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.

Tomb of a Thousand Doors is a crowdsourced megadungeon with editing and production duties by Matthew Morris, a stellar art team, and a list of authors so long click through above to read them. It’s 94 pages, and features over 37 individual submissions and I’m assured over 250 rooms. If there ever was as a way to assemble a megadungeon efficiently, this is it. The big question in my mind is, does the grand editorial and production effort take the tonally broad potential of a crowdsourced megadungeon and synthesise it into a cohensive unit?

The first 10 pages or so are the primary attempt to do this. This dungeon-spanning section covers an interesting encounter mechanic, a page full of treasure, 3 major factions, 3 dungeon merchants, 3-4 rival adventuring parties. I love the addition of rival adventuring parties, but I find them difficult to run (unless you’re running many groups in one dungeon), and so I’m disappointed in no guidance in how to do so. It may be it’s intended to only be driven by the encounter mechanic, but if that was the case I’d want more sign of them in the dungeon itself (this never eventuates). The merchants however, are stellar and weird in hand Legends of Zelda style: “pile of maggots disguised as an albino rat in a heavy black cloak. It serves a dark master”, “blind albino mouse who lives inside the carcass of a dead chicken she hollowed out and animated”, but I’d soften them a little for my young table. The having is nice and simple number, providing easy to track interactions. In the context of this dungeon, it’s a good choice. The encounter mechanic is nifty: It’s a hazard die, but instead of an encounter, you roll an alarm die, which increases in size the more risky things you do. Accordingly there are 4 encounter tables according to risk level. Given this is a flat megadungeon — no levels here — this works really well to give the players a sense of how much risk they’re at, and to give them control over that risk by retreating or hunkering down.

Then, we get a summary of all the mini-dungeons, and a keyed map (an earlier map was ostensibly player-facing and unkeyed, but leaves secret doors and rooms in the map, sadly). I don’t adore the “at a glance” section. It summarises each individual contribution, but it doesn’t summarise the story of the megadungeon, which would have gone a long way to making it feel more cohesive. It doesn’t think about what the Sisters and Bat-cultists are doing, despite them featuring in the random encounter tables, for example. I don’t think I’d use this beyond the first read through, because the players will just be wondering through the dungeon, as crawlers are wont to do.

From here, this is a challenging module to review, largely because it has so many sections — more than I can reasonably review and expect anyone to read. Firstly there are 7 loosely associated locations — 2 are surface locations that connect to the megadungeon, one being the headquarters of a faction, 3 are large scale additional areas underground, with a bunch of interesting rules and spaces, that don’t fit neatly into the rest of the megadungeon structure, and 2 are pocket dimensions inside the dungeon. I have no objection to the content of these in particular — I think the Cave of Fongi is a little undercooked for a hex crawl, but the others are truly interesting locations — but because of their isolation from the rest of the dungeon, I don’t think they’re interesting additions, and rather than go there when the dungeon is cleared (which is unlikely to occur), I think they’re a high-effort alternative to simply introducing new factions to the Tomb and restocking to keep the space interesting. I think this is a failure of the crowdsourcing process more than anything else, rather than a failure of the individual locations or authors. It just doesn’t fit, and I can’t see any editor knocking back generously donated quality submissions.

The first location that I find striking is Nordengren’s Five Equipments, a creepy and interesting ocean where the islands are the corpse of a buried cat. This one is evocative and weird. Utopia Fallen is a stark contrast of a romantic burial ground, that I vibe very strongly with, and features Nigel, one of my favourite NPCs in the tomb. Dungeon of the Mad Maus is a not so interesting dungeon full of interesting tools that I’d love to see players play with. Saint Ginger’s Hospital is huge, and I could see its Froglodytes spreading outside of the hospital, despite there being no provision for that. Lair of the Gorgon, Zola is cute and fun and features a really fun boss battle. Overall, we have about a 50% rate of success with minidungeons that are exciting, with most being acceptable. Only a few that are genuinely weak submissions or unlikely to find use. There are very few empty rooms in this megadungeon — makes sense given it’s been crowdsourced — so even those weaker areas will find use as bases, which works just fine in conjunction with the presence of the merchants for a self-contained megadungeon experience.

Of the factions, there are 5 Snake Worshipper areas, but the Mole Combine barely makes an appearance and the Plague Ratz barely make an appearance. They do, however, appear in the alarm table as do a smattering of other factions that aren’t detailed aside from in their dungeons. These ones aren’t given page-references, though, so that’s some homework for you, and they’re not all designed for interactivity. A few of the unique creatures in the random table act as factions as well, but they’re given the Mausritter house amount of explication, and hence don’t have a lot of meat, with the exception of the very charming Dragon Turtle. The Snake Worshippers receive a little extra attention than everyone else — I think they’re intended as primary antagonists — but it wasn’t clear on my read if the shrines and unique snakes are intended to be additional locations or describe the existing locations. Perhaps in play, it will all come together, but the connective tissue isn’t quite there in the text. You’re going to need to bring a lot of your own flair to bring this megadungeon up to an interactive scratch. But also I can see this going very well if you just name everyone, and add the Nemesis system (if anyone still remembers Shadows of Mordor) and apply it to everyone who’s encountered.

A personal peeve: This dungeon incorporates fairy additions to Mausritter. I assume that this is associated with editor Matthew Morris’ Lilliputian rules which are quite popular in the Mausritter community, although it’s explicitly associated with a few other products so it may be those instead. There isn’t much in the way of rules associated with this, but for me, I’m not playing Mausritter to bring what are effectively little humans into my game. Not to my taste. It means I’d change the references to fae runes and the fairy characters here to something else, something I find annoying and contrary to the purpose of this for me. That said, I suspect that the fairies will appeal solidly to my core player pool, which is 4 to 10 year old girls. Your mileage may, obviously, vary.

The information design isn’t immediately obvious to me, but after reading it I understood the choices; there are two areas that really should’ve been at the end in an “associated underground areas” section with the other spaces that are placed at the end, though, in my opinion, which are the pocket dimensions. I think the surface locations should be here too, separated and not numbered with the rest of the dungeon. An incredible touch is that each individual mini dungeon is individually mapped in addition to the larger whole dungeon map — these aren’t cut outs, they have additional details. This touch makes the megadungeon incredibly usable. There’s some intelligent use of art, as well, in such a massive tome, to minimise page-turning and keep almost everything you’d need to a single spread, almost all the time (I don’t want to give you a guarantee, because it’s hard to confirm that in a large book in pdf that I’m reading on my phone in the bath, but it’s close at least). Honestly, this isn’t flashy, but it’s thoughtfully laid out, with some a good number of creative choices that result in a readable, easy to navigate book. No small feat in a complex text like this one. The primary issue is one of information design stemming from the crowdsourced approach: The different areas of the dungeon just aren’t keyed the same. I think, if I were to crowdsource something like this, I’d add a condition that to be eligible it needs to use the Mausritter house style, just because the lack of consistency is jarring, even if I wouldn’t mind running any of these spaces individually based on their own merits.

Tomb of a Thousand Doors is an admirable experiment, in my opinion. Recently, a similar project, Return to Perinthos was attempted as a memorial to Jennell Jaquays, and I’m interested in how it’ll come along. There are few mega dungeons published in a state of completeness; episodic releases are more common but vary between slow but progressing (Through Ultan’s Door) and in development hell (Anomalous Subsurface Environment) — in that context, the crowdfunded model makes sense. The haphazard system model of Return to Perinthos feels a step backwards from the model that Tomb of a Thousand Doors takes, but I think that if it’s to be a truly successful model, more editorial control needs to be incorporated from the outset; a challenging prospect, I think, for a community funded project that to my knowledge was not for profit. A decent number of the pitfalls the Tomb of A Thousand Doors falls into, however, would have been avoided simply with a little more direction in terms of “please choose one of these factions to incorporate” or the freedom of the editorial team to drop more tidbits from one section into another. The Tomb feels more funhouse than cohesive place, because of the lack of this editorial direction.

Now, I run Mausritter for my kids on a regular basis, and so an investment like the print version of The Tomb of a Thousand Doors is appealing to me: It’s easy for the girls to track and stay involved in. This goal — infinite easy to implement Mausritter adventures —colours my perception of this product. I am not a fan of the digital version of the Tomb of a Thousand Doors. The landscape layout translates poorly to a small screen, making it hard to read and impractical to use, even though the layout in and of itself is solid. If you work from a laptop or wider screen, it’ll work just fine. I don’t have the print copy, but I suspect the very weaknesses I see in the digital version would be strengths in the print version. I went to look at the price of the pre-order of the hardcover as soon as I finished reading it.

In terms of content, there is enough in here that’s a little too confronting for kids the age mine are (four and six), but would be just fine in a few years time. I’d either just block off those passages, or substitute another Mausritter dungeon for those locations. But the sheer amount of content here is months of play, even for kids who tend to rush through content like water through rapids. The inconsistent content, formatting and writing won’t impact their enjoyment of the Tomb of a Thousand Doors at all, either: This is a playground for them to play in, and they’ll enjoy it plenty. I’d strongly consider picking this up if you’re playing Mausritter with your kids. If you’re looking for a megadungeon and enjoy playing with adults, I feel like this would benefit from a fair bit of extra work before you go into it, but it’s a megadungeon — that extra work is a whole lot less than writing your own. Overall, there’s plenty to recommend in the Tomb of a Thousand Doors, irregardless of your table, if you don’t mind the caveats.

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