![]() 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:
1 Comment
Jacob72
6/11/2024 03:11:07 pm
When I see that painting, I'm not familiar with it at all, I thought of the video game Bad North. A bleak and difficult tactical wargame that procedurally generated islands as your battlefield.
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AuthorWeblog of Ben Gibson, the main writer and publisher of Coldlight Press. Archives
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