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 end of January marks my 100th Bathtub Review (not counting my I Read Reviews, so the number may be closer to 150), so I’m celebrating with an Introductory Extravaganza, where I review a different Dungeons and Dragons starter module every week for a few weeks. In the last month I covered the Village of Hommlet (AD&D), the Sunless Citadel (D&D 3e), the Lost Mine of Phandelver (D&D 5e), and the Iron Coral (Into the Odd). Today we’re wrapping up with the Blancmange and Thistle (Troika!).

The Blancmange and Thistle is a 23 page introductory module for Troika! by Daniel Sell. There are a few versions of it; I’m reviewing the version in the 2023 printing with the Andrew Walter art, specifically, rather than the more commonly available version which in my opinion has terrible layout, although the content is much the same for those of you who care little about such things. In it, the players are forced to share a room on the sixth floor of the Blancmange & Thistle — what will they encounter in a hotel run by mandrills in the inter-dimensional city of Troika?

Blancmange & Thistle is laid out in single column layout, breaking into a 1:2 ratio second column occasionally for things like stat blocks. The only information flagged is mechanical information such as skills or statistics — almost everything else is in plain text, written in paragraphed prose. Those reading my reviews for some time know that I’m not always a fan, and while Sell’s authorial voice is sumptuous and pulpy, I do struggle here. It’s balanced with generous margins, paragraph breaks and padding, but marred by inconsistencies in positioning (randomly in a 1:1 column at the bottom of page 112 for example) and the odd use of the 1:2 ratio just for stat blocks with minimal padding where brief stat blocks would suffice. The paragraphing really doesn’t want any orphans or widows at all, to the point there are some absurdly large white spaces that feel unintentional; I can’t decide if this was a good decision, but to my eye it’s not. Given the success of Troika! these are places where some will have used spot art if they cared so deeply about orphaned lines, but instead we have bold white spaces — this I think is a spot where the solid layout choices of the greater rulebook is negatively affecting the module at its back, similarly to what we saw in The Iron Coral. The Walter art, like the rest of the art in this edition, is lovely and reminiscent of the line art used in RPGs in the late 80s and early 90s; it suits Troika! a little better than the iconic art in the free version, but is a little less striking and unique.

Structurally, Blancmange and Thistle is unique: There is no map, simply something occurring on each floor (if you take the stairs, you’ll experience them all), and someone getting into the lift on each floor (if you don’t take the stairs, you’ll experience them all). You can of course, exit or enter the lift as you choose, which means the “map” is simply a 5 x 2 grid of locations, 10 interesting encounters described each in about a page. These encounters are, all of them, intriguing on their own and intended to interact with each other in potentially interesting ways. They are a masterclass in how to bring the weirdness that is the list of advanced skills and backgrounds in Troika! to your adventures. My only criticism of the writing of course, is that it’s just too much: In providing the voice and aesthetic of Troika! Sell has rendered the module unplayable, or at least, I’m either reading his text out loud self-censoring or taking long pauses whenever the players enter a new space as I parse the text and then recite what I feel is important back at them. When your prose is key to communicating your aesthetic, I feel like you just need to work it into read-aloud text, rather than this semi-novelistic prose, else it becomes an impenetrable wall.

Referee advice in Blancmange & Thistle largely amounts to a number of places where the referee is encouraged to improvise in various ways, and one section where it advises when it’s appropriate to create new advanced skills and how to do so. That’s not much, but it’s a little more than in the Village of Hommlet, and much more than the Iron Coral. There is next to no tutorialising for the players though: To players not already engaged in Troika!s style of play, and not expecting multiple deaths of player characters, I could see many players being turned off by this module. There is almost no interesting choice allowed — you cannot avoid the stairs or the elevator, and of course simply finding a different hotel is outside the scope of the module — and roughly half of the encounters are potentially deadly. One of them is a dream and when you wake you’re alive. Once you reach your destination, if you choose to go to the party, you’re rewarded with rumours of potential adventure in the great city of Troika! These, for the poor referee, are also entirely to be improvised.

Of the introductory modules I’ve read, Blancmange & Thistle is the only one that I genuinely think is a bad introduction. Goblin Mail or the Big Squirm are more interesting introductions to the game, utilise the rules more appropriately, and show the players what it’s like to be in this strange world in a similar way. Blancmange & Thistle does communicate is that Troika! is weird and strange and to expect bizarre interactions with unique individuals — it just does very little else in terms of communicating the joy of adventuring in Troika! Unlike the others, Blancmange & Thistle attempts to be a stepping off point for the referee to invent their own Troika! with their players, but Troika! itself doesn’t really allow for that, rather relying on the implicit world building in the backgrounds, just like a number of other Troika! settings have. I think this urge in Troika! is misguided, which I’ve written about previously in my review of Goblin Mail. I want a module that gives me a fun time with my friends, not something that requires me to spend the whole time making things up to cover the places where the author couldn’t be bothered doing any work. Of all of these introductory modules, Troika is the only one that doesn’t give me at least a few sessions of play, and that doesn’t give a clear indication (or even sell me on a pitch) for what the game will play out like in the future.

The big question that I’m left wondering at the end of this series of reviews, is “What is the purpose of an introductory module?”, because I think that, some concepts aside, all 5 I’ve reviewed have had different perspectives on what introductory modules should do. What almost all of them do succeed at is being exemplars of what to expect from an adventure in the system in question; Dungeons and Dragons evolved over time, and with it so did the style of module introducing it. The Iron Coral and Blancmange & Thistle take wildly different tacts based on the directions those games head in; here is think the only active failure of an introductory module is Blancmange & Thistle, although if its primary goal was in fact primarily to communicate vibes, the issue here is that I think that goal was a misguided one, not that it actually failed to achieve it.

What I’ve come to realise is that I personally believe introductory modules should put more effort into tutorialising the game they introduce; the only one of these 5 that do this to an adequate extent is Lost Mine of Phandelver. What so much of our hobby relies on is oral transmission of both solid rules and directives that inform how we play and what choices we make. This is why sometimes you play and enjoy a game, and wonder “was that a good game, or is Jane just a good referee?” What does that mean though? If I were to set out a list of criteria, having reviewed both great and mediocre attempts, how would I go about achieving this goal? Well, I’d probably go through my game, and break down the key things a player and a referee needs to learn to play: For the referee, this is likely to be the primary principles of the game (although for principle driven games, this applies to players as well). Last year I read Shadowdark and Five Torches Deep, they both lay out principles in their rulebooks. I should have encounters where they can exercise those muscles. For the players, they should be each mechanic that is likely to be engaged with: Firstly simple conflict resolution, and then later procedures if they’re necessary, whatever the game attempts at combat or mass combat if it has it, an interaction with some examples of how to interpret perhaps a social encounter and any rolls associated with it. Examples of what things to write down in my notebook. How the character sheets change in response to what happens. Those are the kind of things you need. And, to do that, I suggest the Phandelver approach isn’t foolish: Start on rails, to introduce the basics in 1 or 2 encounters, then open up the world, to allow them to learn the rest of the game as they choose to engage with it. I’d love to see more games tutorialise like this, because the best here is by Wizards of the Coast, and is deeply flawed, so I think we can do better. I’m also surprised there aren’t more independent tutorials (I know there are some, but I can’t review every introductory module in this series — one I’m a big fan of is Tomb Robbers of the Crystal Frontier, and Another Bug Hunt is very thoughtful if flawed as well). It also leaves a huge amount of space for independent creators to make introductory modules for games that aren’t first party,

Troika! is available here. Luckily, it’s free, so you can check it out and decide whether I’m being unfair on Blancmange & Thistle yourself. I really like Troika! and there are a number of excellent modules for it, for example Goblin Mail. Check those out!

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