• Bathtub Review: Mystery on Big Rock Candy Mountain

    Bathtub Reviews are an excuse for me to read modules a little more closely. I’m doing them to critique 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.

    Mystery on Big Rock Candy Mountain (hereafter Mystery) is a 42 page module for Cairn by RUN DMG released as part of the A Town, A Forest, A Dungeon Jam. I’m looking at select jam entries as a way of highlighting up and coming authors. It’s inspired by the titular song, and asks if in fact it was a cautionary tale?

    Mystery is as decadent as the story it tells. There is an overabundance of words. Before you get to the adventure, you’re reading three full prose pages of text. The voice is conversational, which also means it could be significantly terser. I think that I’d find the generous prose more forgivable if they’d leaned a little harder into the regional dialects they’re referring to in their themes and in the title, but they sadly don’t. The sense of place doesn’t shine through through the narrative voice.

    Where it does shine through, though, is the descriptions themselves. While they would benefit from a good scissor cut, what you find them describing is quirky, interesting characters — a Reverend who “uses his age, place of reverence in the community, and wits to get outsiders to do him favors” — clear differentiated locations — “Cool, damp, and strange. The smell of rust is heavy in the air.” and weird tasty creatures (Wampus Cat! Alchoholic Bears!). Here the place is weird and decadent with a distinct flavour that feels Appalachian from a distance and through candy coloured glasses.

    The dungeon map is half point crawl and half traditional dungeon map, and it’s pretty, and I like the mini maps in theory, but I really struggle to make sense of it all. Each location gets exit details, but I wish they had signs of what were down those halls as well, so there was more guidance for the PCs. It’s a very linear dungeon as well, leading straight to the Bossman without much capacity for side tracks, sneaking or retreating. The locations within it though, are as flavourful as ever. The final boss feels very prescribed and one-note, although fun. I wish that he were not the final thing you find, but rather a despicable figure you could choose to be ally or enemy during the adventure instead of just afterwards. Placing these moral quandaries in the centre of the module make for more interesting outcomes than placing them at the end; I feel like this is obvious, we’ve just had the poison of multiple ending videogames deep into module design. Remember! We can do what we want!

    If I were to describe the graphic design in Mystery in one word it would be whiplash. It leverages public domain art often to create vibrant clashing color-switched pages especially for maps, creating in some spaces a very dynamic feeling DIY zine vibe. But more pages than not are monochrome, single column graphic design drudgery where even the monumental amount of spot art fail to create interest. Now, perhaps perpetuating the gorgeous look that some pages have would make the product challenging to use (like it was in Beast of Borgenwold), but I think the creator could have leant into the striking style even if it was out of necessity. The dark framing on the less-designed pages feel claustrophobic, not because the margins are fine, but because they’re crowded in with the border art. There are six of so sometimes clashing font choices here, which also contributes to the collage zine vibe, but could be leveraged more to increase usability in terms of headings and wayfinding. I found the structure quite challenging to follow, not realising the overarching structure of the module until about halfway through.

    Mystery on Big Rock Candy Mountain is a mixed bag for me. There is a lot to love, here. Some of it — the narrative voice, the graphic design — needed to go harder, but falls short. Some of it — the actual contents — is really interesting. Nothing here is irredeemable at all; I think for me it comes down to being a little more challenging to run than I’d like because of the cumulative effects of the choices made. There are at least two other Big Rock Candy Mountain themed adventures out there, so it’s stiff competition. This is however the longest and most thorough, and probably the one I’d most likely run at my table if I wanted to run an Appalachian sidetrek for an ongoing campaign. I just wish they’d taken the extra time to polish — one big negative of jam deadlines. This could’ve been very special with some extra attention.

    9th November, 2023

    Idle Cartulary

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  • Bathtub Review: The Weeps

    Bathtub Reviews are an excuse for me to read modules a little more closely. I’m doing them to critique well-regarded modules from the perspective of my own table and to learn for my own module design. They’re stream of consciousness and unedited harsh critiques. I’m writing them on my phone in the bath.

    The Weeps is a 15 page module for Cairn by Tony Jaguar and Spooky Rusty, the best named pair of writers in elfgames in my opinion. It’s one of the submissions to the A Town, A Forest, A Dungeon Jam that I’m reviewing to highlight lower budget hobbyist work.

    In terms of layout, I think it would’ve been better to lay this out in more pages, perhaps in a two-column format. There’s a lot of text here, and it’s a bit intimidating to the eye, and not broken up with spot art, with very narrow margins. The art is amateurish but appropriate, as are the maps. The cover art is striking but compromised by the logo placements which I assume are a reference to the village’s makeup habits or perhaps a pun on the title.

    I don’t like the introductory page at all; a lot of words that inadequately communicate the hook and the character of the village and it’s people. But it is flavourfully written, and that flavour carries over into the more conceptually dense writing that follows.

    What follows is a bunch of tables, a forest and it’s key, and a dungeon and it’s key. The longest single block of writing is seven sentences, and most are one to two. This is completely what I look for in terms of terseness, but is it up to scratch with regards to evocativeness?

    “Filthy rodents mating loudly, d6 Cave Cassowaries are feasting on crawlers and shrooms”, “town filled with dreams and black lungs”, “Has a small medical practice. Practice makes perfect, and he needs a lot of it. “We’re going to have to amputate.” He jokes constantly.”. Most of it is like this. Funny, memorable, evocative, brief and when it uses words, valuable.

    The negative of such a table-heavy module is that it could be clearer where and what they’re all for. I could wing it, but with such excellent and specific tables, I’d like brief but specific guidance to their use. It would make them just a little bit more useful.

    In terms of connective tissue, it doesn’t do well, however. It relies heavily on the players acting in the spirit of the game; while the introduction suggests the PCs should be seeking flasks of magic water, they needn’t access the dungeon to do that, and the given hooks are colourful and don’t include that. None of the hooks point to the mines or the forest lake, actually. There’s a good chance that the PCs wouldn’t delve into these locations, despite the pleasure it would be to run them.

    Overall, this module is full of fantastic, colourful characters and locations, well written. It’s a module devoid of hooks, so I’d be remiss to recommend running it by itself, as it’d take some effort to add them; but popping these three locations onto your map for a campaign or a West Marches, and they’d make for a great contribution to your world.

    2nd November, 2023

    Idle Cartulary

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  • Pirate City and Creole Collabs

    There have been a bunch of posts lately that have me thinking about languages in games, specifically the fact that they kind are honestly kind of the worst most of the time.

    There’s Justin, who proposes a pidgin rule where the PC makes a check, and the margin of success gives them a pool of points from which they can establish a word in common with the other speaker. You track these words, and are limited to those words in their attempts to communicate. You get a bonus if you know a closely related language, and you get to roll again for successive successful conversations.

    Then, HIPONFA built on this, suggesting a few world-building conceits, the most interesting being that common as either a pidgin (useless for anything but visiting the market), or as a Koine (a smushing of similar languages into a single language due to political pressure).

    Finally (and I don’t know how I’ll ever use this), there’s The Worlds Writing Systems, which is a database of all of these amazing glyphs from more languages than I can count, many no longer used. If you can’t find inspiration for a fantasy script here, you need to seek a muse.

    Anyway, all of these got me thinking, it would be very cool for a campaign to be based around a trade intersection. Honestly, I do that a lot, particularly for fantasy locations, because a village on a trade route makes a lot of sense for somewhere adventurers might stumble upon. So what if your party weren’t pirates coming to Pirate City, but instead, the crew come to establish it? And ships from three nations, perhaps Orcish, Elvish and Dwarvish nations, all started arriving there, and you had to build a common language? And of course, Pirate City is built on the remains of an ancient civilisation, but if you want to go dungeon crawling, all those antiques and rare magicks can’t be sold unless you speak in common. And so, your party, who speak only Elvish, have to piece together a dworcfish pidgin in order to sell their wares, and gain access only to the best that those nations have to offer aren’t available until you all can butter each other up fluently?

    Or, to mix two of these together, what if, whenever you bump into someone in your campaign you can’t communicate, you get a collaborative worldbuilding opportunity? Oh, I don’t speak Goblin? Well, back where we live, there’s a goblin enclave, and I used to go there to buy Goblin Horchata for my grandmother, so I have a few words of goblin? Now, we can use Justin’s language check in a justifiable way, and we get to build the world a little bit more, if you’re a table who enjoys doing that sort of thing.

    Anyway, languages are cool. More language minigames, I think, would be better.

    Idle Cartulary

  • Bathtub Review: A Rasp of Sand

    Bathtub Reviews are an excuse for me to read modules a little more closely. I’m doing them to critique 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.

    A Rasp of Sand is a 76-page module by Dave Cox written for Knave 1st Edition. It stretches the meaning of module — this is an entire campaign, it spans generations, and it modifies a lot of Knave’s rules. You pay ongoing generations of a family, who are sent into a ritual ocean-themed dungeon to seek their destinies and whose children return to do the same.

    Cover by Ma-ko

    The conceit of a Rasp of Sand is that it is “Rogue-lite” dungeon crawl, which each character delves only once (and dies or retires) and the dungeon is randomly generated, but you carry equipment and information over between delves. It does this by generating families rather than individual characters, who pass tales and equipment and skills down to the next generation. One page is spent explaining this, which is perfect.

    Creating your family fills seven pages. Creating your heir and the rules for inheritance cover the next eight. There’s two pages of exploration rules, necessary to explain the structure and randomisation of the dungeon. There are a lot of rules here, in addition to the basic Knave ruleset (admittedly only 4 pages or so if I recall), but it all works together to turn what follows into a near-infinite self-perpetuating adventure.

    The locations themselves are 2–4 to a page, with descriptions ranging from too much (10 sentences) to perfect (2–3 sentences), generally functionally written with some flavourful flourishes (“There’s sticky egg piles everywhere. Oh gods, they are breeding in here! It’s awful I can’t describe it.”). I’d rather more of the latter, but it works well enough.

    The final boss gets 2 pages, situations get 4 pages, there are 12 pages of unique monsters, and 9 pages of loot (including blessings and unique items). Magic takes 3 pages and finally there is a page of how to map this random dungeon. The writing in these is similar: Good ideas, based around the oceanic theme, unique enough to not be a waste of time, but functionally written. Overall, a Rasp of Sand is unique in both inhabitants, location and world, but is written in a dry style that doesn’t luxuriate in it.

    Layout is stellar, as is the art by Jake Morrison. Minimalist, use if light rather than bolded titling complements the colours and art, placement of headings is consistent, there is a consistent two column layout that is very comfortable for most of the book. The readability drops when it transitions to single column layout for pages at a time (for rules and for treasure, for example), but usability does not.

    I ran a campaign of a Rasp of Sand a few years ago, and was impressed at the time by its usability. It is a very dangerous dungeon, with high heir turnover and to be expected, and so mileage at the table will vary, as will tolerance for a cautious playstyle which is rewarded. But, it is an excellent perpetual dungeon crawl, that outlasts it’s apparent size significantly due to its random nature. It may have only 73 rooms (compared to more mega mega dungeons) but they get well used and change contexts considerably. The bigger negative is that you need to lean heavily into generational knowledge both as GM and player, because otherwise faction play becomes challenging, which is one of the bigger pleasures and strategies in a dangerous megadungeon.

    If you’re looking for an all-in-one dungeon delve that you can play consistently with minimal prep, a Rasp of Sand is for you. Just keep in mind that you need a table that is happy with high lethality, cautious play (if they want to progress), and that aren’t adverse to an expectation of not playing the same characters necessarily for the entire campaign.

    26th October, 2023

    Idle Cartulary

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  • Dungeons, Regularly

    I just released a zine full of dungeon maps at Amanda P’s encouragement.

    It’s called Dungeons Regularly (a joke on my podcast, Dungeon Regular), and it contains thirteen maps (mainly dungeons) for you to key yourself and use for personal or commercial use.

    If you pay a little extra, you get two pages of things to put in those dungeons, if you need inspiration, as well as the jpgs of the maps if you want to use them commercially or as a VTT. I statted them for Cairn because I’m playing Cairn right now, but if anyone wants it but that put them off, let me know and I’ll stat #2 for some other system.

    Anyway, it was a fun little art project, so I think I’ll keep making them. And if you back me monthly on my Ko-fi, you can have them for free!

    Idle Cartulary

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  • Bathtub Review: The Micery Keep

    Bathtub Reviews are an excuse for me to read modules a little more closely. I’m doing them to critique well-regarded modules from the perspective of my own table and to learn for my own module design. They’re stream of consciousness and unedited harsh critiques. I’m writing them on my phone in the bath.

    The Micery Keep is a 4 page zine adaptation of Misery Keep (a Mork Borg pamphlet module) for Mausritter by Hugh Lashbrooke. It’s a short one, so this is a short one.

    Layout on this is clear and simple. Honestly it wastes space in the cover and gets away with it. The art is a public domain cut out of a vintage car, and a lich-rat. They’re both great, and match in their styles well. Headings and highlights are clear and legible.

    The stat blocks are flavourful (“The Count’s rusted crown casts an aura; any steel nearby will crumble to dust”), the treasure is my favourite style: evocative and unexplained. The location descriptions are terse, often two or three sentences. The longer locations describe set pieces, such as the evil ritual you are sent to dispel.

    The writing is workmanlike, but very effective. My only criticism of the writing as a whole is that one of my favourite parts of a Mausritter module is the connection between the human location and what the mice use or perceive it as; here the connections are a little unclear, both in terms of the big black hexes indicating the rooms obscuring the map, and the lack of clarity in the descriptions. Clarifying them would ruin the perfect terseness, but would be worth it for me as the GM, because it gives me more leverage to describe the locations.

    Honestly, this is the best possible module for Mausritter. It should be a model for other short modules, and is better than some of the modules in the Estate, which I think very highly of. And it’s free. Throw it into your Mausritter campaign. Every campaign needs a lich.

    23rd October, 2023

    Idle Cartulary

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  • Dungeon Regular

    I just this moment realised that a month ago I started a podcast, and I haven’t told anyone what it was about.

    Here’s the pitch: An episode a week, less than 10 minutes long, each about a single module from Dungeon Magazine. Tear it apart, find the problems and the great things about it, and translate them into things to apply to your home game.

    How did I come to that? So, a year or two ago, I discovered Monster Man, a podcast that came in very short, bite-sized episodes, each about a monster from a monster manual from the history of Dungeons and Dragons. It’s an absolute banger, to be honest, and James Holloway must have some kind of background in folklore or mythology studies because what he brings is absolutely fascinating.

    I started to think about other ways to use that capsule-sized podcast format. And the first thing that came to mind: Dungeon Magazine. This is before I started even the first, Twitter-thread version of Bathtub Reviews, when I first became interested in reading and analysing more modules to see what makes great, good and not-so-great modules tick. I actually recorded an episode back then, and then I fell sick and never had the capacity or energy to continue. The first episode, “The Dark Tower of Cabilar” has been floating about in my mind since then, and while I reconsidered it when I finally recorded it, my opinions haven’t really changed. In fact, my opinions on Dark Tower of Cabilar influenced my upcoming module, Bridewell, considerably, and solidified my belief that we have a lot to learn from even not-so-good modules.

    So, I recorded a few takes of a first episode, polished the format a little, and am trying to figure out how to make my set up cleaner, but on a $0 budget it’s difficult. I figure it’s better to make a thing than make a perfectly produced thing. I’ve now released episodes for the first three modules of Dungeon Magazine.

    If you want to listen to it, check it out on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or Spotify, or Podchaser, or probably any directory you want. If it’s not on your directory, let me know in the comments and I’ll add it! I’ll try to keep up a new episode every Sunday.

    17th October, 2023

    Idle Cartulary

  • Bathtub Review: Midnight in Bonetown

    Bathtub Reviews are an excuse for me to read modules a little more closely. I’m doing them to critique well-regarded modules from the perspective of my own table and to learn for my own module design. They’re stream of consciousness and unedited harsh critiques. I’m writing them on my phone in the bath.

    Midnight in Bonetown is a 41 page module for Cairn by Luke Simmonds. This is one of a few submissions I’m reviewing from the A Town, A Forest, A Dungeon Jam, as a part of boosting up and coming hobbyist creators. It’s about a village of the undead who have lost their necromancer and hire the party to get him back.

    Layout-wise, it’s a decent effort. A single-colour effort, layout is clear, uses sidebars well, headings signal information clearly. It’s reminiscent of Clayton’s template, but the proportions are off enough I suspect it’s Luke’s own work. I don’t love the choice of high-level heading font — I find it a little challenging to read — but otherwise typography is simple and helpful. It doesn’t overuse the bold highlighting or use too many stylistic variations like so many modules do. Art is whimsical and suits the adventure; the map is amateurish but enough for its purposes and has character, I just wish the style matched the art better.

    The writing here varies from way too wordy and just needs an edit or some dot points (the opening paragraph) but absolutely excels in its tables, a great highlight being the Bonetown Skeletons table which is jam-packed so the iconic, evocative characters to pepper the town with. Terse, punchy writing doesn’t come better than this, and Luke brings a dose of Nightmare Before Christmas whimsy to the narrative voice in spades (“Smoking on the corner in a leather jacket; uses slang incorrectly”). Falls short in other places, which is where a hobbyist like Luke needs an editor, (“Balstrava the witch is a former associate of Gebert who has gone mad from mushroom spores and runs around the forest causing chaos.”). If it weren’t such a huge commitment, I wish I could offer editing services to hobbyists like Luke who show great promise.

    The factions and characters around the adventure add a fun amount of complexity to the proceedings, and twist and subvert expectations. There is a red dragon, for example, object of fear and awe and a high lethality game like Cairn, who provides a fairly challenging fetch quest for his freedom, and whose likelihood of betrayal, I suspect, is quite high. I love opportunities for drama and ways to bring disparate characters together and into conflict.

    The final dungeon is a solid crawl, and I appreciate the hazard die incorporation but with a twist, the reliance on random encounters to tell the story, and the existence of wildcards foe the PCs to foolishly cause havoc with (what party with a resurrection stone won’t be tempted by the ancient dragon skeleton?).

    All in all, Midnight in Bonetown is a commendable effort, that definitely makes for a fun detour in an underdark adventure. I’d throw this into a campaign, but I probably wouldn’t play it in isolation. With a little more consistency and attention to detail, this would be an instant recommendation, but as is, if you want a whimsical skeleton adventure, I honestly don’t know of a better one. It’s for certain worth more than the free it’s going for. I’d download it and see if it’s to your taste, particularly if you’re populating a map.

    15th October, 2023

    Idle Cartulary

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  • The Session Report

    In a recent RTFM episode, Chris Bisette talked about how they wish there were more session reports. However, they aren’t the session reports I’m reading out there, which are usually narrativisations of play (the kind of reports we often write as records for our play groups themselves). They’re suggesting we talk about how the referee plays the game and why.

    This stirs me, a little, but the problem is, “How did I adjudicate the session I’m running?” is a hard question to answer; I don’t know how I do that. I’ve been running variations of D&D since 1993 or so, inconsistently, and since 2010 consistently, so a lot of what I do is automagical, with no real conscious consideration.

    Which, like: That’s exactly the type of referee we want active conversations about how they adjudicate. Like, an unsaid part of the conversation on Trophy Gold that exploded a few weeks ago as a result of the Bones of Contention review was, is it actually that Ram/Alex/Nova are all very experience referees that makes us feel like Trophy Gold is good? Does it simply lean into the strengths of experienced referees?

    So, I reached out on the socials and discord, and got a lot of responses to the question “If you wanted someone to write commentary on how they ran their elfgame, what questions would you want answered?” Thanks to everyone who contributed, I won’t name everyone here, but you know who you are. I’ll add that Chris themselves linked to their own attempts at doing so. I’m going to distill it down into a proformer, that I might be able to use to help me verbalise some things that are going on when I run. I’m not running a regular game right now, though, so it may be a little while before I have a chance to implement it (although, I am writing a Mothership module, The Tragedy of Grimsby-Almaz, right now, so perhaps we’ll get some playtests to talk about). I might just apply it to a game that I’m playing in, though, as a test.

    1. What did I change about the module? Why? How successful were those changes?
    2. What rulings that weren’t rulebook supported were made, and why did I make them?
    3. Did I have to work around the rules in order to facilitate play? How?
    4. How did I use procedures to facilitate play?
    5. What did I modify “behind the screen”, and why?
    6. When did I tailor things to my table instead of randomising them?
    7. Were there any pain points in the session, and how did I respond?
    8. Were there any emotional or triumphant moments, and did I or how did you facilitate that?
    9. How did I maintain pacing during this session? Did I have to work to balance attention between players?
    10. Was there any prep that felt wasted or unused on reflection?
    11. When did I have the most fun this session? Why did I think those parts were fun?

    I tried very hard to reduce it to 10 questions, but failed. I removed some higher level questions suggested by Chris Chin and others, as well, deciding instead to focus on within-session dynamics, on refereeing rather than designing, as much as that distinction is tenuous.

    Anyway, I’ll try to remember to apply some of these questions in writing future session reports, to make them more of a study into how I referee them!

    15th October 2023,

    Idle Cartulary

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  • Bathtub Review: What lies within the pools which like upon the shoreline?

    Bathtub Reviews are an excuse for me to read modules a little more closely. I do them to critique well-regarded modules from the perspective of my own table and to learn for my own module design. They’re stream of consciousness and minimally edited harsh critiques. I’m writing them on my phone in the bath.

    What lies within the pools which like upon the shoreline? (henceforth Shoreline) is a 24 page coastal pointcrawl for Mausritter, by Matthew Morris with absolutely stellar curated public domain art. This is a sandbox in a format that approximates the Mausritter house style, with an unfamiliar theme.

    It’s the second module I’ve reviewed that utilised the Classic Explorer template by Clayton Notestine, and demonstrates the flexibility of the template in comparison to Howl. It is a great deal bolder, more reminiscent of OSE with its highlighted headings but using similar bold highlights, italic descriptions and dot points as core Mausritter. It has a clear but not flashy layout, relying on bold art for punch, and places mock equipment cards in the margins, which is a fun and unique use (otherwise, the sidebar is used just for tips).

    I’m always eager to read more Mausritter modules, as Mausritter is an exceptional game and yet I struggle with releasing myself into the magic of the setting. Taking the familar-yet-unfamiliar Mausritter themes and placing it in tidal shoals makes for an interesting, iconic landscape with a wide range of inspirations from folklore to swashbuckling films. The vibes in Shoreline are impeccable; it feels like a grey day at the beach collecting shells.

    The opening map which I assume is Morris’ work is simple, evocative and excellent. Clever touches mean that alot of traversal information is hidden within the map itself.

    Mausritter itself is an incredibly terse text, and especially it encourages this in its modules, firstly through the significant amount of time it devotes to locations in the core book, and secondly through modelling in its starter module and in its boxed set, the Estate. In Shoreline, this terseness is replicated — something I hesitate to criticise — with mixed results. Pondering the subject of terseness, I think the key to my heart is specificity combined with terseness; brevity in and of itself is not a virtue. An excellent, terse rumour is “A magical sword was lost by a Sandpiper knight in a forgotten pool, lost to the sea.” In one sentence, we have a key item, a key location, and a clue as to the local flavour. A less successful random encounter is “An adventuring party from Coralridge”. There is no reference to this adventuring party elsewhere. I, as a GM, have to come up with, on the fly, a rival adventuring party, their motives, their names. Five words prompts can work, if their referents are elsewhere defined — in the same encounter table “The Gull out hunting” works just fine, because the Gull is detailed elsewhere.

    I suspect where this occurs, it’s because of a familiarity with and an adherence to the Mausritter house style. For example, the factions are written out exactly as recommended by the core book (if my memory serves); this is in my opinion an exceptional way to lay out factions for your home game, but not sufficient for a published module. In a published module, I want a little more. For example, the Surfsiders gang aren’t clearly detailed in their faction section, and it only becomes clear they’re a gang of rat pirates on the back cover. They have no leader or named characters, and the location of their secret lair is not named. What is included is solid worldbuilding and enough for the faction as a whole, but not enough for me to run it straight from the book, which is disappointing to me. What is here is good, but feels incomplete.

    There is a lot to love here. While the writing isn’t beautiful in and of itself, the imagination behind the locations and the images it conjures are exceptional. I’m playing Pikmin 4 with my children right now, and Coralridge Fortress reminds me of the monstrous children’s playthings of that game. These descriptions are consistent throughout the zine — I want to run these locations based on the initial text. But, descriptions of the paths occur here as well, which feels messy and might have been best as labels or as information on the map, and there is an encounter table for many of these locations which I’d rather be briefer (most are 8 items), with a little more detail. “An Octopus looking for a new home”? All I have here is the difficult to reconcile “Wants to assert dominance in its pool”.

    This is a good module, that requires a little more preparation than I’d like to put into it. I think that these concerns could be easily remedied, and I see signs are there that the author can excel at these more specific, evocative descriptions, but are limited by the existence of the Mausritter house style, in a similar way to seeing Luka Rejec’s flamboyant style limited by the OSE house style. I’m starting to develop the opinion that the existence of house style templates that are pretty good (and Mausritter and OSE are two of those) are resulting in authors limiting their colouring to inside the lines, instead of feeling empowered to paint whatever they desire, leading to a good number of decent modules in those house styles, but that leave me with the impression that those authors would be capable of amazing things if they weren’t placing these limitations on them.

    If I wanted to run a small campaign in Mausritter, I’d probably choose this. It recommends itself as an expansion, and I think this would be even better as an extension to the Estate, for example, because while this is a damned interesting setting; I probably couldn’t run it with as much ease as The Estate and it doesn’t come with as many immediate hooks. It’s much more striking a setting though, and well worth incorporating, although you’ll need to put some work into supplementing what’s here and preparing to run it.

    10th October, 2023

    Idle Cartulary

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Threshold of Evil – Dungeon Regular

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.
  1. Threshold of Evil
  2. Secrets of the Towers
  3. Monsterquest
  4. They Also Serve
  5. The Artisan’s Tomb

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