• Sharky! Now crowdfunding!

    My new module Sharky is funding for Zinequest right now! Please, support it!

    Sharky is a fantasy roleplaying adventure module written for Old School Essentials or other, similar, fantasy roleplaying games for low-level adventurers. In it, your heroes (or rogues) will travel into an undersea cave complex, to investigate a beast that is wreaking havok in the seaside village of Conchi.

    This is a 50 page softcover filled with interesting characters, compelling factions and weird magical items, set in the same world as Curse of Mizzling Grove. The village of Conchi has 8 locations and the characters that dwell there, and Catacomb Cave is a 31 room dungeon, filled with secret passages and affected by the tides. Art is by Jay White, and it’s gorgeous! Check out the cover!

    Sharky by Jay White

    Anyway, Sharky is funding now, and I’d love for you all to have a play in this little sandbox.

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    Playful Void is a production of Idle Cartulary. If you liked this article, please consider liking, sharing, and subscribing to the Idle Digest Newsletter. If you want to support Idle Cartulary continuing to provide Bathtub Reviews, I Read Reviews, and Dungeon Regular, please consider a one-off donation or becoming a regular supporter of Idle Cartulary on Ko-fi.

  • Zungeon Zunday: The Desecration

    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 Desecration by Jonathan Loy is a 6 page, 6 room zungeon for Old School Essentials, inspired by Greek mythology. In it, a naiad Ismene provides the local village with clean water. The guardian of her shrine is dies, and you can choose to aid in saving the village — or pilfer for your own gain!

    The layout is inspired by 80s modules, with positives and negatives that entails, but it’s not terrible, and the dungeon scrawl map is pretty good. Serviceable, and as good as plenty on the market you’re ponying up cash for a layout for.

    The hooks here need a little tweaking — as is, they largely relate the premise, and I think it’s better if they twist the premise or impact the how the characters interact with the shrine. Suggesting that the sapphire has special powers that might tempt them or cause them to fear it, or placing them in more direct opposition with the village, the rival adventurers or the nymph would bring a lot to the module.

    The random encounters here are flavourful, but don’t add much in the way of tension. I think, in a 6 room dungeon, that’s a sensible approach — particularly if you’re putting a lot into the rooms, you don’t have to lay it on too thick with random encounters. I’m not sure the rooms are interactive enough, here, though. Here’s what I’d tweak: There are two puzzles, and I’d keep them. I’d remove the adventuring party from the 4th room, and put something there: An encounter with the ghost of the guardian, seeking its’ severed head and heckling, perhaps? And put the praying villagers into the remaining empty rooms, with a little more spice, by naming them and giving them a little personality, as Loy has the adventurer. But I’d increase the risk of random encounters, so that the adventuring party is more likely to show up and interfere in more other rooms as their primary mode of involvement. This gives the random encounters focus and a clear role in the proceedings — but also, if you do this, you need to think about how often they’re occurring to make sure they actually occur.

    The rooms are keyed out in a style reminiscent of the OSE house style, which for me is a little too wordy, but it gives you a lot to work with if you’re a reluctant improviser. I really like the meaty encounters that are here — the nymph, the adventuring party, and the flood trap are all fun encounters, and the empty rooms have flavourful descriptions. I think those empty rooms could be more meaningfully empty, though, perhaps revealing a way the magical waters could rejuvenate the slain guardian, if a puzzle was solved, or revealing lore in a cumulative way with the other rooms.

    There is a prayer effects table (which I like for its thematic randomness, everything from drenching to cursing to a magi wand), and a list of potential results for obvious approaches to the adventure. I like these, a lot, to be honest, as they really lean into the central ethical conflict at the core of the module, and ethical conundrums make for fun play in my experience.

    The changes I’ve suggested would make this an absolute banger, I think, but as it stands I’d totally still check The Desecration out. It’s hard to fill a sandbox with small but fun dungeons that take a session or two to play through, and this is still a strong candidate for adding to your campaign map; certainly better than most of what you’d throw together yourself the night before.

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    Playful Void is a production of Idle Cartulary. If you liked this article, please consider liking, sharing, and subscribing to the Idle Digest Newsletter. If you want to support Idle Cartulary continuing to provide Bathtub Reviews, I Read Reviews, and Dungeon Regular, please consider a one-off donation or becoming a regular supporter of Idle Cartulary on Ko-fi.

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  • Bathtub Review: The Blancmange and Thistle

    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 month I covered the Village of Hommlet (AD&D), the Sunless Citadel (D&D 3e), the Lost Mine of Phandelver (D&D 5e), and the Iron Coral (Into the Odd). Today we’re wrapping up with the Blancmange and Thistle (Troika!).

    This is actually the thumbnail for the Foundry VTT edition, but it matches the book I’m reading from, and its contents are different from the version you can buy on the Troika! website.

    The Blancmange and Thistle is a 23 page introductory module for Troika! by Daniel Sell. There are a few versions of it; I’m reviewing the version in the 2023 printing with the Andrew Walter art, specifically, rather than the more commonly available version which in my opinion has terrible layout, although the content is much the same for those of you who care little about such things. In it, the players are forced to share a room on the sixth floor of the Blancmange & Thistle — what will they encounter in a hotel run by mandrills in the inter-dimensional city of Troika?

    Blancmange & Thistle is laid out in single column layout, breaking into a 1:2 ratio second column occasionally for things like stat blocks. The only information flagged is mechanical information such as skills or statistics — almost everything else is in plain text, written in paragraphed prose. Those reading my reviews for some time know that I’m not always a fan, and while Sell’s authorial voice is sumptuous and pulpy, I do struggle here. It’s balanced with generous margins, paragraph breaks and padding, but marred by inconsistencies in positioning (randomly in a 1:1 column at the bottom of page 112 for example) and the odd use of the 1:2 ratio just for stat blocks with minimal padding where brief stat blocks would suffice. The paragraphing really doesn’t want any orphans or widows at all, to the point there are some absurdly large white spaces that feel unintentional; I can’t decide if this was a good decision, but to my eye it’s not. Given the success of Troika! these are places where some will have used spot art if they cared so deeply about orphaned lines, but instead we have bold white spaces — this I think is a spot where the solid layout choices of the greater rulebook is negatively affecting the module at its back, similarly to what we saw in The Iron Coral. The Walter art, like the rest of the art in this edition, is lovely and reminiscent of the line art used in RPGs in the late 80s and early 90s; it suits Troika! a little better than the iconic art in the free version, but is a little less striking and unique.

    Structurally, Blancmange and Thistle is unique: There is no map, simply something occurring on each floor (if you take the stairs, you’ll experience them all), and someone getting into the lift on each floor (if you don’t take the stairs, you’ll experience them all). You can of course, exit or enter the lift as you choose, which means the “map” is simply a 5 x 2 grid of locations, 10 interesting encounters described each in about a page. These encounters are, all of them, intriguing on their own and intended to interact with each other in potentially interesting ways. They are a masterclass in how to bring the weirdness that is the list of advanced skills and backgrounds in Troika! to your adventures. My only criticism of the writing of course, is that it’s just too much: In providing the voice and aesthetic of Troika! Sell has rendered the module unplayable, or at least, I’m either reading his text out loud self-censoring or taking long pauses whenever the players enter a new space as I parse the text and then recite what I feel is important back at them. When your prose is key to communicating your aesthetic, I feel like you just need to work it into read-aloud text, rather than this semi-novelistic prose, else it becomes an impenetrable wall.

    Referee advice in Blancmange & Thistle largely amounts to a number of places where the referee is encouraged to improvise in various ways, and one section where it advises when it’s appropriate to create new advanced skills and how to do so. That’s not much, but it’s a little more than in the Village of Hommlet, and much more than the Iron Coral. There is next to no tutorialising for the players though: To players not already engaged in Troika!s style of play, and not expecting multiple deaths of player characters, I could see many players being turned off by this module. There is almost no interesting choice allowed — you cannot avoid the stairs or the elevator, and of course simply finding a different hotel is outside the scope of the module — and roughly half of the encounters are potentially deadly. One of them is a dream and when you wake you’re alive. Once you reach your destination, if you choose to go to the party, you’re rewarded with rumours of potential adventure in the great city of Troika! These, for the poor referee, are also entirely to be improvised.

    Of the introductory modules I’ve read, Blancmange & Thistle is the only one that I genuinely think is a bad introduction. Goblin Mail or the Big Squirm are more interesting introductions to the game, utilise the rules more appropriately, and show the players what it’s like to be in this strange world in a similar way. Blancmange & Thistle does communicate is that Troika! is weird and strange and to expect bizarre interactions with unique individuals — it just does very little else in terms of communicating the joy of adventuring in Troika! Unlike the others, Blancmange & Thistle attempts to be a stepping off point for the referee to invent their own Troika! with their players, but Troika! itself doesn’t really allow for that, rather relying on the implicit world building in the backgrounds, just like a number of other Troika! settings have. I think this urge in Troika! is misguided, which I’ve written about previously in my review of Goblin Mail. I want a module that gives me a fun time with my friends, not something that requires me to spend the whole time making things up to cover the places where the author couldn’t be bothered doing any work. Of all of these introductory modules, Troika is the only one that doesn’t give me at least a few sessions of play, and that doesn’t give a clear indication (or even sell me on a pitch) for what the game will play out like in the future.

    The big question that I’m left wondering at the end of this series of reviews, is “What is the purpose of an introductory module?”, because I think that, some concepts aside, all 5 I’ve reviewed have had different perspectives on what introductory modules should do. What almost all of them do succeed at is being exemplars of what to expect from an adventure in the system in question; Dungeons and Dragons evolved over time, and with it so did the style of module introducing it. The Iron Coral and Blancmange & Thistle take wildly different tacts based on the directions those games head in; here is think the only active failure of an introductory module is Blancmange & Thistle, although if its primary goal was in fact primarily to communicate vibes, the issue here is that I think that goal was a misguided one, not that it actually failed to achieve it.

    What I’ve come to realise is that I personally believe introductory modules should put more effort into tutorialising the game they introduce; the only one of these 5 that do this to an adequate extent is Lost Mine of Phandelver. What so much of our hobby relies on is oral transmission of both solid rules and directives that inform how we play and what choices we make. This is why sometimes you play and enjoy a game, and wonder “was that a good game, or is Jane just a good referee?” What does that mean though? If I were to set out a list of criteria, having reviewed both great and mediocre attempts, how would I go about achieving this goal? Well, I’d probably go through my game, and break down the key things a player and a referee needs to learn to play: For the referee, this is likely to be the primary principles of the game (although for principle driven games, this applies to players as well). Last year I read Shadowdark and Five Torches Deep, they both lay out principles in their rulebooks. I should have encounters where they can exercise those muscles. For the players, they should be each mechanic that is likely to be engaged with: Firstly simple conflict resolution, and then later procedures if they’re necessary, whatever the game attempts at combat or mass combat if it has it, an interaction with some examples of how to interpret perhaps a social encounter and any rolls associated with it. Examples of what things to write down in my notebook. How the character sheets change in response to what happens. Those are the kind of things you need. And, to do that, I suggest the Phandelver approach isn’t foolish: Start on rails, to introduce the basics in 1 or 2 encounters, then open up the world, to allow them to learn the rest of the game as they choose to engage with it. I’d love to see more games tutorialise like this, because the best here is by Wizards of the Coast, and is deeply flawed, so I think we can do better. I’m also surprised there aren’t more independent tutorials (I know there are some, but I can’t review every introductory module in this series — one I’m a big fan of is Tomb Robbers of the Crystal Frontier, and Another Bug Hunt is very thoughtful if flawed as well). It also leaves a huge amount of space for independent creators to make introductory modules for games that aren’t first party,

    Troika! is available here. Luckily, it’s free, so you can check it out and decide whether I’m being unfair on Blancmange & Thistle yourself. I really like Troika! and there are a number of excellent modules for it, for example Goblin Mail. Check those out!

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    Playful Void is a production of Idle Cartulary. If you liked this article, please consider liking, sharing, and subscribing to the Idle Digest Newsletter. If you want to support Idle Cartulary continuing to provide Bathtub Reviews, I Read Reviews, and Dungeon Regular, please consider a one-off donation or becoming a regular supporter of Idle Cartulary on Ko-fi.

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  • Zungeon Zunday: Lost Ruins of the Tiger-men

    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.”. Combining these 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.

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    Playful Void is a production of Idle Cartulary. If you liked this article, please consider liking, sharing, and subscribing to the Idle Digest Newsletter. If you want to support Idle Cartulary continuing to provide Bathtub Reviews, I Read Reviews, and Dungeon Regular, please consider a one-off donation or becoming a regular supporter of Idle Cartulary on Ko-fi.

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  • Bathtub Review: The Iron Coral

    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.

    Idle Cartulary

    Playful Void is a production of Idle Cartulary. If you liked this article, please consider liking, sharing, and subscribing to the Idle Digest Newsletter. If you want to support Idle Cartulary continuing to provide Bathtub Reviews, I Read Reviews, and Dungeon Regular, please consider a one-off donation or becoming a regular supporter of Idle Cartulary on Ko-fi.

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  • Zungeon Zunday: The Divorced Mage

    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.

    Idle Cartulary

    Playful Void is a production of Idle Cartulary. If you liked this article, please consider liking, sharing, and subscribing to the Idle Digest Newsletter. If you want to support Idle Cartulary continuing to provide Bathtub Reviews, I Read Reviews, and Dungeon Regular, please consider a one-off donation or becoming a regular supporter of Idle Cartulary on Ko-fi.

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  • Bathtub Review: Lost Mine of Phandelver

    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.

    Idle Cartulary

    Playful Void is a production of Idle Cartulary. If you liked this article, please consider liking, sharing, and subscribing to the Idle Digest Newsletter. If you want to support Idle Cartulary continuing to provide Bathtub Reviews, I Read Reviews, and Dungeon Regular, please consider a one-off donation or becoming a regular supporter of Idle Cartulary on Ko-fi.

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  • Zungeon Zunday: The Temple of Kuzhlen

    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.

    Idle Cartulary

    Playful Void is a production of Idle Cartulary. If you liked this article, please consider liking, sharing, and subscribing to the Idle Digest Newsletter. If you want to support Idle Cartulary continuing to provide Bathtub Reviews, I Read Reviews, and Dungeon Regular, please consider a one-off donation or becoming a regular supporter of Idle Cartulary on Ko-fi.

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  • Releasing Guilders

    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.

    Idle Cartulary

    Playful Void is a production of Idle Cartulary. If you liked this article, please consider liking, sharing, and subscribing to the Idle Digest Newsletter. If you want to support Idle Cartulary continuing to provide Bathtub Reviews, I Read Reviews, and Dungeon Regular, please consider a one-off donation or becoming a regular supporter of Idle Cartulary on Ko-fi.

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  • Zungeon Zunday: A Mirror Dungeon

    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.

    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.

    Playful Void is a production of Idle Cartulary. If you liked this article, please consider liking, sharing, and subscribing to the Idle Digest Newsletter. If you want to support Idle Cartulary continuing to provide Bathtub Reviews, I Read Reviews, and Dungeon Regular, please consider a one-off donation or becoming a regular supporter of Idle Cartulary on Ko-fi.

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