Bathtub Reviews are an excuse for me to read modules a little more closely. I’m doing them to critique modules from the perspective of my own table and to learn for my own module design. They’re stream of consciousness and unedited critiques. I’m writing them on my phone in the bath.

A Rasp of Sand is a 76-page module by Dave Cox written for Knave 1st Edition. It stretches the meaning of module — this is an entire campaign, it spans generations, and it modifies a lot of Knave’s rules. You pay ongoing generations of a family, who are sent into a ritual ocean-themed dungeon to seek their destinies and whose children return to do the same.

The conceit of a Rasp of Sand is that it is “Rogue-lite” dungeon crawl, which each character delves only once (and dies or retires) and the dungeon is randomly generated, but you carry equipment and information over between delves. It does this by generating families rather than individual characters, who pass tales and equipment and skills down to the next generation. One page is spent explaining this, which is perfect.

Creating your family fills seven pages. Creating your heir and the rules for inheritance cover the next eight. There’s two pages of exploration rules, necessary to explain the structure and randomisation of the dungeon. There are a lot of rules here, in addition to the basic Knave ruleset (admittedly only 4 pages or so if I recall), but it all works together to turn what follows into a near-infinite self-perpetuating adventure.

The locations themselves are 2–4 to a page, with descriptions ranging from too much (10 sentences) to perfect (2–3 sentences), generally functionally written with some flavourful flourishes (“There’s sticky egg piles everywhere. Oh gods, they are breeding in here! It’s awful I can’t describe it.”). I’d rather more of the latter, but it works well enough.

The final boss gets 2 pages, situations get 4 pages, there are 12 pages of unique monsters, and 9 pages of loot (including blessings and unique items). Magic takes 3 pages and finally there is a page of how to map this random dungeon. The writing in these is similar: Good ideas, based around the oceanic theme, unique enough to not be a waste of time, but functionally written. Overall, a Rasp of Sand is unique in both inhabitants, location and world, but is written in a dry style that doesn’t luxuriate in it.

Layout is stellar, as is the art by Jake Morrison. Minimalist, use if light rather than bolded titling complements the colours and art, placement of headings is consistent, there is a consistent two column layout that is very comfortable for most of the book. The readability drops when it transitions to single column layout for pages at a time (for rules and for treasure, for example), but usability does not.

I ran a campaign of a Rasp of Sand a few years ago, and was impressed at the time by its usability. It is a very dangerous dungeon, with high heir turnover and to be expected, and so mileage at the table will vary, as will tolerance for a cautious playstyle which is rewarded. But, it is an excellent perpetual dungeon crawl, that outlasts it’s apparent size significantly due to its random nature. It may have only 73 rooms (compared to more mega mega dungeons) but they get well used and change contexts considerably. The bigger negative is that you need to lean heavily into generational knowledge both as GM and player, because otherwise faction play becomes challenging, which is one of the bigger pleasures and strategies in a dangerous megadungeon.

If you’re looking for an all-in-one dungeon delve that you can play consistently with minimal prep, a Rasp of Sand is for you. Just keep in mind that you need a table that is happy with high lethality, cautious play (if they want to progress), and that aren’t adverse to an expectation of not playing the same characters necessarily for the entire campaign.

26th October, 2023

Idle Cartulary