A dungeon site by Bear Wizard, no level listed (but dangerous below level 3) Written for “classic editions” (AD&D stats) Adventure Site Entry detected. The author might have mildly missed the page count (three pages for the elevenish rooms), but it’s definitely intended to be a little adventure-in-a-bottle bumped into in the course of wandering the badlands looking for treasure. Does your game’s cosmology include That Which Hungers Below, god of all ghouls? Well it better, sucker, because here’s his temple. A strange artifact here, this module. The “story” is just simply “there’s a ghoul god, this is his temple, go loot it”. A few pieces of genuinely charming art and the fact that the first content page is the bestiary makes me think that this is something artpunkish, with a genuine enthusiasm for creating bits and bobs and sharing them, the best part of the artpunk movement. Map is present but a little bland and only half the rooms are keyed (rest are random rolls) …but there’s still obviously some desire to make a thing actually played. The author missed the memo about needing pretentious unplayability, then, and included stats for his monsters. Its heart is in the right place. I’ll grant what I liked here is a little unmoored from the map, but there’s some creative bits. For example, the “final boss”, a ghoul priest, has a nifty new custom spell (and reskinned Vampiric Touch) and the charming weapon of a staff with a bell on it…every time he bonks someone with his staff, the ringing bell has a chance to summon reinforcements. Neat. Having a room of sarcophagi where the final sarcophagus opens up into a black void that leads to the Ghoul Roads is great. Art is cute (and multiple styles, so I suspect stolen). The odd choice to have a d20 table of encounters for the 6 unkeyed rooms is noted, but the encounters hit more often than they miss, being nice little scenarios. Treasures are rolled from a d12 table, very well and good, but… WHAT CAN BE IMPROVED IS TO GIVE US ACTUAL TREASURE VALUES. Don’t give the DM homework, give us something solid. Don’t worry, we feel very empowered to change things as needed. What could also be improved is the map (drink), a cleanly scanned but very linear affair. The only real meaningful exploratory bit is the one loop, where a secret door (no hint) bypasses a classic “hall of darkness filled with ghosts” main entrance. Despite all the creativity on display, there’s also a lack of specificity (drink) in terms of names and/or personalities. One of the main advantages of using ghouls over other types of undead is that they tend to be sentient, often enjoy talking with their food. Use that. Despite the author’s intent the best use case here is to mine it for ideas. Nothing here is earth-shaking and many variations of things like “a bag of gold teeth” have been written before, but why not give your bad guy a staff with a bell? Playing this as an adventure site is fine, maybe not best use but sure it’s a use case. Final Rating? */***** At least the author was trying but that doesn’t make it worthwhile for most users.
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AuthorWeblog of Ben Gibson, the main writer and publisher of Coldlight Press. Archives
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