. Beyond that, I liked the riddle to solve how to open the red stone seals, and I liked the bits of writing that conveyed the mood, “uninhabited except for a long eared goat tied to a post”, that’s good. And hey, the very simple map did have some vertical play, which I’m always glad to see. Very cutely illustrated too. To be frank most of what could be improved is caught in a simple editing pass. There’s a riddle about the wind opening vaults, but those are just more “use a coin” locks in the text. Details about little animal-themes for the individual librarians don’t really have a payoff. The nod at competing motivations between the railroad patron quest and the efreet isn’t really fleshed out. Random bolding makes things a little confusing at times…and if I’m going to start talking about that level of formatting quibble, it’s a pretty decent product. The best use case for this, honestly, would be to run it using Knave at a con (but level up those Knaves because it is not a level 1 adventure). It’s also a more than adequate adventure site to sprinkle onto a sandy !Egyptian hexcrawl. Plundering it for parts also works well enough, the riddles aren’t new but they work in conjunction with the elemental loot very well. Final rating? ***/***** for nothing earth-shattering or hyper-original, but a competently put together little dungeon site. Well done. ![]() A dungeon by Scott Malthouse (but really, Arnold Böcklin), level 1. Written for Heartseeker. You know the theme of Heartseeker joints by now. Take gorgeous old painting, slap a nonsensical node diagram over it, key the diagram, ship. The victim in this case is Arnold Böcklin, specifically his astounding Isle of the Dead, a beautiful work to be sure, one that suggests a dungeon to any D&D GM worth his salt upon first viewing. The seven keys all occupy a single page, as sadly we don’t get the implied crypts in that little cliff area. The painting is powerful, though, anything that has Sigmund Freud, Vladimir Lenin, and Adolf Hitler as its most famous owners has to be impressive. The sketchy story, such as it is, is that a cursed prince is dying and needs three colored chalices from an elf-island (titular isle of said damned), with an uncertain set of rumors painting no comprehensive picture of the place. There’s a very hackneyed set of…puzzles? Set of things that all boil down to “take chalice, deal with consequences. There’s a simple color puzzle, there’s an easy riddle, it’s all very rote. The strangest choice is node 6, which is keyed as “Moaning Forest” and described as “a deep forest”, in the painting is clearly just like fourteen trees. This place has a fetch quest for a map to it, a six-entry random-encounter table, and multiple rumors…just no. Obviously what I liked about this thing is the Böcklin painting, I’ve considered writing a one-shot set in the area myself. Simple as they were, I found the puzzle and the riddle cute…I run for kids often enough that both are perfectly calibrated to be brief head-scratchers for the 9-to-11-year-olds at the Saturday afternoon table. One of the random encounters, and pig-handled sword that curses the toucher to turn into a pig for a while, is fun. It’s getting trite at this point, but what can be improved is get us solid geography to explore. Having more coherence in encounters would also help a lot too…there’s a squid that attacks your boat, then a locust swarm, then ghoul-bats, then a possible witch, it’s all over the place, very isolated from any single mood or theme. The scope and scale of the site wouldn’t be terrible as a one-pager, but everything here being so abstracted was the wrong call, improve on the concept by allowing the players to walk 1” by 1” on a gridded square. Heck, if you’re feeling frisky even a little hex grid would be okay, but Dyson map this sucker. All this makes the best use case just “swipe the couple good ideas to use in a different context. With children players.” Running this as a one-shot seems like it’d be a weird and alienating experience, and not in a good way. Final Rating? */***** is all I can offer, which is very sad considering the painting. You know what? If anyone wants to Wavestone Keep this sucker, I’ll review your adventure. If it’s particularly great, I’ll even offer proofreading, editing, and/or map sketching services if you want to publish it. Call it a contest, but it’s ongoing for as long as it takes me to get bored. The two rules:
![]() Fairytale adventure by Chance Duninack, levels 1-3. Written for B/X or something in the family. I have been in the habit of dumpster diving for reviews, blindly groping amidst the muck of itch.io for the occasional gem. While there’s a lot of dreck, this also feels like a pretty fair sampling method for “average” adventures. There’s a rich-get-richer aspect to reviewing suggested adventures and old TSR modules, which not only stops the rare anonymous gem from getting noticed, but it also means we all hear just the 4,286th review of Keep on the Borderland and I’m not sure the value add there (capsule review: B2 is good). Still, I’m curious, at times, to look at “popular” modules, perhaps not the very highest of the high, but things hailed far and wide certainly, possessing what the kids call “hype”. The Black Wyrm of Brandonsford is one such module, Adamantine Bestseller on DriveThruRPG, hailed as Best by Bryce Lynch at Tenfootpole and by Ben Milton at Questing Beast. I’m a big advocate of dragons, black dragons in particular, so why not check out Black Wyrm and see what passes for high quality in this joint? First off, what is the audience for this? Well, I’d argue there’s an ostensible audience, and an actual audience, but we’ll start by taking this at face value…as level 1-3 adventure set in a simple village in the enchanted wilderness, this is a classic starter module, designed to take a wide-eyed young Dungeon Master and his three-to-five fresh-faced friends on a fairytale adventure with their brand-new just-rolled OSE characters (Human fighter, human cleric, human thief, token elf, token dwarf) on a magical romp that hits every expected high point. There’s a witch in the woods, requisite bandits, nuisance goblins, tricky fairies, a mean/stupid giant, a greedy dwarf mine, an undead-containing barrow, and of course a nicely evil dragon. We laugh, we cry, we lose the elf to a random encounter and roll a magic-user…all is right with the world. May I now have my vast profits please (just enough $$$ to be mildly annoying on the taxes and to pay for at least one unwise hobby purchase). Lest we accuse the module of the dire sin of “being generic”, there is a very distinctive and flavorful voice here. The titular Black Wyrm is a former dwarf, twisted in draconic form by his own greed after murdering his brothers over a gold cache (coins they discovered while…mining? It doesn’t make sense but it fits the vibe). He’s menacing the simple prosperous village of Brandonsford, providing half of the adventuring impetus within the bucolic woodsy adventuring region. The other threat to the region is the goblin incursion, these goblins are firmly on the fae side of the spectrum and under their king Hogboon are seeking to conquer the region. Ineptly. A few little side-quests like capturing a fairy drunkard or romantically setting up a pair of eccentric villagers add spice, but most of the content of the module will be traipsing about the woods looking for ways your first-level party might be able to overcome a wingless but otherwise very formidable dragon. I haven’t mathed it out perfectly but I think parties that “do all the content” can confront the dragon with the fighter and thief at level 3, while the elf and the magic user manage level 2. It’s a solid adventure framework, probably looking at 10-20 hours of play. Format and writing quality are very high, which explains why this product is bobbling high upon a veritable ocean of reviewer drool. Prominent villagers are heavily described, with plenty of useful detail for any long roleplay scenes desired, while every random encounter is richly detailed with “individuals doing things” per Tenfootpole.org standards. Format is clean, with main description not taking up too much time and bullets clearly broken out for details...all written in naturalistic language. With a few notable exceptions, monster stats are given when the monster appears, while magic items (all lovingly unique, of course) appear in the appendix at the end. The two maps (one for the goblin “castle”, one for the two-level barrow) have a charming hand-drawn style, simple and understandable. There’s a trio of cute little illustrations through the booklet that add to the given section’s description. I legitimately have zero complains about the layout of this module, it’s a good-looking product. Eagle-eyed readers may have just spotted a dangerous qualifier a moment ago, though. There are a few occasions where stats are not given, like in the case of a statue that attacks if the players don’t recite the virtues found in a knight…I guess we’re supposed to use an Animated Statue statblock? There’s a magical glowing citrine that the party gets if they help the village alchemist get her groove on that explodes violently if exposed to torchlight…how much damage is that? 1d6? 6d6? “Nuclear bomb”? I can improvise that, you could probably improvise that, our imaginary starry-eyed newbie DM? Probably not. And I get that in a lot of places, this is a level 1-3 module but there are some very dangerous spaces here, with nasty damage spikes…let alone the dragon. Despite the initial impressions, there is a lot of assumed experience needed to properly run this adventure, cultural knowledge imparted by spending a long time not just with TTRPGs, but in the “OSR scene”. This extends even to the module’s overall structure…why should we go to the Barrow of Sir Brandon? Because there’s magic to defeat a dragon there, of course. As nice-looking and well-presented as everything is, the game being played is very simple, dare I say Basic (not /eXpert). The goblin castle is six keys…all very well-written keys, but there is zero exploratory potential. The barrow is barely exploratory, mostly linear, just a couple secret doors (including one found via symmetry, good) and loops, which is fine, but there’s also some confusion about what’s going on in a “barrow”, with one parlor room filled with stuffed chairs. Very normal to have Lazy Boy loungers 30ft from the grave of a saint. It’s whimsical, but not deep. Verisimilitude isn’t just a totem, playing in a realistic world with consistent rules gives players freedom to think outside of the module’s box based on their own understanding of a world, while this midsummer night’s dream drips with flavor, I don’t know if players running this are going to be looking into making rock-slide traps. Flavor can constrain in ways not entirely obvious, and I think that’ll happen on a playthrough of Black Wyrm of Brandonsford. No playtesters are credited, by the way. So circling back to the question of audience, who is this product actually written for? It is very simple, what’s being sold here is nostalgia. This is not a module for the young, this is a module for middle-aged men trying to recapture the feeling of being young. And this is the right choice for a financially successful module. Reviewers can quickly grok the flavor and (being mostly middle-aged men nostalgic for their own youths) transmit enthusiasm for it. People who buy modules to read and imagine playing them love this stuff, it’s a perfect length for that (18 pages). I’ll bet this thing streams on Twitch or Youtube really well too, if I was trying to make a punchy 20-hour actual play podcast season I’d love this. It’s a perfect price point for this audience ($5 pdf, $9 softcover), it’s charmingly marketed…good job. There’s a reason why it’s in the top-200 of all DriveThruRPG sellers of all time, and frankly it deserves it. You should never come to me for advice on how to be a successful adventure module writer. First module I ever wrote is the Fall of Whitecliff, which was also a tenfootpole Best, it is in the top quartile for DTRPG downloads, it does have at least one Youtube actual play…but it’s nothing near Black Wyrm’s level of success. And that’s rightly so, because I wrote the product focused on being played by groups at the table, which is a far smaller audience demo. Nevertheless, it’s those products, even churned out in the dreck mines of itch.io, that interest me in writing and reviewing. That’s why I don’t think I’ll be focusing on the Adamantine Bestsellers or whatever…or at least I wouldn’t label those as “adventure” reviews. There are then three ratings I’ll give The Black Wyrm of Brandonsford: As a read? *****, delightful read, evokes a wonderful mood. As an “Old School experience”? *****, you and your friends will scratch your greying beards with joy. As a straight adventure? ***, it’s fine, you’ll have fun. ![]() A regional…adventure? by Giuliano Roverato, levelless. Written for an ephemeral system running on the whimsy of a tiny orphan child. Trifold time, once again. Now we have not only an author listed, but also some poor individual is being blamed for layout…which is pretty wonky. This little regional thingy is inspired by the lovely cover art into making an…adventure(?) with a vaguely Japanese flavor, touching everything “East Asian” you’d expect for someone with the cultural and historical understanding of a 1968 Walt Disney educational short. The formatting choices go beyond artsy into just plain “puzzling”, and I’m reasonably sure that the “Tample” is supposed to be a “temple”. A lot of misallocated effort. This may shock you, but the plot of this thing is that there’s a province, and it’s becoming frozen. Hard to determine why, it’s never made explicit in the text, although there’s a vague intimation that it might be stemming from the neck of a shriveled corpse against a tree. No idea. There’s a few random encounters to be rolled three times every two days, frostbite rules exist to severely punish the players for taking any amount of time, and beyond that everyone is bumbling around getting cold and interacting with pitiful figures like a trapped frozen carp with a human face, plague-ridden bandits, and a sword saint with his Rainbow Sword, which is a sword that can generate rainbows of course. Everything is very random, and after one week the last inhabitants of the province are supposed to be gone. Enjoy the eternal winter apocalypse, players (actually, this is only ever a one-shot, at the very best). With the shockingly vast amount of random noodles being thrown at the wall, surely some of what I liked has stuck? Only one noodle looks even vaguely appetizing, alas, the village does have “the Purple Warrior”, a blind old veteran NPC with a broken sword who’s willing to come along as the world’s worst tagalong because he’s about to die but he doesn’t want to die here. That’s a solid NPC right there. Beyond that, what can be improved most of all would probably be rewriting all the interactions for a reader who’s not occupying the same skull as the author. There are a bunch of encounters written here with some very strong flavor, but it’s all very tonally at odds from section to section. First, you’re dealing with a magically enchanted immortal white cat who curses you, then you’re at the emperor’s summer home fighting a giant cricket, then you’re trying to evict a troop of monkeys who possess a single rifle. The other improvement is to TELL US WHAT IS GOING ON WITH THE UNNATURAL COLD…there doesn’t even have to be a planned resolution, but as it is the mystery has no solution, you’re just all helpless in the face of a magical curse that will destroy “the whole country” in one year, and then maybe the whole word? Railroads are rightly panned but the strictest rails in the universe are preferable to a formless soup of dreamlike vagaries like this. Structure is required. I guess that makes the best use case for this thing to just pull out encounters but the encounters are all so oddball, while also being so boring and low-interaction, that there’s not even a lot of value in that. Good luck running this whole thing as a standalone adventure, and heaven help you if you try to fit a province with an imperial summer home, anthropomorphic carp, and rifling-toting monkeys into your ongoing campaign world. Final Rating? */***** as novelty for novelty’s sake is a fool’s errand. |
AuthorWeblog of Ben Gibson, the main writer and publisher of Coldlight Press. Archives
June 2024
Categories
All
|