• Bathtub Review: Barrow Keep – Den of Spies

    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.

    Barrow Keep: Den of Spies is a 70 page fully illustrated setting module written by Richard Ruane with stellar art by Minerva Fox. It’s written for generically OSR settings. It’s broken into two larger sections, the first being an introduction to the setting for GM and players alike, the second being secrets and further expansion on the setting for the GM only.

    The introduction immediately falls into a pitfall that renders it not for players of characters in the setting: Random tables. It just pitched wrong. The random tables, also, are something I rail against: I don’t need a generator for the three most important political characters in the setting, I’d rather you give me all three on one page and let me stew in the possibilities. The first three pages cover three characters who aren’t named and have 2–3 sentences of characterisation. This makes me twitch.

    Locations within Barrow Keep are well-structured and evocatively written. I would have loved the layout to be more consistent: A location to a spread or page, perhaps. And they’re a little wordy for my liking for locations stretched across multiple pages. But there are no wasted words, and my main criticism is in the usability at the table. Faces in Barrow Keep absolutely nails it, with a bunch of useful and short 2–3 sentence descriptions. They aren’t beautiful, but they’re unique and characterful. Great.

    Next up is rules for equipment and ritual magic, which, I understand that this is intended to bring the vibe in line with romantic fantasy, but I just don’t think belongs. It particularly jars because it isn’t modifying an existing system, but rather generic DIY adventure games. Luke Gearing’s Wolves upon the Coast (something too big to read in the bath) does this, but it assumes the use of a specific hack for that campaign. I just don’t find any of it to be flavourful enough to justify the space or my bothering with it.

    Then we’re onto the second section: Secrets of Barrow Keep. Here, the module absolutely falls apart structurally, which may be because outside contributors take some of the load. There is no map of the keep, which feels intentional, but I had the impression that most of the keep had already been covered. This section adds sections to the keep, including “how to navigate” which simply does not do as titled. Then, it digresses to a heist adventure suggestion, a rumour list, a few new characters, some delegations, and it continues. Just a hodgepodge that is desperately in need of structure and recommendation.

    The individual sections here, though are as strong as the earlier ones: Well structured (although some of the structures aren’t consistent with earlier ones), evocatively written if not beautifully or wittily. It’s all very useful, but not usable at the table, mainly in preparation. The secrets section also luxuriates in an overuse of tables, which, once again, seems a misunderstanding of the purpose of a table. Give me great relationships and interesting situations, and then vary things within them. Well-written is better that randomised; randomised tables fit a specific use-case of things that need and want variation.

    I should stop here, and note that looking through the inspirations list and reading this, we’re talking about running a campaign that is likely to be high intrigue, minimal combat and dungeon-crawling. That’s not how I would characterise romantic fantasy, but honestly, genre labels are always kind of vague.

    Overall, I’m a little disappointed in Barrow Keep. It’s a module that brings a great first impression, the art is beautiful and sucked me in, and that has a lot of good to excellent writing that works well with the stated aims of running a romantic fantasy adventure game, but whose structural failures and lack of clarity on how to incorporate your player characters into the setting leaves it falling flat for me. I don’t mean to be scathing, but it reminds me of an excellent WOTC adventure: Lots of great content, requiring lots of work to turn into an actual campaign. Even if I’m buying a setting, I’m not looking to spend tens of hours preparing to run it.

    Barrow Keep comes strongly recommended if you’re looking to run a romantic fantasy adventure game, and are willing to put in a fair amount of effort to fill in gaps (or if you have a campaign where you could drop this in and incorporate its politics with yours). Lots of excellent content, all useful, but you need to make it useable yourself. Not a module for my table, but maybe one for yours.

    16th June, 2023

    Idle Cartulary

  • Compression and decompression

    Tom commented on my post Only two or three things that they felt that this approach (or at least my examples) were over-compressed, and it got me thinking. Like, obviously I disagree, but I think there’s a little more nuance to it.

    Firstly, yes, you can write one paragraph per thing. But, in my opinion, why write a paragraph when you could write a sentence? Why write a sentence when you could write a clause? Additional words, in my opinion, should be justified. I write for myself, and to be honest, I want to be able to quickly read and adapt, and I can’t do that with a four paragraph description. That’s why my writing feels over-compressed.

    Is there a place for four paragraph descriptions? Yes. I think great examples are puzzles and traps; they benefit from additional words for clarity and to allow the GM to adapt to alternative approaches. In my recent review of Aberrant Reflections I commented on this approach being appropriate, and the traditions of traps and puzzles in elfgames mean that allowances should be made for this.

    But that’s not what I usually see in four paragraph encounters, or four paragraph characters, or four paragraph descriptions. I usually see paragraphs that could be communicated in a sentence or even with a few words. I use the word “overwritten” a lot when writing bathtub reviews for this reason.

    Why do I think they’re overwritten? Probably because I don’t need every detail of a room, character or encounter described if I’m running a game. I want just enough that I can run it, no more. Much of the detail can be implied, I can imagine the rest. This does vary depending on what we’re describing though.

    So for dungeons, maps are extra necessary detail. Puzzles and traps might deserve a paragraph to themselves. But for everything (these things included), for me, less is more.

    11th June, 2023

    Idle Cartulary

  • Bathtub Review: Aberrant Reflections

    Bathtub Reviews are an excuse for me to read modules a little more closely, but I’m doing this as a critique from the perspective of me, playing, and designing modules myself. They’re stream of consciousness and unedited harsh critiques on usually excellent modules. I’m writing them on my phone in the bath.

    Aberrant Reflections is a fully illustrated 38 page dungeon module by Direct Sun. It bills itself as a “puzzle dungeon”, and it more than lives up to its name, more closely resembling a dungeon from the Legend of Zelda than any other module I’ve read.

    It’s a smart move to pick a gimmick for the whole dungeon, and open with explaining the gimmick to the GM and suggesting how to adjudicate edge cases. An example of an edge case is given from playtesting, which I really liked. I imagine it would be challenging to use a gimmick strong enough to sustain a complete, if small, dungeon.

    Aside from that, it opens with a timeline (not strictly necessary, but it’s standard on modules these days), a page of special items and how they can be used, and eight creatures and NPCs. Four of the items are involved in solving puzzles, although you may not discover them all. There’s a jarring moment here where text is purple with no explanation, and it’s purpose gets explained a few pages later.

    The symbols and colour coding occur as part of the key and maps, which covers most of the book. Most rooms are one to a page, include art of the room or a map cutout if it’s important to understanding the room, and has text for both the “real” room and the one in the alternate “abberant” universe. I usually don’t like wordy entries, but I forgive it in this case because they’re doubling up on rooms every entry and using art to assist with understanding.

    The writing is functional, but has a lot of nice worldbuilding touches such as “Selling the painting will draw the ire of its previous owner— Captain Rosewell of the Martel adventuring company.” I don’t mind the workmanlike writing here, because it’s important to understand the pieces of the puzzle, although I’d love to see the gap being bridged more effectively between great prose and practical puzzle communication.

    Layout is consistent and clear. There’s a lot of solid line art here with purple highlights by Del Teigeler Jacob Fleming, Luke Broderick and Kiril Tchangov, all of whom have harmonious styles. Typefacing is readable. None of this is flashy, but it all feels very classic dungeon sensibility while also modernising the messes that were classic dungeons in reality.

    The puzzles themselves are very central to the dungeon, and I’d recommend being sure that your friends are keen to solve puzzles. I like them a lot. I don’t think they’re too difficult, they lend themselves to creative solutions, and in the hands of a good GM, they’ll be a great time. There’s also the evil lurking on the other side, placing time pressure on many of the puzzles completion in a satisfying way.

    Finally, I like the use of the inside cover pages for wandering monsters and the map of the dungeon. Great for usability and also they’re great quality. The map is annotated, and if you knew the module well you could probably run the adventure from it, and if you don’t it still makes it very easy to find relevant other locations and items. The wandering monsters table includes stat blocks, and includes checklists for encountering the same characters multiple times for different events.

    Overall, this is a very solid dungeon, and I’d recommend it for the right group. My criticisms are mainly things holding it back from being great, and I suspect were conscious decisions made for functional and pragmatic reasons that make sense in the context of the module and don’t detract from its usability. It’s easier to criticise my favourite type of middle that reaches for the stars and fail, than this more modest dungeon that nails most of what it attempts.

    An excellent dungeon to drop into your campaign.

    8th June, 2023

    Idle Cartulary

  • The Bridewell Bestiary

    There are about 40 monsters in Bridewell. I’m going to playtest in Trophy Gold, maybe Into the Odd, two systems that are easy to stat for, so here is a dual bestiary. This is why I wrote the other week. I’ll write about ten at a time, I suppose. Content Warning: Horror, implied abuse, murder.

    Khumush-spawn. Magist-experiments, serpentine, winged, undying, rotting. TG. Endurance: 6. Weaknesses: Sunlight, kindness. Habits: Starved, curious, friendly or guarding. Defences. Freeze-constrict, lightning-bite. ITO. HP 4. Armour 0. STR . 10 DEX 13. WIL 5. Attacks: Lightning-bite 1d6. Can constrict as a serpent, 1d4/turn blizzard.

    Corpse-knight. Cursed Knights Belour, soul-trapped in mummified husks. TG. Endurance 7. Weaknesses: Holiness, self-doubt. Hulking, whiplike, crawling, falling apart, cruel, pragmatic, rough. Defences. Already dead. Random blizzard–dragon power. ITO. HP 6. Armour 2. STR 15. DEX 8. WIL 12. Attacks: Axe 1d8. Blizzard-dragon powers: 1. Blizzard-breath; 2. Lightning-eyes; 3. Icy-ground; 4. Wings; 5. Avalanche-strength; 6. Snow-blind.

    Magist. Long-dead, brain-rotted arcane laboratorians. TG. Endurance 7. Weaknesses: Not-gods, confusion. Skittering, snake-spined, bone-spurred or oozing tar. Defences: Already dead. Just One Savage Spell. ITO. HP 6. Armour 0. STR 8. DEX 12. WIL 16. Attacks: Just One Savage Spell. 1. Blood Blast; 2. Explode Flesh; 3. Rot Eyes; 4. Were-Mega-Mantis; 5. Bone-whip; 6. Melt.

    Mourning Ghost. Beautiful but beaten. TG. Endurance 8. Weaknesses: Light, kindness. Angry, weeping, screeching, clawing, clinging. Terrible, painful song. ITO. HP 8. Armour 1. STR 8. DEX 16. WIL 14. Attacks: Song 1d6, pain-wracking, WILL save for half.

    Rook Swarm. Black, screaming, tiny blades, tiny picks. TG. Endurance 3. Weakness: Fire. Vengeful, Feeding, Cleaning, Swarming, Dropping. Envelop, Swoop. ITO. HP 1. Armour 0. STR 10. DEX 18. WIL 6. Attacks: 1d6 claws and beaks. Separate: Impair attacks against the swarm.

    Possessing Ghost. Rabid, animal, grimace-sneer-roar. TG. Endurance 8. Weaknesses: Holiness. Habits Vengeance, sedition, seduction. Defences Possession, Devour, Shred. ITO. HP 5. Armour 0. STR 15. DEX 15. WIL 10. Attacks: Teeth 1d6, Possession on failed WIL save.

    Skeletal Lamtern-Bearer. Haggard, calcified arm, lantern both glowing and not. TG. Endurance. 5 Weakness: Fulfilment. Habits Single-minded, forgetful, blameful, suspicious, grandiose. Defences. Charge. Alight. Reveal. ITO. HP 4. Armour 2. STR 15. DEX 10. WIL 10. Attacks: Sword d8. Charge d10 and crush.

    Shambling Corpse. Dead. Barely holding it together. Travel in packs. Souls? TG. Endurance 3. Weakness Dismemberment. Habits Groping, teaching, bursting from earth, concealing, surprising. Defences Soul-stealing, infectious. ITO. HP 1. Armour 0. STR 12. DEX 8. WIL 8. Attacks: Bite 1d6. Soul-steal or rotting infection on failed CON save.

    Ghost-light. Levitate candle-flame, balefully gazing. TG. Endurance 4. Weakness Intangible. Habits Luring, singing, giggling, running, stomping. Defences Intangible, ghost-burning. ITO. HP 3. Armour 1. STR 7. DEX 13. WIL 13. Attacks: Ghost-fire 1d6. Intangible: Magic or holiness to injure.

    Mummified corpse-parts. Leathery, flapping, slapping. TG. Endurance 3. Weakness Water. Habits: Guardians of Holy Places, come in groups. Defences. Wrestle, restrain, steal weapon. ITO. HP 1. Armour 1. STR 12. DEX 8. WIL 8. Attacks: Body-slam 1d6. Restrain on failed STR save. Steal weapon on failed DEX save.

    There! My first few creatures, some exciting, some prototypical.

    4th June, 2023

    Idle Cartulary

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  • Playtest Report – Bridewell Session 3

    My Bridewell playtest campaign continued today with Marcia and Alex joining. It was a longer session as I’m out of hospital. We’re playing in my own hack of Trophy Gold. There will be Bridewell spoilers, but if you’re a part of the playtest, you can definitely read this.

    Erstwhile the disaster girlfriend joined Ursaline the bear-priestess. They picked up choosing to pursue to thread of finding a holy relic (“part of a god”) in order to save the relic stolen from the Vineyard of Our Lady of Perpetual Light by the Penny Dreadfuls of The Abbey of Saint Angelus.

    Erstwhile disguised herself as a scholar to persuade Sigfiend and Orto to allow them entry to the library. With Orto escorting them, they browsed the library, eventually discovering a forbidden book that required both charm and slight of hand to access too (and Orto’s suspicions now lay on Erstwhile, having been revealed she cannot read or speak a language she indicated she could). The forbidden book maid reference to a cult of Knights Belour and their associate Magists being involved in dark magics involving chained or hostage gods.

    Ursaline interrogated Veaceslav, secret druid for information, leveraging the multiple favours he owes them. He indicated these Knights Belour were in the very south of the valley of Bridewell centuries ago, but knew very little else. He indicated it would be a great evil to use the bodies of any of the gods of the valley – Padru, Groaming or Khumush – in such a ritual.

    Ursaline and Erstwhile, taking the road and choosing (out of character) to bypass many sites for the sake of the session, travelled for a number of days to arrive in Ravensbourne, a small town which strangely feels as if it is not of the same dismal cut as the rest of the valley. Here, flowers bloom, birds sing, and grass is green, although the people of Ravensbourne act as though all is more as it seems than you’d expect. Visiting the fairly empty tavern, they persuade the innkeeper Erik the vibes in his inn are off, ply a local – Alexi – whose grandsons fled for Dimmness-town leaving him with nobody to look after the rookery – for information, and gain the interest of two robed strangers who let slip they have a map leading to the ruins of a Casa Belour that they intend to visit soon. They ignore a suggestion to talk to the Burgomaster of the town. Planning to beat the strangers to Casa Belour, they depart post-haste.

    Casa Belour is a fortified manse in a field of artificial black thorns, hidden behind a cleft in the mountains. The only place in this region that does not seem merry and bright, it clearly is the site of an ancient battle, and is crumbling and vine-choked. Within, they spied and avoided praying corpse-knights, flying death-serpents, and plotting undead tacticians, before engaging in a long conversation with the gay commander of the Knights Belour, stuck in his office planning a battle for centuries. With the knowledge of his true love clouding his awakening, they stole his papers and his amulet, which they used to open a secret door in the statue of the Warden of the Forsaken, an unknown god, in the great hall. Screams could be heard from a nearby room as they climbed down into the basement, and here they faced two long-dead, bored and surprised magists in a vestibule, and could hear nearby the groaning of something vast in a twisted and dark laboratory.

    I feel like there was less happening this session despite its length, mainly because a lot of the dungeon crawl at the end was starting and stopping, and avoiding encounters, much of which was breezed over in the summary. I’m not a fan of “door to the left or two the right” in dungeons, so I basically gave them a free peek through every door, so they had full information for the most part about the room ahead so they could choose whether to engage. This potentially backfired, as the two felt they were not well positioned to fight the dreadful horrors that lay within this castle. The map I used for this dungeon was experimental in the sense that I didn’t complete it, which I think was not successful in the way that these players wanted to tackle the dungeon. I think that map will need revisions. That said, I think certain success in this first Bridewell dungeon crawl so far.

    Marcia at last twigged to the fact that the Bridewell mists are a variety of Nick’s Flux Space when the map they gained allowed them direct access to the Casa Belour. I think this tied together why I’ve set up the mists the way they are, and I wonder if the rules to this simplified flux should be explicit or if I should let that gleam happen in future player’s eyes too.

    Some great pleasures are coming from the success in the module’s capacity to face out of sequence play. Not once so far has the approach of the players been the anticipated route by the module, but each time that has yielded fun and unique results. In this session, the sequence-breaking meant they had key information for a character (the death-knight commander) that otherwise would have been a significant foe, to render him instead lovesick and open to plying with charm. This is a single sentence in his description which I honestly put there for the sake of the GM, but ended up playing a key role in the outcome of this particular session.

    I’m really enjoying running Bridewell, but I’m starting to see that the structure and writing here is sound (although I’d love to test out a few more locations), and the real question is whether or not the writing and structure holds up to other GMs playing and reading it. Now there’s tension between whether I cease my playtest earlier (even though there’s a lot of fun to be had), or whether I cease after a few more sessions and then let the beta phase of playtesting (“Do other GMs like this too?”) begin.

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  • Bathtub Review: The Big Squirm

    Bathtub Reviews are an excuse for me to read modules a little more closely, but I’m doing this as a critique from the perspective of me, playing, and designing modules myself. They’re stream of consciousness and unedited harsh critiques on usually excellent modules. I’m writing them on my phone in the bath.

    The Big Squirm is an 80 page, fully illustrated mystery for Troika! by Luke Gearing. I backed it on Kickstarter. It is a complicated module to wrap my head around, being an investigation with randomly generated clues. First up: Impeccable art by Andrew Walter and very suave type facing. Honestly the cover doesn’t do the interior justice. Just lovely to look at, with very few missteps in layout.

    One of my favourite illustrations, by Andrew Walter, from the Big Squirm

    It opens uniquely: A description of the state of the city and the stat blocks of two feature creatures, before the contents page. I like this as an opening, to be honest, and am of two minds because if I wasn’t reading a .pdf, I might have just skipped the stuff before the contents page? Like, there isn’t usually anything useful there.

    Information here is disseminated to rival investigators after four days, which serves to even the playing field and put some fuel on the fire, as the enemy can easily catch up and interfere with your plans. The d66 information generator is cool, and would make sure scenes aren’t replicated across play throughs. I’m always a bit suspicious that a table that should be rolled in advance should be a table at all, though.

    There are six competing investigators, and the author really leans into the strengths of Troika to make them memorable, terse, easy to run characters. This is gold.

    The “Interested Parties” are the factions, and these are fun and weird as Troika! factions should be, excellent ease of use and interest. They’re just funny, too: “At the height of the speculation, the Left Yellow Gang began crafting harmless imitation worms. These sold well…”, then: “Goals: Shift a bunch of papier-mâché.” Some layout decisions I wouldn’t have made, put similar information in different page positions across spreads for three of the spreads (just switch the art positions for consistency!).

    The locations section is anchored around a spectacular and functional map. The location summaries suffer from something that is a peeve of mine — the largest location at twenty pages comes up first, the smaller ones (between one and seven pages) come after. I find that approach a little overwhelming and it makes the latter areas underwhelming. The best of these are pithy and witty, (“The concierge is a dog with very, very long legs, wearing its hat at a rakish angle. She doesn’t appear on any salary records, but no-one has yet been able to remove the hat”, and the worst are unnecessarily verbose. The latter would benefit from either an edit or shudder dot points. There is a single page with four locations on it, and each of those nails it. The longest location feels like it may be the main adventure location, a major heist, which is not the vibe I expected until I arrived at that location in the book, and could use stronger telegraphing. I did miss the minor telegraph on my first read through: A footnote in the information table suggests the presence of a complex location.

    I’m very torn on this module all together. On one hand, the vibes are impeccable, and it’s lovely to utilise a system like Troika! for an investigative module like this. The best investigation module in my opinion is Witchburner, but it’s a much tougher module to engage with than this.

    On the other hand, while The Big Squirm offers more replay value, I think (not having run both) it would be the more challenging module to run. This is mainly due to the information economy and the random information generation systems. The latter can be ironed out easily, though. I think it’s hard to gauge whether the information economy would have value except table to table, and whether it would achieve its intended effect for your table specifically.

    I came up against information design concerns reading Witchburner, but it was easy enough to reframe the module to find a good approach. The Big Squirm feels more traditional in its location-based structure, and hence it’s much harder to simplify your approach or reframe information to similar effect.

    Why am I struggling? I think, after a week’s pause, another bath, and a re-read, it’s because the Big Squirm is two things: An investigation and a sandbox. I don’t think it manages to square the circle. If I approach it as an investigation, I want a summary of the mystery as a GM. I want a final confrontation with the Weaver. But, this module also wants freedom at all points in between, which causes problems with my capacity to prepare. And what’s more challenging, Troika! as a system encourages more chaos! I honestly have no idea which direction this adventure would take, and that’s after two read throughs.

    There’s so many great things about the Big Squirm, and it really showcases well a fantastic writer working in a comedic mode. It’s interesting and lighthearted. It’s an investigation. It’s really a unique module with a lot to offer. It’s hard not to recommend it, despite my concerns about managing all the complex information in the module, which would probably require a lot of preparation for a GM like me. So, the Big Squirm: Recommended.

    31st May, 2023

    Idle Cartulary

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  • How To Write an Interesting Encounter

    This is an expanded transcript of a tweet thread, because Ty rightly recommended it belonged here. I’d recommend checking the thread out, if it exists, it’s full of great stuff!

    Somebody asked me deep in the above thread what I thought made an interesting encounter, and while I don’t have typical taste, this is what I’m aiming for: Unique silhouette, ambiguity, relationship, potential conflict. Here’s a dirty example of an encounter after my style:

    Gorgonzola-and-dirt boy Jaime, broken legged on the road. He is a were-rat, and a gang of his siblings scavenge nearby, looking for easy meals.

    Unique Silhouette

    I want every character to be memorable. Players mightn’t remember their name, but they remember their smell, where they were, something about them. To do that, I use weird descriptions, like “gorgonzola and dirt” or “a bow drained of all tension”. These descriptions aren’t intended to be read-aloud text, they’re meant to evoke something in the GM’s mind so they can provide a banging description of their own.

    Ambiguity

    I don’t want everyone to interpret my encounter the same, so they’re tainted by unreliable narrators: Is their leg broken? Are they at risk from were-rats, too? I don’t want a GM to labour over these, just go with their gut, differently from the next GM who reads it.

    Relationship

    Characters should connect to either other characters in the encounter or even better, characters somewhere else. Sure, Jaime’s a were-rat, but also the Blacksmith’s son. Check the blacksmith’s entry, and you find out that there’s a reward out for his rescue. But does he want to be rescued? Is the blacksmith a good dad? More relationships, more drama, more difficult decisions, more fun.

    Potential Conflict

    There should be multiple conflict sources, here between PCs and boy, boy and were-rats, and were-rats and PCs. More the better! Add the blacksmith! Conflict between boy and blacksmith, blacksmith and were-rats, and blacksmith and PCs if they decide not to side with him? Make it possible to take any side! Magnify the potential for conflict!

    Brevity

    I want them to be brief. If I can make it a paragraph good. Three sentences, better. One sentence, great. A lot of the examples in the thread fit whole implied background situations into a tweet: More bang for your word-buck is always better!

    Hope that helps with my perspective! Notice that it doesn’t include potential outcomes or what tests to perform. Don’t waste precious space with stat blocks (they’re in the manual) or with DCs (there aren’t many options) or telling people what skill to use to figure out the boy is lying (again, there aren’t many options). I like to assume that the GM, who is not an idiot, can figure that stuff out. This is the YNAI principle I wrote about earlier this week.

    Instead, give them the red barrel, they choose where to throw it!

    30th May, 2023

    Idle Cartulary

  • The You’re Not An Idiot Principle

    One of my guiding principles in Bridewell is “The reader is not an idiot”. What do I mean by this?

    I’m assuming that someone reading my (independently published, single-creator, idiosyncratic horror sandbox influenced by haiku, 17th century literature, and queer rage) setting sandbox has come to it with the wherewithal to figure out how to use basic tools and like, run a sandbox.

    Here’s an example of where I am treating the reader as not an idiot.

    Major arcana lists of characters, locations, artefacts, moods, moments and events are on the inside front cover, as are lists for each suit.

    I don’t need to tell you how to use this, whether to use them, or when to use them. Here’s an example of where, in the book I’m running Bridewell in, it does not follow the YNAI Principle.

    Say how you’re trying to weaken the monster, then make a Risk Roll as normal. If your roll succeeds (highest die of 4, 5, or 6), you reduce the monster’s Endurance by 1.

    Noting here that it both says “make Risk Roll as normal” and then redefines “succeeds”. The reader, here, is an idiot.

    Now, to be clear, redundancy is not a waste of time, it’s a choice. In this set of combat rules for Trophy Gold, one could make the argument that this multiple redundancy helps make the text more play-friendly. I would disagree with you as I think the Trophy Gold combat rules are a trainwreck holding a gold shipment. But the choice to ignore the YNAI Principle here is intentional and I think pretty valid.

    In Bridewell, I’m making the YNAI Principle a driving force, not because it’s necessarily the better solution to every situation, but because I have a sense of the soul of Bridewell and that soul is lean. The contrast between Bridewells leanness and short-form-poetry roots and the purple, dare I say pulpiness of its gothic roots is one of the most interesting things for me to see emerging out of writing Bridewell.

    The YNAI Principle, then, is a way of my maximising leanness. What rules can I elide in favour of rulings? What concepts can I imply without saying? How can I induce the reader to know what to do and to imagine what is there? My answer is the YNAI Principle.

    I think potentially the YNAI Principle is a good lens through which to view certain texts, although I haven’t really used it before Bridewell. To be entirely honest, it was something I realised I was saying to myself as I was figuring out the voice of Bridewell, “No, delete that, the reader isn’t an idiot”. I’ll see if it is useful in the future.

    27th May, 2023

    Idle Cartulary

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  • Playtest Report – Bridewell Session 2

    My Bridewell playtest campaign continued today with Marcia, Sandro, and with Zedeck joining. It was a shorter session because I was running it from in hospital! We’re playing in my own hack of Trophy Gold. There will be Bridewell spoilers, but if you’re a part of the playtest, you can definitely read this.

    Vero the Ratcatcher and her small fierce attack-dog joined Ursaline the bear-priestess, and Ferdrek, the disgraced noble. They picked up where they left off, headi mg back into the mists on the trail of the kidnapping wolves.

    They found a massive she-wolf, exerting dominance over a pack of wolves, and followed them at a distance to Cairn Tor, a hill with a wicker-man type effigy at its peak and catacombs at its base. Investigating the catacombs, Ferdrek met a hazy entity with angry eyes and an axe that dripped blood, who threatened him initially, but joined them to drive the druids and wolves from his resting place. He named himself Shukrul.

    The company chose to investigate the effigy first, and revealed the site of a massive druidic ritual, ready to be performed come through right astrological moment. The effigy was not just an image, but a cage, for a massive, bellowing creature. Hesitantly, Ferdrek began to use his sword to hack away at the effigy, attempting to free the creature, but they were cornered by Kori, a man with wolves teeth, and four angry wolves with thorns in their flesh and moss-thickened fur.

    After Vero angered them (“Why are we bargaining with kidnappers?!”) a fight ensued, resulting in four unconscious wolves and one tied up man, who was unwilling to provide information (and happy to sacrifice his pack) until his own body was threatened. He revealed some information: That he was doing this for the good of his pack, that the High Druid was involved in their association, and that the effigy would “Birth Sigvatibog”. They beheaded him, cowing his pack, who fled as his body grew into a savage thorned plant-thing, which the company burned.

    They company freed the creature in the cage, who they now suspected was Padru, spirit of the forest. A massive, red-panda-like entity of autumn colours, she gave Ferdrek a blessing (who knows what?) and answered some of Vero’s questions in an onslaught of emotions and impressions: The druids we’re misguided and well-meaning children, the High Druid was deceiving them; the ritual would have turned her into another, more violent, cruel entity; the children are trapped below. Vero, wanting to stay in contact with the forest-god, asked where she could find Padru again — she pointed far south, to the woods of the Valley, the Crosswood. Then, she departed, ambling through the boughs without them stirring.

    The company burnt the effigy and destroyed the ritual site, and then went into the catacombs, finding that Shukrul had fought against the wolves there, who had fled or died. He offered Vero the Bloodsoaked Ax, who accepted it, in thanks. They rescued thr two children from cells behind a well-used arena. They lit a fire in the forest, made them food, and played games with them, before returning them home.

    The Burgomaster Ionus offered them gold as reward, but they declined and asked instead for food and board, which was eagerly accepted. After the towns’ celebrations, they cornered Veaceslav, who was mortified and disbelieving regarding their claims — indeed, it seems the druids were deceived, but by whom, and for what purpose?

    We chose to end the session there.

    This was a much shorter, more directed session, with less mystery than the last, but it seemed like everyone enjoyed the pace. There were also two combats! Though brief ones, and plenty of ruin dealt. Combat with my revisions definitely runs smoother than earlier Trophy Gold combats.

    Interestingly, this entire plot was closed without an entire location and faction being involved, and without much of a hitch (other than Vero exclaiming “what kind of wolves are these”, something explained by the fact that they’re corrupted ones, and the “good” wolves have been entirely unencountered). There will be some consequences to this plot being closed early, that will be interesting to see what comes about.

    I was surprised that the encounter with Padru went so well, but the feedback was resoundingly positive as both tonal relief and as an example of horror source and insight into the past of the valley, which was all excellent feedback.

    I was really happy with the character descriptions here; they’re one or two sentences only, and gave me plenty of sauce for the unexpectedly prolongues encounters with Veaceslav and with Kori. I think the random encounter with the giant she-wolf probably needs to go, although perhaps that was my mistake, rendering her as a member of Kori’s pack. Too many wolves, I think, and an odd random one probably needs to go. In a module of this complexity, that’s one level of complexity that isn’t necessary.

    I still am surprised by the density and complexity of the religious aspects of Bridewell, which weren’t intentional at all but seem to be becoming increasingly important to the characters, especially now that they have met one of the gods in question. If they’d asked questions differently, she’d have granted them a quest, and I’d be surprised if they didn’t seek her aid later in the campaign if we manage to continue running.

    Overall, another successful session and playtest, and I’m glad it sustained a more directed session than the last.

    25th May, 2023

    Idle Cartulary

  • Bathtub Review: Witchburner

    Bathtub Reviews are an excuse for me to read modules a little more closely, but I’m doing this as a critique from the perspective of me, playing, and designing modules myself. They’re stream of consciousness and unedited harsh critiques on usually excellent modules. I’m writing them on my phone in the bath.

    Witchburner is a seventy-seven page module, written, illustrate and laid out by Luka Rejec. It’s an entirely system agnostic adventure, hinging on investigation and social interaction rather than exploration and combat. I’d be remiss not to mention Luka’s art; it’s varies between exceptional and functional but it’s never bad and always supports the vibe, which is key for this particular, tragic module.

    I’ve written before that I’m not a fan of block prose fiction in my roleplaying modules, and Luka falls into this pit consistently here and in other modules. Here, especially in the introductory pages, my primary problem is that it interferes with my eyes finding the information it wants to figure out how the adventure gets started. I’m impatient you see, I want to know the crux immediately. The intent, I think, is to read the first two sections, “The Town”, and “The Offer” at the table, a kind of ultimate setting of vibes for what is a grim module with challenging themes. You could definitely use the prose introduction here as a campaign pitch. But I’ve already bought the book, so I’m sold on the concept – please, start with the bang.

    Luka then opens with addressing the elephant in the room: There are thirty characters in the town, any of which could be the witch, all of which have clues that point to them, and if the witch is not found, in thirty days a doom will come. This is complicated, and so Luka opens with a time tracker and an attitude tracker, and a bunch of pages of rules and tables to help navigate this complex space. There are only about four pages of rules, and about ten pages of additional tables and advice, but gosh it feels like a lot as you read it. On the other hand, with the caveat of photocopying a few handouts, I definitely think that this module is playable directly from the book. It’s designed to be, with success.

    In terms of getting playing, the main barrier on the end of the GM is wrapping my head around the rules, how to bring the witch to trial, thresholds and things like that. For me, that required taking some notes and underlining some parts of the book. This is because the rules are very specific to the setting, so those rules are peppered with information about the world, and they get hidden by it to a degree. This I suspect would fade into the background once you’d played a few sessions and the players were bringing witches to trial, but for me, it’s a speed bump. At the player end, there’s a very clear single hook, but no right way (in fact, only wrong ways) to pursue finding the witch. A clue-like handout is provided to help the players puzzle things out. Getting buy-in is probably as simple as reading that introductory prose and saying “yes or no?”, and no further decisions need to be made. I like that a lot, compared to other good modules which have no clear on-ramp at all.

    The Calamities is a calendar of everything that goes wrong over the month that the players are investigating the witch, and hence new clues that help or hinder the players in finding the witch. These are fun and illustrative and escalate nicely. It adds significant pressure, especially to the timekeeping. I’ll remark here upon the ambience and quality of Luka’s writing. I would be tempted to read directly from the text each new scene: “Sky like bruised peaches”, “throw salt and ash into the Whitewater to spare themselves from the witches flood”, “a love potion (barely works)”. In a module that really asks a lot of vibes, the writing elevates it immensely.

    The meat of the module is the People of Bridge. Thirty people, an entire page each. I automatically see this and think, no way in hell am I going to be able to run this. But I think that in reading the entries (which include things like their home, household, family, friends, secrets, caves, treasures), it might be best to visualise this town as a dungeon consisting of thirty rooms, where you don’t need intimate familiarity with each room, but where each room contains a unique puzzle. It’s good to read over the whole dungeon beforehand – you need a grasp on the geography – but that’s enough.

    The problem, though, is that Luka falls back into the prose pitfall here; for the Doctor’s Husband forever, of their three quarters of a page (the other quarter being illustration), one quarter is a prose introduction. I’m not going to want to read through that, and it doesn’t appear intended to be read-aloud text. Does it add something? Yes, it does. Maybe for someone other than me, it increases the memorability of the character, but for me, it wrenches me trying to dodge the prose as a run the character. I think different formatting decisions would have helped me here; Luka uses the colour red, italics and bolding, but not to the best effect for readability. Using red instead to identify key concepts (rather than the first few words of a page) to help me pick them out at the table, would go a long way in eliminating this problem.

    Spoiler alert for this paragraph and the next.

    (more…)

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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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