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.

In the Shadow of Tower Silveraxe is a 54 page module for Old School Essentials written and illustrated by Jacob Fleming. It contains the the 40 x 80 mile Gemthrone Wilderness, 5 settlements and 9 dungeons including the titular Tower Silveraxe (although that’s not what it’s called in the module). In 54 pages. This is going to be a challenge to pull off, as we have only about 3 pages available per location, if we’re lucky. I’m looking forward to either a trainwreck or a masterpiece. Which will it be? I bought this on Drivethru.

I don’t usually open with this, but the painted cover is really great. It brings very strong 1990s TSR vibes — Larry Elmore and the like. The art style inside is a much more cartoonish line art, which I also really like, and there is art on every spread and most every page if you include maps, but the cover in particular stands right out. Given I started with the cover, I’ll hit layout next, before getting into the meat: It’s a simple, 2 column layout with tight margins and claustrophobic spacing. I don’t love the font choices, but they do their job of differentiating and aiding in navigation, as does the art and maps in the absence of white space — and the art is clearly drawn for the available space, featuring some very interesting wrapping. It also uses a bunch of useful and interesting iconography, as well as appropriate use of text flagging (not overly complex or overused). It’s clear there were compromises made in order to pack this all into so few pages — it’s available in print directly from the author’s website for only $15, so perhaps it was worth it. It’s very functional, and feels heavily inspired by ‘90’s TSR yet again here.

We open with 2 pages introducing Gemthrone and its history, and then 2 pages covering the factions. While the factions have interesting twists each, they aren’t summarised very well, and I’d much prefer it in a terser, clearer format so I didn’t have to take notes about their goals or assets. In the rumours table, there’s a clever conceit of highlighting the falsified parts of rumours with italics, which is very clever and should be more widely adopted. We’ll come

back to the rumours later. I also really like the weather advice, which basically says “tell the party in advance, they’re experienced travellers they know when there’s a storm coming”. I can’t believe I’ve never received this advice before, but it’s startlingly obvious in retrospect. There is also a cipher puzzle hidden on statues across the wilderness, which is a great puzzle for the puzzle loving tables, and one that isn’t too challenging for the puzzle haters. Great little addition in my opinion.

And then, from page 9 we start with the key. The town designated your starting point, Karn Buldahr, reveals a few things about what to expect: Keying is brief, names are Greyhawkish, Character traits aren’t spelled out here at all — it’s just Lodwaelyn Kraghorn, raucous female dwarf and that’s all you’ve got. That’s enough for embodying them for the moment, but it’s not enough to engage her in the larger story without significant improvisation or expansion.

The second set of locations — Amethyst Lake Ranch — repeats some of the same scenes — long-written scenes in need of an edit or a summary, with a questgiver and a local problem that needs solving. In this case it’s associated with a dungeon — but there’s no hooks leading to the dungeon or even the lake, which apparently has a grim reputation (although there’s no rumour concerning it) and the only potential hook — the dwarf who owns the ranch — is too gruff to talk about his feelings so won’t tell you about the lake.

This kind of writing — uninspiring characters, incomplete or disconnected locations — is pretty emblematic of what we see throughout In the Shadow of Tower Silveraxe. It screams “I didn’t playtest” or “I didn’t hire an editor” or perhaps both, given no editors or playtesters are credited. It really leans into quantity as a selling point, hoping that nobody will notice that the only way to find them is to wonder aimlessly. Coming back to the initial rumours — none of them point the heroes to anywhere except for Amethyst Lake Ranch (the aforementioned location that goes nowhere) and the mage Myrya. Myrya doesn’t go anywhere — just pays a bounty on finding crystals. Of the 20 town rumours (across 4 towns), 1 points to the climactic adventure location, and 1 points to a treasure map. So out of 25 rumours, just 4 help the players find anything specific. What this is telling me, is that this module expects the players to wonder aimlessly in the home of finding treasure or gems based on rumours. I know we have a social contract that says “Adventurers adventure”, but I haven’t ever been at a table where the players didn’t like some kind of direction.

And that’s really disappointing, because for the most part the dungeons and other locations are a lot of fun. There are classic challenges like water termites that devour any wooden items you’re carrying, lots of beginner level traps, secret puzzle doors. The Tower of the Builders — the climactic location — has an appropriately looped design over multiple floors. One of the towns has political intrigue to engage in. It’s fun stuff. Drop in one of these locations and you’ve got a session or 2 of fun.

There are 3 physical map handouts for the players — very cool, if you find them, plus the cipher codes, which is a decent amount of props in a module this short, and at the back there’s a bestiary detailing all the creatures not in the basic OSE bestiary.

One big problem here is that the setting depends on wilderness travel, but the wilderness travel is just uninteresting as a whole — there’s nothing spicy or interesting in the random encounters. The random encounters with non-hostile NPCs are not detailed — are they a dwarf we know? No, just dwarves. If I were to run this, I’d have to either overhaul the wilderness altogether, or overhaul the rumours, or both, or I fear my sessions would be filled with the kind of awkwardness I haven’t experienced since I ran Horde of the Dragon Queen.

Coming back to the question at the top, is this a masterpiece or a train wreck? Well, honestly, neither. This is a whole setting in 64 pages! That’s a hell of an achievement! And to be honest, for the kind of low-stakes, beer and pretzels play that this aims for the simple keying, stereotypical characters and classically designed dungeons are kind of perfect. It doesn’t have space for faction play or much in the way of social play, which I favour. And it’s disappointing that with better developmental editing and more solid wilderness travel rules, it could have been rife with hooks and excitement, but instead the locations are simply there. It could’ve been a masterpiece, and probably without changing the word count. Regardless, In the Shadow of Tower Silveraxe is a strong value proposition if you’re looking for a generic fantasy mini-setting with a solid 10 or more sessions worth of play, so long as your table likes exploring the wilderness and dungeon-crawling as their primary occupations.

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