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.

Goblin Mail is a 30 page module for Troika! written by Sofia Ramos with art by Evelyn Moreau. “Art” understates Moreau’s impact on this module, though: Her aesthetics absolutely permeate it, and she’s co-credited as designer. In it, you’ll delve into a multidimensional goblin post office in order to retrieve a missing parcel. There is a complementary print copy of the zine somewhere between me and Canada — I’m convinced it’s not coming, and the storefront was blatantly rude to me when I inquired — but I also backed the kickstarter so I’m not waiting any longer to review the digital version.

Layout here is by Luna P, and it works perfectly to complement the dense artwork by Moreau. The text is often crowded out by the imagery in fact. There are only 3 pages by my count without some kind of art on it. This definitely veers towards reducing legibility and obscuring the shape of the text, but also it successfully conjures the aesthetic of an overcrowded post office. And what we lose in legibility, we make up in other choices: The lovely clear headings, the halftone headers and footers, consistent but varied layouts to support the text. It’s a compromise, to be sure, but strongly argued for. Moreau’s art is some of the strongest in the hobby, and it’s as charming and characterful here as ever, and perhaps more so, as Goblin Mail leans into her strengths.

The six patrons described at the outset are some of the best hooks I’ve read recently — each of them is flavourful, ties uniquely into the post office that is to come, and provides a unique window into the implied world. My favourite is the Maester, who sets you straight up for conflict with Grilda the Fortune-teller.

There is a really neat simplification and description of the bureaucracy that you’ll have to wade through to find your parcel. I find this (and other) branching maps a really appealing way to make an opaque bureaucracy feel opaque and frustrating in a fun and limited way, while still making it feasibly runnable and able to be overcome. The real challenge here is overcoming the bureaucracy, and how you choose to do so will dictate how you explore the post office.

From here on in, we’ve got a key for a 12 room dungeon. Each room gets a 2 page spread, typically 1 of them being a random table. These random tables serve the principle “Goblins are unpredictable and chaotic creatures. An entire post office ran by them couldnʼt be any different.”, and each time you enter a room it’ll be a very different experience. “You reenter the store room, but this time…”. This is an exceptionally flavourful way to keep a small dungeon interesting, particularly one that you’re expected to re-traverse regularly. It’s hard in such a small dungeon to not go through every room — I won’t, but some of my favourite moments are “A plaque above the counter reads: “Troublemakers will be dealt with by Burt.” You do NOT want to meet Burt. BURT: SKLL 8/ STAM 12/ INIT 3/ ARMR 1 / Damage as Maul”; and Tobias, who’s a student renting a room here and needs a demon exorcised from his kitchen.

The back of the zine are a bunch of random tables, plus all the stats for the module. Clients, goblin names, packages, senders, receivers, encounters in and out of the post office. These basically serve to fill in the gaps throughout the module — other parcels, other visitors, jazz things up when the existing randomness fails to. I’m often opposed to excessive randomness, but this isn’t an example of this in my opinion. Here, all of these random tables — throughout the book — are absolutely in service of the themes, aesthetics and scope of the post office, and more importantly are solidly grounded in concrete locations and characters. Really well done. The only thing I bounced off is the Labyrinth, basically the extra dimensional world the goblins use to send their mail — not quite enough for me to understand how to use it, in the core zine. But, the Goblin Mail Extras document, gives the PCs a bunch of new potential tasks to complete in the post office, more events to characterise the NPCs, expands the labyrinth to make it a more satisfying and less bewildering addition and even adds a few backgrounds, fixing a few problems and adding a wealth of extras of you’re stuck or in love with your post office.

My big takeaway here is that this is a module for Troika, rather than a setting in the form of a set of backgrounds and tables like Spectacle, Acid Death Fantasy or Fronds of Benevolence. This is more akin to the Big Squirm, and we need more zines like this for Troika in my opinion — things that truly stand on their own and that aren’t just enjoyable thought experiments. Because that’s how I feel about a zine full of backgrounds masquerading as a setting or a module: You just wrote the fun part, and expect me to buy it and do the boring work make. Nah, thanks. I can write the fun part myself, I need the author to do the boring and hard work of filling the gaps. Goblin Mail is good, sturdy, fun work. It don’t feel like I’m getting half the package sold as if it were a whole product — here the bonus content feels like a bonus: Cool! I can play as a mail gobbo!

Overall, this is a fun, zany module, that will fit well into most Troika! campaigns, but which would also serve well as a light-hearted one-shot. It’s an absolute pleasure to read, and while I don’t feel like it has a lot of replayability — once you’ve sorted the bureaucracy your goal is achieved — it feels like an absolute pleasure for at least a session, maybe 2. I would definitely bring this to my table — it’s bringing very strong Barkeep on the Borderlands lighthearted and comedic fun. It hits the comedy, like Barkeep, at the correct note. If that kind of vibe is one that belongs at your table, Goblin Mail is well worth picking up.

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