Bathtub Reviews are an excuse for me to read modules a little more closely. I’m doing them to critique a wide range of 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.

Electric Mangrove is an 8-page module slash art installation by Andre Novoa, Diarmuid Ó Cáthain, Guilherme Gontijo and the Dead Robotz. I gave the artist, layout designer and “musical collective”(I’m not sure if there are other contributors, or if Dead Robotz is these three performing) equal billing here because this is as much their product as it is the writer’s. In it, wizard-summoned robots replicate infinitely in a mangrove swamp, and only you can stop them!

Elephant in the room: This is a product designed clearly to be printed and listened to. I’m reading it in digital, on my phone. I’m not getting the intended experience, so take my opinions with a grain of salt. It’s a limited edition LP, with music by the Dead Robotz (that you can listen to here). The module itself is an insert for the LP. The shape of the page doesn’t neatly fit the screen of either my phone or my computer, but it would be pleasant in the hand. It feels more like a poster you would have gotten in a video game box in the 90s than a CD insert to be honest.

The music is a kind of jazz-hop fusion with funk vibes, it’s pretty good. I’m not a music critic, but I’d listen to this by itself. It sets a cool atmosphere for a module like this. But there are only 5 tracks that are connected by name to things inside the module itself, though (and that wasn’t clear, I had to close read the module to increase the number from 3). And I can’t say the track “Swimming in the Cockatoo Lagoon” gives me anything to help me run it; in fact the track feels a bit resort-like, and that’s not what the description states.

In the insert, we have three locations and their maps, and four pages of description, along with a cover. The words are brief and the art is beautiful, but honestly I’d appreciate the art being denser, as right now it doesn’t double as usable, playable information. Give the terseness and the limited information, I really want a product like this to lean into using the art as a replacement for the key, rather than just displaying what’s already written. It doesn’t do that, which means it’s really not taking advantage of its format. And realistically, the music should provide a triple threat here.

The pages aren’t really used consistently: Only four of the eight pages are packed with information (be it visual or text) and the other four are sparse or don’t communicate anything. The Incubator location feels half-baked because of this, compared to the other two locations; the Meteorite really could have been part of another place. The Mutations didn’t need a whole page. It’s beautiful and striking, but really confounding informational design in a product that on its face appears to be innovative in this regard.

What writing is here, though, and is evocative and compelling. It’s a gonzo fantasy, so that needs to be your jam, but if it is the vibes are impeccable. If you’re looking for a vibe-laiden pamphlet or poster to riff off as you improvise your way through a bizarro-mangrove, this has it in spades.

Overall, though, I found it disappointing. It has good writing, great art and layout, and I don’t know why I’m surprised, but great music too. Despite that it doesn’t feel well designed as a cohesive whole, or as a module. It feels like a tour through the creator’s weirdest imaginings rather than something into which forethought has been put into how it might generate fun for your table, or how things in it relate to each other.

Could you bring Electric Mangrove to your table and have fun? Yes, if the vibe suited your campaign, or you wanted to run a one-shot. It’s fun, and it’s pretty, and maybe that’s enough, especially if you collect LPs. It’s begging to be given a night to be to listen to the LP and play FKR, under the influence of something mellow and mildly hallucinogenic. But I feel like with a unified vision and collaboration between skilled creatives such as this, it could have been much much more.

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