Today I hit “publish” on the small module I’ve been playtesting the last few weeks, Hiss!

Hiss is a horror module featuring a doomed village for your diy elfgame. It’s short, dense and flexible, and features simmering tensions that could explode over a short two or three sessions, or could become a mysterious feature of your campaign if you chose to base your adventuring party out of it.

My goal with Hiss was to write a short module (after spending six months just writing Bridewell, and it’s probably not going to release before Christmas), that benefited from a lot of the lessons learnt from Bridewell while presenting it in a more traditional and compact manner. Hiss, therefore, has what I think are excellent maps (although I wish I could have fit text keying onto them), it has incredibly terse description, it has a large and interconnected cast, and it has tools to help the referee connect all the disparate elements together on the fly without more familiarity with the zine other than a read-through (although I’d strongly encourage you take notes as things occur). I write my modules with a strong The Player Is Not An Idiot philosophy: I expect the referee to be able to springboard off the terse descriptions and interconnections to create a fun time. But in exchange, you get something dense. There’s a lot more content here than you’d expect from a 30 page module; our playtests got almost seven hours of play out of five or six locations, and there are thirty in total.

I fully expect some people will bounce right off my terse style and my reliance on the referee’s intelligence, improvisation and skill, but that’s ok. I think if you work with what I’ve given you, you will probably grow as a referee, and if you are already experienced, you’ll find something that leans towards your strengths. That said, all my readers were impressed. Sandro said with this I was “Legitimately creating the lexicon for what I look for in good adventures” and Marcia said “I am blown away by Idle Cartulary’s adventure design!”. I’m pretty proud of it, although it’s a low-key release compared to the scope of the upcoming Bridewell.

If you’re still reluctant, I’ve posted two session reports for Hiss (session 1, and session 2), although it definitely has spoilers in it.

You can buy it here! Community copies are available for those who experience marginalisation or economic instability!

1st September, 2023

Idle Cartulary