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.

Sanctimonious Slimes vs Expired Epicures is a 25 page module for Errant by Nick LS Whelan. It’s fully illustrated by Morriebird, Samantha Miller and the author. It’s almost exclusively dungeon crawl with a strong focus on faction relationships. It consists a history, a faction summary, the 30 room dungeon, a 1-page bestiary, a few pages of random tables, and two testaments, which are religions for Errant’s version of clerics.

The focus and restraint this module shows is remarkable, almost entirely on the dungeon, with outside concerns only mentioned insofar as they feature the dungeon. The dungeon itself is concisely keyed with a subtle humour that fits well with the existing Errant product line. It uses a key system akin to Miranda Elkins’ Nightwick Abbey and the one I am using in Curse of Mizzling Grove, which is one I’m a big fan of as one of the stronger systems for communicating information clearly. And when I say concise, I mean it: It’s single column, minimal margin layout, with spot sketches only, with 4 to 6 rooms to a page, making it one of the denser keys I’ve read lately.

The fear with so dense keys is a loss of evocative writing, but while the style is very brief, it succeeds in remaining evocative in the few sentences provided. I must pause here to mention that Nick edited my own upcoming Bridewell, which also leans into dense evocative prose, and in my opinion SsvEE is a triumph here. Nick once said he didn’t have a way with words, and I disagree. There is something lost in the absence of more flowing, effusive writing like that of Gus L or Ben Laurence, but plenty gained in usability in my opinion. This is a very usable book in terms of the key.

Sadly, a little of that usability is lost in encounter placement and the pages of tables in the back. Suddenly, I’m flicking to and fro to find the random encounter table or the unique hazard roll (both roughly 2/3rds of the way through the book), or for the list of dungeon conflicts. These conflicts — which are really just 12 additional random encounters — are all more interesting than the core encounters, in that they display the factions interacting. They don’t come straight after the random encounter tables, but 4 pages later, bookended by other random tables that detail the effects of the seeds you may find, help you roleplay religious snakes, and things that taken on the surface. As they aren’t clearly signalled in the hazard or encounter rolls, I suspect I’d forget to use them. A cue would be nice. Moving these to the inside covers of the book — where the overworld map and testaments are currently — or the centre spread at least for the print edition— would make the module easier to run without having to xerox odd pages for reference.

The little consideration the module gives to the surrounding world renders the above-ground factions a little odd and out of place. It definitely feels assumed you’ll drop the villagers, snake cultists and the Church into whatever village is in your own campaign to plant the dungeon there, but their presence in the dungeon itself is negligible, as is the space spent developing them. It might have been better to spend space on providing hooks to encourage exploring the dungeon, or perhaps a brief village key a la A Wizard. It’s a little too much personality for an existing village, and not enough crunch to create its own. Even two or three villagers would do, I think, to make it runnable — and these exist, in the table in the back, just not quite accessible enough. The book opens with a map of the overworld, which is all the more jarring given the people in it only appear in a random table. In trying to walk the tightrope between efficient and elegant world-building and over-reaching and micromanaging design, I fear for me this fails to make the landing.

The factions in the dungeon, however are unique and vibrant, with skeletal hedonists, intelligent evangelist snakes and (different, opposing) religious oozes all fighting for space in a too-small territory. I wouldn’t have come up with this set up in a lifetime, and that’s exactly what I’m buying modules for, and these strong faction themes make the random encounters and conflicts fairly iconic off the bat. This would be a memorable dungeon to run.

Overall there’s a focus on simplicity here, that is both a strength and a weakness. The simple encounter tables, the concentration on the dungeon, and the simplified keys, all serve a singularly focused module, which really sings and is where the writing is as it’s best. The auxiliary content to that is where the module feels it needs to spend either more time, or less, but it doesn’t detract from the core of the module, which is an excellently written, faction-focused dungeon crawl in concise words with a particular set up that I’d never come up with myself.

The core module, in my opinion, is absolutely well worth bringing to the table, if your table likes the kind of weird juxtapositions present in the core factions. If they’re likely to think they’re absurd rather than fun — well firstly you’re playing a game about elves, why take yourself so seriously — but it’s probably not going to be to their liking. But we have a very well put together, simple and enjoyable module here, well worth dropping into your campaign, if it’s compatible with Sanctimonious Slimes and Expired Epicures, at least. Well worth the offensively low price of $8, in my opinion.

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