A dungeon adventure by Vance Atkins, for “Low to Mid-level” For OSE Ah, a nine-page tomb module using a Dyson Logos map, written for OSE? It’s like slipping on a comfy pair of old slippers. I didn’t recognize the author’s name at first, but he’s the author of the excellent Leicester's Ramble blog, which I’ve enjoyed perusing before. So, clearly knows what he’s doing here…it’s a free product, so uses public domain images, has a pretty normal format (single-column intro, double-column for keys), all standard. He uses eight pages to describe a twenty-room dungeon, with some decent enough geography and shape-interest. Twenty rooms is a nice size for one of these products, much more breathing room than the little 5-10 roomers I’m finding more often. The story is nothing new, but it is well told…paladin guy died defeating five necromancers, gets buried with them under a temple, temple is burnt down, now people are raiding the tomb and waking up the dead, oops. A meaty 12-entry rumor table is present to deliver the backstory and most importantly to tell the greedy players that there’s a legendary magic spear in there. The tomb itself has some decently gnarly traps and a variety of enemies, although it’s a little sparsely populated, the biggest threats being a nicely outfitted evil adventuring party and swirling smoke-ghosts who try to reach a different room to turn into a massive horror. Zero random attacking skeletons. Now what I liked here are almost all the individual details. The rival party is characterized, the traps are fine, and the map layout is taken advantage of consistently. The unique magical spear is pretty awesome and not in an obvious place, which is good. The “final bossfight” (not guaranteed to be final, could technically be the first fight) has the potential to be very frantic, but it doesn’t seem badly tuned for levels 3-5. I feel like this would be fun to play. What’s here, I like. Like not love. What can be improved here is “add more”. The biggest issue here is the Standard Tomb Problem of a static environment, which wandering monsters would help. If I were to run this, I’d have to add random encounters of other exploring adventurers, vermin, skeletons, or possibly more giant otters (there’s also giant otters btw). A bit more interconnectivity than the map defaults to and a few more deadly room inhabitants might not be a bad idea either. Finally, treasure in gold feels a little too light for “low to mid-levels” of a B/X derivative, while there’s a lot of magic to be retrieved. To each their own, but rarer magic and more encounters plus gold would do a lot to make this cool tomb really pop. Basically, it comes off as less deep, and less substantial, than it really could be. The sparse nature of this beast does mean that its best use case is probably as a long one-shot, or a site placed on a big hexmap. In fact, I’m going to be putting this in my current West Marches, so I guess that’s an endorsement. With effort you could have a longer usage of this place but that’s giving yourself probably more homework than you should. Final Rating? ***/***** Exactly perfect for its modest ambitions.
2 Comments
Vance
10/18/2023 07:51:57 pm
Thanks for the review! Always appreciate finding my creations played out in the wild. Let me know how it goes...
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Commodore
10/19/2023 08:05:46 am
Will do, it's a fine tomb for a setting that's all about ancient Old Men and their left-behind cairns. The only major change will be those charming otters, I don't have giant otters but there are predatory and aggressive walruses in the zone...
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