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.
Dead Weight is an 11 page module for Mothership by Norgad. In it, you are technicians aboard the ship the Adamant Lapis, as it falls to ruin for reasons you don’t yet understand. Norgad writes small modules, and I actually have another in the queue for this month and one for a next year, but this one was just released a few days ago so I gave it a bump. I’m really interested in Norgad’s approach to small modules, and I’m very curious how it translates to Mothership, which is the first time I’ve seen Norgad tackle something meatier than Mausritter. I missed this on Kickstarter, but received a comp copy.
The immediately obvious difference between this and Norgad’s other work, is that this has Mothership textual density. Smaller fonts, less white space, it feels as claustrophobic and working class as the Adamant Lapis feels as you are slowly driven from area to area by the vacuum of space. Art is minimalist but feels vector-sketched rather than hand-drawn and isvery sparse, except on the cover which is really attractively minimalist; symbols are used to differentiate different text levels rather than deep indentation. Headings are clearly differentiated with bold black decorations and numbering that I really like, and cut-out mini-maps pepper the text for usability. There is a lot packed into this space, and it’s clever layout.
The density results in some really neat shortcuts. The crew manifest is summarised in a single sentence quote, most of which are pretty good at conjuring a personality: “Wanna see a cool trick?” “Can I bum a cig off ya? No? Hey, Fuck you.” Symbols are used to maximise density while keeping hierarchy, as seen below, rather than deeply nested bullets. There are no stat blocks, as there are no monsters here: All of the horrors here are environmental.
Obviously, this is from Dead Weight by Norgad, and it’s damned efficient keying.
The fact that there are no enemies here, as well as saving a ton of space, means that it relies on a bunch of systems in Mothership 1e that otherwise often go by the wayside, like oxygen consumption and movement in vacuum. Breached hulls are central to the whole adventure. This is a pretty cool approach, taking advantage of these rules that I kind of considered ancillary and unnecessary, and making them core to the experience. The fact that there is a list of 5 incidents that effectively it is the players’ job to prevent occurring, and the fact that preventing those incidents for the most part involves saving lives rather than murdering people, makes this an utterly unique take on Mothership.
Now, whether that density is always for the best, is up for debate. From the start, the density and speed at which Dead Weight proceeds left me unsure exactly what was causing the breaches throughout the ship. The early indication that “every single person aboard the ship is a potential hull breach waiting to happen” made me think that either the Pearl — the cause of the danger — was moving around in relation to the crew, or that the infection was causing the crew to explode and cause the hull breaches. Eventually I realised that things from further and further around the ship were being drawn towards the Pearl, in a series of incidents detailed on page 4. It took me longer than it probably should have to figure this out, until the summary on the back cover, which I didn’t immediately recognise as a summary, again, because it’s damned dense and also includes a ship manifest and some example lab notes. I think that some important aspects of the module could have used more attention being given to them in terms of layout: White space and art do play an important role in drawing attention to important information, and when you pack your document densely, you pass up the use of an important tool.
Furthermore, while we have 4 events that are theoretically preventable, the imposed density means that it’s not clear from the outset how to identify that they’re going to happen, and how to prevent them. You’re looking for a few things: How to avoid collision with 98-Gobstopper, how to save Chief Officer Weaver, and how to prevent the ship from colliding with the ejected Dr Renato. You do have plenty of time — 8 hours in total — but to do so you need to figure out how that dead and bleeding bodies cause the hull breaches, and you need to figure out that the Pearl is causing the hull breaches. There are clues all over the place to this, but it’ll take time, and the answers aren’t actually flagged clearly in the text. In a text that’s usually well hyperlinked, I think this could use some suggestions as to solutions to these problems, and while I think you can make the case that we have an “OSR Challenge” that is open-ended, I think that it helps even in open-ended challenges to signpost potential ways to overcome them that are present, which this doesn’t do. And while I don’t in principle dislike the intersection of the alien Pearl and the unexpected virus, Carminosis, together being the cause of the unexpected disaster, I suspect that most players would be disappointed at the fact that they are unrelated, if they ever figure it out. And due to the lack of signposting and clear solutions, it feels at first blush that this cruise may be doomed from the start, and that you’re signing up to play your role in a tragedy. This might be worth signposting at your table, so they aren’t surprised.
It’s important to add, that time tracking isn’t included in this module. I was concerned about this initially — there’s a lot to track here, both as players and as the referee. But! It comes with player handouts for the deck plans, the cargo manifest and the crew manifest, and it comes with some incredibly useful time and character tracking handouts for the referee. These aren’t referenced in the text of the module, but they’re essential, I think, to running this smoothly; I’m the kind of person to overlook the extra stuff in the downloads section of a module, but in this case that does Dead Weight a significant disservice. There’s also a soundtrack, which provides tracks unique to all areas of the ship, and honestly, they’re very good ambient and tension-building tracks. This is quality support for a very small module of the kind that doesn’t usually get that kind of support.
Dead Weight is a damned impressive little module. There are so many innovations, and it achieves a lot in very little space. That density and incredible ambition causes it to fall short in a few places, namely that it doesn’t explain itself clearly and leans too hard into open-endedness, resulting in a module that’s hard to wrap your head around and that you kind of need to study to understand. But, that scenario is very compelling, and unique among Mothership modules in that it relies entirely on environmental and social horror rather than violence, cosmic or body horror. But the thing is, I have to write this review, so I have already studied this text. And, if you’ve studied it, this is a damned good Mothership module, one that I could pitch at a bunch of friends who wouldn’t otherwise be interested in the usual horrors offered by Mothership modules. So, for me, Dead Weight is an absolute win: This will make it to my table, I have no doubt at all. If you’re willing to put in that effort, or you’ve got players who you want to introduce to Mothership but they don’t vibe the usual horror themes in Mothership modules, this is something unlike anything else out there.
I Read Games reviews are me reading games when I have nothing better to do, like read a module or write or play a game. I don’t seriously believe that I can judge a game without playing it, usually a lot, so I don’t take these very seriously. But I can talk about its choices and whether or not it gets me excited about bringing it to the table.
I just rode my kids to the playground and now have what feels like heatstroke, so while they watch Paw Patrol I’m lying on the bed and reading the Dungeon Master’s Guide (2025). Disclaimer: I’m not being paid for this, obviously. If I was I’d have published this a month ago with all the famous people and news sites.
I read The Player’s Handbook (2024) here. If you didn’t read that, and don’t want to, this is why I’m interested in reading D&D2024: I want to know how it responds to the surprising twists and turns the hobby has taken in the least decade. I want to know if they’ve made it more approachable. I want to know about new directions they’re taking it on. I want to know if they are considering the impact of actual play, lockdowns, and the resurgence of digital play, have had on how we play RPGs? I wrote a list after reading the PHB2024, of what I was hoping to see in the DMG2024 or D&D 2024 more generally. What I’m looking for in this book is a robust system for generating balanced combats, streamlined ways to run mobs and large scale battles, support for more interesting approaches to bosses than “oh my gosh more hit points!”, support for running factions, a deeper dive into dispositions, and procedural support for exploration and dungeon crawling. Let’s see if this 380 page tome ticks any of my boxes.
The first page is a sales pitch for why you’d want to be a Dungeon Master. They use the word “fun” 8 times in the first page, just in case you’re wondering who was complaining the most about D&D2014. The “fun” DM must be an actor, director, improviser, referee, storyteller, teacher and world builder. The next two pages are an inventory of what you need, which puts basically all the responsibility for providing it all — even note paper for the players — on the DM. I don’t love that D&D2024 continues to perpetuate this DM-as-dancing-monkey cultural movement in its very first pages: Both you’re an entertainer but also you’re the only responsible person in the room! Everyone’s fun is your responsibility! It leads to the kind of toxicity exemplified in the tweet below, that this book literally spends time trying to discourage later on and and that these authors spent time discouraging in the PHB2024.
I don’t hate the tips here, though: Don’t be afraid of mistakes, embrace the chaos, communicate well: This is all solid advice, that to be honest shouldn’t be exclusive to DMs. Next up, it follows that up with a page of prep advice, and while I provide better advice in Advanced Fantasy Dungeons, I think this is the best I’ve ever seen in an official product, even going so far as to talk about how much to prepare per hour of expected play, and what to prioritise depending on how much time you have to prep. It definitely expects prepared story to be imposed on the players though: The is no room for emergent narrative here. The core tenets I wrote about here are not on the writers’ radar (should they be? I’m not sure, but D&D2024 is less close to them than D&D2014 was, and intentionally in my opinion). It finishes the section with an example of play in the same format — which I think is excellent — as the PHB2024.
Page 1. Well, that’s promising, isn’t it? Let’s see if it keeps the promise.
We then talk about playstyle and DM style, how to use rulings fairly, delegation of tasks. It includes a safety checklist! In the core rule book! A serviceable one! I think it’s really interesting how the attitudes to safety here are quite basic, again, relying on what I’d consider outdated methods or ones that are best for playing with strangers, rather than, say, the hospitality-based perspectives that Sean McCoy has more recently raised the profile of in the Mothership Warden’s Operations Manual. There are five pages devoted to safety, not explicitly but to me obviously they focus on the context of playing with strangers online; it’s very interesting to see an increased focus on this, as clearly a response to changing attitudes to play, in lockstep with the discouragement of adversarial play in the PHB2014. Most interestingly and finally it has a section on how to critically view an AP in order to learn from them as a DM, and how to tell what’s a reasonable expectation of yourself as a DM and what’s not; the fact that it’s acknowledging both that these people that the DMG2024 is holding on a pedestal aren’t feasible standards to live up to, but also are the primary way people learn and model, reveals the challenge of designing for the D&D2024 audience.
I do appreciate the humour in the DMG, even though it’s clearly aimed at the kind of person who knows who Zuggtmoy is.
The “Running the Game” section starts with a taxonomy of players that seems inspired by the best of the DMGs, the 4th Edition DMG2. I love this kind of taxonomy, because it helps clarify that different players have different needs and desires. I don’t love that it suggests that the DMs responsibility is to satisfy these needs though; we’re all adults here, and we should advocate kindly for ourselves. There’s solid advice about how to narrate here as well, as well as generally helpful advice on when to avoid and how to use checks well. This is all concrete, moment to moment advice on how to play the game. There’s some great mixed success advice in here, and if you take the recommendations at face value, it effectively says that a fail by 5+ is a hard fail, by 1–2 is a mixed success, and a success by 5+ is a strong success. This is a fun change, I think, and should be baked right in, in my opinion, although with more thought: Basically, whole I’m a little disappointed they didn’t do away with easy and very easy DCs, especially given these categories were removed in other places, it would make sense if, taking this advice, all the modifiers were scaled down such that likelihood of success was similar and likelihood of various degrees of failure were balanced. Perhaps that’s too core of a change for a ½ edition though. There’s also some straight up basic improvisational advice here, which is great to see. There’s fun advice here about how to engage players without high Charisma scores in social play, as well. Attitude (more commonly called disposition), disappointingly, is scaled back from 2014 rather than beefed up, and I think more support for the pillar of social interaction rather than less would be a bolder and more interesting choice; this reflects a trend away from the optional subsystems in the DMG2014 that I’ll talk about more later. What we do get is a travel procedure, along with tracking sheets! I think more could’ve been learnt from innovations in the space, but something here at all is a huge step forward. There’s nothing on dungeons at all, though, which speaks I think to a recognition that dungeon crawling as a mode of play has receded in the 5th edition consciousness, and scenic dungeons punctuated by planned combat encounters are the new expectation. The combat section is largely unchanged from DND2024, with some additional advice on keeping combat moving which is largely sound. Parts of the death advice feels straight out of the Principia Apocrypha, in a good way, and others feels so incredibly Matt Mercer fingerprinted its almost silly. There’s a page on doors and nothing in it is better than the half page in Errant. There is some neat world building away in corners, like the fact that kraken and tarrasques are considered gods now — love this, they should be, this took too long. The fact that the NPC advice avoids the standard advice of “goals” says a lot to me about the role they’re expected to play in the house campaign style. It’s a mixed bag, and it the way it’s presented feels off, somehow: Not with the misguided confidence that DMG2014 present its optional subsystems with, but rather a bunch of interesting and good ideas and world building thrown together in a blender with no emphasis or thought on the impact. It really feels like they just stuck in whatever the consultants did as options, without labelling them options. It tells that this input wasn’t written before the PHB2024, as there’s potential for these to be core in a very interesting way, that isn’t followed through.
The Creating Adventures section is mixed. I like the Tier-distributed adventure hooks. Yes, I know they’re not mind blowing innovations, but we’re playing elfgames: This is what we need to keep playing week in week out. Advice on Gygaxian Naturalism sneaks in, hook examples abound, there are a load of example objectives that are, for the most part, interesting. There’s good advice on pacing, rests and random encounters here too. On the other hand, the dungeon design section is so vague as to be completely pointless, despite their being a glossary filled with maps that you can fill with your own keys! There are five mini adventures included in the DMG2024. These are minimal — exemplars of the kinds of notes you’d write for a home game — not full modules. But gosh, it’s something. This section is just so very close to being excellent, but it pales in comparison to the much more concrete and meaningful support you get in the PF2:GM Core for building adventures. Disappointing, given it’s right there, and you can see the influences elsewhere in the PHB2024.
Honestly, the Creating Campaigns section is one of the most interesting sections in the book. The campaign journal is a little anemic, but its presence here goes a long way to starting DMs on the right track for running campaigns. In the context of a campaign, they have a “fully developed” NPC template which is honestly just pretty good. Not what I’d choose, but no notes, except that they shouldn’t double up on how to describe NPCs without more clarity — it comes across as if the sections were developed in isolation and nobody actually read the whole book. They throw some old content in here — it’s all rubbish in my opinion — and spend too much time on selling their published settings — Exandria and a few Magic: The Gathering planes make it into the list. There’s otherwise a fair bit of interesting advice, but again, most of it feels like it was written in isolation, where just attributing (or being aware of, possibly) Ray Otus or Sly Flourish or any of the other people who’ve done work in this area would’ve resulted in a much better version of the same book.
There’s a thirty page primer on Oerth and the city of Greyhawk, and about the same on the Planes. I’m of two minds here: I’m not sure how many people will chose to run Greyhawk based on this, but it’s probably just enough for it to be worth it. It probably would’ve been worth dropping coin to pay for Exandria, though, if getting people cracking is your goal. The time spent on this and on cosmology is in such stark contrast to the elegance of the PHB2024, it’s honestly disappointing. Harkening back to the worst parts of D&D2014, right here in the opening salvos of D&D2024.
The treasure section — sigh, ok. I have to read this, don’t I. May Fizban have mercy on my soul. My thoughts: There’s an ingots section? That’s new and funny. A gold ingot is 5x2x¾inches in size, who knew? The trade goods section is good, but not weird enough for a fantasy world; really this should all be folded in with art goods and gemstones, as it’s really a “what’s treasure that isn’t piles of coins” section. Interestingly, in another concession of the movement away from gold for XP and dungeon crawling as a primary mode of play, the infamous individual and hoard treasure tables are gone, replaced by rules for awarding items at level based on wishlists, which is yet another throwback to 4th edition, although it feels weird not baked into the level progression in the PHB if they’re going to lean in that direction. I also wonder, in the absence of treasure tables for monsters, if this will appear in the Monster Manual appendices or in the stat blocks there. There is a randomiser at the end by rarity, but overall treasure organisation gets a huge change. They spend a fair chunk of time on customisation, which is generally pretty good both in terms of advice and content, although it could be more confident. There’s something to the idea of giving the player characters what they want, but making sure they get associated drawbacks that appeals to me, but I’m not convinced that’s actually what they’re aiming for here, as if it were surely they’d spell it out. I’m surprised they put this much effort into this section, to be honest, even though the magic item lists (while they claim to be different) appear to lifted whole cloth; I don’t care enough to do a side by side. I’m sure someone will do so and find gold or at least views.
There’s 20 pages on bastions, the new (ish) take on domains. Building bases comes up enough in 5th edition I could see it being valuable. The actual bastion rules are pretty neat, and basically are level-specific base-building rules, overall pretty simple, and which give you specific perks —especially crafting, which it turns out is all transferred out into this ruleset. That mightn’t be everyone’s favourite decision — it disincentivises epic quests to find that single reagent to forge that magic ring. But it’s neat. I don’t feel strongly about it either way, but it seems like smart design to keep an ancillary system simple and to make it provide specific benefits that are also largely ancillary. However, this is all player facing, so really should be in the Player’s Handbook. None of these are DM options in the slightest. I’m not sure if this is an oversight, or an admission to the fact that the PHB2024 was already massive, or a plot to sell more DMG2024s, but it was a bad decision, further evidenced by the fact that it’s relegated to the end of the book for no clear reason. Clearly even they knew it wasn’t supposed to be here.
Interesting, though, to look at what’s been dropped since the DMG2014: Namely, all of the damned optional rules and subsystems. This book isn’t aimed at rules hackers or people who want to twist the rules of the game anymore. No, the rules are set in stone, only the DM’s interpretations are flexible. But no guides exist for things like high-lethality playor low magic, ability options or creating new character options, or changing how rests work. So much NPC design guidance has been scrapped. The random dungeon generator has been replaced with an appendix of dungeon maps. Missing is the detailed random adventure generators, too, although I’m not sure anyone used those. Monster lists have gone, deferred I assume to the Monster Manual. There’s a lore glossary now, which is interesting, and guides the DM through obscure D&D lore like Venger and Warduke, but more interesting is what it replaces: Appendix N, or as it was last called, Dungeon Master Inspiration. No longer does Dungeons and Dragons use the wider world of fantasy as its reference: It stands alone, auto-cannibalising rather than steeping itself in the broader fantasy literature and media. A fascinating, if not predictable, progression in the corporatisation of D&D. More surprising, though, is that they don’t appear to feature (although I don’t have a deep knowledge of either) characters from Baldur’s Gate 3 or Honor Among Thieves, but rather they focus on the depths of D&D’s written history. I honestly don’t know what to make of that — Minsc and Boo both make (independent) appearances, which means it wasn’t a case of “video games are off limits”, so this honestly just feels masturbatory and dismissive of the generation that are currently excited about D&D, and just generally ill-advised to me: The audience you’re aiming this book at aren’t middle aged nerds, you should be leaning into the new Hollywood and videogame demographics. Altogether, though, these new omissions and their replacements do tell a story: That it’s aiming at people who are happy with the core D&D rules, but need support with the basics of running, scheduling, maintaining a campaign. New Dungeon Masters. It wants them tied deeply into the D&D cosmology so that they don’t, for example, follow their favourite actual plays to Daggerheart or whatever MCDM will call their RPG. It stinks of D&D Beyond compatibility, focusing its advice not on rules customisation — because that breaks the proprietary software — but on the interpersonal and world building rules. It stinks of divorcing itself further from the history of D&D, and, despite how D&D2014 embraced the OSR movement, choosing to cast that entirely aside, and forge ahead based on the popularity and advice of actual and celebrity players.
Obviously, that’s not what I want to see. But if we come back to my list of hopes and dreams, we see that only few of them make the cut, largely because I want a low-prep, DIY style version of this, and D&D2024 is explicitly attempting to move away from that, even where it improves upon its younger self. There’s no inventory options, no online tools for prep (but there are a bunch of prep sheets included that I’m sure will see quick conversion by the community), no dungeon crawling. Disposition is weakened rather than strengthened. Factions get a single paragraph and the examples in Greyhawk are plainly uninteresting. There’s minimal advice on making boss fights more dynamic, although I must say that the standard combat encounter advice here is far stronger than D&D2014 and transfers of course to bosses. I’d just love to see nested hit points or staged bosses built into the DMG. The encounter math is simpler, they’ve scrapped CR altogether, low level encounters are removed, and high level encounters are worth more. People smarter than I have broken this down in detail, but, I’ll have to wait until the Monster Manual is out to see how this really pans out. My gut feeling: We needed more advice around mixed high/low level encounters, so that we can design boss encounters with tons of minions with confidence, and that’s lacking here and perhaps compromised further as high level monsters were always squishy in D&D2014. We do get a spread covering mobs, which I think is better elucidated than in the earlier edition, but hasn’t developed into something simpler — I’d default to swarm stat blocks over these rules — and there’s nothing for larger scale combat at all. There is a minimal procedure for travel, which is an improvement, but not enough of an improvement in my opinion, and no equivalent for dungeon crawling. Finally, it’s too early to say whether the modules will improve, but the example adventures here have a brevity that official modules have been begging for, for ten years.
Coming around to art, layout, and information design. In terms of art, the cartoonish, fourth-wall breaking asides of the PHB2024 are gone here, with a more traditional, one dimensional, digital paint art style. The design and composition of a few of these are admittedly stellar — the art of a gorilla pursuing terrorised adventurers through a portal made of tentacles is perhaps my favourite piece of art in a number of editions — but overall they lack the interest and humour of the PHB2024, and they’re obscure and self-referential, aimed at people like me who’ve been playing since the 80s or 90s, rather than at fans of Exandria or BG3. The notable additions are Venger and Warduke, characters from the animated TV show and the toyline, that haven’t to my knowledge actually featured in the games, ever. These are weird, alienating choices to me. So many choices here seem explicitly intended to move on from the very same grognards D&D2014 attempted to bring back into the fold, except for this specific, very weird art and worldbuilding choice. The layout keeps a few innovations — the annotated examples of play — but mostly ignores them. Information design here is largely non-existent, too: Worse than the DMG2014, which at least had some overarching organisational structure. There are so many ways to arrange this information, and I can’t believe they didn’t even choose one. As is, it’s a hodgepodge.
The renewed focus in the first half of the book on advice, really feels like a recognition that the bar for DMing has changed in the past 10 years, for better and for worse. It embraces a bunch of the best DMing advice that’s come out, and I strongly suspect that a lot of the impact of “consultants” like Mercer, Kretchmer and Woll on this edition is these advice sections. By contrast, the second half is basically setting information, if you include treasure in that category. It seems a product confused as to who its audience is but I think it comes down on the side of inexperienced DMs moreso than the previous DMG2014. My niece recently started playing 5th edition. If she wanted to run it, would I buy her this? Not a chance. The intentionality of the PHB2024 is missing here. While this is better than the DMG2014 for new DMs, it’s still not up to scratch for a 2024 product; it shows how isolated Wizards of the Coast is from the larger hobby. Despite going some of the way, the DMG2024 doesn’t go far enough to support the DM in their role. I fear nevertheless these bread crumbs will be enough to impress the masses starved of good advice. We need more support for prep than this, more for wilderness travel and more for dungeons, more for factions. We need clearer structures for NPCs, not split over multiple chapters. We need to eliminate the thriving ecosystem for DM advice, because it should all be here, or what’s the point of this book? It appears there has been a ton of learning from what kind of DMs have been huge successes publicly in what they’re working into this section on the one hand; but on the other hand a ton of unadulterated duplication from the DMG2014. The organisational redesign appears intended to obstruct identifying what has changed more than be intentional in any way. What’s worse, there’s a strange obsession with resurrecting old properties here, missing the opportunity to take advantage of the huge properties actually popular in recent years.
Despite the changes, the DMG2024 feels like an afterthought to me compared to the significant overhaul the PHB2024 received, and that’s doubly disappointing when — for me at least — the lack of support for DMs was a not insignificant part of what drove me away from 5th edition in the first place. This lack of support feels like an active rejection of time poor people like me from this corner of the hobby, people who loved it when they were time rich but now have demanding jobs or children or health concerns. It’s super disappointing to me that so many of the things I’d hoped to appear here were not, or even had their presence reduced rather than enhanced. Furthermore, it feels to me like so much of this was written in absolute ignorance of a thriving section of the community who have solved so many of the issues that this book fails to adequately address. To me, the fact that so many solutions to the problems left here are available for free on the internet, makes their omissions far less forgivable. Yet again, Dungeon Masters feel the afterthought to Wizards of the Coast, unimportant stooges there to provide a service to the real money-makers — the players, or perhaps even just the audience. I’d love to have felt more catered to by a new edition, but alas, it wasn’t to be, and instead what I got was the same book, gutted of support for hacking, with bonus advice from some celebrity DMs, and a new ruleset intended for players rather than DMs. There’s some interesting stuff thrown in here too, but there’s far more chaff than wheat, for me.
Despite my hopes, D&D2024 isn’t for me and wasn’t intended for me or those like me. The problem is, with its strange choices and uninformed perspective, I can’t say it’s a strong sell for the audience it appears to be for: Young, new DMs drawn in by APs, Baldur’s Gate 3 and Honor Among Thieves. I can’t recommend this one, and it’s left me sour for the rest of the line. I wouldn’t wait for a review of the Monster Manual from me, unless it’s genuinely a surprise, but perhaps when the starter set or the first module for this new edition is released, I’ll take another look to see if the adventuring changes take root officially.
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.
Whiskers in the Wind is a 42 page module for Mausritter by Hugh Lashbrooke, with art by Fernando Salvaterra, Louie M. Salvaterra, and Oozejar. In it you are are lay like in a dark fairytale forest.
The simplicity of the design here makes it very easy to describe: There’s a very evocative one-page introduction, then 17 one-page points of interest with a succinct and useful Description/What’s happening/who’s there structure, each accompanied by a full colour illustration. Then we have rules for moving between them (a spread, including random encounters) and then a list of 6 simple factions, a 10 page bestiary, and then finish with a page of advice. It’s a gorgeous “my first sandbox” for kids.
Damn, Whiskers in the Wind is a big step forward for Hugh Lashbrooke in terms of production, I’ve got to say. My first impressions are that compared to his previous (already good) work Kiwi Acres and 10 Downing Street, the writing here is very moody and evocative, the art is absolutely spectacular, and the layout is a lot more polished, while maintaining a similar, children’s story vibe with broad margins, soft palettes and large typefaces. I love to see creators developing their style and collaborations.
That said, the storybook style, as I’ve said before about Kiwi Acres, has its flaws. I’d like a little more of everything — just a little. Perhaps some characters and goals associated with the factions; some additional traits or relationships associated with the characters. But also, I think these are explicitly aimed at children, so would they want these things? Maybe not. Certainly, I run Mausritter with 4 and 6 year olds, and this is plenty for that demographic; they roleplay like bulls in china shops, running from scene to scene and place to place, with little regard for the integrity of the world. I don’t need to be supported in consistency like I do running for adults.
Ok, so I think it’s worth pausing there and saying: I’m probably going to buy this in print when it’s available, and run it for my kids, who have expended all of the Estate and have moved onto Kiwi Acres. This is the perfect module to pop in the queue. “Improving” this module doesn’t improve anything for me as a referee running it for young kids. But it’s worth talking about why I don’t feel like I’d run this for adults, and that’s because many of those 27 locations feel like they deserve an entire module this size entirely dedicated to them. For example: “An imposing bell tower surrounded by giant pumpkins, home to an enigmatic hermit who is said to see the future.” is the entire description for one location; “A sprawling network of underground tunnels carved out by industrious rodents, teeming with hidden passages and long-forgotten secrets.” is another. They’re screaming for expansion, right? They read like the back cover of an entire module. This is most of the locations, if I’m to be honest. Now, if I’m running for kids, this level of detail is plenty. If I’m running for adults, I need to have connections to the oracle, and a secret story there. I need to have a map of the tunnels, or a way of navigating them. If you were to expand on Whiskers in the Wind, you’d have something the size and depth of Valley of Flowers, but as is you need to improvise these locations, and I’d honestly like to see them expanded further.
The big challenge I think in running this as it stands is the lack of direction it provides the players. There are no rumours; there is no primary quest. It’s purely a sandbox. It’s not entirely directionless, though: The rumour table here is the encounter table; here you might learn of the blight at the mill by encountering mill workers, or meet a graveyard ghost that wants to go home. But there are no page references, or indications. That ghost doesn’t have a home anywhere in the module, but the mill workers do work in a real mill with a real problem. This runs up against the issue with hyperdiegesis I wrote about the other week: How do I know to flick through my book for the mill, but not to flick through it imagining I’ve forgotten the graveyard ghost? Now, I can search for this easily in digital, but on paper, the lack of referencing makes this a fairly impenetrable problem to encounter. This might not matter when I’m running for a 4 and 6 year old; on the other hand, often the kids are presented very clear choices to choose between, and here I have to do a lot more work to provide these for them here. It might be a deal breaker, though, if I was running for adults who look for consistency.
Irregardless, Whiskers in the Wind is a strong Mausritter module, perfect for running for children, the art and layout has been taken up a level, and if you’re running out of Mausritter content like I am, there’s no good reason not to pick it up. If you’re running Mausritter for adults, you’re going to have to prepare yourself for a lot of work (if that’s what you love doing, all power to you and your schedule) to expand on the gaps in these lovely locations.
Addendum: Since the release of this review, Hugh Lashbrooke has made some additions in an update. Check it here!
People keep asking me what an OSR game is. They want a clear mechanical difference, like the one they think exists between Forged in the Dark and Powered By The Apocalypse, for example. You’re not going to get that here, you’re just going to get my opinion, so I can link to it rather than explain myself again.
OSR, NSR, POSR et cetera, are the same category of games: Mostly false dichotomies driven by a history of nerd-driven overcategorisation with an an icing of wanting to differentiate one community from another. Skip to the end of this paragraph if you don’t care very much about history, and just want to know what an OSR game is. People will faff about because the term OSR (and NSR) have meant multiple things over the years. The definitions have not been static. But nobody asking me “What’s OSR/NSR?” is asking about history. They want to know if they’re going to enjoy playing with me. So, if you’re interested in the history of the OSR, click Marcia’s post, and its’ extensive bibliography, or Tom’s analysis. If you’re interested in how the NSR has redefined itself over time, read the post where Layla defined the term here, (although it was coined by Brian & Brendan it seems) to Yochai’s where he argues that it’s no longer a category of games but a community, to this one more recently which contradicts both. In the time since the NSR community formed, the OSR community has become far more diverse and welcoming in its major spaces like the OSR discord (once purple, now rainbow), to some degree necessitating those that identify as NSR re-aligning their identity. My friend Warren argues here that the correct term for the current crop of games is Post-OSR, and he’s convincing, but everyone still uses the term OSR. I like none of these three terms — they feel like inside baseball to me. I substitute it for DIY D&D or DIY elfgame — it’s there in my byline. And all of these things mean the same thing, if we’re talking about if a specific game is OSR. So, I’m going to use OSR in this post because it’s what the people who ask me, ask me about.
TL;DR: when I say OSR here, I also mean NSR, POSR, DIY D&D and DIY elfgame.
To talk about what an OSR game is, you need to think of categorisation as clustering of features. If you match enough features, you get a game that “feels” OSR. I think of these features as being across multiple axes: Rules features, Playstyle features, and Community features.
Rules Features of the OSR
I’ll start with Rules, because Marcia did all the work, and it’s data-driven, and she made graphs. I can’t talk about rules features any better she did here, but I’ll summarise.
Marcia’s Cluster Plot
There are six clusters of types of rules that Marcia identified:
Faithfuls, characterised by class-based distinctions between characters, and a lack of dependence on individual character abilities. Old School Essentials and Basic Fantasy are examples, notably known as retro-clones.
Moderns, characterised by character abilities and universal resolution procedures. Dungeon Crawl Classics and World Without Number are examples, which I think notably are both forks of 3rd Edition.
Blacks, characterised by simple math, dependence on ability scores, abstract item usage, and real-time encounter checks. The Black Hack is an example, although it’s quite influential, with Whitehack and The Vanilla Game also fitting in a similar space.
Odds, characterised by emphasis on character ability scores and removal of attack rolls. Cairn and Mausritter are examples.
Knaves, characterised by no classes, individual character ability, and lack of play procedures. Tunnel Goons and Mork Borg are examples.
Baroques, characterised by a renewed interest in play procedures. Errant and His Majesty the Worm are examples.
Interestingly, while I’m not going to reverse-engineer Marcia’s work, it’s pretty clear where some newer games would fit here: Shadowdark, for example, is clearly Modern, where Advanced Fantasy Dungeons is clearly Baroque. It’s less clear to me where or if Trophy Gold fits into this graph. Marcia is pretty clear about the fact that this graph works only because the similarities between the groups are so great. What Marcia doesn’t say, is that the fantasy games generally accepted as NSR are mainly sitting on the right side of the graph: The “DND Unlike Cluster”, as she calls it. I think it’s also important to note that Marcia clarifies that “OSR games are virtually the same thing”, which is why a data-based rules analysis like this contains any meaning. These are subtle differences in rules. All of these OSR games support a very similar table experience.
The ostensibly “NSR” cluster is on the right, where the more faithful cluster is on the left.
The point being that: It’s not meaningful in my opinion to differentiate NSR from OSR from POSR games in terms of rules, except in the broadest sense, which is that you can see from Marcia’s visualisation that the games that identify as NSR are essentially a subcategory. One person may place greater emphasis on a small difference than others (I’ve written three rulesets myself, I’m not judging anyone who places the emphasis on minutiae), but the experience at the table is virtually the same, which means to me that the OSR is really unified by those similarities rather than by the differences.
Playstyle Features
So let’s talk about that table experience. So, you more or less have three lists that define the playstyles, that are mature and well avoided, and thousands of new ones that I won’t go into. Let’s summarise:
High lethality, an open world, a lack of pre-written plot, an emphasis on creative problem solving, an exploration-centered reward system, a disregard for “encounter balance”, the use of random tables to generate world elements that surprise both players and referees…
Ben Milton – Maze Rats
The Principia Apocrypha is a 50 page essay by the same Ben and Steven Lumpkin that goes into detail on all of this, basically serving as a set of principles a la Apocalypse World for both referee and players. These are the principle names:
The table is yours, rulings over rules, the referee is impartial, preparation is flexible, build responsive situations, embrace chaos but uphold logic, let them off the rails, player ingenuity over character ability, good items are unique tools, don’t mind the fourth wall
Cleverness is rewarded, ask them how they do it, let players manipulate the world, offer tough choices, challenges have hard or no answers, subvert expectations
Deadly but avoidable combat, keep up the pressure, let the dice kill then but telegraph lethality, reveal the situation, give them layers to peel, don’t bury the lede, NPCs aren’t scripted, keep the world alive
Learn when to run, combat is war, not sport, don’t be limited by your character sheet, live your backstory, power is earned, heroism proven, scrutinise the world, interrogate the fiction, the only dead end is death, let your creativity flow, play to win, savour loss
You can see the very clear overlaps between these three lists, assuming you accept some paraphrasing, which to me indicates that these are all effectively saying the same thing. Ben says you don’t need them all: “The more of the following a campaign has, the more old school it is”. Here’s a summary of the things that I think are common to all three lists. Obviously the Principia Apocrypha is far more granular and many of those are folded into few here or minimised in my list as good advice rather than core principles. The terms “rules buy-in” and “table agency” are useful ones coined by Chris McDowall and Zedeck Siew respectively, which help clarify the original terms in my opinion:
Deadly (but solvable) combat and hazards where the expectation is that the players are out of their depth
Livingworld, often driven by randomisation of some kind, that operates to some degree without regard to the players
Interaction is focused on creative problem solving of external problems rather than internal drama
Any narrative emerges organically, rather than through preparation
A reliance on rulings rather than exhaustive rules, which leads to greater “table agency” where you are empowered to find the right solution for your table, due to the de-emphasis of the rules as “word of god”
An emphasis on exploration into a lethal unknown, often but not always through rewards systems
Minimum rules buy-in due to the rules-light nature of the game. Even the more complex end of the OSR (which are the modern rule sets, and perhaps some of the baroque ones) are very light compared to something like Pathfinder or 5th edition, allowing a “just turn up, we’ll figure it out” attitude (but also less mechanical chunks to chew on, so to speak)
Interestingly, this basically matches up with how I describe what I do when people ask me (supplemented by my friend Sam).
You’ve heard of D&D? I play DIY D&D, because I don’t really enjoy the most recent version, and instead I focus on exploring weird, unknown and dangerous spaces (like derelict space craft or ruined castles) full of weird people, and those relationships. Because I don’t focus on combat, it tends to be a little horror in the sense that you can’t go toe to toe with your foes, you need to be smart about it. But you’ll spend most of your time talking to people, trying to figure out what’s going on, and finding cool things that have unexpected effects. It’s good for people who like imagining fictional worlds, trust the people they’re playing with, and don’t want to deal with a lot of rules.
Me, IRL
Going back to the list, this is why I say things like “Blades in the Dark is OSR” from time to time: It arguably satisfies 6 out of 7 of these criteria. It is also why people often snarkily say “But does that mean 5th edition is OSR?” Yes, it can be. It definitely can be. Sandra is a highly influential voice in the OSR and runs a 5th edition fork. Dungeon Crawl Classics is a 3rd edition fork. That’s the whole thesis: It’s a playstyle, as much as it’s a set of similar rules.
Community Features
However, unlike the first two which are a list of features something OSR may or may not have, the community features that surround the OSR are basically common features to all the games. There are two major community features, in my opinion: Module ecosystems (I’ll digress a little there, as is my wont) and a DIY community.
“If it can run B2, it’s OSR” is a common tongue in cheek reply with a grain of truth to it; basically every fantasy OSR game is compatible or has rules for conversion for modules written for B/X, an old version of D&D currently popularised as Old School Essentials. It’s a lingua franca of sorts. But “Can run B2” isn’t the whole story; because games like Cairn, Mothership and Old School Essentials don’t rely on modules from the 80s. These have their own thriving ecosystem of modules. For these games, the ecosystem is as much a part of the game as the ruleset itself; they rely on the ecosystem of modules to sustain play. This is because modules are a nutrient that OSR games use to grow and to thrive.
There are games that don’t have ecosystems, but those systems are universally desirous of an ecosystem; that deep-seated desire for an ecosystem in the absence of one is a defining feature to me as well. I wouldn’t argue that, for example, Yokai Hunter’s Society is OSR, but I’m not playing it until Tokyo City Crawl is released. I think The Door Locks Behind You is OSR, but I have nothing to spur me to bring it to the table, in the lack of an ecosystem. Errant is absolutely stellar, but there aren’t enough modules for it for me to want it at the table. Significant time and effort are put into getting modules published for Cloud Empress and for Best Left Buried in order to bring their community the nutrients to survive. Things like the Twisted Classics and Cabin Fever jams take OSR games like Liminal Horror and Pirate Borg to a level that invites play, through creating an ecosystem through community engagement. I struggled with Pariah until Atop the Wailing Dunes was released. Modules are an important nutrient that most OSR games require to thrive; they often make little sense in their absence.
I should interrupt there, and say that to a degree, I recognise that there is a subset of OSR games that appear to buck that trend towards module ecosystems. These are two major groups: The first are grand campaigns, like Wolves Upon the Coast, His Majesty the Worm and (I’d argue) Blades in the Dark. The second is the megadungeon game, best explored through the podcast Into the Megadungeon. But I don’t think they actually buck the trend. I think megadungeon campaigns are simply examples of home-brewed modules (I’ve been privy to the amount of work Miranda puts into Nightwick Abbey, for example), and they’ve been there since the beginning of the hobby and declined specifically because of the existence of modules becoming wider-spread. And similarly, grand campaigns are simply games that strap a ton of modules to their main game. In Doskvol, you are trapped in a small space with a bunch of factions, after all: How different is that from a megadungeon, really?
This is probably a good place to digress into the minutiae of the interaction between certain modules and certain variations in playstyle. The entire reason I write so many Bathtub Reviews is that differences in modules are important! And they really fall into two popular categories that focus on different things, though not exclusively, with a bunch of other categories in the periphery: Classic dungeons, and scenic dungeons. Classic dungeons like Nightwick Abbey and Tomb Robbers of the Crystal Frontier, really rely on the minutiae of Old School Essentials or similar systems for their tension; you think about exploration foot-by-foot, you’re often mapping as you go, monster speed is essential, treasure distribution is important because it’s tied to progression, class level is a major consideration in building your dungeon. In scenic dungeons like Crown of Salt or Ultraviolet Grasslands, descriptions can be less specific and concrete and more easily improvised and are more focused on other aspects: Weird and striking locations, faction play, and interesting characters. This is one place where the interplay between the modules created by the community and which of that larger list of features your playstyle includes interacts in often surprising ways, to create emergent fiction in different ways. There are of course other types of module — many — but I don’t think I’ve done the work or that this is the place to elucidate them all. The more general point is that the interaction between this aspect of the community and the playstyle you experience at your table is meaningful, and the experience you have with one module is not the same as another.
A second important feature is the DIY community, which was mentioned way up by both myself and also by Ben Milton, whose quote above I concluded early, and finishes with: “and a strong do-it-yourself attitude and a willingness to share your work and use the creativity of others in your game”. Basically, players, referees, fans are active participants in the ongoing development of the game (or perhaps the OSR as a whole). The OSR blogosphere is, to me, the most salient aspect of this DIY community, but it definitely extends to the hacking and development community, including jams and informal releases, that responds to and is in conversation with most games. When I released Advanced Fantasy Dungeons, a modern version was released within weeks of my initial release, for example. Jams inviting the community to expand Barkeep on the Borderlands and His Majesty the Worm occurred in just the last few months. There are even movements to preserve this conversation, in the form of things like Blogs on Tape, and Knock! The reason Marcia’s graph earlier exists at all is because of this conversation; Sam Dunnewold said in this interview, that the culture of “I’m playing Cairn but with these four blog posts” is a major part of the DIY culture of the OSR, and he’s right, which is why I prefer having DIY in the name. This DIY nature is, in my opinion, why variety of systems and rules evolves in my opinion from the DIY nature of the scene: It’s about bespoke rulesets for your table, and these many similar rulesets reflect that.
Conclusions
Well, that took forever to write, and largely regurgitated what other people have said. Woe is me. However, it serves its’ purpose.
TL;DR, if you want the pitch:
You’ve heard of D&D? I play DIY D&D, because I don’t really enjoy the most recent version, and instead I focus on exploring weird, unknown and dangerous spaces (like derelict space craft or ruined castles) full of weird people, and those relationships. Because I don’t focus on combat, it tends to be a little horror in the sense that you can’t go toe to toe with your foes, you need to be smart about it. But you’ll spend most of your time talking to people, trying to figure out what’s going on, and finding cool things that have unexpected effects. It’s good for people who like imagining fictional worlds, trust the people they’re playing with, and don’t want to deal with a lot of rules.
Me, IRL
TL;DR, if you want a summary:
In my opinion, the games often labelled OSR, NSR, POSR and whatnot are all trying to provide a very similar table experience; it’s pretty meaningless to try to separate them in terms of mechanics and playstyle, because they all share in a core cluster of rules and playstyle features, and vary only in the specifics (and the playstyle specifics may only vary at your table and in how you and your friends implement those playstyle features). What they do all share, is a need for a shared community around which people create and contribute to an ecosystem of modules and rules additions or modifications. This community is the key nutrient that the OSR thrives upon.
Mass produced products are a relatively recent phenomenon, but the evolution of the elfgame has resulted in Spell Lists and Magic Item Catalogues. It’s all very Sears, or very American Western Expansion or maybe just very industrial revolution. While it makes it easier to run an elfgame with a catalogue, it’s also just super boring, in my opinion. I think it’s more interesting for my pre-industrial fantasy to be pre-industrial.
So, how were items of quality identified before industrialisation? Googling suggests three ways: Guild marks, Master’s marks, and skilled inspection. Let’s break these down.
Guild marks
Guilds were professional organisations that monitored their members for minimal standards of quality. Items with a guild mark always met those minimum standards, but marks from different guilds would represent different standards, and different cities (typically) each had their own guild. This lead to location-based expectations. A local guild might look like this:
The Society of Heptamite Thaumaturgists. Shield, filled by a seven-pointed star. “Heptamite gear lasts forever”. All master-forged items self-repair if doused in water that has been charged with the light of the full moon.
Artisan’s marks
Artisan marks were how artisan’s indicated a work was theirs — like signatures on a painting. This could be a literal mark or signature, or a signature style, which could potentially substitute for a mark. Certain artisans also would’ve been better at certain things: da Venti makes the sharpest swords, but Angelus makes them unbreakable. An example artisan might look like this:
Van Gorgoa. Sinuous designs and a hidden gorgon. Whips, chains, chandeliers. Bonus to grappling or capturing.
Pallazzo. Red tassels. Swords and cooking knives. Bonus to behead or dismember.
Ignix. A lowercase “I” with a flame substituting the dot. Fire-based powers gain +1d4 to damage and always light nearby flammable materials.
Buyer’s Inspection
Finally, we have the buyers inspection of the product. This is how you determine an item is actually what it says it is. The only way to determine this is if the buyer (or thief) examines the item and knows enough about it to be able to tell. Hence, examining these objects was a skill people were taught.
This is obviously best represented by a check, where success is knowing the truth of the matter, and failure is thinking it is something it isn’t, modified by specific expertise in that type of item. Use whatever works for your system, but skills that are relevant are things like sword or painting appraisal, not just “proficiency with heavy weapons”. And I’d suggest, the more specific the appraisal, the better. “Warhorse” is better than “farm animals” or “animal handling”. “Late Waterdeep Painters” is better than “Art History”.
This tells you whether you recognise any flaws in your item. What could be wrong (or right) with the item you’re checking, though?
2. It’s a forgery, but one that’s hard to pick. It’s nothing special, and doesn’t have the artisan’s special quality.
3-4. It’s a genuine work by that artisan, but flawed in a critical way that isn’t apparent until used
5-6. It’s an average work by that artisan, seen heavy use, and won’t have as many charges or stand up to damage well
7-8. It’s an average work by that artisan
9-10. It’s an experiment by that artisan, something that guided them on their way to making their master work. It’s a degree better than anything else they have made.
12. It’s their magnum opus, the best the artisan has ever made, and unique in some way
A good salesman knows their stuff, and puts it in the sales pitch. A shady one knows their stuff and lies about it in ways a good player might be able to pick up “Oh the seven pointed star is a mark of Simeon Star-forged, it mean they’re very effective against extra-planar beings”; you don’t get to roll for that information, you need to know he’s lying and it’s really the mark of the Heptamite Thaumaturgists. It’s also worth considering a roll that would indicate whether the seller knows what it is; they might be convinced by the forgery, or they might not be aware that it’s the Inexhaustible Wand of Ignix, not just any old wand of Ignix. They can be fooled as easily as any player.
What’s in stock
The final thing to consider when you’re looking to make your magical item production pre-industrial, is what actually got made? Google tells me that most smiths only made about 15 different items, split between weaponry and armour, agriculture, everyday tools, and household items, and while I don’t trust google, that scans to me. And anime and Tolkien would have me believe that masters focused exclusively on one type of item altogether — typically swords or rings in those cases. So, a brief rule, relating the range and quality of the items to the mastery of the artisan. I attributed the mastery to the “range” they have, rather than give them a title.
Journeyman. All four item types, 4 items each. On 1-5, no bonus. On 6, a small and specific magic.
Master. Three item types, 3 items each, On 1-4, no bonus. On 5, +1 bonus or equivalent. On 6, a small and specific magic.
Specialist. Two item types, 2 items each, On 1-3, no bonus. On 4, +1 bonus or equivalent. On 5, +2 bonus or equivalent. On 6, startling magic.
Sage. One item type. On 1-2, no bonus. On 3, +1 bonus or equivalent. On 4, +2 bonus or equivalent. On 5, +3 bonus or equivalent. On 6, startling magic.
That’s my take on how to make magical and other items more unique and a little less industrial in their presentation. I refuse to do any more work on this right now, but you could totally apply Treasure Squares to these concepts to interesting effect. Let me know if you do!
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.
Crown of Salt is a 120 odd page module, compatible with Mörk Borg, with writing, art and layout by Tania Herrero, published in both English and Spanish, and comes with pregenerated characters and an additional pamphlet-sized one-shot. In it you will venture into a forbidding wilderness and delve a dungeon to face the Cantigaster, a cursed ex-tyrant. It tells the story of the world of Grift through visual storytelling, and is very, very art-heavy. I was provided with a comp digital copy.
First things first: This is the first third-party module for Mörk Borg that in my opinion stands toe-to-toe with Nohr’s original layouts. Herrero is doing amazing work here; few people in elfgames are handling writing, art and layout so elegantly and so boldly; the only other polymath doing work like this who comes to mind is Luka Rejec. Crown of Salt has art consistent with the Mörk Borg oeuvre but unique, is dripping with consistent theme, and the layout walks the line between legibility and aesthetic incredibly well. Often, the layouts make writing choices I normally struggle with engaging and readable.
Take this spread for example; readable and compelling, but if it had been a single page without the art or layout choices, I’d have felt it was too wall-of-text.
I think that some people will struggle with it — the same people who have issues with Mörk Borg in its original form — and I do think that more concessions could’ve been made to navigability — there aren’t page numbers, headings can be lost to the art at times, and sometimes the eye doesn’t naturally follow the intended order of text. But like in Nohr’s layouts, often the striking and unique choices can serve as navigable landmarks. It’s not perfect in terms of information design or navigability (I’ll come back to that), but the tradeoff to me is worth it, and if great art and bold layouts are your cup of tea, then this is worth your penny straight up, no need to read further.
What about the module itself? It opens up with a fable illustrated in poems and pages of art that is very compelling, followed by a list of reasons to engage with the Cantigaster — the deadly foe at the heart of the module — at all. These are hooks, and I’ve written about how I love a good hook. These aren’t perfect hooks, but most of them do provide unique perspectives on the module as a whole, which is a damned good start. There is a rumours table as well, but of the eight rumours only two are meaningfully useful, and I wouldn’t hand out any of the others as they’re purely red herrings that don’t provide any additional benefits or interactions.
The village itself, Saltburg, is really only 1 location, with 4 shops. It features 6 characters, each which are simply fantastic. The Crow: Enigmatic and compelling. The hirelings: Engaging, with goals that may be at odds with the player characters, but that at a deeper — perhaps optional? — level, they may be eldritch horrors posing as hirelings to guide the player characters to their own hidden evil ends. These changeling hirelings become the lynchpins of the module, whether or not they’re hired, in really interesting ways. The four shops have very short descriptions, but they’re all pretty striking and interesting. You‘ll come to love them all, I suspect. There are only 4 random encounters in the wilderness: They’re all creepy and fun. I love how this really concentrates the themes and aesthetics, but two of them — the non combat encounters — feel like one-offs to me. I’d like more meat, but the truth is this isn’t really core to the module, it’s all the prelude. You’re not expected to linger in the village or wilderness. The dungeon is what you’re here for.
Descending into the salt rift has its own rules, and is striking in its own ways. Just the imagery is engaging: “Shaky rope ladders left by those who came before vanish into the wounds of the pale earth.”, but I think the exploration rules are overly complex — basically, you encounter 4 things out of a possible 24 on the way to the temple, but you make a number of rolls to get there. This could’ve been folded together into less rolls effectively, I think, especially given each event is given a lot of space and art — a whole spread for 6 items, often less. And these events are stellar and memorable, every one. Masterclasses in how to use maximalist space. Very evocative. Favourites are the Polar Bear (not what you’d expect, but a very clever pun and a fearful creature to encounter in the dark), and Garrik, the party member nobody remembers. There aren’t even only a few, there are 24 of these! It reminds me that we don’t have good excuses for mediocre random encounters.
The Polar Bear
The first dungeon, Tomb of the Promised Princess, has two methods to find, but the first isn’t actually spelt out (at least where I’d expect it to be) and I suspect it’s code for “when the referee wants them to find it”. Including the fable that precedes it and the boss monster that follows, it’s a one page dungeon, but it does some really neat visual storytelling, with the emergence of the Salinized Dragon being a page turn mid-sentence, and that dragon perhaps being able to tell you the fable that preceded it rendering the earlier narrative not just for the referee.
Next up is the Lost Temple. This is four events deep, which means that if you do not hire hirelings, the chances are that you will venture this far, find the barrier, and return to the village of Saltburg with nothing, encountering the Tomb of the Promised Princess at some point on the return journey to collect the key (a 1-in-6 event chance). It’s not clear to me at all how the players will know that bearing the Immaculate Sword you can claim from the Salinized Dragon will break past the barrier — this is important, and I can’t see evidence of it in any of the stories that will be delivered to the players organically. The only way to do the right thing is to be accompanied by the Latrofax that I can see — It’s rather a little redundancy.
Once inside the temple, you are stalked by the Cantigaster, which is a nice piece of horror, and being hunted is one of my favourite horror dungeon conceits. The Latrofax seek the Cantigaster, although it’s not clear, if you break down the barrier, whether they will turn on you or continue to use you to get what they want — the Crown of Salt. It’s notable I think, that the Crown of Salt is not necessarily your goal as players — you might have the rumour that tells you this is how you slay the creature, but more often will not, potentially resulting in some interesting conflicts. The lost temple itself is a compelling, weird dungeon with surprising spatial looping and the same kind of density as the earlier sections of the module. Really good stuff, but not a traditional foot-by-foot crawl. The unconventional layout falls away for no small part of the temple, but splash pages still pepper it, with full spread maps, full page illustrated tables, and boss monsters all getting splashes. The keying can be long-winded for me, but the complexity isn’t wasted — it’s usually describing interesting things to interact with, examples being a time-rifted waterfall or the pelagic armour mechs. Overall, a solid small dungeon (16 rooms), though not in the classic style best embodied in this design generation by Gus L.
One thing I love about this module is how you piece together the story from the various fables throughout the book. Who the king is, who the princess is, and who you’re slaying didn’t become clear to me until half way through the module. This gradual unveiling was an experience akin to something between the Isle’s narrative design and Dark Souls bite-sized lore. It’s very neat. I can imagine the Salinized Dragon revealing facts with a cackle, in and running him as an Elden Ring boss. This comes down to preference: Perhaps the more conventional design decision would be to just explain the history, but taking another route here makes for a very compelling experience, for me at least.
Information design decisions hamper the elegance of the module, though: The module actually opens up, for example, with a table filled with items — this might make sense as an inside cover, but it looks like this is the second spread (I am reading digitally, though), and so the positioning feels like a poor start. Important information on the Face-stealers lies between the exploration rules and the event tables, causing a disconnect and difficulty with interpretation. While it makes sense narratively for the promised princess fable to be placed where it is, it’s jarring and it means you’re flicking through the book to figure out what’s happened and to find the previous page (no page numbers, remember) that referenced it (it was the Face-snatcher page). All of these information design issues really result in a book that I’ll end up putting a lot of sticky tabs in and that I’ll have to read through at least twice before running — that’s really not my preference. This is probably the major negative of one-person shows: I think issues of information design are best noticed by interested and unfamiliar readers, rather than the creator. I think Herrero could’ve been clever with information design by colour coding or using other methods to encode navigation and structure, without sacrificing the other aspects of the text, though: It’s possible, I think, without compromising the integrity of the art.
There is some bonus content available as well: Lost Fools are 20 pregenerated characters, fully illustrated. Feast of Ink is a pamphlet dungeon that is set in the same world as Crown of Salt. And of course it comes with 3 custom character classes. These are handy and cool, but I think they’d be better if they had connections between them or to the module itself. Feast of Ink at least, would make a good introductory one-shot. But none of these are pushing me over the edge of buying or not buying this module. There’s also an OST, which is not so much to my taste, but of course your mileage may vary. I’m a module reviewer, not a music critic: I’d check it out yourself.
Now, it must be said: This is an art book. Many sections of this scream dark children’s book or graphic novel. I’m reviewing this on my phone in digital as I often do, and it’s only available in spreads, so I can’t really strongly recommend the digital version unless you’re reading it in a wide screen format — desktop only, thank you. But, if you can afford the print version of this, you’re in for a hell of a treat. If I could afford postage across the pacific, I’d drop for the print version in a heartbeat. Crown of Salt wants to be held. The print version of this, even if you tend to read digitally, is going to be the best version.
Crown of Salt is not a traditional dungeon crawl — if you’re running a classic style game, like OSE by the book, you’ll struggle here. But running it in a looser style like Mörk Borg and Cairn will suit it really well. It does lack a lot of the details that make it possible to run a more granular approach though — don’t look here if you want that. If your table runs Cairn or Mörk Borg, you enjoy dark fantasy that is in the same ballpark as Dark Souls or Elden Ring, and you don’t mind rereading an incredibly beautiful book a few times to wrap your head around it, this is a strong contender for best module of the year. If you’re like me and love to see when art, layout and writing are coordinated well, and what this medium is capable of when you experiment with excellent writing and coordinated graphic design, I’d put it on your radar irregardless of whether you like Mörk Borgy aesthetics. I’ve not heard of Tania Herrero before this, but she’s solidly on my radar after reading Crown of Salt (digital or print preorders).
Hyperdiegetic is a word to describe the stuff in a creative work that is unexplained but implies a larger setting. Well-known examples of hyperdiegesis include:
“Attack ships on fire off (the) shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate.”
Blade Runner
“You fought in the Clone Wars?” “Yes. I was once a Jedi knight, the same as your father.”
Star Wars
When you open your brain to the world’s psychic maelstrom, roll+weird.
Apocalypse World
Obviously, these have been retconned out of existence by a plethora of sequels, coined by Matt Hill, although I found it here and snipped the quotes down, because you can read it yourself and because this isn’t a critical analysis, it’s me riffing on an idea.
…the creation of a vast and detailed narrative space, only a fraction of which is ever directly seen or encountered within the text…
Matt Hill, Fan Cultures
…world is built throughout the series by accumulating and reiterating details. Mentions of people, places, and events suggest a complete world with a long history….
Matt Hill, Defining Cult TV
I’m going to talk about it in the context of DIY elfgames, particularly modules and setting. Hyperdiegetic information in movies can be intended to seed connections for future instalments (like in the early Marvel Cinematic Universe or in the many Star Trek TV series), but also they can be stand-alone comments meant to provide a sense of vastness. More uniquely in TTRPGs, it is actively intended to be a gap the table fills at play.
Iceberg. Get it?
Now I love hyperdiegetic information, as a personal preference, in my modules and settings. But I also notice that among many referees there’s an allergy to it. I see people repeatedly complaining “it doesn’t explain who so and so is”, or “if this name doesn’t refer to someone in the module, it shouldn’t be included”. Now, obviously, I disagree with this preference, but it’s a preference and it’s valid. M John Harrison didn’t feel as generous — he called it the clomping foot of nerdism, but I think in TTRPGs in particular this clomping foot is often justifiable. Let’s explore (I asked a few friends who write games and modules) where this impulse comes from, and whether how to battle the inclination in ourselves or embrace it.
I encountered issues with the problem of hyperdiegetic detail in the excellent series of zines, Ben L’s Through Ultan’s Door, and I described it thusly:
I fear the lack of clarity — “why are the baths bloody?”— for me would result in a kind of improvisation paralysis, where the lack of information in the presence of a much larger and growing world, would make me hesitant to create my own answers for fear of contradicting something that I don’t remember or hasn’t been written yet.
Me, here
So, I’m less receptive to hyperdiegetic information because if they make up the wrong thing it could ruin something that might be already existing in the world, may come in a future instalment, or might break the narrative or ruin a tension. Zedeck Siew suggested that this means you’re at risk of creating “interruptions to the fabric of the world rather than evolutions (because the author is not present at the table)”. There’s a solution to this to be had at an authorial level: That’s flagging hyperdiegetic information. Zedeck suggested using page references in order to flag hyperdiegetic information by omission, rather than the clumsier method of saying “this is hyperdiegetic”.
Diegetic information may be misleading. Chris McDowall suggested that the “fogginess of information” in TTRPGS — the fact that the referee is playing the part of all of the senses of the players — can result in hyperdiegetic information becoming confusing noise, due to the difficulty players have in distinguishing relevant from irrelevant information. For example, the use of names of places or people who aren’t immediately relevant to the plot, might distract the players from the module or adventure at hand. Perhaps this throwaway line from Crown of Salt might cause the players to diverge on a quest for the second blade, for example: “An identical copy of the Blade of the Forgotten King.”
A third concern is that a referee who lacks confidence improvising, or is a very inflexible subscriber to the Blorb approach to running adventures, will not like it if there is not a fact to look up in the almanac or in the appendix or wherever. I once ran a Dragonlance campaign, a world I’m very familiar with with an incredibly thorough wiki site. There’s certainly a pleasure to participating in that kind of always-a-right-answer play. But I think absolute fears of not knowing the right answer plays against the strengths of DIY elfgames in general. This acknowledgement of improvisation of the world as a special strength of the hobby goes back to its earliest days:
…total and absolutely perfect information will [not] be needed, but a general schema is required. From this you can give vague hints and ambiguous answers…the interaction of judge and players shapes the bare bones of the initial creation into something far larger […] adventuring breathes life into a make believe world…
Gary Gygax, AD&D 1e Dungeon Master’s Guide
I was hoping to draw some principles from these fears, to best choose where to place our hyperdiegetic information, to get maximum bang with minimal allergic reactions, but now I realise that my initial ideas about those principles are wrong. I think we might have to fight our instincts here. It’s turned from a writing advice post into a running and playing advice post. Surprise!
Support your improvisation. Nobody is good at improvisation out of the box. You need to stock your pantry: Refer back to products you already have. Read other people’s stuff. Blogs. Books. Keep a pile of unused modules. Read them, remember them. Build your collection of generators and support documents. Something has been written for everything. More than 1 module comes out per week these days, so you often don’t have to write something new if you pay attention to the broader hobby. Steal shamelessly. You’ll have something available to you that way, when you’re forced to improvise: It’s just glorified stealing, so pack your pockets with gold. And making this easy is useful because…
Sandbox play is about detours. If you go off book, embrace it. Go find that second blade. Make it the treasure of the bonus dungeon. Add additional rumours. Bespoke character driven adventure is part of the dynamism and collaborative nature of the hobby. If you support your improv, it’s a blessing and not a curse to be sent off the beaten track.
Naively theorise. Part of the resistance to hyperdiegesis is the increasingly interconnected world we live in; Amanda P points out that most of the time, an adventurer in a fantasy world is living in a world filled with things they don’t know or understand.
…they met by chance in an inn or tavern and resolved to journey together to seek their fortunes in the dangerous environment, and that, beyond the knowledge common to the area, they know nothing of the world…
Gary Gygax, AD&D 1e Dungeon Master’s Guide
As players we should live in that naivety. We often want to create experts — “I’d know about this” is a regular refrain. Lean instead on “I have no idea what that means, let’s figure it out”, rather than asking the referee. The referee can and should correct mistakes in understanding of information; but this naïveté contributes to theorising. Adventurers should embrace their naivety, and delve deeper anyway, building their theories. Encourage your players to do the same: The referee doesn’t always have to improvise the answer, the players can theorise one; ask them “You don’t know. What do you think the answer is?”; this resolves the previous issue of fear of painting yourself into a corner, because you’re wondering about reality rather than imposing reality.
Embrace the retcon. When you do interrupt reality accidentally, don’t hesitate to fix it. Hyperdiegetic information should be used to set up a larger world, which means you could get it wrong. We’re almost always playing in a world unlike ours: A great change in our history or geography can be explained by great magic, alien technology easily. But even in a campaign without these world-changing, time-breaking possibilities, you could realise your reality is brainwashing or propaganda — stuff that happens in real life. Make it an event, every time you figure you got something wrong. A crisis on infinite Oerths, perhaps. Embrace it as part of the dynamism and collaborative nature of the hobby.
[I’m realising now that I don’t have a word for the strange, lopsided collaboration at the core of DIY elfgames. That will be a future post, I suppose.]
Yeah, that’s it, I think. The hobby is better off using hyperdiegetic information. I think we should learn to embrace it, both as referees and as players, and we can do it by changing our angles of collaboration in various ways.
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.
Kiwi Acres is an adventure collection and campaign setting for Mausritter, by Hugh Lashbrooke. The author reached out to me with it after I mentioned back in my Tomb of a Thousand Doors review that I run Mausritter with my kids. It’s a family-friendly set of adventures, clearly modelled after the highly successful the Estate, with 10 mini-modules attached to a simplified hexcrawl.
The titular farm is a 19 hex area, each hex having a single sentence description, 10 of them being directly related to a mini-module, and only 1 other being described in any additional detail, that being the township in the centre of it all. It has its own random encounters, rumours, and factions, along with simple child-level advice on how to run them. The factions in particular really simple and iconic, in a way that’s perfect for childlike minds. Scarecrow Stand, the township, is modelled the same: 1 sentence descriptions, plus a few pages of striking but simple characters.
The mini-modules are brief, and fit on a single spread, a more succinct version of the Estate, which means going through them individually defies the point to some degree. I play Mausritter with my kids, and all of these are enough for a solid session with them. About half are traditional location based modules, and half less traditional. They’re written, to be honest, with kid referees in mind, and for those purposes I think for most of them a more typical location is better, and the less concrete locations would be a challenge. But they’re fine for me as a mum playing for her daughters. My favourites, though, and based on my experience also the ones likely to be my kids favourites, are the less traditional ones: Particularly Underground Escape, a perpetual chase through underground tunnels pursued by a gang of ravenous Weta. The younger kids in particular prefer modules with their own momentum, rather than ones where their agency is required to propel them forward.
It finishes with a treasury and a list of creatures — helpfully with photos of the native wildlife that are featured. The fae of Mausritter are replaced by indigenous folktales, and the unique spells and items are a lot of fun. My main irritant here, to be honest, is that they inconsistently use a bunch of different types of dice — d20 for treasure, then either d6, d8, d10 or d20 depending on what you roll at first — some consistency here would be nicer in my opinion, and would make for less complexity in the roll.
Layout wise Kiwi Acres is simple to the extreme, but in a way that’s coordinated well with the information design such that almost everything is confined to a spread or a page. It works really well, and in print makes it an absolute breeze to run. I’d love to argue for a more complex layout, but it’s really unnecessary here — it feels modelled after a primary school text book and the information brevity complements this decision and reduces the need for a more complex layout. I should add it’s also designed to be scrawled on — there are a bunch of notes pages, where you can write down what has happened and what you’ve invented. The brevity here is extreme, clear, and written in words a primary schooler will understand. There’s minimal poetics here — Mausritter’s house style to some degree discourages this — but is it perfect for both its audience and does it know itself? Yes, in my opinion, it does.
As someone who enjoys spending time in New Zealand, this is a charmer, leaning hard into te reo Māori, and featuring a bunch of unique Kiwi wildlife. It feels targeted to some degree as a teaching aid, explaining basic pronunciation, and making the wildlife iconic and stereotypical in the way Mausritter itself did for the quaint English countryside.
I’m always on the prowl for more family-friendly Mausritter content, and Kiwi Acres hits a home run on my criteria for running for kids. It’s simple, it’s iconic and stereotypical, it reimagines places they’re familiar with, and it has an educational aspect to it as well. Very cool! I like having printed modules when I’m running for kids, and the POD hardcover of this is a gorgeous little picture book, and it has print and play tokens included (although not the actual tokens), which are also essential for keeping the kids engaged in the inventory system. Overall, if you’re looking to play with your kids — or keep playing with them — Kiwi Acres is an admirable addition to your collection, that will last you a good 10 or more sessions, although there is content I prefer if you’re running Mausritter for a table of adults.
It’s Vampire Weekend! So I’m going to talk about what I want out of a classic vampire villain.
For the purposes of this, I’m interested in the vampire that is a fun antagonist to my players. There are other types of vampires worth exploring — I’ve written one myself in Bridewell — but I’m starting writing this waiting in a pharmacy (and finished, in a strange time-twist, in a medical wait room), so I don’t have time today to do comprehensive taxonomy of vampires. I’ll leave that to Dwiz.
Alucard of Castlevania, by Ioruko (I can’t find the link, because of the scourge that is Pinterest)
The vampire I want to talk about is a videogamevillainvampire. This VVV doesn’t act like a real person, or at least, you don’t start with the reality of their psychology as a starting point. They are a character that you get to know throughout the adventure or campaign, not during a boss fight at the end. This is why the VVV has all of these weird and wonderful powers of regeneration and shape change and what not. They need to be present the whole time. How do you make this invincible GMPC into someone who isn’t infuriating for the players?
Firstly, the VVV needs to be introduced immediately, and be somewhat charming. the players must love to hate them. How do we manufacture this? Look at TV and books to be honest. They need to be hot, they need to be flawed, and they need to be witty. The VVV is not ambiguous, you’re never going to be their friend. But they’re fun to have around, a constant foil. Think Q, of Star Trek, but not quite so all-powerful.
You meet them early, and non-violently, and here they’re inviting or welcoming you into their lair. The welcome doesn’t have to be open arms, of course: This is where you learn you’ve started playing their game. You encounter them or their proxies regularly. You see their visage in speaking pictures. Their bats and rats spy on you as security cameras and bring you clues when you struggle, to encourage you to take risks. They’re a benevolent referee analogue, in a way, but the traps they’re laying are difficult and dangerous and unforgiving to balance out the help they provide you in overcoming them. You’re the entertainment, they don’t want you to croak early.
The hardest thing about the VVV is that what happens at the end? You don’t want a combat, they’re nigh invincible in their domain, that’s why they’re toying with you. No, they might be invincible and clever, but they’re arrogant and not as clever as they think, or at least arrogant enough not to put up enough defences. They don’t clean up after themselves. Wondering through their lair, they leave clues as to their weaknesses, how they can be bribed or threatened. They leave shrines to the heroes that got this far that might indicate what they missed. They might even have visages or menageries of those doomed heroes, who want you to succeed, on your way. If you get through to their throne room, which is no doubt filled with magma and gothic statuary, that is animated and filled with smouldering skeletons, you’re accidentally equipped with the tools to hold them to ransom enough to gain your goal or at least to escape. I have a soft spot for the point scoring in tournament modules, as I read too many of them for my irregular podcast, Dungeon Regular. And here, I could see the player characters getting a score according to how much leverage they gain on the VVV, which determines exactly how much they get from the VVV at the end. But there are other ways to manage this — a flowchart or something, perhaps.
How do we discourage a final battle, though? Or how do we facilitate one if it’s what we want? Well, it may be impossible to discourage depending on your team, in which case I suggest talking with your table prior and flagging that you cannot defeat this villain, at least this time. Maybe you can come back later. Or, perhaps, feel out whether any of the players might be happy to be made an example of, killed or turned into spawn. Preferably the most competent one. Encouraging a boss battle: Well, we take a different direction then.
What if there are secret passages, or backstage areas, and those areas are filled with the weapons and poisons that affect the VVV? But once you’re noticed off-stage (remember, the bats and rats are omnipresent, but perhaps not off stage until they realise you’ve broken the fourth wall), it’s no longer a friendly game. Can you stay off the radar, finding secrets and keeping them secret until it’s time to spring it in the final room? Or do you build up the VVV’s anger meter, and then they comes after you, with all their hazards and traps at their disposal.
I’d strongly encourage you to make these meters public. Your Leverage the Vampire Score? Public. Your Anger Meter? Public. Scores can be part of the fun. It’s a feedback mechanism. Have the VVV’s baby vampire robots get steam out of their ears or the atmosphere get more oppressive, if you need diegetics. But it is a game we’re playing. You can introduce your own stats.
To wrap this up, the VVV is the main character and the director, they created the rooms, they run the show. The fun of this kind of vampire is subverting their intentions, of breaking the fourth wall of this play your for is directing, where you are the doomed stars. I’d love to see a slew of these vampire-as-dungeon modules, to be honest, because in my opinion, the biggest and most famous example of this falls short.
I think Gearing is wrong about hooks, and I think he’s wrong to say rumours are any different or better. I’m not going to go into detail here, but basically: It’s my job as a writer to make everyone’s life easier when it comes to playing in my module, my job as a referee to make it easier for my table to engage with the module, and players who are great at taking the lead can ignore any hooks or rumours.
But most hooks and most rumours aren’t very good. Hooks are just, to set up my analogy, bare hooks with no worm on them. Why would the players bite? What makes a juicy worm, then? And rumours, they’re siri telling you to turn left in 300 meters, where they should be directions provided by locals, informed by local knowledge, that speak about how the locals perceive their locale. And, they should get to the point: People don’t speak in generalities, they’re specific, more often than they’re right.
Let’s get to some rules of thumb, huh? show do we make our hooks catchier and our rumours more local?
Juicy worms for catchy hooks
A link to the outside world: Give them a character, a guild, a letter, a friend who tells them the hook. Someone in their world they know and they care about or hate or love, and connect them to the module and the risks and benefits of exploring it. Make it personal to the characters. Give them a reason to engage more than “cool rewards” and “there’s a social contract”. Not because they need it, because it makes it more fun. “My sister needs a potion that only Druid Beckett can provide or she’ll die”, where Druid Beckett is missing.
A solid basis for interaction: This is a link to the module itself. Make sure that it gives the players a specific goal within the module, so they have a direction to take if they don’t find one themselves. That doesn’t have to be the main thing in the module, but if it’s not, make sure they get a thread to pull on where you send them that will lead them there. “You need to kill the rats in the cellar of the local inn” and in that cellar is a clue to the location of the Blue Jewel.
A prejudice: At least some of the hooks should give the players the wrong impression of the situation. It should subvert what’s going on. It should be a different lens. There’s a beast on the loose? A menagerie wants it captured, not killed. It’s the rangers’ best friend, possessed by a magic broach, remove the broach! Good hooks often change the whole goal of the module, or reveal secrets that change the player’s approaches, that wouldn’t otherwise be obvious.
Local knowledge for razor-sharp rumours
A direction, not a hint: Rumours aren’t the button that says “I can’t solve the puzzle, give me the hint”, they’re the puzzle itself. They direct to specific clues that add up to solutions. You’ll probably only provide a few rumours to your players, so make them count: If you’re telling someone how to get to the local pizzeria, you aren’t going to give them vague directions. “The priest has gone mad, cursed because he slept with the mayor’s wife, and he’s locked himself in the clock tower”.
A reflection of what the speaker cares about: Rumours always reflect the beliefs of the person who provides them. This means you should tailor them to different groups, where you can. If you want to tell a truth, think of how the goblins would interpret that truth. Make the people of the world real through the rumours you give, they’ll often be one of only a few vectors through which anything about them is communicated. In the above rumour, that is not the reason the vicar is cursed, but rather an example of the conservative beliefs of the speaker.
An interesting direction, even if they’re false: They always lead somewhere useful. There are no red herrings or tricks. Where they send you, there should always be a useful thing, even if it’s not the one or thing you expected. False rumours can feel really nasty as players, so here the more obvious the subversion the better: They should feel excited they followed the lead, even if they didn’t get what they expected. “Saint Jahn was buried with a magical sword that was made to slay dragons on a single strike.”Doesn’t lead to that sword, but does lead to a secret passage that bypasses the dragon’s first defences.
Anyway, that’s what I reckon. Did I miss anything?
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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 