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. During Zinequest I’m doing some bonus reviews, to give more visibility during this great month of gaming!

Absolute Wurst is a trifold pamphlet module for Frontier Scum by Two Snakes Games. It it, you are tasked with find and report back on the state of a mining prospect town that was lost to deep snow during winter. It’s funding now!

This is a tiny social sandbox, with a decent dose of body horror (content warning: cannibalism, tempered with very dark humour), where you’re dropped straight into the grasp of a cult that wants to eat — well, everyone. The background — a whole winter’s worth — is crammed into the first page, and the second and third are the contents of the town, along with a map and specific locations around town. The back two pages cover the NPCs and random tables. The final page is a blurb, for the “back” of the pamphlet. This is a damned fine module, that with some improvisation on behalf of the referee, will be a banging session or two, if you and your table can stomach it’s particular body horror. I’m fronting up with that because I’m going to spend much of the review criticising the choice of trifold pamphlet format.

A trifold pamphlet consists 3 panels per letter or A4 page: You’re effectively cramming 6 pages of information into 2 pages. This is a huge challenge, particularly if you’re aiming for something with a degree of complexity, as the author is with this. The first 3 panels — the first page— of the pamphlet are wall to wall exposition. No breaks, and even prepositions and articles have been trimmed to make it the content fit. The only relief is the small map. Space is at such a premium that font is used to differentiate sections. This page fits three pages of information into one. It’s masterfully efficient, but not masterfully legible. It needs desperately to breathe.

Which is sad, because the truth is there is space wasted on the back 3 panels, with the panel of random tables much more reasonably reducible to lists, the stat block for the Bone Worm taking a huge amount of unnecessary space given how unlikely you are to defeat it in a fight, and the front cover being largely unnecessary and overwritten compared to the rest of the pamphlet. Even within this format, room for breath could’ve been found, I think.

I’m not sure if it’s the need for brevity, but the writing is damned fine, and feels on point for a western. Where it’s not beautiful, it’s evocative or layered in meaning. It feels like the author could trust in the reader a little more, given how strong the writing is, to be honest. “Nobody seems interested in silver” is clever, and the character descriptions are excellent launching points — the best a pamphlet can really offer: “Tells lies easy as breathing” and “Resentful. Secret cache of tomato and vinegar. Missing lower arm.” all reveal much more than simply their words, to a clever referee. Even though I think the random tables waste space that might have been better used for legibility, they still do double duty, serving both player and referee. There’s really only one design misstep, and that’s hiding the journal beyond a roll, where learning the dirty history of the town is part of the fun. And given the amount of improvisation required, I think any referee capable of running this is likely to ignore that instruction anyway.

I’ve written extensively about problems with pamphlets before, and sadly this doesn’t answer the challenge: this is a pretty dense module, and it needs more space to breathe. It would be better as a longer module, even if text were not expanded. Information that would be given a page in another format, is given a sentence or two here.

But, despite this, Absolute Wurst slaps, and there are of course benefits to the format. Slip this into your copy of Frontier Scum for example, or even run it FKR from your pocket. You can’t do that expanded to 16 or more pages, even if it would read and process better expanded. I’d love to see an expanded version of this, to be honest, one day, but if you’re looking for a 1-shot or 2-shot horror module, and am happy to do a whole lot of improvisation (in this case you probably need a half decent knowledge of westerns to do so), that fits in the palm of your hand, I’d consider Absolute Wurst.

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