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.

The Secret Vault of the Windswept Island is a 29 page module for Old School Essentials by Gabriel Ramos with art and maps by Colin Lor. Described as a fantasy horror module, in it the players are trapped in a vault with a death cult, and need to escape. I backed it for Zinequest this year.

In terms of art and layout, this is designed to be reminiscent of official OSE modules, utilising holding of key points of interest, bullet points for clarity, and two column layout. The colour is under-utilised in the art, but it is used well to tie key points and headings to the maps and to differentiate heading clearly by subject as well as level. Stat blocks are boldly differentiated in white on black text — this works, although a subtler but no less effective choice would’ve been to use those colours doubly here. I find Lor’s art, while excellent, is too cartoonish to communicate a sense of horror, although it’s technically excellent and clear. This comes across particularly in the character illustrations in the prefab characters at the back — these come across as fun starter characters, rather than characters in a horror module with trigger warnings for self-harm suicide. Once you’ve finished the module, the choice makes sense, but based on the pitch it’s a surprise. One giant peeve of mine is that the pdf isn’t searchable — half the benefit of a digital version is that you can search for things in it. You have to make an effort to turn off searchability in a pdf — I assume they don’t want people to copy their sacred text — but overall this is misguided and means I can’t look things up effectively. A massive mistake.

The module opens with two pages of very solid summary. Main NPCs, hooks and unanswered questions take one page and advice for running the two more complex encounters follow on the second, the third being a list of rumours. Only one of these rules of a solidly poor one, although a lot of them are a little meh. A good rumour should change behaviour of the player character who hears it —“A sentient artifact of tremendous power is hidden in the vault” for example doesn’t really give you anything to act on or change your behaviour. I’d rather 6 excellent, game-changing rumours than 12 ones insignificant to play.

We then have 4 pages covering the island itself. The island is very interactive, which is a pretty great feature to have. They’re all quite charming, although I’d have love more of them to have been interactive with the dungeon, or when they are called out to do so. It’s not clear here whether lighting the skeleton buoy impacts the dungeon at all, although it feels like it should — I certainly can’t see why lighting the buoy would change anything anywhere else, and as I said earlier I can’t search for “buoy” to make sure I didn’t miss anything. If I did, it should be mentioned here at the same place irregardless. The only one I dislike is the caltrop beach, which seems to unnecessarily call for a dexterity check on arrival. While I could see this being used as a trap, there are no nearby creatures to lure there.

There are some inconsistencies in the keying, though, indicating the need for an editor with a closer eye; some sensory cues being bulleted points of interest for example, rather than in the main description, but inconsistently. As a writer, I know this happens; often your information design choices occur organically as you write. But the editors job is to iron out those mistakes that appear in the evolution of the writing.

Immediately in room 1, the dungeon features some problems. The Convoker is here, which locks the dungeon doors if “grabbed”, although it’s not clear if this means “touched” or “activated”, or only if it’s removed from the statue it is held by. There’s strong indication that it’s essential that the Convoker is activated so that dead PCs can return to life as ghosts for the duration of the module, but there’s no mention of this effect by the rumours table or any NPCs, and the time pressure of your ghost expiring isn’t stated to the players at all, even though it’s mentioned in the “advice” section. While I admired the brevity of the intro, the lack of cohesive word choice here combined with the brevity of the text mean I’m not sure what to do in the first, essential room. There are at two rooms that are flagged in the introduction as being more complex than this one. It’s clarified three pages later in the second page of the entry for room 2 that it’s touching the Convoker that closes the door. This is the kind of mistake I could see derailing my session after I made the wrong call in room 1.

Room 2 features a lovely coloured panel, that’s intended to be shown to the players. It’s a simple puzzle, explaining how to get the major hidden treasure. I love this, and just wish it was available as a file for printing along with the map. Room 3 continues the habit of troublesome descriptions. It took repeated flicking forwards and backwards to pick exactly where the gelatinous cube was in the setup, with a number of red herrings — like the fact that the roof is dripping — making me second guess the choices. This habit of confusingly described spaces continues throughout the seven rooms in the dungeon. Once you get the room, they’re usually each a fun puzzle. But the advice to “read it from front to back” before running it is an understatement. You need to spend time figuring these rooms out and taking notes. If you don’t take the right notes, you’ll describe it wrong. All of these descriptions needed a close, blind read by someone not playtesting it.

One problem here is that this is not explicitly a funhouse dungeon — but there are no empty rooms here, each is an uber-dangerous puzzle. When you describe your adventure as “fantasy horror” that’s not what I’m expecting. I’m expecting some kind of horror. But no, this is a gauntlet, a modern take on a tournament dungeon where your 3-8 player characters are slowly turned to ghosts, which make future deadly traps less deadly for the remaining party. This is fun, and clever, but it ain’t horror, compared to say The Wizard which is quite explicitly a horror dungeon. This kind of incorrect sales pitch feels to me really common in our hobby, and I’m not sure exactly why: You want people to be into what you’ve made, so mislabelling it is never a good thing. Just recently, I reviewed Tephrotic Nightmares which similarly fails to pitch itself accurately.

I’d like to pause to praise the ancient language translation system that’s baked in here. There’s not much to talk about, but it smoothly integrates multiple levels of translation into the text, as well as clearly indicates how to choose which to read, It’s very cool. There are also two fun randomisers at the back, for unique undead and crystal exposure.

Overall, this is an odd duck of a module. Despite a suggestion early on (a miscommunication, but this module is full of those), there is no death cult here. It’s a gauntlet dungeon. The primary treasures at two sentient weapons and the aforementioned Convoker. Being magical treasure, this doesn’t contribute to party XP, and two of them are cursed and not really useful outside the dungeon. There is surprisingly no treasure to speak of in the dungeon otherwise — certainly not enough to level up a party of level 1 characters. A few valuable items aren’t given value, like the gilded chest in room 3. The implication is that this is really intended as a one shot — a single session module for specifically the pregenerated characters, where they’re going to die. But, there are only 3 pregenerated characters — it feels a lot like there should be more, given the 3 level 3 characters provided will almost certainly die by room 4 given nowhere to rest and that none of them can heal.

That said, flawed though it is, and poorly pitched, this is a fun little gauntlet and puzzle dungeon. If you’re signing up to have a party of low level characters put through a meatgrinder, for a single night of fun and goofiness, and you’re not playing for your character development or levelling up or any of those lingering term goals, The Secret Vault of the Windswept Island a neat little distraction for an evening.

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