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 Witch of Drithwyn Weald is a 70 page module by Chris Bissette for their A Dungeon Game. Art-free, it’s one of a regular yearly series where they release an “advent module”, in 25 parts over the advent period, and a gradually increasing price. In it, you explore an endless forest in which, since time immemorial, a powerful witch has dwelt. I purchased this myself, in the first week or so of its release.

The module opens with weather and random encounters. Both of these are pretty run of the mill, although there are a few interesting random encounters that tie in with ongoing stories in the larger forest. The issue with most of the weather and the encounters here are that they simply happen, and aren’t particularly interactive. It ends with a bunch of appendices, some of which are pretty important and really should be at the front of the module. The cults of the forest, for example, are the 6 factions that drive a lot of what is happening; they’re given brief descriptions, but nothing on specifics (leaders or likely contacts) or specific agendas that might guide them any more than a specific madness that afflicts each of them. Other appendices cover how to make more forest, essays on disability and horror, a few short stories and poems set in-world, and how to travel the hidden paths of the forest known as the ways. All up, this is almost 20 pages of what isn’t particularly gameable content — almost 30% of the whole module. I just feel like this would have been better spent actually expanding on the content and making it more interesting and useful, rather than all being ancillary content.

Most of the module, though, are the hex keys — 25 of them. Most of these have 2-4 paragraphs of text describing them, with a few exceptions covering characters, a mid-sized dungeon (which unfortunately has the same number of rooms as the forest had had hexes up to that points by, rendering the key a little confusing), a small tower, and a walled off area with its own hexes (19 of them). That’s a decent amount of content, in my opinion — about 60 keyed locations.

Bisette’s writing is, as always, evocative and atmospheric, but here is often lacking in detail. The village, for example, has no named villagers; neither does the exorcist or their band. No motives, no personalities. It’s all very abstract. What does Fionnan want? I don’t know. What will Brynn do for food? Apparently anything, but no specifics. Stavforth wants nothing but to be left alone? What a fascinating potential encounter. Who is Agna? No way to find out. There are other big missed opportunities, like the circus — which is one major place where disability is foregrounded in this module, and despite the essay at the back, I don’t think it’s justified in the text, with the characters undeveloped beyond their disability; I think disability has a place in our fantasy worlds, but here it isn’t given the space to breathe or have a human face.

The dungeon here is a clever one that deserves a little more attention than the gimmick is given: The Ways, a secret way of travelling, connect many rooms, meaning there are areas with no doors you can access, or ways between rooms that aren’t spatial. This is very neat and fun; sadly there is no reason to venture into it, as nobody knows what’s inside.

The key is where the lack of layout and art really does this module a significant disservice. The text uses centered vs. left justified numbering to differentiate primary vs. secondary keying, but it’s not obvious that this is the case and it’s not super clear once you do. Art and a more thoughtful layout would remedy this, and the truth is, a more thoughtful layout would not actually have been more challenging to produce — just using headings, sections and pagination would have made it far easier to follow, and this stuff is very easy to set up in basic word processors. As it is, it’s not illegible, but it doesn’t do you any favours, and given the final product isn’t cheap, that’s a significant strike against it.

The Witch of Drithwyn Weald is missing so many things that it needs to be interesting or functional for me. I don’t know why you’d go there, and there are no rumours or reasons to visit, let alone juicy ones. The characters have no personality and often no agenda. It’s completely unclear why they are in this hellscape or, for that matter, why the player characters are. There are no reasons to interact with anyone, in a place explicitly filled with horrible encounters. There are no famed treasures. There is no reason to persist. I know there’s a social contract by which the players are obliged to adventure, but what’s the point of a module if not to throw them a bone? Despite this being a bunch of interesting hexes, all together they do not add up to more than the sum of their parts. Honestly, after Reivdene-Upon-The-Moss, a very compelling module that resulted from the same advent process a few years ago, I had high hopes, but this was entirely a disappointment for me.

The Witch of Drithwyn Weald is a forest hexcrawl filled with horrors, and if you are happy to fill in a ton of blanks with regards to characterisation, motivation, and agendas, and do the same with factions and monsters, and to come up with interesting reasons to be there, then this comes with Bissettes typical flair for evocative writing. But, it’s a lot of work, and I’d reach for Reivdene-Upon-The-Moss first, if you’re looking for art-free, or something like the White Horse of Lowvale if you’re looking for similar folk horror, but with a stronger aesthetic and more consistent drive to play.

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