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?
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.
Raising the Obsidian Keep is a 71 page module for Old School Essentials by Joseph R. Lewis. This version is a remake of The Obsidian Keep, in the hands of the Merry Mushmen, with art by Li-An and maps by Rob Matthews and Nobboc. In it, the adventurers delve into a chaos-corrupted keep full of mutated nobles, to investigate a missing fleet of holy warships. I got this as part of a recent kickstarter, along with their remake of Hound of Hendenburgh and the first in the format, Nightmare Over Ragged Hollow. Why is Joseph R. Lewis getting two reviews in a month? Honestly by coincidence they all arrived on the one day, even though they were from different sources.
The introductory pages here immediately fall into 2 pitfalls: Overexplanation (as if many new referees were going to start their careers with this module) and false rumours that don’t actually contribute to the players understanding or interaction with the world, and are simply wasted time. It’s a disappointing start, but I won’t dwell on it. From here, the structure is simple: Three brief locations that get you to the keep, each 8 pages long — Harbor of Death, Survivor’s Beach and At the Foot of the Obsidian Keep — and then the Obsidian Keep itself which spans 31 pages. Each of these smaller locations is 2 or 3 sessions of play, and the keep itself is closer to 7 or 8 (keeping in mind I tend to play in strictly 2 hour sessions), so this book is a solid 3 months of weekly play. It’s a high value investment.
Harbor of Death is a point crawl in a row boat, featuring 2 factions. There’s a random encounter table that features violent encounters 50% of your time in a rowboat, and they’re rolled every time you move between locations. There’s going to be a lot of fighting on that boat, with high risk of death by drowning according to the drowning rules. While NPCs in the random encounters are named (great!) they have no real connections deeper into the module (disappointing), so there’s no real consequence to these encounters, except as potential henchmen. I like some of the character descriptions here: “55, tough as nails, healthy, yellow jacket sailor. Says the ships were destroyed by red lightning. Most sailors eaten by sharks. Asks for rescue” It covers both what they need and can give to the characters, as well as enough for me to put on a persona. Nice. But, the characters often have information to give, rather than anything else, and it’s rarely specific or useful information, mainly context and story. And it’s not consistent: Ivan and Matteo get far less, and their information is presented in different format. There are plenty of magic items and treasure even early on, and the magic items are of the pleasingly high-limitation, but game-breaking variety. Like, there’s a decent chance you’ll be heading into the keep with a bunch of grenades. All of this continues throughout the module; the Harbour of Death is a microcosm of the rest of the module.
Survivor Beach introduces new factions, and is a whole lot less violent — only 25% chance of a hostile encounter. Otherwise, it has similar strengths and weaknesses. There are a few more traps (well, hazards) that, if I were a referee new to elfgames, I’d probably mishandle, making them potentially insta-kills at low levels. I mention this because it’s a disheartening juxtaposition in the light of the earlier concessions to new referees, that the text doesn’t account for the referee knowing how to deal with traps and hazards. I don’t need that extra support: But you’re indicating in your first few pages you think your audience does, so why aren’t the encounters adjusted in that light? What Survivor Beach really does is foreshadow the chaotic mutant nature of the Keep, where the Harbour of Death is more about what happened to the fleet and foreshadowing Survivor Beach.
At The Foot increase the hostility again, but also keeps the mutations. It doesn’t feature any factions, just two NPCs that are pretty fun. I honestly don’t think it has much to contribute aside from them, though, and it admits it in the introduction because it’s clear that all that’s here is “ruined castle, corpses, and some monsters”. Where the other locations were contributing to the overall development of the story, and foreshadowing what is to come through their random encounters and keys, these 13 locations don’t really contribute much more at all, except for a lot of combat and a little treasure.
Of course the bulk of the module is the Obsidian Keep itself. It’s even more deadly, with a 65% chance of a hostile encounter every 2 turns; this is much much higher than the typical Old School Essentials rate of encounters. But, there’s a lot of NPCs here, and it’s all feeling very Halls of the Blood King in its sense of twisted decadence (there’s even a vampire from space here). It’s very easy to make huge mistakes, though (that space vampire can very easily derail the whole module), and it’s rarely clear exactly how the powerful NPCs that drive the action would interact in the absence of the players, let alone to their presence. Earlier I mentioned that some of the NPCs have both things they need and things the PCs need: That’s not the case here, so while Princess Viola is a quest-giver, there’s no reason for the PCs to do as she asks or demands. At a room to room level, though, there’s so much fun stuff to interact with here: Tons of NPCs, a whole menagerie of characters and creatures for the party to befriend, lots of weird encounters and strange spaces and surprising mutations. It’s a horror module, of sorts, but not the kind that will fill you with unease, but rather one that will make you keep wanting to see what weird thing comes next. My big objection here: I had trouble figuring out how the PCs could actually know what the right thing to do in the final room was. I guess the idea is that it should be intuitive not to choose the option that chomps off your arm?
The reason this is important is the appendices feature an “Ending the Adventure section, and there’s a decent chance the players will neither defeat or not defeat the Big Bad Guy. I’m not sure what the outcome will be, in that case? More clarity here would be appreciated. There is other useful stuff: A character summary, for example, and a summary of NPCs that can be repurposed when PCs die. But what these reveal about the module is one criticism I had of it the whole way through: It’s interested in about 6 rich and powerful people, and utterly disinterested in the many other characters in the module or their relationships, except in their usefulness to the PCs. Recently Amanda P mentioned petty desires, something close to my heart. Few of these characters have their own desires or relationships that exist in the absence of the PCs. In fact, dead NPCs that appear only in letters or messages in bottles have more interior life than the ones that appear in person. They’re toys to play with, and there’s no attempt to create more than the illusion of personhood. I’d prefer they all be more connected to their world.
One major flaw in all this design in my opinion is that retreating is highly discouraged, given the high risk and cost of travelling between locations due to the hostility in the random encounters and the high frequency of rolls. You’re clearly meant to be returning to the ship every three days to rest and recuperate — this is explained back in Harbor of Death — but to get out of the keep to the harbour features at least 3 random encounters (assuming the referee lets you move from point to farthest point, which feels against the spirit of the crawl), which is an about 80% chance of encountering violence on your retreat in the most optimistic scenario. There aren’t really many places of safety here, and there certainly aren’t any places to restock — it’s a fairly punishing module if you play by the intended ruleset. It does say in the foreword is that it’s not intended as a combat-heavy module, but the probabilities really don’t feel that way, and you don’t get a lot of opportunity to regroup.
A brief aside: I’ve noticed this in previous Merry Mushmen publications, but it’s sad to continue to see proofing errors throughout these otherwise high quality productions. It takes the sheen off. I’m aware they’re French and publishing in English and that’s a hurdle, and I can see at least for this module, they’ve hired an experienced editor from an English speaking country to proof the text, which means they’re aware of the issue, but when proofing errors start in the second sentence, it just shows that this needs more eyes to pass over it before it goes to print. There’s no rush, and plenty of people are ever happy to read these things.
The form factor here is carried over from Nightmare Over Ragged Hollow. They call it a slipcase, but really what it means is that the cover is not attached by staples, and is designed to be removed and used as a referee’s screen during play. This is cute, and clever. In the case of Raiding the Obsidian Keep, this screen is mainly maps with the names of the key attached — I think given it’s to be used in conjunction with the book, the space devoted to the key could’ve been devoted instead to random encounter tables and the like, to make a cute idea more useful at the table. Putting the rumour table here instead of any reference to the actual source text that might be used in play: Giant misstep, unless the intention is that the rumours be displayed at all times to the players — this might be the case, in which case bravo! and that’s why it’s on the front facing side, I guess? The problem with this format is durability: Covers are for protecting the paper inside. I took this to a cafe today, and despite it being in my handbag with very little movement for a grand total of 20 minutes, the pages sustained damage. When I’m spending this much — €30 — on a print copy, I expect it to stand up to more than 20 minutes in my bag.
The whole module is beautiful, though. Its weathered look is intended to evoke 80’s nostalgia, as is the tightly padded layout. The art is lineart with grey shading, and complements the use of shading in tables, maps and headings; the art itself is uniformly gorgeous lineart of exactly the kind that I think behooves an elfgame. Font choices are bold, retro and legible. But they have to be: This layout is so dense it’s challenging to get through. The art isn’t thoughtfully distributed — you’ll have 6 pages of double column walls of text, then an illustration and a map or two illustrations on one spread. This makes it harder to use illustrations as navigation tools. Once you’re into the key, it’s hard to find the headings, because they’re nestled mid-page or mid-column. This is all in service to a dense, small and affordable book. The density is such that it stands out like a sore thumb when a space isn’t filled — usually to prevent orphans or widows, or to keep small paragraphs whole. There are nice flourishes, like the swash used to distinguish boxed text, but they’re lost in the density. It gives me no time to breathe. This is a tragedy of beautiful parts assembled poorly due to production constraints. I’d love to see this layout artist given some space to work in.
All of these layout issues become more glaring when placed into the context of the over-explanation in the module. It’s often seemingly pitched at a beginner referee, despite not being for level 1 adventurers; this explanation adds either more page count (which the Merry Mushmen seem keen to keep low), or it adds to density (which is a problem for legibility and navigation for me, at least). they could’ve cut a lot of this lowest common denominator advice to make it either cheaper, more profitable or more legible, and choosing to do none of these is baffling to me. I genuinely think that the maps in the module are a waste of space — again in a book full of layout decisions that suggest space is at a premium. It’s as if the book is laid out in isolation of the fact that the maps are in fact in the detachable cover. It’s always easier to look at the cover than at the book, and I’d have preferred if, had they decided they couldn’t do without them, to have minimaps on each spread covering just the section of the map that was covered on a spread, which would’ve been an improvement in terms of usability. There’s an overall attachment to nostalgic layout here that’s manifesting as a reluctance to lean into innovative solutions, even the innovative solutions that they’ve actually implemented themselves. It’s self-defeating.
Raid on the Obsidian Keep has a lot of things I love: The weird and high density of magical items that are just perfect for its chosen style of play, interesting and interactive factions, lots of NPCs. I can’t praise the actual content of the module enough. The lack of clear rewards for interacting with quest-givers and the high hostility of the random encounters and many of the areas and the number of potential companions make me this feel like a 5th edition module rather than one for Old School Essentials, in a way that’s equal parts complementary and derogatory: I don’t think the combat translates as well to the intended playstyle. In terms of layout and design it’s compromised by a lack of attention to detail and considerable flaws, and proofing and other editorial misses, negating some of those considerable strengths and making it hard to navigate.
Are those flaws enough to dissuade me from running it? That’s a hard thing to answer. There is a lot of module here: there’s a lot of fun to be had. It’s fun that feels specifically tailored for my 5th edition loving friends. But I’d have to run this for a long time, and this version is for Old School Essentials only, unlike what it remakes. And it lacks one of the things I like most in my modules, which is character-focused drama. But, if you’re into horror that you want to see more of rather than less, and you don’t mind a room-by-room play-style rather than a broader, political one, if you don’t mind the players losing a lot of characters, and if you’re willing to overlook the difficult navigation — you could probably overcome the issues with some coloured sticky notes or judicious colour highlighting — Raiding the Obsidian Keep is a lot of playtime and a lot of potential for fun and laughs at a beer and pretzels kind of table.
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.
Ex Inferis is a 19 page module for Liminal Horror by Tyler Welch with layout and art by BoRyan Crum. It won the recent Twisted Classics Jam, so I thought I’d give it a read, as the last in-house twisted classic I read for Liminal Horror did not blow me away. I hope I’ll find some time for a few more modules from this jam over the next few weeks. In Ex Inferis, a haunted ship floats on the Great Lakes, and you’re the first to find it.
Ex Inferis wastes no time, with the first page featuring a 3-part timeline that launches you straight into a tight framing of the premise. It then gives you a unique character creation process (as you’re all sailors) to bind you together quickly. It follows that up with the Doom Clock, which makes Ex Inferis feel like a one-shot scenario, mimicking the structure of a slasher movie in a really compelling way. I like that these events, while they are on a clock, are associated with who you meet and what you do on the ship, which means we anticipate some randomness to its implementation (although obviously you’re more likely to encounter certain things as you venture deeper into the ship).
The cast is pretty streamlined, and none of the NPCs you’ll encounter, names or unnamed, are likely to be hostile until latter events are triggered. The next four pages are random tables: Everything from encounters to artifacts, fallouts and visions. These are individually often pretty good: “You vomit out a sticky black sphere with its own gravitational pull” or “old instant camera that prints photos Polaroid-style. In the background of each photo is a line that leads to danger”, bringing SCP/Control to the table.
The map and key itself is interesting, and I’m very curious if the style of play indicated here is the intended style of play for Liminal Horror, indicating perhaps why the Parthenogenesis of Hungry Hollow fell flat for me. Random encounters are not room by room, but rather by indication on the key. It says in addition, according to the doom clock, but the doom clock doesn’t indicate any random encounters. There aren’t, therefore, many chances (less than 5?) to roll a random encounter, and so your experience of this ship will be one of unsettling, horrifying scene after horrifying scene, slowly uncovering more of what happened. However, some of the events are predicated on certain random encounters occurring, and the rooms in which they occur aren’t likely to be revisited. I could see this not going as intended, without a little house ruling around when to roll — easily done, each time you enter a room, roll twice for even rooms. It feels like more random encounters are better here anyway, because out of the 19 rooms only 5 of them have significant interactive elements to them — most are scenes or simply rooms.
The layout here is pretty and readable, with creative use of the grid for interest and clever use of minimal art and pictures. The landscape layout makes it feel unique (although, a peeve: it’s not set to landscape in properties, which means it displays in portrait sideways on my phone). I do feel, though, that other choices would make it more usable: The random tables for example are well laid out individually, but I think the module would be better served by squishing these into smaller space, so I don’t have to turn so many pages to find them. After the first few packed pages, and the concluding ones, these spaced out tables feel strangely decompressed.
This all leads to an almost meditative sense of exploration, of delving into something you know you should not, as if the demonic infestation that possesses the ship has possessed the player characters. “I must look a little deeper”, the ship tells you, “Nothing yet has gone wrong.” You feel like the researchers in every horror film until the penny drops. On the hand, there’s not a lot to do in the space: As I said, 4 or 5 things. I’d expect plenty of artifacts to be uncovered, though, which may change how things progress. If you’re looking for a space you’re interacting with, a space you can, so to speak, win, this is not one of those spaces. What it is, is a space where you experience the uneasy sense of creeping horror.
One glaring issue I’m encountering when wrestling with Ex Inferis is perhaps related from my distance from the Liminal Horror community, and not a reflection on the module. I’m not sure what this wants to be? I don’t know how you’re expected to experience this. There are no referee asides, there’s no additional guidance, and it departs from the core rules in a few places and doesn’t explain what these are intended to achieve. I’m making guesses, here, but there is virtue to explaining yourself, sometimes, I’m beginning to realise, when someone else is expected to run it for you.
So, is Ex Inferis for you? Well, I enjoy the kind of horror that’s escapable, and while it’s possible to escape this horror, I don’t think the module is written with that it mind: You’re supposed to be doomed going into this, unable to turn around this demonic horror. At best you may escape. In that way, I can see two uses for it at my table: Either as a one-shot, “Hey friends, do you like Liminal Horror?” or at a con, or as a funnel, where the survivors of this become more typical Liminal Horror investigators. If those use cases call out for you, and you’re looking for a Liminal Horror module, I’d scoop Ex Inferis up, definitely over Hungry Hollow.
Talking about oracle decks over on the Dice Exploder discord, and I really want a deck that’s especially for playing elfgames games and giving elfgame inspirations. So I’m thinking, what information do I want to gain from a draw when I’m playing an elfgame? This is a brainstorm post.
Sam Dunnewold suggested in the chat that the key differentiation between an oracle and something else (like rolling a single dice) is multiple dimensions of interpretation are possible. I like this take: Basically we are after overloaded cards. This means that not only do you want the card to provide certain concrete dimensions like randomisation, but also conceptual as well as literal dimensions. And, for my own aesthetic reasons, I want to layer this in a visually pleasing and cohesive wrapper. This means that, while I might want to pack these with imagery, so that they replace as many dice rolls or tables as possible, it’s probably more interesting to see how they can be incorporated separately.
What literal dimensions would I want in my OSRacle? I don’t think any oracle deck is better at generating numbers than dice, and nobody who uses this wouldn’t have dice anyway. But common B/X probabilities, maybe. The most common are 5%, 16.6%, 33.3%, 50%, 66.6% and more rarely 83.3% — basically the 5 chances on a d6 plus your chance of a critical success on a d20. This means the deck has to be divisible by 6. 6-card suits doesn’t work very well, so 12-card suits it is, but numbered twice, 1-5. The final 2 cards aren’t numbered, except for some of them, the number of which will have to be calculated based on the total number of cards.
6 suits feels right, because obviously the angle in elfgames to take is to link them in some way to ability scores and saving throws, both which in some way match here. Our core ability scores are Str, Con, Dex, Int, Wis and Cha. Our core saving throws are Death/Poison, Wands, Paralysis/Petrification, Breath Weapon, Spells/Rods/Staves. Some of these are very obviously linked in my mind: Breath Weapon to Dex, Death/Poison to Con, and Spells/Rods/Staves to Intelligence. The others are not so clear: Wands feels Dex related to me — it’s kind of save vs guns — and Paralysis/Petrification is about willpower, which doesn’t clearly line up with either Wisdom or Charisma. Nothing lines up with Strength, really, but I’d add one, as I did with Advanced Fantasy Dungeons, and make it Steel or Swords. I’m definitely thinking that the suits being tied to saving throws is a good idea, basically because I can think of iconic symbols for them: Skulls, Wands, Snakes, Dragons, Pentagrams and Blades. And they’re associated with Constitution and Death/Poison, Dexterity and Wands, Charisma and Petrification/Paralysis, Wisdom and Breath Weapons, Spells and Intelligence and Violence and Strength. Not sure if I like the double up on lizards there — maybe Gorgons or Stones instead of snakes?
In which case, we have 6 suits of 12 cards each, for a total of 72 cards. 12 of those are empty values. My 5% value is 3.6 cards out of 72. I’ll call that 4 for critical hits, and 3 for critical failures. That means we can fill 7 of those empty cards with critical values, leaving only 5 of them actually empty. Those 5 are just under 7% — I’ll just keep them in mind, I’m not sure if there’s a 7% probability that comes up commonly in elfgames off the top of my head. It’d be nicely symmetrical if I had no empty values, but it’s also nice to have empty values. (Edit: Oh, you know what averages out at 8% probability? The chance of succeeding at 3 consecutive death saving throws in 5th edition. I love a good death save, and I’ll definitely drop that into the empty values.
What other literal dimensions would be nice to include? Our major common conventions are the random encounter table and reaction roll. Both of these are typically on a bell curve, which of course divides very evenly into 72 —2 cards are labelled 2 and 12, 4 are 3 and 11, 6 are 4 and 10, 8 are 5 and 9, 10 are 6 and 8, and 12 are 7. So, I have a second number associated with each card to provide our 2d6 bell curve. I think this is a useful literal dimension, to be honest, and not a difficult addition to the card, but lower priority. But is it the most interesting way to incorporate reaction rolls or random encounters. I think they’re best as conceptual dimensions.
One of those conceptual dimensions are, of course, having monsters, hazards or iconic characters on the card images. Seeing the “Forest Lich” image as the 5 of Skulls is going to give you a random encounter. Combined with the bell curve secondary numbering, there’s heaps of both literal and conceptual range here for random encounters.
The reaction element is harder, because it’s pretty specific. I think it should either remain attributable to the percentages — maybe we can have the border be related to the original list, directly related to the five reactions remembering so long as the numbers add up to match the bell curves, we can attach those borders to specific cards by theme. That means 2 cards have Attack! or Eager/Friendly borders, 18 cards each have Hostile/May Attack or Indifferent/May Negotiate, and 32 cards have uncertain/confused. This has almost no additional load on the card — cards need borders anyway — and adds a literal dimension.
This means that I don’t have to tailor my overall card concept to reactions, which is excellent. What other concepts do I want folded into the art of the card, though? There are two elements, basically. I need to be able to wing an NPC, and I need a general title.
An NPC sketch for me needs a distinguishing trait, an asset the PCs need, and an agenda. Assets can be physical, or information, but are best thought of as an item that is also on the card. So: Each card has an item on it. Agendas are always more complex: These can be tied into the core concept of the card. Spindlewheel and Tarot do a great job with these core concepts, and I need to lean into that combination between classic creature and core concept. For example, I might title the 5 of Dragons Greed, and the 5 of Skulls the Forest Lich. But I want the Forest Lich to have implicit meaning, in the same way that Death has other meanings in Tarot. So perhaps the approach is we have a card Title, and then we have a 1-sentence description or abstract of the card as well. “Calcified Dragon: Greed, stillness, indecision.”
Ok, that’s a pretty dense card. What does every card have:
A chance number, marked with a dice symbol, 1-5 twice within each suit, with 5 empty values, 4 critical hits, and 3 critical misses spread 2 in each suit.
A bell number, marked with a bell symbol.
A suit, from Skulls, Wands, Snakes, Dragons, Pentagrams and Blades. Associated with Constitution and Death/Poison, Dexterity and Wands, Charisma and Petrification/Paralysis, Wisdom and Breath Weapons, Spells and Intelligence and Violence and Strength.
A border associated with reaction. 2 cards have Attack! or Eager/Friendly borders, 18 cards each have Hostile/May Attack or Indifferent/May Negotiate, and 32 cards have uncertain/confused.
A title which describes the monster or NPC, and a 1 sentence description.
And in terms of artwork, we have a distinguishing trait (like Big Nose or Broad Shoulders or Rat-like Whiskers), which is reflected by the monster or NPC on the card and an object or asset.
I think actually starting to figure out the individual cards and the symbolism in them is probably outside of the scope of this post, I’ll tinker with that in my spare time.
My gut feeling is that lower numbers are minions, higher numbers are bosses, and empty values are hazards or traps, and that the suits are associated with broad types: Skulls with undead, Wands with wizards, hags and constructs, Snakes with underworld creatures, oozes and aberrations, Dragons with apex predators, Pentagrams with fiends, fae and curses and Blades with mundane beasts and warriors. But I think adhering to these types isn’t as important as making them thematically cohesive. Just a rough guide.
But I’d love my smart friends’ input: Are there any obvious elfgame literal or conceptual gaps in my framework that I should consider including if I do pursue this further? Any prototypical things that need to make their way into the deck? Do you think the idea of an OSRacle is an absolute waste of time, and why? Oh, and obviously OSRacle is a terrible name, any suggestions?
The prolific Dice Goblin wrote about 2-tiered reaction rolls, which, like is cool, but it was a bit clunky for me. What I like: It gives you a little more that random chance, modified by a little. What I don’t like: Confusing. But, like, could it just be a matrix, though?
Our prototypical reaction roll, remembering Charisma modifies the reaction roll in OSE, and there’s a decent chance of you getting a +1:
2d6
Reaction
~chance
1-2
Attacks
3
3-5
Hostile, may attack
24
6-8
Uncertain, confused
45
9-11
Indifferent, may negotiate
24
12+
Eager, friendly
8
So here, there’s almost no chance of getting a straight attack. This is kind of the problem Dice Problem is thinking of: Context should matter. Now, the first thing I’d say is: If there’s an obvious context, you could just overrule the reaction roll, or not make one. But, ret-conning (so to speak) as a referee those results is part of the fun. My 2d6 friendly goblins in their lair during a war with the bugbears being friendly means they’re retreating and looking for allies, or perhaps are cowards. More interesting situation! But if we work it into the roll itself, it could be simpler than Dice Goblin. Like this.
Y (2d6) X (Situation)
High Danger
Familiar territory, on Guard
Unfamiliar territory, on Watch
Familiar territory, unfamiliar faces
Familiar territory, familiar faces
~chance
1-2
Attacks
Attacks
Attacks
Hostile, may attack
Uncertain, confused
3
3-5
Attacks
Attacks
Hostile, may attack
Uncertain, confused
Indifferent, may negotiate
24
6-8
Attacks
Hostile, may attack
Uncertain, confused
Indifferent, may negotiate
Eager, friendly
45
9-11
Hostile, may attack
Uncertain, confused
Indifferent, may negotiate
Eager, friendly
Eager, friendly
24
12-13
Uncertain, confused
Indifferent, may negotiate
Eager, friendly
Eager, friendly
Eager, friendly
8
14+
Indifferent, may negotiate
Eager, friendly
Eager, friendly
Eager, friendly
Eager, friendly
0
Adding the usual modifiers, for Charisma or for factors that might affect the disposition of the NPCs towards the PCs, like drawn swords, clear benefits, or unsavoury reputation.
Now, there’s a problem with this matrix, though, I realise now. It’s that it’s not strictly necessary, except as an exercise in “I can make this simpler”. Actually what this is, is the original reaction roll, but with the following rules applied:
Change the tier or your reaction roll based on the situation the NPCs are in:
-2 tiers if they are in a high danger situation already
-1 tier if they are guarding their territory
0 tier if they are on watch or in unfamiliar teritory
+1 tier if they are in familiar territory
+2 tiers if they are both in familiar territory and the PCs are familiar faces
These rules are basically what many referees are already doing, it’s just not written down. It’s pretty good to write it down. The main thing I might have wrong, though, is whether these are the right situations in the right order. What do you think?
Anyway Dice Goblin goes in to add in how you can continuously make reaction rolls to change dispositions, based on Nick’s system, which I don’t really like too much. I’d prefer if we went in that direction, to go the full Errant social rules, which I think are exceptional, but they need to be learnt, and I prefer rules to basically disappear for my style of play. However, there’s the old rule (I think from “On the Non-Player Character“) where half your reaction roll is the number of conversational turns they’ll put up with you talking to them. I really like this rule, it just doesn’t quite work once you add this tiered approach. Instead, you need to attach that number directly to the result, which is clumsier, sadly.
2d6
Reaction
Exchanges
Behaviour
1-2
Attacks
1
Position for advantage in attack
3-5
Hostile, may attack
2
Murder or eject
6-8
Uncertain, confused
3-4
Murder, eject, or ignore
9-11
Indifferent, may negotiate
5
Eject or ignore
12+
Eager, friendly
6
Ignore
-2 tiers if they are in a high danger situation already -1 tier if they are guarding their territory 0 tier if they are on watch or in unfamiliar teritory +1 tier if they are in familiar territory +2 tiers if they are both in familiar territory and the PCs are familiar faces
I’ve also added expected behaviour here, once your exchange is up. Friendly people will just go back to what they’re doing, probably politely. Most of the time, you’ll simply be thrown out. On a 1-2, they’ll spend your time talking positioning themselves for an advantage in the coming fight.
Bathtub Reviews are an excuse for me to read modules a little more closely. I’m doing them to critique a wide range of modules from the perspective of my own table and to learn for my own module design. They’re stream of consciousness and unedited critiques. I’m writing them on my phone in the bath.
The Undying Sea is a 100 page game by Joseph R. Lewis based on Cairn and Into the Odd. I don’t usually review games as Bathtub Reviews, but to be entirely honest this is a game about as much as, say, Wolves Upon the Coast or Vaults of Vaarn are games, that is to say, technically, but you’re playing the module that it comes with as much or more than you’re playing the game itself. And I bought it under the impression it was a module, as it pitches itself as a depth-crawl akin to the recently reviewed Stygian Library, but reimagined to crawl the archipelago of a violent and death-defying sea.
The rules basically add firearms and ships to Cairn. Most of the rules are not even 10 pages, including inventory and two character sheets. But then there are a bunch of combat rules that come much later in the game, after the depthcrawl rules. It’s all more than I want to learn to run this module, and weirdly organised. Should this have been a game? Like, no, I don’t think so. The main unique things it adds are the ship rules, which are obviously essential to making this kind of game interesting, but if I’m running a Cairn table — and Lewis is a strong Cairn advocate so I’d be playing other stuff by him in Cairn — I’d just strap those rules on instead of remake my characters or whatnot.
The way the sea travel sells the “depth-crawl” mechanic is that the sea is blanketed in mist, only ten feet deep, and filled with the undead. There is a dark secret in the uttermost depths of the Undying Sea, that you can uncover, perhaps ending the curse upon the ocean. I don’t hate this as world building and it justifies the mechanic well, but the timeline on the curse is unclear — is this something that’s just happened, or something that’s been present for generations? There are five factions in the sea, but it’s not entirely clear to me why this treacherous, unnavigable sea is a valuable asset at all for them to fight over. Two of these factions are aggressive, blatantly evil colonisers. Two of these are good, either searching for the secret cursing the sea, or searching for a cure to their own curse. One is just there to screw with the PCs. They’re good, iconic, driven factions.
Port Joro is supposed to be your home town, and it’s the centre of the campaign. But it falls into the pitfall of too much customisation. I don’t need to pick from three governors, I want a single compelling governor. You have actions to take there, but no one to interact with with any built in meaning. Suggested quests are not tied to characters or quest givers, and rumours are vague and about half don’t affect how the players will interact with the world (there are a few gems though — “The Harpy is real, and it hunts in a most beautiful garden. Beware both.”). I’m going to have to put in a hell of a lot of effort to make Port Joro a place to care about. One thing Port Joro does have going for it, though, are the events tables. One appears modelled after the events table in Pirate Börg, the other simply adds events to each visit to town. These make the Undying Sea feel like a living, dynamic place, and while they’re no substitute for some actual characters to interact with, they go a long way.
The depth-crawl mechanics are pretty typical — you map as you go, discovering the shape of the archipelago island by island. Once it’s discovered, it’s not a surprised anymore. Travelling on land has its own little procedure, which is probably the messiest part of the procedure, because unlike the Gardens of Ynn, the island you land on is randomised, not just the location and a detail, but a terrain, encounters and treasures for its shore and interior, as well as a feature and relics. It’s also not clear if you cross things off as you encounter them — some are clearly one offs, but many aren’t. This is a lot of work — enough that there needs to be an example, and that the book suggests giving the players a break each time you land on an island. I’d feel the need to generate islands ahead of time, to be honest, which isn’t promising for me to bring this to the table. And, I’m not sure what it adds? Like, how much of a difference does it make to my campaign that the goblin labyrinth is on a white sand and palms island and not a boulders and baobabs island? I’d have rathered the time be spent on making islands complete with these randomisers built in meaningfully, than be forced to do this extra work in the name of what? Replayability? I’m not even sure what it’s supposed to add, for the significant additional complexity.
It suggests you can allow the crew to dungeon crawl room by room, but I don’t see how, because all of this complexity does not bring with it any specificity. My Moss & Frost island has a treasure hidden perhaps under ice, and a few encounters, but no points of interest or landmarks. If I roll an Undine Tower, there is no map of the tower, simply some relics hidden by members of an otherwise friendly faction strangely hostile and looking for violence. I’m a big fan of Atop the Wailing Dunes, which similarly generates a lot of its adventure from random games dependent on terrain. But there, everything you need is in a single spread, and here they are spread throughout a whole book.
There is an excellent bestiary at the end, full of fun creatures all illustrated by Hodag. It’s really good. That’s all I have to say about that. A lot of this book is, in isolation, really good. The layout, for example, is pretty good, utilising it’s large letter format to excellent, easy to read effect. The art is all very good. It’s an easy book to flick through, although I’m glad I have the print version because it’d be nigh impossible to navigate digitally.
My problem with the Undying Sea is that it ends up being less than the sum of its parts. It spends time being evocative when it needs to be specific; it spends energy being random when it needs to be bespoke. The same page length could’ve had 70 custom islands that you encounter randomly with the original Garden of Ynn rules — it could have had mapped lairs and locations as well — but instead we have pages of rules I don’t want or need, spread randomly amongst tables I have to roll on to generate islands that rely entirely on my imagination to create. I can make up my own islands, without tables, thank you very much.
I’ve got to say, though, the setting, the factions, the concept of a major town the player characters are attached to descending and rallying the locals to the defence of, what is out there on the sea: This is all incredibly compelling. I want to like the Undying Sea. It’s a damned cool setting, and the islands are gorgeously described, the features for the most part striking, the creatures and beasts unite and compelling. I want to play Undying Sea.
But while Lewis’ writing is solid here, he’s at his best when writing concrete locations like in the Raid on the Obsidian Keep. I can’t see myself using the Undying Sea — it leaves me to do too much of the work, and I just don’t have the time when I could run Stygian Library or my own Hell on Rev-X for a good depthcrawl, or Wolves Upon the Coast or Seas of Sand for some great swashbuckling. That said, if you don’t want to stray far from the Cairn framework, enjoy on-the-fly location generation as an exercise, and your table isn’t attached to blorby exploration, this is likely to be a great game for you. Or, if you love the idea of the Undying Sea as a setting, and don’t mind doing a fair amount of legwork to make Port Joro your own, or to customise the locations that feel like they could’ve been a module in and of themselves, or want to drop your collection of modules into an island setting, then the Undying Sea is a good choice for you.
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.
Penumbral Oasis (Part One) is a 40 page module for Vaults of Vaarn written, illustrated and laid out by Jacob Marks. It’s a dungeon crawl beneath an oasis in a far future fantasy, and this features the first 3 floors of the dungeon, to be completed in another release.
The introduction is brief, which I like: A page of history, and a page of instruction. I don’t hate the “how to run a dungeon” section, even though I generally don’t like these sections. I’m torn a little: Obviously not everyone who is seeking out Vaults of Vaarn modules knows how to run a megadungeon, but I just see so much repetition between modules of this advice. That said, it’s a window into what the author thinks is important: Here, Marks places emphasis on restocking, random encounters, and resource management.
The key itself opens with a tight frame directly to the entrance of the dungeon, and a potential combat encounter with a nesting crocodilian. I love the option of tight framing here, and the writing is gorgeous, I just wish it more clearly differentiated between read-aloud and keep-to-yourself text. It has a similar novelistic prose style as, for example, Through Ultan’s Door, which to me is a little challenging to process in the absence of active highlighting choices.
I really like Marks’ word choice, despite my challenges scanning the prose. “Scintillating water reflects caustic patterns up”, “child sized figure made out of boiling liquid mercury […] they wear a moon shaped mask made of iron”, “a spinning zoetrope of light and flesh. Animated within their membraneous frames is the image of a preying mantis: at once delicate orchid, and violent sadist” This kind of description isn’t hard to find in the text; if you gain any joy from striking, evocative writing, you’ll have plenty to love here.
The dungeon itself has a recurring shape, and is intended to be somewhat “true” to the idea that it was once a liveable space, which renders it a fairly inert space, and while looping, doesn’t have a lot of secrets or unexpected links, and no spatial puzzles to speak of. This isn’t so much a criticism of this module, but of the idea of rendering liveable spaces as dungeons, which is challenging at best and misguided at worst. I think I managed it well in the Curse of Mizzling Grove, but I find it’s consistently a challenge to turn domestic spaces into interesting exploratory spaces, and largely this is because most of the spaces are designed to be accessed easily.
Most rooms are only a paragraph long, which minimises some of my concerns about highlighting, and while there are about 25 empty rooms here — a necessity in such a large dungeon in my opinion — there are very few rooms without clear points of interest. They all have some kind of interactive element, treasure or special feature that can play a role in other encounters. I really liked the consistent level of interest maintained in every room over 46 or so rooms — it feels like it’ll be a really compelling dungeon to explore, particularly for the FAFO crowd. I didn’t count them, but I got the impression there were far more combat than trap encounters, and in terms of obvious directions to take these combat encounters that aren’t hostilities: You’re not provided with much in the text to facilitate alternate options such as negotiation. I recognise that a recently revived triceratops or a plastic-laminated crocodile aren’t likely to reason with you, but I do feel like the intelligent daemons could’ve been characterised more strongly, and the explicitly social mantis encounters don’t have a lot of depth by design. I personally would rather that the NPCs that are here and can be interacted with would be able to give some insight into the history of the dungeon (potentially indecipherable to Vaarnian ears), and this feels like a prime space to include interesting puzzles and clues as to what comes next, even if we’re not using it to facilitate a political, factional dungeon, which this is clearly disinterested in being.
In the opening scene, if you remove the lamigator, the dobsonflies it lives off will then occupy the space, causing trouble later on. This little ecosystem is neat, and could tutorialise the restocking well, if it were consistently applied. I just wish that this very clever conceit was carried over in the context of the whole dungeon, rather than being abandoned early. I often encounter problems with restocking in published megadungeons — you’re expected to restock, but they don’t provide you with any support in doing so. Ave Nox does away with restocking altogether; Through Ultan’s Door avoids mentioning it. But incorporating the ecosystem into the footnotes (or in this case sidebar) is a really clever way to facilitate the feeling of a dynamic space that restocking is supposed to create. Instead, there’s a page of restocking options in the appendix, but these options both lack elegance and interest when compared to the method suggested in the initial stages of the book.
The art is in a distinctive, low resolution pixel gouache style that I absolutely adore. The maps are in a similar style, and pretty effective. Layout is in a classic, single column with a sidebar style, but the sidebar is used sparingly to excellent effect. Headings aren’t great — the font for level 1 headings can be indecipherable at times, and the lower level headings are identical to some highlighting choices, making it hard to track. The same level headings are used for different actual levels of hierarchy — for example the whole statue museum is given the same level heading as its constituent level descriptions (both the statues and the areas history as a whole), and as the locations, and the next section, making it hard to see exactly what the subsections are. It’s genuinely confusing to read. Colours are used in highlighting, but the palette choice is maybe a bit too subtle for my eyes, and there’s little to no highlighting aside from separating stat blocks from body text, which renders it difficult to scan or quickly navigate. I love how a lot of art breaks the grid elegantly, though. It’s a superficially gorgeous layout that falls short in the pragmatics of use. Really what we need here are far stronger highlighting and clearer hierarchies, with potentially some reorganisation to minimise really deep obfuscating layers of hierarchy.
Overall, I’m impressed by Penumbral Oasis (Part 1). As a one-person show, it leaves a little to be desired in a few places — the information design needs some work, and the layout needs development to render the information more legible to the user. There need to be more opportunities for non-hostile encounters, or at least it needs to showcase options for when they occur, rather than rely entirely on referee improvisation. I’d love a more labyrinthine map, not limited by the square castle layout, with more interesting multilevel and intralevel looping. But, the rooms have a lot of interest, the tale at the heart of it all is compelling, there’s a lot of exciting things to recover and reasons to delve deeper. The art is stellar, and the overall visual appeal of the zine is super strong. It’s a very strong addition to your Vaults of Vaarn library, if you’re already running it, and I’m always looking for reasons to bring more Vaults of Vaarn to the table to be honest. This module reminded me how much I like the system. If you’re looking for an excellent dungeon crawl that will likely last you 13 to 16 sessions (assuming part 2 is released and is of similar size and quality), and you’ve been looking to get Vaults of Vaarn on your table, and you’re willing to mark it up a little to help you make more sense of it, Penumbral Oasis (Part 1) is absolutely for you.
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.
Victory’s Planet is a 100 or so page science fiction hexcrawl for Troika! by Evey Lockhart, the author of Wet Grandpa. I’m always on the look out for interesting stuff written for Troika!, a system I think is interesting and compelling but poorly supported given its popularity.
Straight off the bat, Lockheart hits it out of the park with the writing. The introduction in particular, is seedy, foreboding, and cinematic, although you may choose not to present it to the players (I would). The help wanted ad and bumbled slide deck portrays the incompetence of the corporation at play, elegantly: The only way it could’ve been better was to actually give us the incompetent slides, as now I want to send the players one of those pdf print outs of the slide deck with the notes at the bottom? That’d be a cool handout. The only issue is that you players end up with more information front-loaded here than I’d usually prefer — 14 points and a page of FAQs. Once again, I think this kind of gives the vibe we want from this scene — I expect the player characters to be exasperated with their bosses here, but doing it for the money — but I feel like there might be a way to communicate that without lingering on this scene so much, and expecting the players to take so many notes.
I think that part of reducing this might be to simply expect Baron Erossos, who accompanies the players on their mission, to dole out more information as the mission continues. His character description is exquisite, he has a clear agenda, the player characters have to treat him well to get paid, and so I think a 3-point slide deck accompanied with scenes of slogging through the wilderness of Victory’s Planet and talking about what’s happened, and would be the way I’d actually disseminate the information.
Coming back to Lockhart’s writing, as with her previous work, it’s just dripping with personality and passion incredibly evocative. The planet is described as “it feels like hatred was somehow baked into the fucking stones”. In some places “tilted bundles of basalt spikes impale encrusted sandstone valleys”. The Baron “He could have been almost anything, but mostly he’s sad, uncertain, and nervous.” It’s all just this good. A lot of the less quote-worthy text is still good: It feels like a debrief by a colonial marine from the film Aliens.
In terms of the key, I was initially confused simply because it seemed like some of the spaces would have two separate encounter tables. This isn’t the case; I misread the map. Exploration here is driven by randomness, though, which I’m not sure I love — given it revolves around finding the 5 hidden silos, and more so finding just 1 of them in truth. That said, I think it’s implied that once you reach the hex, the silo in it is usually easy to find.
One thing I bounce off in the text is the foreshadowing of the psychic at the beginning. You don’t land at its source until a significant way through, and it’s detailed in full in an appendix, but it should impact the Baron’s actions, so I feel like an earlier explanation would be better. In modules like this, even though it’s on the shorter side, I — and I imagine most people — have trouble getting through all the location descriptions, and so might not make it to the appendix.
Sadly, the unclear, creepy-as-hell cause for all of this stated in the appendix has no way of becoming known to the players that I can see. This information could be given in monologue by Victory when they finally find her, but there’s an urgency to that scene (or series of scenes) that makes it difficult to see there being time to talk about the cosmic horror of “They broke her and stapled her together again with psychic barbs. In their image, the Stars remade her skin.”, and I want to talk about it. I recognise that this story isn’t entirely true (or perhaps it is — it’s unclear) but it’s still so powerful and creepy and mythic that I want it to feature more than it does.
Despite being presented as a hexcrawl, Victory’s Planet feels very Troika! in that its’ heart lies in a series of interactions within it that bring a lot of joy and pleasure, rather than in the act of exploration. The point of the exploration is that it leads to Jan and Jiffybot and Inheaha’s star-carved tomb, and the revelation of the Baron’s compulsion. The exploration is a vector for these excellent scenes — and unlike most Troika! modules it gives you an excellent reason to interact beyond “oh ho! what comes next?” — I’m not convinced that the hex-crawl is a compelling vector for this, though, or that it adds anything — perhaps a point crawl would be easier? However, what the hex map does provide is an interesting veneer. This is a science fiction Troika! that feels as if it were meant to be played in a Mothership-esque hack of Troika! I recall one being shared at one stage, which was pretty exceptional. The hex map feels more science-fictional, in the same way that the circuit-board maps of Gradient Descent feel science fictional. Would this play better as a point crawl? Yeah, probably. Would it feel better? Probably not. The sense of semi-realism behooves the module. Would this be better in Mothership than Troika!? I think it would, possibly. At the very least, I’d be borrowing a sci-fi hack or writing up sci-fi backgrounds for it. This world wants psychic rather than magic powers. But it isn’t bad in Troika — I just wish that there were sci fi Troika! hacks that had been released.
I’m reviewing the digital edition here, and it is split across multiple booklets, with transcriptions of the map descriptions accompanying the silo maps in one of the booklets, and a lot of the player facing information in another — like those 14 points of background information. This made it difficult to wrap my head around it terms of reading it on my phone in the bath — lots of flipping between documents — but playing at the table it’s all pretty convenient. I do feel like the map document and main document could be effectively combined though, and I wouldn’t have to look at the main document at all. Given the information communication issue, I think the players booklet is great.
Overall, I really like Victory’s Planet, although I have some quibbles with its choices and would make some changes to how information is communicated to the players. The guts of the module, although spread out over a lot of space ludogeographically, isn’t actually spread out too much in terms of gameplay, and the writing is compelling enough that I want to read it aloud. The major flaw here is that the most chilling, cosmic horror aspects aren’t fully (or to be honest even partially) explored, and I’d want to find a way to communicate that horror that drives the story to the players.
If you’re looking for a Troika! module that strays from the typical model, your table enjoys cosmic and sci-fi horror, or you’re just looking for a hex-crawl with beautiful descriptions, Victory’s Planet is a good choice for you. It’s good enough that I feel compelled to create content to fill the gaps left, but I do wish those gaps were already filled, so if you’re anything like me, I’d anticipate spending some time making hand-outs, writing additional encounters, and presenting a slide deck to your players in some kind of comedy of errors. If you’re willing to put that kind of effort in, Victory’s Planet is for you.
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