In 2025 I’m reviewing zungeon zines. They’re stream of consciousness and unedited critiques, just like Bathtub Reviews, but they’ll be a little briefer. The goal here is a little different: I want to spotlight what a craft-based, just-do-it approach to module writing can do.

Tavurchower is a 6 page zungeon for Cairn by Rambling Ink. In it, you are hired to investigate 3 missing buildings that have been replaced by a single, visitor-devouring cottage.

The writing here is funny and evocative. “An Unfortunate Collage of People.”, “Human Eyes: Do Swine Have Souls?”, “A Chaotic Conflagration of wood, stone & brick. A portion of a Tavern Bar looks to have been drunkenly slammed between a Church Nave and a Wizard Tower’s Orrery”. Due to the twisted spatial features of the dungeon, even the empty rooms have points of interest, but most of the rooms have features that make them unique to interact with, “may walk on the walls and ceilings as if they were the floor”, for example. This is a funhouse dungeon, that brings the fun, and keeps you improvising.

This is around 24 rooms, and it keeps those rooms interesting and appropriately looped both on a single level and between levels. The “spatial anomaly” nature of the dungeon is such that it’s hard to predict the shape and patterns of the dungeon, which makes it a puzzle to solve and a dungeon that would be fun to map out if that’s your cup of tea. There are few creators attempting to make spatially interesting dungeons these days, particularly in the rules lite space, so it’s lovely to see that here.

The primary flaw is the lack of factions or characters with competing goals within the dungeon. I feel like there’s actually potential for the squinched and the shadows throughout the dungeon to have their own competing goals, and it would’ve been interesting to see them realised as factions, given they’re by definition multiple people. If I were to run it, I’d probably flesh out a few of these squinched individuals, and I’d also probably come up with some kind of mechanism to determine which of them is in charge. It would added a lot, I think, to an already interesting dungeon.

Tavurchower is a good looking zungeon; it’s (maybe faux) sketched out on graph paper, with red pen for headings, and pasted in body text. Maps and art are gorgeously doodled in biro. It’s damned legible and easy to read; the main problem is that it’s in an unorthodox format (tabloid size), that might be a little hard to use at the table (it’s close enough to A3 that you could still print it outside the US though without trouble).

Tavurchower is a bigger zungeon, and has a tight frame — a job listing, with no other hooks in or out, and no rumours — which I appreciate for a medium sized dungeon, but as it is also more likely to last 4 or more sessions, I think it will serve as more of a centrepiece in your campaign than an excursion; if you’re willing to put a little effort into building up a few characters and motivations, then it’ll do mighty fine as a funhouse dungeon to entertain for a month or two. Even without the added faction play, Tavurchower is going to be a damned fun space to explore, due to its puzzling nature. If that’s what you’re after — a proper crawl, a fun funhouse dungeon that isn’t too punishing, statted out for a modern rules lite game, or if the other zungeons I’ve looked at seemed too small for your table, Tavurchower is precisely the zungeon for you.

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