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.

Megadungeon July continues with Through Ultan’s Door, a series of modules by Ben Laurence detailing a megadungeon set in the world of dream. It’s being released periodically, and is yet to be completed. I mentioned this earlier in the month in my Tomb of a Thousand Doors review, as a periodical megadungeon that appears to be maintaining steam. I’ll be reviewing Issue 1, Issue 2, and Issue 3 parts 1 and 2 — 4 zines, but not the accompanying zines Beneath the Moss Courts by Gus L or Downtime in Zyan, because I’ve bit off more than I suspect I can chew with this review already. Each issue is around 36 pages, with writing and art direction by Ben Laurence, with a number of artists on duty across the zines, including Gus L on maps. They’re written for Labyrinth Lords.

I’ll start off with the most obvious overview: Laurence is a masterful writer, beautiful and to me appears inspired by writers like Harrison, Vance and other midcentury by-the-word authors in his verbose, purple style. He’s up there with Siew as some of the most lyrical authors out there writing in modules right now, however, this style is absolutely not for me, in terms of sheer usability of the text: We have paragraphs of prose, difficult to navigate, with bullets, bolding, and other way to differentiate key points confined to tables and stat blocks almost exclusively (although he compromises a little in later issues). I haven’t run Through Ultan’s Door, but I find it an intimidating prospect, simply due to the approach Laurence takes. Does this approach achieve something? Yes, it evokes such a baroque, dreamlike sense of place that it’s be hard to imagine it written differently. This isn’t relying on my imagination to fill in the gaps, it’s someone describing their dream, with all the negatives and positive aesthetics that suggests.

Layout is consistent across the 4 zines: Single column, generous margins and spacing, minimal embellishments except when separating stat blocks and accompanying chapter headings. Art is striking and dominates the spaces it’s in, but it’s a text heavy series of zines, rather than art heavy. This shifts a little in later issues, but mainly in the sense that the novelistic, simple prose is separated out increasingly with tables and lists rather than en bloc with those tables and lists bookending the zines. The art is very closely curated, and feels pleasingly otherworldly. This novelistic layout also serves to evoke a novelistic tone, supporting the aesthetic produced by the style of writing. It feels like a purposeful choice, and the simplicity of it works, although quality of life choices like page references and mini maps would probably make it a more usable text. Would it betray the dreamlike quality of the prose? My inclination is sadly, yes. Journeys “beyond the veil of sleep” benefit to some degree from the obscurity baked into the design. One design decision that is intelligent but unusual, is the decision include the encounter tables and map as appendices, clearly intended to be printed and sit on the table, rather than be a reference that you flip through incessantly, although encounters are summarised in the print out rather than not included in the primary text. Decisions like this make it feel like a module intended to be played, even if the prose is a challenge for me.

I do think these decisions really clarify the priorities of the text: Firstly a dreamlike aesthetic, secondly the exploration of space itself, thirdly the surprise and dynamism of random encounter driven play, and only lastly the content of the keys itself. Given the evidence of this prioritisation, I can see why Gus L is involved both on art and in supplementary material: This echoes his own priorities in modules like Tomb Robbers of the Crystal Frontier I think.

Issue 1 covers the entryway to the city of Zyan, and the Ruins of the Inquisitor’s Theatre. Immediately, Issue 1 presents itself as a classic dungeon: Unique treasures, empty rooms, space to play and retreat and be surprised. This is not the encounter-per-room intensity of Tomb of A Thousand Doors or the space-neutral point crawl of Gradient Descent. There are details here, meant to communicate information about the world (“old man, naked and withered, pulls a skein of thread from his open mouth with one hand, untangling it with the other”) or how to interact with it (“The parasol, should someone think to open it[…]is a spinning wheel of death.”). It feels as if these phrases are meant to be a looser form of boxed text, intended to be read as much as possible, to communicate the authors vision somehow to the table, a seance of sorts.

The factions are well-detailed, but the truth is I could summarise them in much fewer words and I’d probably have to do so if I were to run them. If I didn’t do this preparation, when I finally get to an encounter with the Guildless, I’d have forgotten that they’ll be hostile to people who are masked, for example. This is a key fact, but buried in the description. There is one of these for each faction — each is, on a study, the last paragraph, but that’s not clearly flagged. The novelistic layout could often do the most salient information better justice; it gets lost in the detail more often than not.

One thing that is clear, though, is that while there are no uninteresting encounters, there is little explanation here. This does add to the dreamlike quality of Zyan, at least for me as a reader, but I fear the lack of clarity — “why are the baths bloody?”— for me would result in a kind of improvisation paralysis, where the lack of information in the presence of a much larger and growing world, would make me hesitant to create my own answers for fear of contradicting something that I don’t remember or hasn’t been written yet. Now, perhaps this is the intent: I’m supposed to make mistakes and contradictions, the dream becoming more dreamlike through the interaction between the Zyan here and the Zyan I imagine. But if this was the case, I think explication of this intent — given there is author-voiced explication already present in the opening pages of Issue 1, albeit less in subsequent issues — should be present. And if it wasn’t, there’s a benefit to simply saying what’s happening to avoid these complications and hesitations. Even if you’re publishing your home megadungeon, it’s valuable to view it as a stranger would.

Issue 2 details the Catacombs of the Fleischguild. While being of a similar nature to Ruins of the Inquisitor’s Theatre, the Catacombs are more complicated: Five factions, and an escalating schedule of tensions. The theme is more cohesive, too: Gore and death, which to me is a departure from the bizarre melange of themes that were the Ruins in issue 1. The keying in Issue 2 is much clearer, but less charming and novelistic. Honestly, on some pages I prefer the clarity, and in other places I wish the intentional obscurity of the first issue was present. I imagine the changes were a result of feedback, or they’d have been present in issue 1; I’m just of the opinion that if you’re releasing your bizarre take on a megadungeon in a world of dreams, leaning hard into your weirdness is an asset, even if the consequences are a little less usability. For me, idealism and creative vision win over pragmatism every time.

The truth is though, irregardless of the improvements on presentation and design in Issue 2, I don’t like Issue 2 as much. A follow up to a classic release is hard, but the gory, body horror subject matter is a turn off for me. In Issue 1, while it was grim and gritty, it was bizarre and dreamlike. This feels more like someone riffing on their visit to an abattoir, or at least on the dreams they had after the visit specifically. I don’t want to visit this dream, myself.

The connections between Issue 2 and Issue 1 are implicit rather than explicit. Issue 3, part 1 makes this explicit, detailing the Sewer River that connects them, as well as introducing more rules for playing in Wishery. Maybe I made an assumption based on the existence of Into the Megadungeon, but I expected a more explicit connection, earlier. What I’m seeing is a series of dungeons instead, joined together by this river. At the end of Part 1, I thought that it foreshadows future additions, but it actually all the listed locations are detailed by the end of Part 2 — just not with locations as large as the first two issues. I must say that I find the map of the river — a dynamic, energetic piece of art certainly — a little difficult to read as a play aid; I’d probably colour it in for clarity. For now, though, we have the mechanism for moving around this megadungeon: Simple rules for travel among the river, and a bunch of encounters in it, with a few secret locations that aren’t likely to have issues of their own in the future.

The encounters should’ve been the most interesting thing here, but they’re not, largely because they don’t gesture to the future or draw new connections between what we’ve already seen. The river is simply a place of its own. A great river connecting many parts of the megadungeon, is promising as exciting connective tissue. Whether because Laurence doesn’t know what is to come, or because he didn’t want to give anything away, I think the lack of connection here will make this issue grow weaker the deeper beneath Zyan we descend, unless retrospectively this encounter table is added to, or, to be honest, the map.

Part 2 of Issue 3 features two major destinations — the Sanitarium of the Benefactors and the Dam of the Lurid Toads —and a few other minor ones. It’s not a bumper issue, though, they’re both just a little shorter, at 9 and 5 locations each. The Sanitarium is a settlement rather than a dungeon, a setting for major social interactions and a potential base in Zyan Below, the first we’ve seen. With 3 factions and a score of NPCs, this is a lovely addition to the dungeon, but the factions have short-term, resolvable goals, rather than long term ambitions, and I think having bigger projects in mind once the initial powderkeg situation is resolved would help to expand the dungeons detail so far into a restockable, dynamic place. There are hints of how you could do this, starting with potential changes to the political situation in Zyan Above, but as usual I come back around to: I can write my own situations, I want this to provide me with better ones with little effort. The Dam of Lurid Toads is a brief dungeon, featuring only one faction. It is a space to explore, but I feel like it would be better if the Lurid Toads also had larger ambitions and were likely to spread beyond their borders. Part 2 also features a brief description of the Churning Gate (to be described in depth in a future issue we’re assured) and a description of the Harbour, which is little more than a hook to visit the Lurid Toads. Honestly, Part 2 is a disappointment in terms of providing megadungeon material, after the first 2 issues and the declaration of a double issue.

In all issues I’ve breezed over the supplementary material, so I’ll come back to it: It’s a mixed bag in my opinion. I’m not sure it’ll feel that way in retrospect, though: I can see them being more meaningful in the context of Zyan Above and future issues. The magic items are all unique, interesting and dynamic, which is a strength, but the assorted rules (diseases, making your world more dream-like, the opium dream) seem haphazard and unclear in their precise positioning in your session. As a referee who has trouble just “dropping in” rules that don’t have a trigger in play, a lot of these feature too-specific triggers or none at all. I’m not sure how to use them. But on the other hand, I want to: They’re flavourful for the fever-dream that Zyan Below is supposed to be, and they gesture towards Zyan the city as a place, as does the latter Downtime in Zyan supplement, that I haven’t read although I’m familiar with the inciting blogposts.

Four zones and three issues in, I’m surprised to find Through Ultan’s Door a point crawl, despite the classic design of its “levels” and my association of Labyrinth Lord with retro stylings —foolish I realise, given the first point crawl that self-styled as such was Slumbering Ursine Dunes, for Labyrinth Lords. I’m not disappointed exactly — it is a structure that makes sense for an episodic release. But I have to say I was expecting something a little more traditional in structure, with the main variations being in content. To the contrary, we have a pointcrawl and not a 10 foot flagstone or ceiling height mention in sight.

I hesitate to judge on content, as I’m by definition reviewing an incomplete text here, so more is to come. But after 4 issues (arguably) worth of content, it doesn’t feel like I have 4 issues worth of megadungeon, but rather a framework to create my own slumberlands. Perhaps the addition of Beneath the Moss Courts and Downtime in Zyan provide some expansion in places I wish there to be? I do want more Zyan, to be sure. The glimpses of Zyan are tempting. I definitely want more megadungeon than is provided, as I want to be able to spend all my time in these depths. I also feel disappointed that the Great Sewer River and its accompaniment in Issue 3 provides such brief and superficial locations compared to Issues 1 and 2. It is faint condemnation to wish for more of a product I bought in the knowledge it was incomplete; it might even be considered praise.

This read of Through Ultan’s Door reveals to me what may be the major pitfall with the periodical release approach to megadungeons — the prohibition on improvisation that accompanies incompleteness. It’s hard to play in a megadungeon where you’re not free to delve as deeply as you wish. The unfulfilled name on the map of the Sewer River are a promise that we’ll see more, but they’re also a challenge: Do we design them ourselves? Do they appear, as in a dream, when they’re released? Is there enough play in these three issues — about 70 locations I estimate — to keep me going until issue 4 or 5? To some degree, the existence of Beneath the Moss Courts suggests Laurence’ awareness of this problem. I’m not entirely sure how to sidestep this issue, aside than to regard this approach as: This is might be intended as a megadungeon, but until it’s all out, it’s best regarded as a series of related dungeons explored over a campaign, I think. Were it a traditional, layer-cake dungeon, this problem would have been less prominent, and to a degree the problem with the megadungeon is that the interconnectedness that characterises them proves a problem when not all the pieces are present, and this is exacerbated when they don’t exist yet.

In addition, Through Ultan’s Door features the problem of “dolorous pariah Archon Golumex” or rather more generally, the fact that’s it not clear where a phrase intended to be an evocative springboard for improvisation on behalf of the referee, or whether it’s a reference to heretofore incompleted text. There’s a lot of this, and to some degree because it’s incomplete, clarity regarding this problem would have been appreciated. In a complete text, I can search or refer to the index on Golumex; then I know I can add lib why he was a pariah, or what it means that the Pickled Prince is an aspect of him. The Golumex problem can be disregarded (“it’s my campaign, I do what I want”), but I find that dismissive of why I would choose to run a megadungeon or a module at all — I’m doing it because I want connections drawn and ideas laid out that I wouldn’t have made myself, fully knowing that as referee I’ll make the text my own.

Through Ultan’s Door is a quandary to me, filling me with mixed feelings. The prose is beautiful, and a pleasure to read, seeming designed to be read aloud at a table by a wizard. I get strong Harrison and Vance vibes from it, and for the right table — one that is attached to Lovecraft’s Dreamlands or Robert Chambers — that would be absolute joy. But, that very strength renders it a challenge to run, particularly with regards to self-reference, and I suspect this problem might compound as you introduce multiple issues, rather than run them separately. As a world living in the author’s head, his home game of many years, this is not an issue: For me it is. In addition, I’m not sure I have the connective tissue to run this as anything but a series of standalones, unless I choose to design my own expansions to the content.

That said, for Dreamlands-like content, there is nothing quite like Through Ultan’s Door in the hobby; in terms of prose, you might choose to read it simply for the pleasure; despite the incompleteness being challenging, you might choose to support it in order for it to be brought to completion. I certainly don’t regret the purchase, but I think it’ll be a few more years and a few more issues before I feel it’s complete enough for me to run.

(Addition: Since writing this review, which I did a little in advance of release as a megadungeon review needs to be written over multiple baths, Ben Laurence the author actually wrote a blog post acknowledging the challenge of incompleteness, and talking about the future of Through Ultan’s Door, which looks to include at least 8-9 more issues at this stage. Check it out here.)

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