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.

Stirring the Hornet’s Nest at Het Thamsya is a 26 page module for Cairn, written, laid out and illustrated by Munkao. It concerns a temple full of robots that is suffering a wasp infestation. It’s a module with a bit of pressure behind it: To my knowledge it’s the first thing published by Centaur Games since Zedeck Siew and Munkao parted ways, and the first module entirely produced by Munkao.

We’ll start with art and layout: We know Munkao is one of the best artists in the business, and his art here is no different. However, in a surprise twist, his art seems an afterthought in this, largely because of the more traditional 2-column layout. This layout feels pretty inconsistent, though: Switching to different column widths and to full page width without warning or apparent reason. This both impacts the reception of the excellent art and makes the module difficult to follow. Typography is simple, but leading and paragraph spacing are tight to the point of being challenging to read. I don’t understand the design intent in the layout, really: If it had given itself more space, it would have been more legible, better looking and easier to absorb. As a black and white zine, the difference between 28 and 36 pages would have been negligible, but there’s no sign of a print run on the itch page, so I’m not sure why keeping the page count to a minimum was a design goal. However, on further examination, it’s not black and white: There is a little colour, again with no real thought as to the placement. It could’ve been used for highlighting, sidebars, but instead is used so intermittently where colour does appear it looks like a mistake (and isn’t colourblind friendly). The layout doesn’t complement either the text or the art, and comes across as quite amateurish in a way that nothing else by Centaur Games has. It goes a long way, I think, to show that layout decisions truly impact the reception of the rest of the text.

What we have here is a 24 room dungeon, with very little else. A true drop-in dungeon. I like that simplicity, and I love a dungeon that I can just drop into an ongoing campaign. I’ve got to be frank, though, the 4 introductory pages read like someone vomited them onto the page, with no clear rhyme or reason, the automatons are named such that they feel like something my daughter pits me against when she runs Mausritter (“it’s a roomba automaton…a Rhoomton!”). There are neat ideas such as how to subvert robot orders here, but are presented in a way that’s hard to grasp. I think that, if I spent some time eking out these robot rules, they’d be an excellent tool for solving challenges in the hands of the right party. But as is, this feels like “cool idea, maybe I’ll adapt it and use it later”, rather than “cool! I wanna run this!”.

The map is both simple and the design choices make it hard to grasp. These dotted line labels — honestly confusing to me, and it feels like simple map notation could have sufficed. The dungeon itself is written with no apparent thought given to information order — in one room, the exits are last, in another, no exits at all are given. Some have treasure last, some, the treasure is first. The writing itself is mainly workmanlike, presenting a traditional, actuarial perspective on dungeon design that’s perfectly serviceable, with occasional notable flourishes that make me grin: The random encounter featuring a swallow, the dagger made from ever-molten rocks, “honeycomb cleopatra couch”. But more come across as uninspired: The imprisoned robot with accompanying documentation explaining that it is broken, that says “No pillton, killton!” for example. There are plenty of characters, and two factions of wasps (plus some other potential factions), which is nice and primes well for interesting play, but the characters aren’t given a lot of desires to bounce off or to assist you play or politic with, sadly. I’d need to put in some work. My overwhelming impression of this module, is that it’s full of exactly what I’d envision if asked to write a module about “a robot monastery infested by wasps”, and little else. It’s a first draft. Then you need to go back, review it, and lean into what makes it exciting, strong and unique.

And that’s the sin of Stirring the Hornet’s Nest at Het Thamsya — it lacks punch. It lacks imagination. Imagination, truly, is why I’m running modules and not making them up myself. If a module doesn’t provide me with sufficient conceptual density, with plenty of ideas that I wouldn’t have managed to come up with myself, why am I reading it, let alone running it? There’s just not much here, when push comes to shove, to draw from.

In terms of a module I would bring to the table? There’s not much to offer in Stirring the Hornet’s Nest at Het Thamsya I wouldn’t look for elsewhere. The key thing that this module has that I’m not aware of an equivalent elsewhere, is the automatons. They’re pretty cool. If that’s something you’re looking for, and you’re not concerned about putting in some work, this module is for you. It’s cheap for the amount of art in it. You could easily throw this into your campaign if you were looking for things to complement it. But for me: This isn’t going to hit my table any time soon,

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