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.

These are two brief kickstarter stretch goals for Eco Mofos, and Into the Odd based post apocalyptic ecopunk game. To Put Away A Sword is a module by Zedeck Siew, and Into the Antlion’s Den is a module by Samantha Leigh, both with art by Daniel Locke. One is 12 pages, and the other 8, which is why I’m reviewing them as a double feature.

Into the Antlion’s Den is a 9 hex hexcrawl, where the goal is the library and antlion’s den about 4 hexes distant from the starting town. I like this familiar structure, and it starts strong, by identifying that the hardest part is accessing the antlion’s pit, and listing the ways to do so, as well as hooks for tight framing. Leigh’s writing is immediately striking: “…wind-swept desert of pulverized metal that buries an oldworld city set in a deep canyon. A few crumbling buildings pierce above the scrap-sand, shimmering in the heat.” This carries on through the Random Encounters and the hex descriptions: “Sailing stones made of compacted scrap cubes speed through the desert”.

I really like the hex descriptions. They’re not bite-sized, varying from quarter to a half page, but they’re clear, evocative and targeted. The intent is clearly that the referee ad lib most of the encounters, after the style of a Mausritter module, and I don’t hate that approach, it just marks it clearly as not a classic style of play, despite eco mofos styling itself as a dungeon crawler.

The rumours are a little weaker: I want them to drive the players consistently towards adventure, but rumours like “Someone took the last hoverboard from the SkidKid factory” do the opposite. The other weakness in the module is that there’s only one faction here: There’s not a lot going on aside from stumbling about running into admittedly compelling encounters. These encounters would be made more compelling with more tools for interactivity. Any surprises you encounter running this will be entirely of your tables devising, and not reflecting the design, I fear.

But overall, for an 8 page hex crawl, Into the Antlions Den is a pretty stellar offering. It doesn’t have a lot to offer my adult table, but it’s stellar for playing with the kids, with lots of flashy encounters and a straightforward drive. If you’re running for kids who love Kipo or Adventure Time, this is a damned good choice, especially as Eco Mofos is not a long stretch from Mausritter. I noticed after I wrote this that it’s labelled family fun on the cover, so I think it hits the nail on the head.

To Put Away A Sword on the other hand is not labelled family fun. Siew’s approach to writing in brevity is to dial up the poetry and interactivity, which is a bold move. It opens with a table of things you love about town, and the question “Describe what you love. Why would you bleed to keep it safe? The god soldier’s throes threaten it, as they do all of Grove.” The players are then asked to draw the map themselves, based on the description by the elders. This is elegant ritualistic gaming more akin to Sleepaway than the Iron Coral. Innovative stuff from Siew, which is saying something as a fan of his work.

Despite this dialled up poetics — I’ll reframe from quoting every page — there are references to the core rules here, and page references that are appreciated. And the poetics are there in spades. Siew remains the best writer in the hobby in my opinion. At random: “Assembly-robot arms, frozen upright like roach legs.”, “bandits, covered in acid burns, as mean as cornered cats”, “A ball of plasma, three metres in diameter. Ignited to be a death machine’s battery, she has decided to be more.”. You don’t get better than this.

The biggest negative I think is in terms of structure. My sense of space in both the valley and within the Mountain — the giant dying mecha — is a little overwhelmed, or perhaps Siew is just disinterested in the spatial element here. That said, it’s very playable, if only because most locations are limited to 3 paragraphs of text — a pattern so rigid it feels intentional. And, in terms of the space, I think you’re supposed to use your mecha action figure as a dungeon map here — travelling through those limbs as passages. I have to say, though, that the impact of this method is reduced a little through its re-use for the military base Ursus Point.

But again, To Put Away A Sword is a stellar offering for 12 pages of point crawl. Absolute bang for your buck, and you get to see Siew writing sci fi with a post-apocalyptic religious undertone. This one, however is solidly for adults, with themes of violence, body horror, and child soldiers. Not for the light hearted.

Between the two of these, it’s an interesting overview of the approach of Eco Mofos: The game is not adult, but there’s an effort here to produce content that fits a range of audiences. Fascinating stuff, and if Eco Mofos can keep up this two pronged approach, and keep up the module release in pace with the audience (I’ve written before about the bespoke elfgame module problem), we’re in for a post-apocalyptic treat.

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