• Bathtub Review: The White Horse of Lowvale

    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 White Horse of Lowvale is a 53 page system agnostic module with art, layout and writing by Tania Herrero. In it, the beast Nykur plagues the village of Lowvale, and you are hired to put an end to the menace. Where Crown of Salt was Herrero tackling a dungeon, the White Horse of Lowvale tackles a village and wilderness in her characteristic style. I backed this during Zinequest, for a print copy (I picked up Crown of Salt by the same author in print as well).

    As with Crown of Salt, it’s difficult to break the White Horse of Lowvale down, because it doesn’t follow any traditional structure. Of the overall text, about 8 are in a picture book format, featuring folk tales. As my friend Derek astutely noted, these pages you could spin around and read out to your players, effectively. Most of the book is key, though. The writing is creative and works synchronously with the art in a unique way — for example, the hook is presented as a wanted poster. The printed book itself is gorgeous, solid and with premium paper, and I’d recommend the print copy over digital, as I found it very easy to let my glaze over when reading the digital version, where it wasn’t easy to comprehend in print. The art is astoundingly good, and many individual spreads are a work of art in and of themselves. I think there are a few small missteps — the keys have an opening paragraph that didn’t follow my eye’s natural draw, which meant I kept starting in the middle of the entry — but for the most part the layout is peerless. And the writing here is incredibly evocative, especially where it breaks into the “picture book” sections; it is, however, not brief, and meanders a lot, and with the lack of highlighting, I lose a lot of the content to memory. Some people prefer this though, and it’s an elegant take on a traditional longer form text  — your mileage may vary. A smart addition here is the highlighted sections that help guide the referee to basic needs — meals, markets, henchmen and healers, and later system agnostic “stat blocks”; these make picking out the parts you need mechanically or regularly, a little easier. More attention to this in paragraph would have helped me. 

    Structurally, it expects the referee to intuit how to run it, and I don’t think it succeeds — we’ll get back to that. The aforementioned wanted poster is a tight frame, which allows the text, which is meandering and generous, to be approached with some direction. The layout, art, and writing working together are top notch, but there is little page-to-page consistency which limits navigability, except if you’re looking for specific art, which here serves as the most important navigation beacon. There are a number of structural issues, though, that would have benefited from a developmental edit. For example, the mill is the last item in the village key, but it should be the first thing to be visited: The information here is delivered as the answer to the “question” of the village, but I don’t think that this improves the experience of the read in the context of it being a module. Starting here would help the referee see what’s coming and what they’re looking for, and make the trail of breadcrumbs clearer. I think the assumption is that, because you’ve read the whole module, you’ll be able to incorporate a lot of information, but I’d appreciate more guidance here, as I struggled to see how the players wouldn’t be quickly slaughtered by literal invincible foes, despite those breadcrumbs being there. There’s a clear trajectory through the module that’s expected here — from the children to Goodfellow, to Nana Taga, to the beast, encountering the Green Knight on the way, collecting these fairy’s true names and runes as you go. But there’s a chance you’ll never encounter the Green Knight — this is an essential encounter that’s gated behind randomness, and also not all players would loot this body for the essential item he carries. Restructuring this would help a lot — as is, if the referee is not taking notes you’ll struggle to communicate it to your players.  I didn’t get it until my second read, and due to the lack of highlighting, you can’t skim for any information.

    Mechanically, there are a few misses for me. The Woods themselves use a mix of “fixed” and “unfixed” hexes, with random encounters layered on top. I’m not a fan of randomised locations in general, but here there are 6 unfixed hexes and 9 empty hexes to fill them with. This means you’re getting repetition, but also that a lot of them could have just been fixed. The goal, I think, was a sense of being lost in a fairy realm here, but I think that removing the capacity to get a sense of where you are really clashes with the necessity of this being a hex crawl at all. If you are able to explore the hexes in a systematic way, hexcrawls make sense. If you can’t — should they just be random encounters? Or should this be a point crawl? Certainly, the random encounters tie into the hexes in a pleasant way, and make for interactions that are pleasing when combined with both fixed and unfixed hexes. A larger issue is the fact that a few of these unfixed hexes are essential — if you luck out and don’t find them, you can’t slay the beast. I think what this is saying is that in play, Hererro is expecting the referee to make sure this hex is encountered — there are more elegant ways to do this, though, and I think they should be implemented in terms of travel structure, rather than hoping the referee will realise and fudge the roll. Exploring this won’t be uninteresting, but it might feel pointless, particularly if you stumble across the same unfixed hexes repeatedly. Complicating matters is the fact that there is a rigid timer — 4 days, and after the first, 1 source of important information is killed. I love a module on a timer, but I am genuinely worried that with all the combat, there’s a decent chance that the party will die or have to retreat a number of times, and by the time they make it, it might be too late — and then, your employer is killed, so the party just…leaves Lowvale? This feels unsatisfying to me. Either I’d soften the timer, or strengthen the faction play so you might play them off each other a bit more, because it feels like it might be too dangerous a module to complete in the time.

    The sense of fairytale or folk horror in this module is exactly what I wanted. The encounters are equal parts creepy and eerie, and you fully buy between Lowvale and the Woods that you are participating in a fairytale, especially the unfixed locations. Every encounter is iconic. But it might be too much. With 13 locations, all packed with unique and individually compelling fairytale encounters, the density feels a little much for me? There are no breathers, and you need to travel through 5 hexes minimum to find the beast that is your goal; and it’s unlikely that you’ll travel there via a direct route. To me, this places it solidly in the adventure tour category of module — you’re here for the vibes and to inhabit these encounters, not for exploration or problem-solving; but there are some solid combat encounters here, meaning the party are going to face serious danger. 

    For me, more referee advice would be helpful. Hererro does include referee advice, and referee-facing information, so I think that choosing not to include it is more of a mistake than if she had decided to omit any at all. You’ll need to read through this once or maybe twice, and take notes, and make references, if you want to run this. Whether this works for you or not is probably something to consider — I typically don’t want to do this work, and I wish Herrera could find an approach to bridge the gap, but the strength of Herrero’s writing and art combine to outweigh the negatives for me here. Similarly, the complete system-agnosticism — which wasn’t present in Crown of Salt — feels like Herrero doubling down on her immersion conceit, and I think it works really well, but it compounds the issue of requiring additional work on behalf of the referee to get to the table. 

    I’ve read White Horse of Lowvale 3 times now, once in digital and twice in print, and the module it reminds me most of is the Isle — the first module since the Isle I’ve read that mimics the sense that it was written as much as an experience for the reader and referee as it was as something to be run. Whenever Herrero is given the choice of how to structure, she chooses to ask questions and then drip-feed you the answers later, making for a fun mystery of a read. Characters are developed, I think, in service of the narrative — for example the players don’t care that Tarna wants to move to the city to escape this all, except in that it’s sad when she’s taken by the beast — repeatedly I wondered why things were relevant, and I don’t think they were to the game at play, but rather to the experience of the reader. This is as much a story told through the format of a module as it is a module itself. The seams here — where Hererro rubs up on the borders between these two formats — are abrasive, though. The traditional module structure clashes with the needs of the fairy tale. That said, I think this is exceeds the Isle as an experiment of trying to make the twain meet. It’s a progression in many ways away from what we liked about the Isle and towards a better version of that category of modules. Hererro brings characterization and a density of concept here that she did not bring in the already compelling Crown of Salt, and I can’t wait to see where she goes next. I hope she finds a way to make those seams less abrasive without making it less playable, rather than moving in a direction more similar to the Isle. 

    If you’re looking for something that will provide you with a lot of support in running, or your table likes spatial puzzles and methodical crawling, the White Horse of Lowvale is not for you. If you’re looking for a dark tour through a village inhabited by people haunted by the Wood that surrounds them, and then a carnival ride of dark fairy encounters in the Wood itself, however, I’d check it out. It will require a bit of work on your behalf, I suspect, however, unless you’re very good at reading things closely and remembering things clearly. If you’re a sucker for high quality print editions and out-of-this world art, I’d also give it a look. In general, it makes for an amazing read, in terms of writing and conceptual density: This is wall to wall powerful writing and compelling encounters. I’m certainly very happy to have it on my shelf, and if you have friends who’re into dark fairy tales, the White Horse of Lowvale is an excellent pitch.

    Idle Cartulary

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

  • Zungeon Zunday: Bloodmoon Crypt

    In 2025 I’m reviewing zungeon zines. They’re stream of consciousness and unedited critiques, just like Bathtub Reviews, but they’ll be a little briefer. The goal here is a little different: I want to spotlight what a craft-based, just-do-it approach to module writing can do.

    Bloodmoon Crypt is a 6 page zungeon for Black Sword Hack, by Elizabeth Brasell. In it, werewolves have used dark magic to return to Silvershaft, and you must delve into the crypt of their greatest foe to reclaim the sword Wolfsbane.

    Bloodmoon Crypt’s description cleverly hides its hooks in the text, which is really smart for such a short module. It features 2 unique creatures, one of which our random encounter, occurring in 1/3 of all rooms. The other lurks in two rooms, as set encounters. It’s very neat, and it results in around 5 combat encounters in this small dungeon.

    The map is small — 10 rooms — but has some fun loops in it, and some dead ends. It’s packed full of cool encounters — the ghost anchorite, the organ of the mountain, and the former priest. It’s all keyed in a max of 3 sentences. It sticks to the dungeon itself — this means that it’s implied that you’re seeding some werewolves into the campaign world, to use Wolfsbane on! If I were the author, I’d use this gap as an opportunity to write a little werewolf centric zungeon sequel, of roughly the same size.

    The main improvement I think I’d make to improve Bloodmoon Crypt without complicating things, would be adding a little bit to each of these encounters in terms of character — the chaos zombies are clearly retaining their past memories for example. said you’re going to encounter 2-3 of them, write up 3 zombies after the style of the former priest. Give the ghost anchorite an agenda or how she might be “of use” as the hook suggests. Tell me why the mountain has a heart! This stuff is fire and would be excellent to expand a little.

    I love the simplicity of Bloodmoon Crypt. As is, this is a really fun module. If you’re looking for a small module to throw into into your campaign, you won’t regret it.

    Idle Cartulary

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

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  • Bathtub Review: The Dark Tools

    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 Dark Tools is a 31 page module for Electric Bastionland, Into the Odd or Cairn, by Joseph Krauss, featuring a search for cursed artifacts in a cursed countryside.

    It’s interesting to me the contrast between a well-framed module — one that simply wants the players to be into the action — and a clumsily framed one. The first real page of the module here is a frame, but comes with six short paragraphs explaining the frame. This feels clumsy to me, if only because it could’ve been one short paragraph to explain “County Dessex has a magic item problem. You can talk to Copperwill for more information, but don’t trust him. There’s a hand off for what you find in 7 days.” The length of the chat here gives me strong Dungeon Magazine vibes, but the premise is actually strong, with an untrustworthy source and a solid schedule to work by giving the players a deadline.

    This module leans into the schedule heavily, with two competing factions, set times to clear items from the town, and leaning into injury, sleep and overexertion as a limiting factor. This makes it a kind of survival horror module, despite it feeling more like a treasure hunt. One issue I see is that the players don’t know that the 2 factions are actually setting a schedule at all. I think that the stakes could be better set up overall, rather than expect them to figure it out along the way.

    The writing here is not beautiful, and not always brief, but works, and uses structure well once you realise it’s there. There are moments of pleasure, though, scattered here and there: “seems as if you’re viewing her through the wrong end of a telescope” It’s also smart about arrangement, fitting most concepts to a page or a spread. And I like what is here a lot, leaning into the faux-modern Electric Bastionland aesthetic really pleasingly, while translating it to a British countryside setting. The connections could be a little more explicit, but overall this little world feels like it should be a pleasure to play in.

    The actual map here is a point crawl, which I don’t hate at all, but I feel like using a hex crawl gives a stronger chance of there being cross-country shortcuts causing long delays in a hurry, etc, and in the context of a treasure hunt race, this is preferable to me. The use of the point crawl is intuitive, but unless you’re clearly including impassable hedges in your faux English countryside, allow my players to run into the woods.

    The Dark Tools has a strong DIY zine vibe, which is aggressive enough that it feels intentional. But, the clumsy 2 column layout is occasionally justified, with varying font sizes and inconsistent use of bolding and spacing for highlights. The DIY aesthetic doesn’t have to marry with illegibility. The art is well chosen public domain, which suits its strong DIY aesthetic, although it could be used more handily to assist with legibility. The issue is mainly that it’s hard to find your way around. The block text — single column at the outset — buries relevant information so that it’s hard to refer back. Was this already mentioned? Is this implied? Where is this person mentioned? I had trouble reviewing this document because it’s a fairly dense and complex little zine.

    Overall, I’m a big fan of the Dark Tools. It nails the Electric Bastionland aesthetic and world, while bringing its own twist, and it is filled with strong characters and compelling descriptions. I think if the author invested more in the work, it’d be a truly praiseworthy module. As it is, though, Dark Tools is probably the first module for Electric Bastionland I’ve seen that I’d actually choose to run, despite it being desperate for editing, unique art, and a keener layout.

    Idle Cartulary

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

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  • Zungeon Zunday: Cure Wounds Inc.

    In 2025 I’m reviewing zungeon zines. They’re stream of consciousness and unedited critiques, just like Bathtub Reviews, but they’ll be a little briefer. The goal here is a little different: I want to spotlight what a craft-based, just-do-it approach to module writing can do.

    Cure Wounds Inc. is a 14 page zungeon for B/X or similar systems, by Richard Gottlieb. In it, you investigate a failing factory that once produced healing potions but whose healing potions are now causing horrifying mutations.

    The module opens with 7 NPCs and encounters — the creatures here have a bunch of interesting things going on, perhaps too much in a 22 room dungeon — with so many features, you may need more space for the surprises to be discovered. Very cool, though. The NPCs, though feel a little flat — the businessman is supposed to appear disinterested — but his entire company is on the verge of collapse and you hired him. For my players , this would play very poorly, disincentivising participating at all, or perhaps making them suspect a conspiracy.

    The dungeon here is the machine itself. The rooms are very interactive, which makes sense for a giant factory. It’s incredibly cool from the referee-end, but I fear not enough attention has been paid to how to make these connections between rooms obvious to the players. In a real factory, there would literally be a manual or labels on everything showing what they did. If you didn’t want it so obvious, you could have had the mutants shred the manual, leaving scraps, or have it all in a strange language that needs to be deciphered. As is, while the interactivity is cool, it may not actually eventuate.

    One major issue in a similar vein, is the 48 hour timer imposed on the players: They don’t know about it, and I can’t see how they could learn. Positioning Adam as a monologuing, threatening villain would forefront this timer, and make it far more interesting. You could also do this by placing more mutants floating about the time limit, or planting journal entries, or something of the sort.

    The layout, as befits a zungeon, is simple and easy to follow, but there’s nothing flashy here. There are 2 pieces of public domain art, and a functional isometric map. Not much to comment on, but no errors here either.

    Overall, though, this is pretty interesting and a fun module to run, particularly as a one- or two- shot, although it may not fit into many existing campaigns with B/X, and is honestly more of an Electric Bastionland kind of joint. I would make some tweaks — clarify the timeline, and I’d also make the connections between rooms clearer, as well as tweak a few of the character demeanors a little. But overall, Cure Wounds Inc. is a really fun, interactive module, that’s well worth checking out.

    Idle Cartulary

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

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  • When is the cake baked?

    Lately I’ve read a bunch of modules that feel like they weren’t fully baked. The scope story they were trying to tell was greater than their page count. I was left wishing there was more, despite and often because what was there was already pretty cool. I get the sense that the authors didn’t realise there was a problem, though. How, as an author, do you know the cake is baked?

    This is a really hard question to answer, when I’m not talking about a specific cake. But I’m going to try to talk about this generally, based on what I look for in a module. While I’m trying to be broad, baked here doesn’t mean things like “your travel procedure isn’t to my taste”, but rather about the themes of your module and how the text completes itself, both as a whole but also in its individual elements.

    Posing questions

    You can think of a module as a bunch of questions you’re asking about the individual elements — people, places, tools, etc. This isn’t the entirety of what a module is, obviously: It’s a lens through which you can view your or someone else’s module, that’s useful for this particular purpose.

    Look at your dungeon (or town, or desert, or whatever) and think about what questions it poses: Perhaps, does the elemental deserve to be freed from bondage? Is the werewolf redeemable? Do the kobolds deserve to be slaughtered for bowing to the dragon? And you can do the same with an NPC, or with a swamp, or with an important artifact.

    Basically every element should pose a question. If you look at your swamp, and you can’t think of any questions it poses, the cake isn’t baked. Can you provide this swamp with a question? If so, expand your module to accommodate your answer. If there is no compelling question to be found, remove the swamp altogether and rearrange the module to not need the swamp.

    Answers just as compelling

    Sometimes you have framed some really compelling questions — at the beginning of the module you and five other characters with dark secrets are snowed into an in for the night, stewing in suspicion and lies. But then, once all of these characters are in the wilderness you’re all there to explore, that potential for intrigue and shocking twists is not realised. 

    You may even have used the elements — placed them in a random encounter, or placed one dead, betrayed, at a crossroads. But you accidentally posed the question “What will come of these five villains being trapped together by fate alone?” And it turns out “You see them again, once.” Isn’t satisfying compared to what your players answered in their head. The issue there is that the answer you’ve come up with isn’t as compelling as the question you posed. If you’re in this situation, don’t change the question! Figure out how to squeeze the drama out of the answer! Often your first inclination isn’t the best creative decision!

    Many, difficult and conflicting answers 

    Questions with difficult or conflicting answers are usually the best. These introduce dilemmas — the elemental does deserve to be freed from bondage, but it will wreak havoc on the local village because they’ve used it for heating for generations, unbeknownst to them. The other thing to look for is multiple answers or methods to reach those answers — you can free the elemental using the rod of elemental freeing the evil wizard has, sure, but also plunging it into a bath of ice will break the curse and it will regenerate in 101 days, or you could use the transmogrifying gaze of the poly-basilisk to turn it into a creature the curse does not affect, until it’s out of the wizard’s purview.

    If you frame interesting questions and provide interesting and conflicting answers, you create an “unstable equilibrium”, with no single solution, and a bunch of potential tools that could be used at different consequence to the PCs or the world around them.

    Unanswered questions

    There is a place for unanswered questions, but in my experience most of the time the unanswered question is due to a misunderstanding of the adage “prep situations not plots”. Prepping a situation well involves framing questions with many conflicting and compelling answers, not with none. For me, the way to identify whether leaving something unanswered is a mistake or not, is to ask: Does the anything else in this module depend on the answer to the question? If it does, you shouldn’t leave it unanswered.

    Checking how well the cake is baked

    If you view a module as a collection of questions that are posed by individual elements, which mix together just so to create an explosive or compelling situation, you have a better chance of judging whether your cake is baked. But I think that for the most part, authors of modules just don’t check if the cake is baked before taking it out of the oven! We’re too quick to publish our ideas, and that means we don’t get a sense of what our art wants to say and we don’t make sure it says it before we publish it. 

    Here are some symptoms the cake isn’t baked:

    • Your hexes or dungeon rooms are mostly empty (or non-sequiter). 
    • You have different sections that are out of proportion to each other — your town is 5 pages, your wilderness only 1, and your dungeon 10. 
    • Your NPCs or faction agendas don’t conflict with each other, or your PCs aren’t placing themselves in the middle of those conflicts.
    • When the players sniff around for clues and leads, the referee is left scrambling to improvise.
    • Your players aren’t coming across solutions to the problems that are presenting themselves.
    • There’s no “what’s going on” section or referee advice, leaving the referee scrambling to figure out how things connect together.
    • Concrete elements aren’t provided for major interactions, but rather random generators are provided to fill the gaps, in a way that leaves elements facts disconnected from the broader world.

    If you want examples of these symptoms, Keep on the Borderlands and the Village of Hommlet provide it, and they’re mimicked this day still — an earlier draft of this included a reworking of the Village Of Hommlet. These are just some symptoms of a lack of coherent questions and answers; you fix it by being sure you’ve framed compelling questions with many conflicting or compelling answers, not by “adding referee advice” of whatever else is here.

    The cake is done

    I think that’s the core of it; The cake is done when its questions are answered. The finishing touches — proofing and editing and illustrating and laying out — that’s akin to icing and decorating and boxing the cake. You shouldn’t do any of that until it’s fully baked, and your skewer? Checking that the all of questions you’ve posed are answered. 

    Idle Cartulary

    P.S. Thanks to Gus L, Amanda P, Derek B. and other excellent authors and editors who helped me think this all through.

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

  • Bathtub Review: No Time for the Wicked

    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.

    No Time for the Wicked is a 33 page Ravenloft module for 5th edition, by Grinning Portal. In it, you are trapped in a time loop aboard a train that is doomed to forever crash and explode every 24 hours. I received a complimentary copy from the author; as per my recent review policy update, it will be the last complimentary 5th edition module I’ll be reviewing on Playful Void.

    The book opens with a lot of information before you get to the module proper — 2 summaries, a page of extra commentary on Ravenloft, 2 pages on time management, a page on train functioning, 1 on unnamed NPCs, 1 on mischief, and 4 on named NPCs, before actually getting to “starting the adventure”. This is absolutely too much for me to take in — 10 pages before we even get to any key, or any space. Contributing to the problem is the longhand 5th edition house style — there is just too much attention given to these NPCs in a way that I can engage with practically; the train car permissions section could be reduced to 1 or 2 sentences, rather than the quarter page it is given, and this is a consistent theme. I feel like I need to memorise this, because it’s not colocated, but it’s written longhand enough I can’t. Once in the key itself, it switches to a room to a page — leaving heaps of space. A lot of this preloading could sensibly be colocated with the key, to minimise this front-end overload of information, and maintain momentum while reading the module. As it is, I hit a huge roadblock at the beginning. It is difficult to write a module that balances equally the needs of ease to use at the table, but also ease of reading for the referee. One sign that a module is getting it right for me is that as you read it, you keep getting fed elements that make you increasingly more excited to run it, as you get deeper and deeper. Providing all of the elements at the front of the module, and then having the key following without really feeding back, really drains me of my excitement for the module.

    There are a number of choices which undercut the core premise. The loop is too long, which results in advice to “just skip parts of the loop” once the characters know what’s going on. If 24 hours of play needs to be fast forwarded to be compelling, it needs to be shorter. If the characters make too much mischief, the loop is forcibly ended by the Dukard, which kind of defies the fun of a time loop — but this is hand in hand with an escalation system that isn’t that end. If Dukard can simply end the loop when he’s out of control, why would he bother with any other actions? The main compelling thing that Dukard should be trying to do is to manipulate the outsiders into ending the curse, but this isn’t on his agenda. A lot of other characters seem positioned to fix problems in the adventure, but in uninteresting ways: Valdak is there to explain the time loop if they doing figure it out for example.

    The issue here is that it’s an investigation as well as a time loop, so I need to know exactly what was going on and when, in order to run it. The key character is D’orien, who is killed 10 minutes into the 24 hour loop. Most of the mystery in this adventure is figuring out that you need to save him, but to figure this out you need to collect specific clues: Dukard journal hints that he can be hurt by D’Orien, a document that proves Dukard is an imposter, and you can figure out who killed D’Orien by investigating his body. But I had to figure this out — it’s not summarised anywhere, despite half the word count being dedicated to prep. I stand by the fact that most puzzles in modules can afford to be straightforward, but as the core driving story of a module, what’s going on here isn’t complex enough to be compelling. The module manages to remain on rails despite the fact that it appears not to be, simply by providing only a few ways to progress. To make a time loop exciting it needs to be an OSR style challenge — the players need to be playing with time. It should feel like the montages in Groundhog Day or Edge of Tomorrow.

    Part of the issue is the house layout for 5th edition — something like this needs creativity in its organisation and layout and it needs to be super user friendly. You can make far more complex modules than this work — Witchburner is all investigation, and it’s great. The Cross-stitch is an excellent time loop module, that is much easier to parse. Complexity is possible to overcome with creative layout and information design choices, but the choices here obfuscate the role of both players and referees.

    A time loop is a pretty compelling concept for a module, and I was excited to see what approach No Time for the Wicked took to it. But, it doesn’t offer the joy I want from a time loop module. It took a very close read to understand what No Time for the Wicked was doing, and it shouldn’t have — when it comes down to it, it’s pretty straightforward mystery. If you’re really excited with the idea of a time loop on a doomed train, or you run a lot of 5th edition modules and you want to flex your wings and try something different than the typical structure, then check out No Time for the Wicked. I think it would make, in particular, a really fun one-shot for an event like Halloween. For me, it doesn’t provide enough support to bring to the table, or enough interest to put the effort into writing that support in myself.

    Idle Cartulary

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

  • Zungeon Zunday: Ecophage

    In 2025 I’m reviewing zungeon zines. They’re stream of consciousness and unedited critiques, just like Bathtub Reviews, but they’ll be a little briefer. The goal here is a little different: I want to spotlight what a craft-based, just-do-it approach to module writing can do.

    Ecophage is a 12 page zungeon for Vaults of Vaarn by Adam Chafe. In it, you break into an underground laboratory to rescue the scientist Lobates the Wynn from a mindless swarm of nanobots that has escaped containment, in exchange for access to his private collection of Exotica.

    Layout here is pleasing, and very simple. Art is adapted from freely available online iconography and art. A steel and blue colour scheme unifies everything. The layout in A5 format is single column, clear first order headings and easy to navigate. The only misstep is that the second order headings — the ones that the key uses — aren’t quite as clear. I’d just add another higher level and flatten things out a little, to solve this.

    This is a 2-level, 18 room dungeon. They have the same short 6-part encounter table, and both table and map are on the inside covers and so are easy to access. Good design. Half of these random encounters aren’t violent, but affect the dungeon in other ways — like making the nanobots angrier, and hinting towards one of the core secrets. Also fun, cool design.

    The module opens with a timeline that explains what has happened, and tightly frames the players to the entrance of the laboratory. I’ve said before, I love a tight frame as someone who tries to fit as much play into a session as possible, and usually plays relatively short sessions. I especially like that there’s a key secret, and a core ethical dilemma, that makes it much harder to both fulfil your goal and to decide which is the lesser of the two evils. That’s good design, in my opinion — something I’m constantly trying to work into my own design.

    There are four possible locations to find the two key cards that you need to reach the lower floor — I don’t love this use of randomisation, and I think designing the dungeon around the keycards is more fun, and I also feel like it you’re doing double duty here. If you really want to randomise something in a dungeon like this, load the encounter dice with that too. On a flat d6, that’s trivial — if we know we have 9 rooms on the first floor, we have at least 9 encounter rolls. If 7+ is always a keycard, and we simply assign a +2 bonus to each round we don’t find one, we’ll always find them by the time we finish the level, without having to randomise multiple times. It also allows for the escalation that is implied by the ordering of the encounter table to be made concrete. But, even better to simple work the keycards meaningfully into the rooms, which affords you the chance to tell a story about what happened and why Lobates left them behind; to be clear, these stories have been written into Ecophage, you just might find it in the dishwasher instead of on the dead assistant, randomly.

    The keying is minimalist, a few sentences to a paragraph. Workmanlike, but the recurring visual themes are nice and foreboding. The upper floor is cleverly all foreshadowing, with one jump scare, but the lower floor is far more dangerous. There are some missteps — the secret door in 11 for example, should be flagged in the initial description in my opinion, as theres no mention of the clue otherwise (unless I misunderstood the description, which is a different misstep). I think these rooms in general would benefit from a puzzle-like element, the simplest version of which is Sean McCoy’s writing rooms in pairs, which would bring a little more interest to the individual rooms here.

    I think that the final room, while being an excellent ethical dilemma, would be better served without the conversation with the sentient creature. There are a bunch of rooms here — if you seeded a lot of rooms with evidence of the various facts presented in this conversation, then the players feel like they’ve solved a mystery, rather than being forced to make a decision. All the dilemmas that are artificially forced on them here, instead are self-inflicted. I’d leave this room empty, and drop a bunch of audio recordings, journals, and notes in different places throughout the laboratory — that reveal the potential sentient nature of the enemy, the potential cruelty of Lobates, the danger the enemy poses to the environment — and let the players come to their own conclusions. There are at least two characters in the lab, which means there’s good reason to have everything repeated twice in case things are missed. I think this would make the module and the climax more engaging.

    The module ends with a list of hooks and rumours, descriptions of the enemies and the random encounters. The latter two are important and do their job well. The creature and items are all fun and compelling. The rumours and hooks don’t feel necessary with such a tight frame, but if you did want to use them, I’d make them more distinct — you’re there to avenge the assistant, you’re there to take a sample of the ecophage to a rival scientist, etc. Have them change the way the players interact, and have them interact with the dilemma in a unique way.

    You know when I start telling you “I’d change this and that”, that the module has good bones. I’d make a few changes to it in play, but for a detour to drop into your post-apocalyptic world, this is great; perfect for the kind of sandbox play that Vaults of Vaarn leans into. If you’re a referee running or looking to run Vaults of Vaarn, I’d check Ecophage out.

    Idle Cartulary

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

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  • A Review Policy

    You might have noticed I review modules, and occasionally games. I do this for two reasons: The first is that I want to critique modules and games for the purpose of learning about design, and the second is I want to support creators in what can be a lonely hobby. I mostly do this by buying and reviewing a lot of modules, but lately, people have started offering me complimentary copies of their work. In light of this, I thought I’d share my review policy, for transparency’s sake. 

    If you want your module or game reviewed, I accept complimentary copies, either digital or physical. I’m in Australia, so postage for physical products is expensive. I might decline a complementary copy, though, if offered, particularly if I have no interest in the game or module, or if I’ve already bought it.

    If you send me a complimentary copy of a module, I will always endeavour to review it, but there may be a wait — I try to limit myself to one review per week for my own sanity, and at the time of writing I had five months of reviews written and scheduled. I will no longer be reviewing complimentary copies of 5th edition modules. Please don’t send your 5th edition module to me, instead read the modules I have reviewed and learn to apply the lessons in them to your work.

    If you send me a complimentary copy of a game, I will not guarantee that I will review it, because I read and review games at my own fancy, if and when I’m excited by them. Games are long and complex, and reviewing games is hard. If you send me a complimentary copy of it game, the chance it will catch my fancy might be higher. Maybe.

    If you request a review to be timed around a scheduled date, I’ll endeavour to accommodate you. Reading games and modules and writing reviews takes time, so I offer no guarantees. 

    I’ll state if I was provided a complimentary copy, or if I have a noteworthy relationship with anyone involved. Regardless of whether you send me a complimentary copy (digital or physical) or I purchase the game or module myself, or have a relationship with a creator, I will provide an honest review. It’s tricky to be objective about things that I get for free or people I’m in relationship with, but my receiving a complimentary copy will never turn a positive opinion negative or a negative opinion positive. My goals here are to critique modules for the purpose of learning about design, and to support creators, as I stated at the top — not being honest in my opinions does not achieve either goal. I have in the past and will in the future publish reviews of modules and games I’ve been disappointed by. If you’re worried about not being able to predict what my opinion will be, it will probably reflect my well-established preferences, which you can familiarise yourself with by reading my past reviews. 

    I do not have capacity to give you a heads up regarding whether my opinion is positive or not. I don’t always have the capacity to let you know when I publish the review. I don’t always have the capacity to share widely. I suggest you follow my socials or this blog, so you know when I publish reviews and can share it in your spaces.

    If, after all of those caveats, you’re still interested in sending me a complimentary copy of a module or game, you can email me at idle cartulary at gee mail dot com. I appreciate your support.

    Idle Cartulary

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

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  • Bathtub Review: Arkos

    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.

    Arkos is an 83 page setting module for Troika! written and laid out by John Kordosh, with art by a large list of contributors. I was provided a complementary copy by Exalted Funeral. In it, you are introduced to the city of Arkos, a vibrant sphere floating through space, where recently one of the five ruling gods has staged a coup, resulting in a pressure cooker of a location with no escape. Arkos has far more content than an 83-page book should feel entitled to, to be frank. It packs a city setting and a pretty action-packed adventure together in its’ pages, as well as a lot of refereeing advice. It’s as dense as a much longer book, and hence, it’ll be hard to overview. Bear with me.

    I’m going to break out of tradition here, and start with appearances: The layout in Arkos is an intense, dense, zine-like affair. There are no margins, the text comes in either bold or bolder, white space is at a minimum (except in select places — namely in the backgrounds), and block background colour is applied haphazardly. It feels like a layout inspired by cheap magazine advertising, in a positive way. To balance out the bold choices, it uses familiar fonts, and a limited palette of canary yellow and teal to hold everything together. The art by all six contributors is in this limited palette, and that really helps pull the disparate art styles together (although admittedly, it is less disparate than you’d expect from the number of artists involved — the art direction here is excellent). You might not like the density on the page, but it’s intentional and it’s not as hard to read as you’d expect, except in long sittings. There are a few unforced errors here, though: The narrow gutter results in a lot of text lost to the binding, usually the first letter of each sentence on the right hand side page, which is a major issue, and will affect the longevity of the book. The navigability at a glance of the pages is challenging, as headings aren’t consistent in either form or placement. This makes for problems mainly when you’re looking for a specific — I went searching for the soundtrack names, for example, and it took me a while — but when you’re running the game, most things you’ll need are either co-located or have relevant page references in the text, which minimises the issue. From this description you’ll get the sense that Arkos is super-dense, and yes, yes it is, which is why I opened with this.

    The writing in Arkos is at its’ worst, workmanlike, but even then it usually has something interesting to say: “There’s a 2-in-6 chance a Peacekeeper captain is with them. The Captain challenges whoever has the best Fighting Skill to a duel.” That’s not florid, but it tells you something about the Peacekeepers. My favourite writing, when Arkos is at its’ best, however, is evocative and borders on genius. There must be 70 “crowd types” in this book, and not a single one is either boring or explained — it’s up to the referee’s imagination what a Dwindling Ghost, Fire-eyed Lizard or Loose-wired Droid is. The names are absolutely iconic — Tourniquet Morphine, Zyre-Zye, and Pallo High Sun sell the setting so well. The art style and layout reflect the revolutionary themes, and centering the districts around the music scenes in each of them is really effective at placing emphasis on the relationship between music and activism, not to mention the fact that you’re supplied soundtracks for specific beats in the story as well as for specific locations — and these soundtracks slap, and bring a very positive atmosphere which matches the art style. I absolutely vibed listening to the soundtracks while I read the book. It’s worth noting I had issues finding the soundtracks, though, mainly due to Spotify’s search function being abysmal — I let the author know, though, and it should be sorted by the time this goes live. The main complaint of the writing is that there’s too much of it: Arkos is a Gygaxian wall of text, and if you have trouble approaching walls of text, you’ll have trouble here. For me, the striking layout overcame the initial challenge, but it is not something I was able to read in one sitting.

    Luckily, I don’t think Arkos expects you to read it in one sitting: It opens with two tables of contents, one with what to read if you’re a player, and the other for the referee, featuring up front, a Prep section. After the prep section, there is a section on each of the 6 areas in the city, as well as one on “The Trigger”, the thing that can occur if the players pull on the right strings, which will unlock the sixth district and make significant geographical and political changes to the city. This same table of contents also pulls out the six sections which are buried within those cities, that you might want to access separately — shopping and such, mainly, as well as some subsystems that exist specifically for the city of Arkos.

    I love that Arkos isn’t a setting for Troika! that relies exclusively on backgrounds to build its’ setting, but it does have a short list of backgrounds — while they feel like a bit of an afterthought in terms of how much they don’t fit into the layout, they all place you squarely in Arkos. I just wish more of them placed you in relationship with the world. This is achieved in other ways, namely what Arkos adds to the Troika! character sheet: Stakes and Sparks. These are things you stand to lose, and things that connect you to the city, and give the players a little more information about what they might choose to do. These are just dynamite for a game that will so much revolve around intrigue and faction play, as well as social encounters in nightclubs and the like. In addition, there’s a party set of stakes and sparks, which gives the party a reason to get into the action as a team. Clever stuff, all that brings everything else in the book so much more to bear in the player character’s lives. These party sparks are a little less compelling than the individual ones, but it’s still an excellent idea.

    The Prep section is what you need to know to run Arkos — it more or less summarises the lore of the city, the events leading up to it, and the big secrets. It provides tips for challenging sections of the module, or things that might get missed — stuff that I feel must have just recurred in playtesting as issues. It describes what play will probably look like before and after the trigger occurs between Act 1 and Act 2. The idea of an Act 1 and Act 2 may make many people look askance — get your story game out of my emergent play — but really it’s just a way to describe how the players impacts are likely to result in a significant change occurring to the city of Arkos. It’s kind of like skipping straight to the big explosion at the end of the advancements in Magical Industrial Revolution. Honestly, it’s a really clever mechanic, which means that you can retreat the same territory with vastly different experiences, increasing the potential of the city two-fold, but without the expectation of years of play that comes in more graduated versions of it. It also breaks down how to read the ward descriptions, the factions in them, and how you should approach them, as well as the main antagonists and how best to utilise them.

    The first five wards follow a similar structure (although, importantly not the same: they’re all unique, and so one doesn’t have crowds, or one has magical cats that cause you to change your mood, etc.). They’re each 7-10 pages, and each have a series of very brief locations, characters, as well as highlights (which really helps — what do you want to make sure we hit in this location if you’re not sure what’s next?). The breadth here is astounding — from immigrant communities to fan communes to of course stores. Each has a micro-dungeon tied to its’ factions’ primary quest, and each has a nightclub which serves as the primary social location for each. The main concern with these wards is that they’re so intense to absorb, and in each of them there’s at least one random table that would benefit more from having a decision made about its contents: An example is the Altimus Wrench quest in the Ward of Glyphs, where his disappearance and nature as well as location is left up to chance. In a city this complex, with so many moving parts, I think it would relieve the referee a little to save the randomisation for things that benefit from it — the unexpected goings on of the city, specifically — and not for the goals of quests or the nature of leaders (which is another example that occurs in Ward Zero). The sixth ward, Omnus Ward, is far more complex, has multiple districts within it that you can visit, each with its’ own encounters and its own dangers. And it’s dangerous: It’s honestly more of a dungon than a ward. But it still follows a similar structure to the others, as best it can.

    The dungeons in Arkos are probably its’ weakest link; but this is Troika!, and the truth is the style of dungeon in Troika! is more one of engaging scene to engaging scene than exploration and puzzle-solving. I’m not sure that the dungeons not being as spatially complex or puzzling as many of the others I review is a valid complaint, although it may impact your enjoyment of Arkos if you enjoy dungeons as more than a set of scenes to proceed through. The main dungeon, The Mind Fortress, however, is a much better proposition. There is a collection puzzle to move from the first to the second floor, there is clever colour coding to differentiate rooms, and the themes are pretty compelling. It feels more like a set-piece, where the smaller dungeons feel like distractions from the real fun of engaging in the city. That said, one strength of all of these dungeons are the excellent maps by Geremia Gayaud — they’re full of personality and information, and deserve a lot of praise.

    As well as the maps, all the art in Arkos is well selected, as I mentioned earlier, but I didn’t talk about how well the art and writing work together — better than I’ve seen before, to be honest, in a product with so many collaborators. The art really complements the writing in a way that seems very, very intentional: For example, the character of Zyre-Zye, a musician and revolutionary leader from a brutal war-torn planet, uses they/them pronouns (just in text, there’s no indication otherwise, which I also like). In a sci-fantasy setting, this doesn’t mean a lot, but in combination with the art featuring top-surgery scars and a beard, far more about the character is communicated through the juxtaposition of art and text than the text itself ever spoke of. In a book where the writing is so dense, its’ meaningful that they manage to cram even more communication about the world into the art than most products do.

    Arkos is a sparkling but messy, city supplement. The messiness feels intentional, adds to its appeal, and fits the themes, although it can detract from usability at times. At the time of writing, this is in my opinion the definitive Troika! module and setting rolled into one. I have trouble finding a pitch to get a Troika! table together: This is my pitch, now. As a referee, this is everything I need to run a Troika! campaign, it fits perfectly with the core setting, and it is so much better than any of the official content I’ve read, and it smartly allows for play to continue based out of the city of Arkos, meaning I can drop all of my other Troika! modules right in here.

    If you’re a referee who runs Troika!, or want to run Troika!, Arkos is the both the best module and city available right now. It’s vibrant, evocative, and clear enough in its’ execution that it’s easy to run with a minimum of prep — and, it walks you right through that prep! But it’s a city, and a module combined, which means it’s very very high density. This density means it’s too dense to run in digital format, and for me it’s completely unnavigable on a screen. And the choice of binding in print fails the book, because it can’t lay flat, and sometimes you’re doing damage to the spine in order to get read the first few letters of a sentence. If you can look past those flaws and you never could figure how to actually run Troika!, Arkos is for you.

    Idle Cartulary

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

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  • Zungeon Zunday: Cacogenic Vats

    In 2025 I’m reviewing zungeon zines. They’re stream of consciousness and unedited critiques, just like Bathtub Reviews, but they’ll be a little briefer. The goal here is a little different: I want to spotlight what a craft-based, just-do-it approach to module writing can do.

    Cacogenic Vats is an 11 page zungeon by Operant Game Lab. In it, you investigate a horrible shrine, only to find out that it is secretly a wizard’s cloning lab, invaded by a group of raiders while the wizard’s clone builds his strength after a recent death.

    The three hooks included here are fun — all providing a different reason to explore the dungeon. The random encounter table is an elegant, one-monster affair — the only problem is that the gradual progression of the clone breaking out of its vat really isn’t tension-building — in a movie you’d cut to each step. You aren’t going to know anything is happening unless you keep passing by room 8. I think a smart move would’ve been to place this room at the central hub of the dungeon, making a visual reminder that something is coming.

    There are 9 foes in the bestiary, and they come up next in the book — these are all well described, but I think it may be better off placed in the text, as it’s a lot to absorb at once. The dungeon text itself is well organised — an explanation of the primary colour puzzle is up front, as is an explanation of what the players expect, and what they find. Empty rooms aren’t uninteresting, although they don’t tell much story. The interactive rooms themselves, are fun. The primary faction is fun, but I’d have preferred they be in more overt opposition to Sxixis the wizard; I’d tweak this a little so that the assassin might be turned against them, appropriately, I think, or that they could be bargained with against Sxixis.

    I really enjoy the deceitful premise of the module — the shrine hasn’t lost its power, but rather its’ illusion has dropped due to the unfortunate death of the wizard maintaining it, and hence the heroes will be entirely out of their depth. And that is a lot of fun, to me. The main issue is that the two factions aren’t primed for interaction — honestly, in a module of this size, it’s a benefit to have them both negotiating with the party to break the balance of power, rather than have that negotiation be an option.

    Layout here is basic, simple, and clear, as are the maps. There’s no issues with legibility here at all. I honestly love the rudimentary art style — it suits the stunted descriptions of the clones, and feels like it might well be Sxixis’ own hand doing the drawing.

    Overall, Cacogenic Vats is a solid little zungeon. With just a few small tweaks, it’s perfect to be folded into your existing campaign, or to be used as a one-shot. As a pay what you want product, Cacogenic Vats a no brainer if you’re running OSE or B/X.

    Idle Cartulary

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

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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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