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 Stragglers is an 8 page module for Mausritter by Norgad. In it, a mine is abandoned after a sentient geode begins to devour its resources, and is infested with evil spiders.

The Stragglers is dense. In its 8 pages are 20 keyed locations, hooks, 2 random encounter tables, 3 treasure tables, 5 star blocks and 3 maps. It’s honestly remarkable that Norgad fit this much into so little space. So, what suffered for this density?

Not much. It’s admirably brief: Locations have 1 sentence descriptions, with any further description being bulleted to points of interest. Exits are described in a way that makes for pleasing choice-making. This self-imposed limitation means we have no complex rooms, but Mausritter doesn’t thrive in complexity of this kind in my experience. Because of the brevity, I think it would benefit from the kind of keying used in my Curse of Mizzling Grove or Beyond the Pale (I first saw it in Nightwick Abbey); it’s easy to lose track of why a part of a key is important.

Some of the descriptions are so succinct and usable I’m jealous I didn’t write them: “Opportunistic hunter. Completely blind.”; “Facsimile of a mouse. Can’t quite get the eyes right.”, but sadly much of the time they’re just succinct, and the description doesn’t give me the same degree of implicit play. I think this module — and other modules like it that lean hard into brevity, would benefit from an editing pass that looks at how their descriptions are immediately useful to the players: “Bowing floor” and “fragments of metal embedded in the walls” find immediate use and impact, as well as being memorable descriptions, but they are not common enough here.

The layout is simple and clear. There are creative flourishes like the placement of the encounter tables. Headings are clear; colour gets simple and powerful use. Art and maps are simple but striking; the dungeon map is cute, clear and has just enough detail to be charming and usable. Simple but good. It couldn’t be much better in a 4 page zine, to be honest, given the density.

Overall, the Stragglers is a worthy addition to the queue of Mausritter modules to play with my kids. The reason for the kids proviso, is that the issue with the Mausritter house style (which, while this doesn’t adhere to, it adapts closely) is that it limits the complexity and interest available, as I recently discussed in my review of Whiskers in the Wind. This makes it perfect for low impact one-shots and games for kids, but less ideal for larger scale campaigns or more puzzle oriented players, in my experience. It’s a limitation of the format, but within those limitations, the Stragglers excels. I’ll print off the Stragglers and add it to the box containing the Estate and Honey in the Rafters.

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