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.
Lost Ruins of the Tiger-men is a 6 page zungeon for Old School Essentials by Katt Kirsch. In it, large catlike beasts have begun invading a local village, and you must infiltrate the temple of the Tiger cult to get to the bottom of it. It’s unpublished, at this stage, but I hope it gets put up on their itch.io page soon (update: it’s available here!).
The first page is hooks and rumours, and while they don’t all fit the criteria I prefer in terms of juiciness, I quite like them anyway. “Why would a young, pretty girl like her spend all that time in the jungle, just staring?”, is lovely to me, although I’d attach it to a character, especially given the village gets some description later in the module. I think the best way to reconcile this, though, is that they’re often repeated; the above rumour is tied to the hook “Barnabus the brandymaker’s odd cousin Genevieve vanished last year. She would often quietly stare into the jungle, as if hypnotised. Now, he fears the worst.”. Combiningthese double ups into a single item might make them a little punchier and more effective.
The map follows, 18 rooms, bold and rendered as a set of nodes. The relevance of the colours isn’t immediately apparent to me, and neither was the labels on the connections (although they became clear when reading the key). A legend would be helpful, I think. It’s an intensely looped space, but some of those loops are hidden well, I just fear some of the more connected rooms might lead to analysis paralysis.
The bestiary, random encounter table and all other encounters are cleverly folded together, and rely on the Old School Essentials bestiary to keep things brief. It works really well, it would just benefit from a variation of a mien table or some baseline disposition or agenda to help with interpreting the reaction rolls. A section on the Tiger Priestess comes at the end of the zine, which details her motivations, and perhaps that’s intended to cover this gap.
All 19 room descriptions fit into two pages, which gives you an idea about what to expect — low complexity. But to make up for that you need to be super evocative, and Kirsch manages this — “…lemon trees curl and wind upon each other, lunging towards sunlight trickling through the stone latticework above. Bronze keys jangle around the neck of a Cat-Baboon high in the canopy. He will not give up his bounty easily.”
For an unpublished zungeon, the layout on this is banging. Bold headings, colour coding to match rooms to contents, bold art, and complex details differentiated with colour highlights. It’s really good stuff, although it could be made more explicit.
Overall, Lost Ruins of the Tiger-men is a banger, and better than plenty of published modules of its’ size. It will make an excellent night or two of play, and the writing is vibrant and memorable. If Kirsch chooses to publish it, I’d encourage you to check it out.
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 end of January marks my 100th Bathtub Review (not counting my I Read Reviews, so the number may be closer to 150), so I’m celebrating with an Introductory Extravaganza, where I review a different Dungeons and Dragons starter module every week for a few weeks. In the last three weeks I covered the Village of Hommlet (AD&D), the Sunless Citadel (D&D 3e), and the Lost Mine of Phandelver (D&D 5e), covering most of the mainline D&D starters. This week we venture further afield with the Iron Coral (Into the Odd). We’ll finish next week with Blancmange and Thistle (Troika!).
The Iron Coral is a 26 page module by Chris McDowall, included as the introductory adventure for Into the Odd Remastered. There was a briefer version of the same module in the original Into the Odd, which I’m not reviewing here. It notably has art and layout by Johan Nohr. In it, a strange alien structure has sprung up in the ocean, and is rumoured to be filled with large mysterious powers.
Nohr’s layout gives away the larger layout trends of Into the Odd Remastered — the wide margins, thoughtful white spaces and striking use of colour — for a busy mess of a layout. We have a clear heading, but the 8 potential bullet types while heavy on information aren’t particularly clear at all (to be clear, I don’t think all 8 ever appear in one spot, but it’s a lot nevertheless. It doesn’t say what the different font flagging means — so I’m not sure why something is bold or why it’s underlined at all, aside from the fact that underlining appears to apply to specifically exits (which are also flagged by bullet points), and the italicised text for every description feels like overuse in a context where 10 lines in a row do not use any un-modified text. I don’t know that the italics actually confers any meaning here — perhaps it differentiates mechanical description from sensory? What little meaning it may have is contradicted in the wandering encounters, where instead italics means location, bolding means creature name, and plain text indicates sensory description — but positively wandering encounters are signified by colour, as are stat blocks. Wandering encounter tables appear on the top right of any spread with a top right, but really this placement would be better signified with white in blue text, because initially I thought that they were each different in each spread rather than a repeating element.
Of course, part of the issue here is that McDowall’s aggressively minimalist keying and the pre-existing Into the Odd Remastered layout aren’t entirely compatible. We’ve switched from an entirely prose book, for which the layout is elegant in the extreme, and struggled to translate, I suspect because McDowall presented an Iron Coral manuscript that already had a dense system for communicating information, and it was hard to come up with ways to present that in a way that didn’t end up way too busy for me to read easily. That said, I think it works for simpler rooms.
For a beginner referee, I don’t think the Iron Coral will be an easy module to run; it relies heavily on your ability to improvise: Striking when Into the Odd is strongly presented by its community as great for those new to RPGs given its simplicity. It doesn’t have narrative or throughlines or NPCs to speak of. Factions are not planned or presented strongly, but expected to be an emergent element. There’s an interesting tension here, because it’s also a 3 level 60 room dungeon, not insignificant in size.
Certainly, though, compared to Lost Mine of Phandelver, the Iron Coral relies entirely on its simpler ruleset rather than providing onboarding throughout, and suffers for the bold assumption that I can remember the entire ruleset of Into the Odd that preceded it. It’s closer in scale to Sunless Citadel — entirely gameable content here, with very little else, all in a dense location — in comparison to the Village of Hommlet, which has a decent amount of rooms that don’t feature interesting or exciting play. Implicitly, though, unlike Sunless Citadel, there’s Bastion, the city to retreat to that is featured. although with far less detail than Village of Hommlet (for good or ill).
It feels like a module for a referee experienced in a certain style of play, rather than a new one. I don’t think it’s going to require much prep if you’re that referee — experienced with a flair for improvisation — but if you’re new to the style, it would be overwhelming, I suspect. You’re going to have to spend time building connections to make this a more interactive and exciting space to be in for that long, which in my opinion is an advanced refereeing skill.
Does it onboard players to Into the Odd? Not with much success at all, I don’t think. It does a little tutorialising for players — the first secret door and the first trap are easy puzzles to solve if you’re occupying the fiction appropriately as a player, for example, and random encounters are given center stage in every room. But it’s mainly oriented at the referee, and I think that by not providing that scaffolding, you’re relying on that referee for a lot. The Iron Coral in the hands of a well-experienced referee? Gold. As your first dungeon? I’m not so convinced it will be an exceptional experience. Certainly it doesn’t scaffold anywhere near as much as either Sunless Citadel or Lost Mine of Phandelver.
That said, when added to the Fallen Marsh, which is in the same book, you can probably play Into the Odd: Remastered for a year before buying or creating anything else, so in that sense it’s better value than anything else I’ve looked at, and it comes for free with the book. That, by itself, sets it apart from everything else so far.
But I think that Into the Odd Remastered’s dedication to simplicity does the Iron Coral no favours as an introductory module. Despite being attached to the rules text, it doesn’t really give opportunities to engage with the rules text, and provides no page references to assist the novice referee. Rather than being a true introductory module, it doesn’t feel intended to tutorialise at all, but rather feels like an exemplar. In some ways, this is a good thing: The messy layout does clearly communicate some of McDowall’s key refereeing principles implicitly, such as the ICI doctrine. If it’s intended to say “oh hey, this is how easy it is to make a dungeon for Into the Odd! See, how you don’t have to write like Tolkien? See how you don’t need or want a story?” rather than be the perfect tutorial dungeon for Into the Odd, it succeeds in spades. And to a degree, as much as it’s not as good a tutorial dungeon as any of the others so far, it’s as much an excellent tool for communicating what Into the Odd is about: Really, it’s a tool to communicate the DIY nature of elfgames and how easy it can be to participate in the hobby yourself. In that way, The Iron Coral is still something very special.
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.
The Divorced Mage is an 8 page zungeon for DURF by Hairic Lilred, with 12 rooms. In it, you explore the home of a divorced couple: An angry harpy, and her depressed ex-husband, a mage. I assume the art — satisfyingly ugly, in a way that feels intentional to match the characters — is also by Lilred, and I love it for this.
I love that these two are minding their own bickering, passive aggressive business until the adventurers interfere — the rumours do a great job of luring adventurers into a situation they have no business being a part of. And it’s all marriage issues: All three factions have their own goals, and they’re all beautifully mundane, despicable and leaves no good or neat answers (although I’m siding with the crow-folk, I think) Just excellent work on the characters and on the dynamic.
The rooms are written conversationally, which fits the mundane tone. “This room is a mess”, then “This one is worse” is funny and exactly how you’d describe a room in a real home. The balance between this mundanity and the high magic of the setting is pleasing to me, although it won’t work for every table or campaign.
Overall The Divorced Mage is a solid zungeon, and honestly as good as many short modules I’ve paid good money for. Perfect for a short digression if you campaign is compatible with a divorced couple bickering in a house with electric bulbs.
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 end of January marks my 100th Bathtub Review (not counting my I Read Reviews and Critique Navidad, so the number may be closer to 150 reviews in total), so I’m celebrating with an Introductory Extravaganza, where I review a different Dungeons and Dragons starter module every week for a few weeks. In the last two weeks I covered the Village of Hommlet (AD&D) and the Sunless Citadel (D&D 3e), and this week I’m covering the Lost Mine of Phandelver (D&D 5e). Then come the Iron Coral (Into the Odd) and Blancmange and Thistle (Troika!). My regular programming will resume in February, and boy do I have a lot of new and excellent stuff lined up.
Lost Mine of Phandelver is a 64 page module for D&D 5th edition. There’s no credits given in the booklet, and I can’t find them online (please, if you have it let me know and I’ll update this). In it, the player characters will rescue their friends’ brother, only to discover he’s at the heart of a mystery that leads deep beneath the town of Phandalin. It features a hex crawl and multiple dungeons, as well as the titular (ish) town.
It opens with two pages of rules summary for the referee and provides a single hook that is assumed to be used for the rest of the module — something I think is the right decision for a starter referee. More interestingly, it provides sidebars throughout the module detailing relevant rules as they come up — rests, how to read and use maps, wilderness encounters, etc. There are also references to the rule book — which in this case is another short pamphlet that came in the boxed set, rather than the Players Handbook. In the back of the module is an index for this rule book — whatever you have a reference for in this module, there’s a page number in the mini-rule-book to refer to. And in addition, the text of the key talks the referee through how to handle situations, then gradually removes this scaffolding throughout the module, until it’s more or less a standard key. Whilst it’s not without flaws, compared to anything else I’ve read it is a far greater success in gradually teaching the referee how to referee.
It also succeeds in doing this for players, in my opinion. The initial encounters are very rigid and on rails, designed to expose the player characters to threatening situations and an ambush by goblins, with fallbacks if they’re defeated, and gradually introduces them to more complex rules and encounters as the campaign goes on. By the time the campaign is over, they’re crawling through a 20 room dungeon and exploring a hex map that covers over 100 miles. They’ve been gradually introduced to the strategies they might use to participate in these as they go. Now, I’m probably raining praise a little effusively here: It’s clumsy in a lot of ways. I could see the player characters being soundly defeated in a number of situations, with the module not accounting for this possibility to the referee. I think some of this support would be more valuable than the broader exploration of the world in the form of the hex crawl, which while granting a sense of the breadth of the game, the space could’ve been used to support the campaign better in other areas. But without a doubt, of the three starter modules I’ve read so far, it’s the first that actually onboards both referee and player in a meaningful way.
In terms of layout, it’s the first thing to be released in the 5th edition house style, which isn’t terrible but has been abused in the last ten years to the point where it feels like a powerpoint template. That said, while being overwritten is a signature of 5th edition module writing, it flags and highlights points of interest well, headings are clear and leading and padding lead to recognisable and navigable pages. It could be written better with the same layout choices and it’d be a stellar example of key-writing; it’s the editorial choices that are its downfall. Interestingly, the art here doesn’t feel as overdone as I feel it has been in more recent 5th edition work; most of the art is monster art recycled from other books, there is a piece of art for every 3 pages at maximum — often not even every spread, and there are only two large-scale art pieces aside from the cover. The 5th edition digital painting style is present here, but much lower in profile than in the rest of the line and what came over the next 10 years. It’s interesting how art expectations have morphed in that time.
As for the module itself: It’s good. The initial stages are on rails in the way that befits a tutorial. Once you reach the town of Phandelin, it opens up significantly, introducing a whole lot of quests, rumours and NPCs, which should lead them to the Redbrand Manor, their first larger, 12 room dungeon. From there it’s truly a sandbox: 5 significant locations in a massive wilderness, all with clues leading to the final dungeon, Wave Echo Cave. Two of these are decent sized adventuring locations — a town with 12 areas and a castle with 14. Each of these locations aren’t huge, but in total you’ll get about 2 or 3 sessions from each, so we’re talking months of play in this 64 page booklet. And this is pretty remarkable compared to the two shorter starter modules I’ve reviewed, because 5e takes up a lot more space per key than they do, but fits a lot more gameable content into its key, especially when compared to the Village of Hommlet, which has a comparable number of locations in a third of the space, but with most of them being devoid of built-in interactivity. The locations, too, are much more thematic than the previous two slapdash dungeons, one being dragon-themed, a hobgoblin castle, a witches lair, a wizard manor, etc. The content here is really strong overall.
There are a lot of design missteps, though, which are common to 5th edition modules in my opinion, and likely related to the the apparent design by committee in the Hasbro-owned company: There’s less character here, with the NPCs being stereotypes, the evil wizards being just evil wizards, the dwarf being a dwarf, the dragon being just a dragon. You need to bring it to make this module exciting. This could, generously, be by design, though? One of the core appeals of 5th edition after all is the power of its iconic archetypes. To beginner players and referees, these could be a similar hook: It’s easy to play a dark elf wizard, or a hobgoblin warlord, or a greedy young dragonling. This “weakness” could be, in fact, considered an onboarding tool. Being generic may be a useful tool in this specific use case.
Further design missteps, I think are in the lethality of this heroic play introduction. The dragon encounter in particular needs a lot of advice in tend if how to run it and how to prepare the players for it to be a slaughter. It does a great job of teaching the rules of the game gradually, but it doesn’t do an excellent job of preparing the players to gauge danger, to retreat, and to act with caution. I found this a trend in 5th edition as a whole. When you set up your player characters as heroes with a 20 level future, you’ll expect them to survive those 20 levels. This leads to a difficult line to tread, especially in the context that this boxed set doesn’t come with character creation rules, just a few pregenerated characters.
It does also train some bad habits, I think, though. The NPC descriptions, particularly for the town of Phandalin (as an NPC-dense space), leaves a lot to be desired, and that makes it more challenging to run. While I like the advice it provides the referee with for running them, the actual NPCs neither consistently use the (admittedly new at the time) traits-ideals-bonds-flaws structure, but also doesn’t succeed in providing them with goals or anything for the referee to hook into when improvising a personality for them. It’s a bad start, when a lot of players looking to try 5th edition for the first time are likely to be inclined to treat them as videogame quest givers, rather than people. It would help to provide them with some kind of inner life, something being done as early as Against the Cult of the Reptile God as far as I can easily recall. The structure is in acts, which trains the referee to consider this a story you’re walking the players through — which, I know, may not be considered bad practice in the realm of 5th edition, but to me, this could function without this drive to place the players on narrative rails, so it’s a disappointment it undermines that open-world structure with some narrative overlaying.
Like the first two modules I’ve reviewed, Lost Mine of Phandelver speaks deeply to what 5th edition modules would end up looking like — large scale, broad sandboxes containing set railroaded narratives that the player characters can choose to engage with or not, resulting in a generation of unhappy referees that rail against the freeform nature of sandboxes and expect players to do as the narrative requires. It’s this structure, among other things, that drove many people out of 5th edition and into the broader world of DIY elf games. But the Lost Mine of Phandelver so close to a damned appealing open-world structure to me — if the railroading was a little less ham handed, and the final dungeon had a little more depth, I think this has huge potential as a larger campaign. In fact (and correct me if I’m wrong), I believe the module Phandelver and Below attempted to expand this module in exactly that way — although I don’t know with how much success. I think I could certainly, with a bit of work, make this into very memorable campaign, although I wouldn’t choose to run it in 5th edition these days.
Does it need work though? I bought this, back in 2014 when it was released, and before we finished the campaign — I don’t remember how long we played it for — we all decided to invest in the core books. And the wealth of advice for expanding and improving the campaign of the starter set speaks volumes about how compelling it is as a generic fantasy introduction to a complex game, even if it at the same time fails to introduce adequately the in-game behaviour necessary to survive the game. I think it’s apparent it works well as a starter set, but I wonder how much more attention to the latter would have impacted the culture of actual play and OC play that developed over the decade since 5th edition came out.
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.
The Temple of Kuzhlen by Kirhon Vi is a 3 page zungeon, published about a week after the Zungeon Jam went live. It features a public domain cover, and a hand-drawn cover. Its pretty cool. Let’s get into it.
Featuring mole-men? Perfect!
What do I like? I really like the touch of having a follow up to the rumour, here, for a little more information. I really like how the final room is locked but visible from the first room you enter. I really like how all of the rooms are unique; I really like the two distinct factions that are immediately easy to embody and make decisions in the shoes of. The clues regarding the small mystery I think are seeded such that the players will figure it out quickly, and I feel like there’s a decent chance of resolving conflict peaceably if they’re paying attention and the referee communicates the faction habits clearly.
What could be improved? I think that the time spent on the second rumour space might be more useful to introduce a dilemma, like that the Molten Claws are needed by the party for some reason. I think that there needs to be a little more clarity about what the two choices when facing down the slime might be. I think a specific named character for each of the two factions would be really helpful; I want to say that I’d like some advice how to play those characters, but honestly I think their descriptions are so strong that’s probably unnecessary. I also think that the module clearly favours non-violent solutions, but I think the party need to be more strongly encouraged to do violence otherwise it isn’t really a choice, is it? What do the factions have that violence would get them more easily? On the other hand, there’s no strong reason to help either of them, either, or to aid one over the other. Giving all of them a little extra spice would help add drama and make decision-making more difficult.
This is a great little first stage zungeon, filled with fun people to interact with and interesting potential encounters. It just needs to be a little more flammable. With those things added, this is easily something I’d pay for, and as it lies the Temple of Kuzhlen will be a great addition to your campaign, or a fun one-shot.
For the last few years, I have been really intrigued by Trophy and particularly Trophy Gold, which are absolute messes of games, which don’t suit my play style at all, but that I find deeply compelling, to the point where I wrote a very long review for Wyrd Science about them. Anyway, in the intervening years, I’ve been tinkering with Trophy as a framework to run the kind of game I enjoy playing.
Experimenting with pixel art, myself, by me.
Guilders is an attempt to do so, basically by modifying the basic framework of Trophy, by removing the nihilistic perspective, aiming it at running open worlds, filled with specific modules, and then layering in some 3rd edition prestige classes for advancement. But it keeps the simple rule-set, the sharing of narrative space (while shifting it blorb-ways), and the principles-first perspective. I’m pretty proud of it, and I think it’s pretty good, covering in a modular way all the bases that I think an elfgame needs to cover.
Anyway, spurred by such movements as The Year of the Beta and The 1e Manifesto, I decided to release it. It’s been playtested a fair while (I tend to playtest my modules in it), and I haven’t tweaked it for a few months.
Tongue in cheek, it’s an open-world, scenario-based, rooted by trophy game. So, OSR. Anyway, I hope a few of you enjoy playing Guilders.
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 approachto module writing can do.
A Mirror Dungeon was the first zungeon written, to my knowledge. Sam Dunnewold wrote it, and then said to me in one of the many zungeon threads that have appeared across Discord, “I have other projects, but this is so much fun I’m afraid it’ll eat into my other projects time.” And I said, so post it on your blog. Therefore, it has no page count, its system agnostic, and it’s only available as a post here, with no art Sam states it took about 80 minutes to write this 6-room dungeon, one that satisfies the first stage of the Zungeon Manifesto. That also means it’s not on the Zungeon Jam page, which is why I wanted to be sure I highlighted it: It won’t be found by other means.
This module has a romance at its’ core: I spoke recently in Dungeon Regular about how much I think romance is a missed opportunity in adventure modules. In this, in two worlds, the opposite half of a couple died, forever haunting their home. You’re investigating a missing widower, who was lost in their haunted house while trying to bring back his wife.
The writing really elegantly hints at what’s going on, “In the floor’s reflection, that chandelier still hangs.” so that the players will figure out the mystery even if they aren’t warned. “Terrified, relieved to have company, and thirsty” is a lovely description of the main NPC, too, among others. Altogether, A Mirror Dungeon has more pithy turns of phrase than a 6 room dungeon deserves. I’ve read plenty of Sam’s work (I recently reviewed Dice Forager), but honestly, he’s shining brighter here. Now, this is an unfinished zungeon, and so we’re left with the questions the author chose not to answer, but I don’t really mind.
Would I run this? This is honestly by itself, with its pencil sketch of a map, a fun little dungeon to drop into a sandbox, with a melancholy vibe. It’s lovely, and as good as anything you’d write quickly for tomorrow’s game. You’ll have to improvise around it: It’s at its best when the author knew the answers to the questions. But it’s worth reading for a few reasons: Firstly, because you can see how you can write something beautiful in less than two hours, and secondly, because in its unfinished form it’s an excellent demonstration of how your first attempt is a small stone that can begin an avalanche. I challenge you not to read this and be inspired to imagine what comes next. I for one, since reading it, am crushed that Sam didn’t choose to finish it.
Let A Mirror Dungeon inspire you: Think of what Sam’s vision, “a zine with a second cover on the back, and all the mirror world stuff is printed in reverse so you have to hold it up to a mirror to read it” might have looked like, what the answers to the reactions raised are, and then go and write your own.
Idle Cartulary
P.S. I was wiped on the first Sunday of the year, so I didn’t get to write this then. So I’m publishing this a few days later, and I’ll re-date it in a a few days. Here on in, I’ll endeavour to run on time, promise.
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 end of January marks my 100th Bathtub Review (not counting my I Read Reviews, so the number may be closer to 150), so I’m celebrating with an Introductory Extravaganza, where I review a different Dungeons and Dragons starter module every week for a few weeks. Last week I covered the Village of Hommlet (AD&D), this week I’ll cover the Sunless Citadel (D&D 3e) and coming up are the Lost Mine of Phandelver (D&D 5e), The Iron Coral (Into the Odd) and Blancmange and Thistle (Troika!).
The Sunless Citadel is a 32 page module for D&D 3rd edition, written by Bruce Cordell. In it, the player characters investigate a dungeon whose upper levels are occupied by feuding kobold and goblin tribes, before driving deeper to find a dark evil: An evil tree that grows a single apple each summer and winter, the seeds of which sprout evil blights. It’s a 55 room dungeon that spends no time on the surrounding area at all; of the total page count only 6 are not dungeon key — 3 are introductory, and 3 are a stat block appendix. Compared to both the Village of Hommlet and the Lost Mine of Phandelver, it’s a shockingly self-contained module, more similar in scope to the Iron Coral.
I skipped the third and fourth editions of Dungeons and Dressing entirely, opting instead to play board games for a decade, and so I’m a little surprised to find that The Sunless Citadel feels very strongly transitional, and not so much of a break from the 1st and 2nd edition modules I’m more familiar with. I assumed that this would suffer from the bloat that I’ve heard was endemic in 3.5e, but the truth is, while it inherits bad habits from the Dragonlance era of 2nd edition, it’s actually got a strong authorial voice and reminds me a lot of the better dungeons of AD&D.
In terms of layout, maps occupy the inside back and front covers, and interior text is a dense justified two column layout that makes you rely heavily on headings for navigation. That said, main headings are replicated in headers, and are differentiated clearly by font, size, indentation and decoration. I intensely dislike the choice to lay sidebars over the external margin art — the external margin art crowds the rest as is, but this choice makes those columns affected scarcely legible. Aside from this, small things like leading, paragraph spacing and padding make this generally more legible than any 1st or 2nd edition module. It’s a cut above, but still beholden to its past. Interestingly, compared to the Village of Hommlet, the keys are more difficult to read: Beyond differentiating the boxed read aloud text and stat blocks, there is no text flagging or highlighting for points of interest or treasure. Given these keys tend to bloat as the stat blocks are heftier than previous editions and are included in-line (excellent choice for an introductory module), the difficulty identifying key information is a problem. You’ll have to go through this with a few different coloured highlighters on your read through to make it smoother to run. There are only 7 interior art pieces, not too different from what came before and not the incredible over the top art density that has come to characterise modern editions. These are, too, black and white line art of a style more typical of earlier editions, although the realism that came to characterise Dungeons and Dragons is beginning to creep in in place of the less polished, janky stylings of AD&D.
The introductory pages introduce jack all, to be honest. Even encounter levels — intended to show at a glance whether your party is likely to be destroyed by an encounter — refer to the DMG. Boxed text and sidebars are explained but little else. The faction summaries aren’t terrible, but don’t give you much juice, and make assumptions regarding what will happen: “The adventurers have less luck dealing with the goblins…” The 3 hooks are not interesting enough to warrant existing and don’t impact the modules’ play in any way; you could be generous and say that is because it’s for beginners, but it largely seems lazy. The rumours aren’t given in list form, and while you can gain them “by role playing”, they really don’t give useful information that will impact play or information that will really lure them to the Sunless Citadel itself; while there’s a social contract to go to the dungeon of course,why are these even here if they don’t provide either in-game justification or contribute to the gameplay. There’s at least one genuine mistake: While the tree bears only one fruit, somehow this is supposed to provide the goblins with some kind of industry selling magical fruit and spreading the seeds. This feels like a massive editing mistake, to me? Oakhurst as a village also feels like it exists in greater detail somewhere on the cutting room floor — a conjecture also supported by the existence of a genuinely lovely panoramic map for a town that isn’t described otherwise. In general, it assumes you remember the text far too much — I wondered why saplings were missing in Oakhurst as a mystery hook, when all it meant was that they had turned into blights, obvious in retrospect, but I missed it in the walls of text.
Check out this map! Genuinely excellent work by Tod Gamble. It’s for a village that isn’t actually detailed at all, Oakhurst.
Overall the introductory section assumes a deep familiarity with both the Player’s Handbook and the Dungeon Masters Guide, and doesn’t do anything to tutorialise the referee at all. Does it tutorialise the players, though? Well, it does gradually expose the player characters to the kind of challenges that they should expect, and does so at first in low-risk situations. In the first few areas, there are sign of low risk creatures, there are language puzzles and search puzzles that foreshadow future encounters, and environmental challenges that require conscious decision making. All of these are mirrored deeper into the module, with traps and secret rooms. But, it gets pretty gnarly pretty quickly; I’m not sure if this is a positive or if the very regular hazards will be a negative experience for new players (there are 5 traps in the first 12 rooms). There is, at least, theme behind the traps: There’s an ongoing war between kobold and goblin that the player characters are stumbling into, but it feels like this dungeon is more punishing than the Ruined Moathouse in Village of Hommlet or especially compared to the Goblin Cave in Lost Mine of Phandelver. You’re less likely to have a rollicking good time here; especially as this adventure assumes you’re mapping as you go and that marching order is important. It’s a ten-foot-pole-poking adventure, moreso even than Hommlet was.
At least until you encounter the kobolds, who you’re supposed to ally with to defeat the goblins that block your way to the deeper druidic grove level. This sounds great in theory, but there’s no simple solution to building reputation with the kobolds, let alone with the goblins, and as factions there is very little to them aside from “squabbling over territory” which isn’t even “squabbling over resources”. There are named kobolds, but they don’t have desires or needs of their own to speak of; the only goblin named is their chief. There’s potential for faction play here, but it’s not set up adequately at all in my opinion, and would be more interesting again if we could incorporate our corrupt druid into the politics, but he’s confined to the grove below. This means that in theory this isn’t a hack and slash dungeon, but in practice it’s likely to be. It’ll take a lot of work to squeeze social play out of it, but it has good bones.
Overall, the Sunless Citadel isn’t something I’d choose to run as an experienced referee for experienced players. It, more so than the Village of Hommlet, assumes a lot of background knowledge of the game from everyone at the table. What’s more, the dungeon itself isn’t deeply compelling as it stands. However, it has a lot of components that could, if arranged differently, make for some compelling and interesting play. It’s inspiring, that’s for sure. I could see a version of this module that would make some hella interesting memories, but where are the compelling NPCs to meet? Where are the exploitable areas? How can we claim parts of the dungeons and make allies and wage war and play them off against each other?
It doesn’t tutorialise at all for the referee, but it arguably does for the players, at least in the sense that the level design provides a graduated difficulty curve and lethality so that they can learn to poke things with a long stick; but, given the issues with the design of the module, I think it will also discourage their best impulses.
That all said, I think, like the Village of Hommlet, it does reflect the expectations for play in 3rd edition: This is skill-roll focused, hazard and encounter-based play. It’s straying from hirelings; now you’re solo heroes. You’re levelling up quickly and facing high level foes by the depths of the dungeon. In this way, the Sunless Citadel is a fascinating insight into the modules that would drive play for over a decade, and potentially, still drive it in in 5th edition.
This is the second year I’ve decided to post Novies, but rather than struggle to create novelty categories every year, I’m going to keep it simple. From 2024 (or so), I’m going to pick my favourite things, judging for innovation and how influential it was to me. However many runners up I want, because spread the love. Let’s go!
Goblin Mail is unique. Unlike anything else released this year, immaculate in its vibes, and trying to do something that even other Troika! modules aren’t trying to do. It’s absolutely fantastic and I can’t recommend it enough. Nothing else like it.
Runners Up:
Resonant by Amanda P is the best Mothership module to come out this year. My first draft of these awards said “absolutely the best”, however we had two late-year surprises that I’ll talk about in a moment. The art by Tony Tran is transcendent, the layout is immaculate, and the writing nails the capitalistic horror that Mothership is best at.
Both Dead Weight and When In Rome were late year surprises that almost upended the competition. Both of them do a single-location, are wildly interactive, and feature some very clever game design decisions but fall down in their execution.
Tomb of the Primate Priest by Joseph R Lewis by contrast, is absolutely tiny, but by being judicious with its choices absolutely nails the idea of a small module. It’s a neat crawl, and the kind of thing we need more of to fill in our hex crawls. Clever stuff, which is really inspiring. I think that small modules are a tough nut to crack, and in many ways Tomb of the Primate Priest is a good exploration of how to crack it. However, that leaves 3 of the top 5 single-location modules being designed for Mothership: Fantasy module writers, you need to start bringing it in 2025!
Best Multi-location Module: Tiny Fables by Josiah
I wrote the review for this donkey’s years ago, but it’s still yet to be released beyond backers. This is the best, straight up, Mausritter module, and I’m really excited for everyone to get it in their hands. It’s a cute, interesting, beautiful and easy to run fairytale of a module which bucks Mausritter design trends. Expect a review as soon as it’s publicly released, and keep it on your radar; I can’t give you a link to it at this stage.
Runners Up:
Atop the Wailing Dunes by Sofhino absolutely blew me away with its methods of designing a hexcrawl that feels organic and like actually travelling through wilderness. I didn’t understand Pariah until I read this. It’s far from perfect, but I want to see others attempt similar things.
Crown of Salt by Tania Herrero was a late-year surprise, and revealed Tania as someone to look out for, combining art, layout and writing in creative and exciting ways, just like luminaries such as Luka Rejec. The grim fairytale vibe is a great twist on Mörk Borg, and this is well worth pre-ordering.
Best Game: Dawn of the Blood Orcs
Dawn of the Orcs was a late year entry with Critique Navidad, and absolutely blew me away with its rigid structure and parlour larp approach to wizardly bickering.
Runner Up:
His Majesty the Worm is the game I’d run if I were to choose one game to run for the rest of my life. It’s all here. You can play from this book for eternity and it’s a beautiful book. The problem is, it doesn’t suit my style of play, which is module-heavy; that’s the main reason it didn’t win best game of the year for me. But if you’re playing a weekly game with the same crew and have for years, this is the game for your table.
Gonan the Barbarian really surprised me with a unique and fun cartoon structure that I feel needs to be hacked and iterated on. Just a really fun surprise.
Eco Mofos was a game that released early and I discovered late, and has reawakened my desire to run Cairn-like games again. It just has a pile of neat innovations, a lot of cool flavourful cues for play, and it made me excited to bring to the table. I hope it managed to build an ecosystem enough that it thrives, rather than disappears as many unsupported TTRPG games do, however you could manage well on the procedural generators that feature here.
Amanda P — a friend of mine I should note — is just very much on the same wavelength as me regarding what they’re attempting to do with their modules. But this and Social Contracts Must Be Splintered are really influential pieces of writing on how to make the people in your modules interesting and living people in their own right, and how to make your elfgame not just a video game.
Clayton Noteskine wrote a whole series on graphic design and other creative tips including marketing copy,covers, titles and voice.
Best Episode of a Podcast: Prestige Classes on Dice Exploder by Sam Dunnewold with Sam Roberts
Making me pick Best Episode is so challenging, and I’m glad I set this restriction. I’m a big fan of Dice Exploder, and I’ve been a guest on the show previously, but there were some strong other contenders this year, with stellar episodes of Bastionland, RTFM, and Yes Indie’d (and of course a special call out to my feature in Stop Hack & Roll) in 2024. But for me, as someone who’s primarily into DIY elf games, this episode of Dice Exploder featuring my friend Sam Roberts was just brimming with the special sauce that makes Dice Exploder great and enthusiasm for the flawed mechanic it discussed and the game as a whole. It was really inspiring for me, and I began designing two games in partial response to it (only one which will come to any fruition, I think). It’s a part of a series on D&D on Dice Exploder, and for me this was the only stand out episode. The difficulty I think is that so many of the mechanics in D&D are either subjects of derision (the Adventuring Day, THAC0), or incredibly basic to everyone’s understanding of the hobby (the d20 roll!), that for me, the guests on these episodes couldn’t help but feel a little less enthused than the usual guests, although Sam Dunnewold is as always a ray of sunshine. I just hope that this series on historical D&D doesn’t preclude other episodes on elfgame mechanics, like mine on Rumour tables, because there is still just so much exciting and interesting stuff out there that merits talking about.
Best Videogame: The Lost Crown
Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown. Every time I play a new metroidvania, I feel like we should persevere with attempts to translate the level design to our megadungeon design, in the same way that Ave Nox attempted to. This game was an absolute pleasure.
Runners Up:
Chants of Senaar, which is filled with interesting linguistic puzzles, of the kind that I wish I could wrap my head around how to write, as I think that this particular type of linguistic puzzle is so obviously a perfect kind of puzzle structure for building worlds in modules and settings. I really should (or someone should) write about building linguistic puzzles like these.
Elden Ring, which I never finished, but the world building and structure is really fascinating and I wrote a number of posts about it including Elden Ring and Overworlds.
The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi was juggled being fascinating study of motherhood and middle age, a mildy spicy ill-advised romance, a swashbuckling pirate adventure, and an epic fantasy, in a way that I didn’t see coming after reading and enjoying Shannon Chakraborty’s previous books. I couldn’t recommend it highly enough, and I can’t get enough of Chakraborty’s medieval Islamic historical fantasies (Master of Djinn by P Djeli Clark was also a consideration for my favourites of the year).
The Theft of Swords by Michael J Sullivan I only finished the other week, but was a very solid and enjoyable fantasy, which builds up a world, politic and characters subtly and enjoyably. This is focused primarily on fantasy heists, and it’s the first in a series (of collected novellas is my impression), and I suspect it may deteriorate into a more epic fantasy over time, but these first two novellas in one volume both bring exceptional lessons for world-building and faction politics.
Daughter of the Moon Goddess by Sue Lynn Tan, is a huge contrast to the other two: This is a Chinese mythological fantasy, featuring a significant romance plotline, which is absolutely epic in scale and breadth. I couldn’t get enough of this first part of the duology (although I don’t feel so strongly about the sequel, which to be honest doesn’t need to be read as the first finished perfectly well). Strong recommendation if you’re interested in non-western fantasies.
Other Recommended Pleasures
I played a lot of Micro Macro Crime City this year; this is an exceptional “board” game to fit around work and parenting, bite-sized in play time, and left pinned as a poster to your wall. In it, you solve crimes by looking for clues on a massive Where’s Wally style poster. We coloured ours in as we went, as well.
Cavern Shuffle: Maze of the Minotaur is a new solo card game that I only got in the last few weeks, and I’ve been playing it when left alone over the break. I’ve never gotten into solo games before, but it’s an absolute pleasure of a solitaire-like, and it feels like you’re crawling through a dungeon despite the familiarity of the mechanics. Oh, and I just really enjoy the art by Bodie H.
This is the year we started building Lego, which we discovered through building with our kids that are of that age. We’ve been slowly building up our Animal Crossing village (the set that persuaded us to invest in it for ourselves and not just for the kids), and are pretty excited for the new releases next year.
Drawing in spare moments was my hobby this year. I didn’t nail it consistently, but I bought notebooks and pens to leaves everywhere I could, and got to sketching dungeon maps and trees and hills and little folk after the style of Ed Emberley (who, sadly, I can’t find many books of
My year in brief
Every Oscars or Grammies has a montage of what happened that year. I’m not all over everything in this hobby, but here’s my milestones for this year:
Things to look forward to next year: I’ll be releasing Sharky, an underwater dungeon module for Zinequest in February, Lightfingers, a small mansion heist module in the second half of the year. Sharky has been written, playtested and the art is rolling in, and Lightfingers is for playtesting early next year. I’m excited by both of them.
I have a really large earring collection; I have perhaps as many earrings as I have TTRPGs, and I mainly buy them from local craft markets, not jewellers. They’re all made from resin or clay, or cut from wood or acrylic, by hand or with homestyle equipment, in peoples’ basements or garages, not outsourced to a factory overseas or to a shop where people print 3d-print their ideas. It’s a craft movement, like zines once were.
Zines in TTRPGs in 2024 has come to mean “A5, highly produced booklet”, but that isn’t what zines have traditionally been. They were like earrings: local craft. I think that we should be embracing local craft in TTRPGs. The easiest way, is to make a dungeon. Let me explain how you can make a zine dungeon in the classic sense of the word: A zungeon.
The first step is how to demystify dungeons. If you ask someone who does this a lot, you’ll get lots of specific advice. Ignore it all. This is how to get your first draft, as quickly as possible.
Go here and generate a dungeon. I suggest this dungeon generator because it’s not random, but rather based on the platonic ideal as calculated by Marcia B. Other generators aren’t as useful in my opinion, because they’re too big. Start small, and only increase the size of the container when your idea overflows.
Choose a theme, then mix it with another theme. “Mermaid Vampire” “Slime waterfall”. If you get something boring like “cucumber demon” just do it again to get “cucumber demon jazz”. If you can’t think of any themes, draw cards and use those (tarot, Magic, Dixit).
Create two monsters or NPCs (or groups) to inhabit your dungeon, riffing off the theme. Give them a goal and a method of achieving it. If you want stats, just take them from a similar stat block and tweak.
Put the NPCs in their designated rooms, and then describe all of the rooms, all riffing off the theme.
Pick a party level (X), and put Xd6 x 200 silver pieces and Xd6 x 100 gold pieces worth of treasure in the dungeon. Also layer the theme on the treasure, if it makes sense.
Roll 1d6, and on a 6 add a magical item. Riff off theme too.
If you don’t feel 6 rooms is enough, do it all again, with a new theme. Have the faction in the second section conflict with the first. Rinse and repeat until you feel like it’s big enough. I’d estimate one of these would last a session or two.
This process lowers the bar of entry to making a dungeon. You’ve already made enough to run for your friends, and it’s been less than an hour.
Stop there, if you want.
Listen to the dungeons’ heart
Or, if want to publish or share this dungeon? This is how to build it into something you’re excited to share. Primary principle: Listen to its’ heart from this point forward.
Do any of the rooms make promises that aren’t fulfilled? Add a room, an item, an NPC. Follow the trail of the world you’ve built. You’ll find it feeds back into itself. Revise it according to what it wants.
Does the slime waterfall need a source? Add a room. What lives there? Add a character.
Read Juicy Hooks and add either hooks or rumours. Like, 1-2 per 6 rooms, probably just 1 will be enough. Again, listen to your dungeon’s heart: What would lure someone into it?
The slime, if collected at its’ source, heals vampirism? What’s the source? Who lives there?
Add events and encounters. Like, 1-2 per 6 rooms, probably just 1 will be enough. Still listen to your dungeons’ heart: What happens when time passes there?
The dungeon slowly fills with slime. You can only stop it by making the infant Vampire Queen stop crying. Until then, the blood slimes will move twice as fast.
Now we play it with our friends, and fix our mistakes (vampire queen too deadly? Blood slimes not deadly enough? Slime rises too quickly? Hook not compelling enough?
Now it’s a loop; repeat this process until you’re excited to show it off.
Stop there, if you want.
Give it an Zungeon identity
Or, make it beautiful. How? “I don’t have an artistic bone in my body”
Yes, you do. You have some kind of asset: Collage skills and old comic books, stick figures and a long meeting at work, watercolours and an interest in splatters, colourful doodles that you do for mindfulness, the ability to sew, you mapped on grid paper as a child, you have an eight year old nephew who loves to draw the X-men: Use your assets to give your dungeon an identity. Make a cover, and then make one of these things special, too: Art, headings or maps. Don’t try to look like everyone else. Don’t try to look professional. Give your zungeon identity. Get glitter and glue on your hands and cut paper. Be messy and DIY. Be surprising. Stick it all together into the notepad you write into, take photos with your phone, and combine it into a pdf.
Go back and look at those cool DIY zines: You’re making a zungeon. Craft, art, and play combine. Have fun. Just do it. Apply the same improvisational skills that you apply to play to your zungeon.
That means that even if you insist you have no skills that you can apply — which I don’t believe — you can support one of the many artists who put their art out for free on to their patrons, like Evelyn or Amanda (artists — if you have one of these, comment, and I’ll add a list at the end of this). Draw a map, using a mapping program like Dungeon Scrawl. If you do it like this — all digital — then make a google doc and print it at work. Then mark it up in the margins. Let loose. Your children’s crayons. Ha! I tricked you into making a zungeon anyway!
Now, share it on itch.io. At the very least make it Pay What You Want. Tell people about it. You know what, use the hashtag #zungeon, why not? If you send me a download code, I promise to put it in my review list. Actually, if I get more than 2 or 3, I’ll review zungeons in addition to my usual reviews.
Creating a dungeon is easy, and even publishing one is attainable, particularly if you unshackle yourself from what it should be, and let yourself make a zungeon.
Idle Cartulary
Addition: A lot of people suggested making this a jam, so we can all be inspired by each other’s zungeons. So, here’s the zungeon jam. Join and share!
Addition 3: The are 2 other 2025 manifestos that support and interact with this one, the 1E Manifesto and Year of the Beta, and Seedling wrote What Is A Zine? Check them out if you’re having trouble sharing your zungeon.
Addition 4: I’ve had some questions about interpreting the output from the dungeon generator, because it uses some terminology from early editions. “Empty” doesn’t mean empty, it means no treasure, monsters, or traps — Chris can help if you’re not sure what to put here! “Interactive” means there’s something there interesting — a puzzle, a magic fountain, a lever that releases the slime. “Treasure” specifically means fungible treasure — treasure not exchangeable for cash can be as plentiful as you wish.
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Dungeon Regular is a show about modules, adventures and dungeons. I’m Nova, also known as Idle Cartulary and I’m reading through Dungeon magazine, one module at a time, picking a few favourite things in that adventure module, and talking about them. On this episode I talk about Threshold of Evil, in Issue #10, March 1988! You can find my famous Bathtub Reviews at my blog, https://playfulvoid.game.blog/, you can buy my supplements for elfgames and Mothership at https://idlecartulary.itch.io/, check out my game Advanced Fantasy Dungeons at https://idlecartulary.itch.io/advanced-fantasy-dungeons and you can support Dungeon Regular on Ko-fi at https://ko-fi.com/idlecartulary.
Playful Void 