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.

Tiny Fables is a 59 page adventure collection written and illustrated by Josiah Moore for Mausritter. I backed it on Kickstarter for Zinequest. In it you’ll find a sandbox adventure inspired by folk and fairytales, including a village, the haunted forest, and five separate adventuring locations.

I’m going to open with: Moore kicks the graphic design, informational design, and art absolutely out of the park. It’s mostly illustrated in a digital linocut style, but where it deviates from that (for example the maps), it makes up for it with a consistent lovely single colour highlight. This forest green highlight is the only colour used aside from a little pink on the cover, I think. The same colour is used for specific text highlights, but sparingly. I adore this selective use of colour, but because it’s close to perfect, the inconsistencies — maps switching key colours for example — really stand out to me. The layout is a crisp two columns. It’s smartly mainly 1 location to a column, although in a few places this rule is broken, but very clearly signalled by changes in heading and decoration. In text signally is very clear, using bolding primarily to signify interest, and underlining and italics only in small measures. Colour and font are used to distinguish other elements like stat blocks. Bullets are used sparingly and well. Maps are all visually distinct and clear, although a few locations on some aren’t keyed which rubs me the wrong way, This isn’t keyed in the Mausritter house style, and while the influence of Gavin Norman’s layouts are apparent, it’s a much stronger version of that approach. Honestly, I think visually and informationally, this is one of the strongest modules I’ve read.

Does it hold up in terms of content? I think so. It opens with a tight frame, which is my favourite way of opening a module — the mice are in Thimblewood Village and introduced to the major mystery immediately, then left to the sandbox. Hooks are provided for the 5 major locations, in the case that the mice need further prompting, This is all on the first page, along with an (I think unnecessary for someone running Mausritter) intro to the playstyle. Great start, although I’d prefer even tighter framing — here they suggest you pick an NPC rather than give you specifically a mayor; they could suggest one perhaps? There are 4 factions elaborated in the classic Mausritter style, and an events timetable keeps things interesting and dynamic — there’s enough events for this to play out over I’d guess 10 sessions, although depending on the pace your players take, it may stretch further. I love that these culminate in very big climaxes — 2 are large scale battles, putting the warband rules on the cards, the other two are unleashing fearsome creatures, which will further incite adventure rather than end it. I should mention that in here is also a page on recent and distant history. This is fine, I guess. A full page feels too much, and it’s prose largely, although it’s formatted well to find key points, just as the key is.

Then, with little ado, we hit the locations proper. Thimblewood Village is a simple 8 location village, although the map has a few intriguing unkeyed locations — who lives in the shoe, Moore??? — Each location is really concrete in a great way. It focuses on characters, real ways to make the characters unique in play, and things like menus and local quirks. Some of them have a key problem to be solved as well, clearly displayed. There are 5 problems in 8 locations — decent hooks that both give the players something to do and link them to the larger story immediately. And they’re petty creatures — they have gossip and dislike each other for no good reason, or crush. And we have rumours, encounters and a few hirelings, all of which also provide hooks to the mystery. It’s good stuff. Overall, this is one of the better towns I’ve read lately. It puts me in mind of a far more practical and interesting version of the succinct village in A Wizard. I rarely get excited for a town, but boy, this is close to the perfect village for me.

The forest is a point crawl, with its own travel rules, that changes day to night significantly. It contains 14 locations, 5 of those being the major adventure locations. The first has basic day/night descriptors and a generator for small impressions of sensations which is great, although not too unique, and doesn’t tie into any small subtleties — the smell of campfire smoke here doesn’t tie into a particular place or encounter for example. I feel it would’ve been stronger had this been incorporated into the encounter tables, so that some of these subtle signs could’ve been signs of something in particular. As is, it would help where an incidental, random sensation might derail the players, to point to where in the module it might connect to at a whim. There are 18 random encounters across day and night by — 9 of these are directly tied to locations and encounters in the forest. I’d love for some interconnection with the village as well there directly, but that’s a pretty exceptional density of connection. I really appreciate that the locations are numbered from the outset of the book to the end of the forest, however that breaks down in individual locations and it would keep up that specificity and usability had it continued on throughout the book.

The minor locations aren’t all consistently strong and gameable, although they have great flavour and contribute strongly to the overall aesthetics. I need a reason to break into the crabapple orchard, or to bother Boris the mole, or to assist the lost angry ghost! These all either have nothing to interact with, else there isn’t a good reason to interact with them. This pattern repeats throughout the minor locations. I’m torn with these — a lot of them do have little quests associated with them, but no intrinsic reason to engage with them. But, there’s a social contract where players should be looking for things to engage with. Irregardless of whether or not this is good design — I’m on the fence — I think it would be better design to have solid reasons to engage here — they’re preventing progression, there’s a clear reward or it changes the environment in a positive way.

There are five major locations, each of them being sufficient for a whole zine in itself. Heartache Lake is probably the biggest of the locations — a whole settlement with politics, unique factions, encounter tables and 16 sub-locations. It’s bigger and more engaging a village than the main village. The Tomb of Roses has a neat haunting mechanic, although the spatial design is a little too heavily looped for such a small dungeon in my opinion — jacquaysing too heavily in a small dungeon can render your players choices meaningless. Chulip’s Castle is a wizard trapped by his own magic — this should be a more common trope in my opinion. Wandering Cottage and Maw of Shadows are a little darker in their fairytale inspirations.

There are two things missing from the dungeons here. Firstly, are the lack of hallways and entryway information — for me it makes it much easier to run if I can give players information about exits at the drop of a hat, rather than having to figure out which room it is and intuit a sensation as a hint to make decisions on. Secondly, even in smaller dungeons, having at least characters if not factions with needs and desires that you can play off and make favourites of and interact with in more interesting ways would be valuable. Most of these dungeons are largely designed at a room to room level — well, I think, at that level — but there’s little cross-dungeon design, the most important of which for me is faction play.

Overall, the vibes here are impeccable. This feels fairytale, and everything from the locations and the encounters to the incidental moments to the politics in terms of the writing, the naming of the places and characters, the simple goals, and of course the art and embellishments all bring amazingly fairytale vibes. This is on par with the Valley of Flowers in terms of impeccable aesthetics.

Overall, while I haven’t heard of Josiah Moore before, this puts him solidly on my radar. We have a new triple threat emerging in module writing. There’s something about the united approach someone who is both artist and author can bring to a module, and it’s here in absolute spades. Josiah Moore is someone to keep an eye out for in the future.

As for Tiny Fables — if you’re running Mausritter, this is a no brainer. Buy it. This, in my esteem, the best release I’ve seen for Mausritter — it gives away the weakest aspects of the classic Mausritter formula for the strongest parts of the Old School Essentials formula. While it isn’t perfect, it’s pretty close. The fairytale vibe is not unknown in the large list of Mausritter modules, but this pulls it off impressively. Overall, this is one of those modules I’ll be poring over for ideas in how to make my future projects better. If the physical version had been a hardcover rather than a zine, I’d have upgraded my pledge in a microsecond — and I really hope for a hardcover re-release soon. The risk printed zine is available now in print and in digital.

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