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.

Seven Stars of the Unseen is a 24 page module for Cairn by Dan Fawcett. It’s another submission to the A Town, A Forest, A Dungeon Jam that I’m using to highlight excellent hobbyists and up and coming authors. It’s an isekai adventure (for those not into manga think the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe), featuring a search for. mysterious missing woman who was cursed by a dark god.

Layout wise, it’s not hard to follow, but not especially pretty or easy on the eyes. It opens poorly, with messy font choices and spacing, but for the majority of the Art is appropriate public domain, and I really like the look of the maps even though they’re really just point crawls layered over nice public domain art.

I like this module a lot. It is bursting with ideas. It’s lovely to set a Cairn adventure in the real world, or in a folkloric historical France. But it feels as if some of these ideas don’t come together fluently.

The first section, New York City, 2014 is an example. It’s asking me to ask my group to free roleplay what they would have done in New York in 2014, until (I assume, this isn’t in the module but it’s referred to) a chauffeur brings you all to a mysterious book shop (why you?) and a mysterious man whose orders you have to follow (it’s his curse) sends you to 18th century France on a quest. And…I’m not sure why? I don’t feel like this section adds much to the story told (it does add some interesting touches in the form of the solutions the author provides to the inherent problems with an isekai dungeon crawl), and simply having a quest giver grant the quest in 18th century France would be simpler and less clumsy a start to the adventure. The author is clearly attached to the framing device, but even then: “You are a group of friends, and you found your way to a mysterious book store where a mysterious man gave you a mysterious quest and sent you to 18th century France” is what I’d do if I were running this.

One you get to the forestcrawl in France though, boy is this characterful! Random encounters include squirrel merchants and squirrel-hating gnomes. The locations are a bit overwritten for my tastes, although part of that feeling may be attributable to the two column layout being quite dense. For the most part, though, the locations have two factors plus Luc’s encounter, so there’s a reason they’re busy, and it makes for some interesting locations, if not written as evocatively as I’d like, the descriptions feeling a little too boxed text for my tastes.

There are two significant twists on the typical forestcrawl. The memory curse makes for an absolutely fascinating twist on the small number of encounters and locations, as the NPCs that have been interacted with will never remember the previous encounter. I adore this as an influence on encounters, and so could see it being manipulated in a really fun way by the players. Also, the villain stalks, bargains and teases the PCs throughout their time in the forest. Specific prompts and deals are given in different locations, and are optional. This means you could choose to slay the main villain early, or could be on the wrong side by the time the final confrontation in the dungeon comes. Very cool touches.

The dungeon, however, feels a little arbitrary for my tastes. There is no clear indication that swimming in a portal pool will take you to Luc, for example. There is an ogre just hanging out in the dungeon for shelter. There’s a rock fall that needs to be cleared, but I’m not sure the PCs would have any reasons to other than “we haven’t found Luc yet” and even then, there’s no clear signal it’s Luc’s lair. Compared to the varied, complex forest encounters, this is a disappointing climax.

Overall I’m very mixed on Seven Stars of the Unseen. It is an absolutely fascinating idea, that isn’t executed as successfully as I wanted it to be, but despite that, it incorporates a bunch of great ideas and techniques that I’d love to see developed further and incorporated into more modules to add interest and excitement. If you’re interested in a fairytale forestcrawl, it’s well worth running that section over most other forestcrawls I’ve read, I’d just transplant Luc to a different place, and change the opening somewhat. Dan Fawcett is certainly someone to keep an eye out for, if this innovative if flawed module is something to go on, and there are a few principles in the forestcrawl that I’ll eagerly incorporate into my own work. It’s free, so if anything here raises your brow, I’d check it out.

7th December, 2023

Idle Cartulary