A dungeon by M. Allen Hall, for “low-level”
Written for OSE
   Hey, check it, OSE; two-years-ago’s most popular game in the universe, now shockingly abandoned. I don’t mind it, it’s just B/X, and B/X is lingua franca of the OSR. This module in particular is about as standard as it gets too, four-pager with a cover page, an explainer/setup/bestiary page (back cover), a page of keys, and a map. Would classify as a valid adventure site submission for the contest, and I wouldn’t get map about the information organization or writing at all. Only quibble is that “low-levels”.
   The story of the dungeon is actually very different indeed. Mad wizard attacks dwarven temple, takes over, melts all gold down into circuitry, enslaves a treasure hunter into being a Control Weather monkey to constantly summon lightning storms against the peaks, turns himself into an electro-lich, starts experimenting on how to raise a massive electrified army of the dead to conquer, uh, stuff. Speaking as an Electrical Engineering major, I can affirm this is a completely realistic and reasonable usage of electricity. Players come into contact with the dungeon because it’s full of legendary treasure and/or the wizard’s magic. Very reasonable motivation.
   What I liked first of all here was the monster setup (although it makes me wonder about what we consider “low-level”). The bestiary is just five things, all on-theme, with just minor tweaks to make them all electric, all making plenty of sense. The lich gets recharged on his throne if brought to zero, the skeletons have a single-use zap attack that’s recharged at nice obvious charging stations, adds just enough interest. I’m not sure how turning interacts with undead who’ve been raised by mad science, not necromantic magic, but that’s okay. Loot being melted-gold circuits that also zap you? Love that.
   Outside of what you do with a cleric, what can be improved first is, uh, “gimmie some magic loot”. There’s a lot of enemy hit dice here to fight, and while the gold rewards are fantastic, the only loot is Boots of Speed and “a scroll”, nothing unique or flavorful based on where you are. The “adept” casting continuous Control Weather is also handwaved, which is kind of nuts. Margins are generous here, I think you could take the extra space to describe just a bit more. Map is isometric, which isn’t terrible given the size, but it does manage to obscure how linear it winds up being. Some horrible Frankenstein res device wouldn’t go amiss either.
   All that aside, best use case is to make this a fine and dandy little one-off little adventure site. It’s fresh, it works well in theme, it’s rewarding. Just make sure it’s before your players get consistent energy resistance and figure out the turning rules ahead of time. I’d be happy using this in my games.
   Final Rating? ***/***** at about the max something this scale and scope can be asked for. OSE getting well-represented here.

A horror dungeon by K. Heath, for levels unknown…
…because written for no system in particular.
   Whaaaat am I doing? This sucker is huge, forty pages long, written system-agnostic, and horror (which is not my cuppa). I guess I’m just a sucker for scifi…this is my least-favorite flavor of scifi, post-apocalyptic, but hey, it’s got the promise of a six-level, fifteen(ish) room per level, complex exploration, that’s pretty neat. Margins are generous and the font, while flavorful, is clear, so it’s not all that bad. The levels are supposed to be randomly generated from a 3d12 roll for a dozen different map sections and the monsters/traps/items are all prerolled too, which makes me nervous that there’s not even a coherent story to the location…
   …which boy howdy is incorrect. There will be many critiques to level against Elysium, but “incomplete story” sure as heck ain’t one of them. There’s a lot going on. There was a nuclear war and everything is going to crap. You’re all a bunch of explorers (six pregens provided) trying to figure out the source of transmissions/power from Elysium Corp’s massive field of spikes and arrays supplying everyone in the society personalized individual prophecies from tabernacles, little boxes sold to encourage the population. Also once the facility is breached it becomes clear that they went HARD onto the mad science trying to “find god”, first scanning the heavens, then looting all the relics of Earth’s religions, then pushing test subject to find a deity within, then turning them into brains-in-robots, then uploading them to a massive evil computer core that might as well be a minor deity. Er, also, they made a lot of horror monsters along the way.
   Have fun kids.
   So while horror is not to my personal taste, what I liked was how well-executed a lot of the horror is. The monsters are gross and scary, the atmosphere is haunting, every level has a different theme, which is cool. The simple system implied, with the health-and-sanity tracks, works pretty well for a focused horror three-shot. I like how the military vet pregen has two states, sober with +2 INT and a max sanity at 60%, or drunk with -2 INT but max sanity at 120%. The backstory/setup really is about perfect in terms of amount of detail vs. leaving things vague.
    …but I’m going to also have a lot in what can be improved. First of all, those procedurally generated maps/traps. I get it, the initial idea seems to be giving them a new layout every time they leave and return, but that’s both a huge hassle in terms of GM overhead and, even worse, means that the maps and traps and encounters have to be rather generic. The maps aren’t a lot to explore and the whole thing becomes a little too small. Ninety-ish rooms, sure, but the vast majority are boring and empty. Everything flavorful noted above has to get drained so it can function as well in level 1 as in level 6. Bummer.
   Best use case here is probably to run it as a slightly edgy horror one-shot if you like slightly edgy horror. Scifi maps are rare, so there’s some utility in that page full of tech-tileset geomorph maps, simple as they are. Art is detailed enough to be used in other techno-horror settings.
   Final Rating? ***/***** with an extra bump if you really dig the vibe and don’t mind the extra homework. Pity about the vagueness letting some of the really vivid ideas down.

Get it today and PLAY MORE.

A lair by Karly Andersen, for levels diegetic
Written for Cairn
   More Cairn, now with even tinier dungeons…oh boy. Remember what I said about page count to room ratios? Well, this time, we’ve got a nine-room dungeon in an eighteen-page project, very colorful, rife with illustrations and quirkiness and odd little stories. It’s all written very conversational single-column, headers are bright and clear, and the editor is also credited as emotional support. You know what we’re getting. Heck, taking a single look at the twee art style, we all know what we’re getting:

 Four(ish) adventures for levels many, by Matthew Austin\
​Written for Shadowdark
Ah, a good ole’ compilation. Been a minute since I’ve gotten one of these in my “to review” pile. This one’s a review copy sent by online friend Lord Matteus, including one that’s a modification/reprint of an itch.io module I bumped into a while ago. In this compilation, we’re looking at four adventures (okay, three and a smaller scenario/trap room) written over for over a hundred thirty pages. It’s…a lot. I don’t object to the plan here, but I do get a little nervous when I see high page-to-site ratios. Still, there’s some Art Stuff and Layout happening here, so it’s not heavy blocks of text. Let’s dive in.
First, a caveat. These are, by and large, horror adventures. I don’t usually go in for horror-focused adventures. Touches, sure, and I’m not particularly squeamish, but it’s not something that’s a core appeal to me. So, when I’m reviewing these adventures, it’s going to be primarily me looking for them as adventures qua adventures. I leave the judgement to how hard the horror hits to the LotFP fans and other such enthusiasts. Fortunately, all of these are legitimate locations to explore, so this lens should be fruitful.
Before going into adventures, the module does make a point to explain the elements of horror. Obviously given its Shadowdark there’s a strong recommendation to heavily use torch timers and the menace of darkness. The game master is also instructed to focus on depleting resources steadily, limiting agency naturalistically, and to give false hope before making the situation even worse. All of these are more module-design than game running, but the final bit of advice, to play up descriptions in lieu of shorthand…it’s not a zombie, it’s a rotting corpse, etc. All good advice/goals for the given set of objectives. It’s a short one-pager and then we’re off to the races…

 Adventure 1: The Haunting of Ashtonshire Keep
Probably the most traditional adventure, this one’s your classic “ruined keep haunted by dead witch” setup. In this case the witch was a baroness who’d sunk her claws into the noble and good Baron Ashton and got herself hanged for her troubles. As usual, the hanging didn’t quite take…now children are being enticed in dreams, mists and shadows arise, all good signs that more fightin’ is needed. The village nearby is given enough description to run as a base for expeditions along with a few clues about what’s going on if the players are sleuth types. Hooks are a good mix of “you’re noble”, “you’re hapless bumblers”, and more interestingly “lost knight” and “lost heirloom”. All fair, c’mon, it’s a ruin, let’s explore because otherwise we don’t have Shadowdark tonight.
Maps are solid. As is standard with realistic fortification maps, layout is pretty stolid and predictable, broken up by the fires’ destruction in some places. The two-story keep and dungeons beneath do have multiple linkages, which is good, and chimneys are also noted for climbing. Exploration of the site’s twenty-eight rooms should take up a good solid session, or maybe two if the players waste a lot of village time and need to retreat once or twice. It won’t be a highly pressured trip, at least…

    Because this is a dead ruin. You know what that means…undead and vermin as monsters. No interactive/intelligent creatures to talk with, which is correct for the atmosphere going with, but it means the gameplay can be somewhat languid. Despite the static nature of the location the fights are reasonably dynamic once an individual room gets wandered into. Random encounters aren’t monsters, it’s “witch is messing with us” effects for spooky portents, torch/morale effects, and at the top end a sudden witch appearance to attack for one round. Much anger to the players, but a good way to show the endboss early. The final confrontation happens if a noose is hung on a tree, which can stop the witch from respawning every single equinox. Nasty fight, but the real cost is the fact that the noose is also a valuable magic item.
I note with approval that unlike most horror adventures, this one is not treasured like a one-shot. This dungeon has legit treasure, both in cash (just remember to increase amounts if used in gp=XP systems) and in magic items. A righteous hammer is given at the outset, a magic shield can be found in the biggest-loot room, there’s the noose, the witch’s spellbook is a nice boon for chaotic witch characters or can be otherwise burned for XP. Solid mix and distribution.
Use in games will be campaign-dependent. I dig the map layout and I think the spooky ruin atmosphere is something I’d run with, the witch herself is a good fight-monster. The lower dungeon has relatively understated but still obvious theme of child torture/sacrifice, which ain’t a subject matter I host at my table. Easily elided, however, and if that’s your jam then that’s something to add to the horror. Good solid adventure site.  

 Adventure 2: Return of the White Wizard
So I’ve reviewed an old version of this one before; it’s a transmutation adventure themed around blobby-squick mutations. This version does a lot more in the initial setup, with a the titular White Wizard, having Returned, spreading mutation-effects among the locals, including the PCs if you want a really hooky darn hook. The mutation table is pretty gnarly, with some genuinely beneficial results but definitely averaging on the terrible. A 2d6 table, snake eyes means you die and boxcars means you become a possessed thrall. Yeah, that’s some motivation to go down the ol’ goop-hole. I’m using this table.
Before reaching the lair, there’s a lot going on with the hex its within. The local village is given a brief sketch, mostly boiling down to “this sucks, we’re all mutating”, but then you travel through a woodland with the local wildlife also full of mutations and some of the local points of interest quite interesting. The mutant couple is just kind of gross but I like the rival adventure party camped out and confused what to do with one of their number turned into a monster-mutant-thrall. Good method of building tension and showing stakes.

    The lair proper, a ruined two-story structure with two levels of dungeon underneath, has a simple but effective map. I like the teleporters making the uppermost story the default way into the belowground. It’s more linear than Ashtonshire Keep but there’s also a little more room in general, with enough nooks and crannies to make a satisfying two-session exploration by default…although a sufficiently panicked/determined party in a hurry to cure Dave’s dwarf might make it to the end in four hours. The cure is for the infection only by default, but kind GMs are told to let it undo mutations if the players hate ‘em.
This dungeon is most assuredly not a dead one. Random encounters are a whole gamut of custom mutant monsters (plus dire rats or gibbering mouthers, natch), plus plenty of nasty goop-beasts among the room keys. Traps are mostly in the “mess with the vat” style, making for an extremely hazardous environment. It’s a high level (well, by Shadowdark standards) adventure, that’s fine, your PCs are big boys. The final boss is once again Traxar the White Wizard, an evil bald bearded elf(!) loaded down with custom transmutation spells (and yes, his spellbook is available). He’s not an easy fight, and we’re in lich territory with him not being fully destroyed unless his clones and brain are destroyed along with his robes.
Oh yeah, the White Robes are back from the first edition. It was my favorite bit of the original and I think they’re my favorite once again…wearing the robes gives a huge set of bonuses, but each adventuring day there’s a Charisma check or the wearer starts turning into Traxar. Nice. The other treasure is a bit low on cash but good on magic items, there are some excellent weapons along with stuff like a master-crafted loom to make enchanted cloth and the spellbooks.
There are quite a few added transmutation spells here too. Most are in the “touch to make goopy” or buff/debuff type, but those are good. To replace the Shadowdark-standard wizard magic mishap table there’s a much nastier (and more flavorful) transmutation mishap table. Powerful magic around but again this is big-boy level.
Campaign integration on this one is pretty easy. It’s a hex troubled by a problem who happens to also own a ton of filthy lucre, we’re in every game’s happy spot. Content-wise, the gross stuff isn’t nearly as easy to sidestep as the dead kids were before, so groups comprised of 90’s kids traumatized by Nickelodeon programming might want to skip, but it’s otherwise a well-written adventure/site.  

 Adventure 3: She (The Final Rehearsal)
So, how do you feel about Suspiria? If you’re most people, the answer is “what’s that?” If you’re a smaller number of people, then it’s “oh yeah, that’s the trippy 70’s movie, right?” If you’re the smaller number of people who answer “heck yeah” then I think this adventure is for you. That’s not to say its not broadly applicable, but it means we’re definitely in cult classic territory.
Speaking of cults, this is one of those. In particular this is a cult dedicated the She of the Eternal Spring, a demoness who oversees a ritual that drains youth from dancers for adherents to imbibe. This cult is designed to be a big campaign-spanning organization, complete with networks of various levels of eternally youthful patrons and artists. It’s an entire campaign plot, essentially, with enough details to run an urban 0-10 campaign with this as one of the main antagonist factions. Or, it can be more minor, even just the Academy of St. Hebe as the cult locus. There’s a unique Shadowdark class, the Warlock of She, who is all about being pretty and eating youth.
St. Hebe is a school of art run by these metaphorical vampires, and boy howdy it is big. Massive realistic two-story 19th-century building map, designed to be wandered through as guests, students, or sneak-thieves. Given scale and openness of the environment, full of living people, this is not a place to treat like a dungeon, it’s more of a setting.
As is most important with an open/social setting, St. Hebe’s inhabitants are the focus. The various teachers and headmistresses and such all supernaturally beautiful and youthful and evil, and the students are mostly victims, which leads to the actual adventure part…
The Final Rehearsal, which is set up as a 0th-level gauntlet where your player characters are prospective initiates or sacrificial victims. This is a social adventure, so there’s a whole subsystem dealing with favor points and earning benefits via performance or artistry while ideally the players figure out what’s going on. Gauntlet adventures are supposed to be highly lethal, so I dig that there’s a “you get sacrificed” failure state but its going to be a very complicated thing to run. Which is probably a plus if you want to be running a social campaign in an urban milieu, might as well toss you into the deep in.
If you want this kind of thing, this is exactly the best example of this kind of thing. If you’re just going to want to dungeon crawl, the big maps are nice but it’s not statted or looted ideally for that (frankly wasteful) use case.  

 Adventure 4: I Like You
This isn’t really a full adventure; this is an escape room. The setup is that this is a catastrophically negative result on the Shadowdark carousing table, where a demon grabs the party while drunk and they wake up in a Saw movie. It’s a tiny sub-dimension in Hell, just the size of a room, packed with pain-causing deathtraps. The puzzles are all pretty solid, the demon is enjoying the pain anytime a PC screws up, and if the players succeed they escape. It’s a very specific, very punishing, encounter/trap, which is what the module says. If you have multiple players who love puzzles, this is heaven for them. If you, as most of us, have a table where there One Puzzle Guy and everyone else wants to just go stab…maybe this is for 1-on-1 play. Or, just use the puzzles in other dungeons as parts of a greater whole. The demoness is statted and a decent fight.

​The whole compilation is hard to break down on simple star ratings, because as is so often the case with horror, it’s going to be up to you and your table how much you want. The horror can be genuinely horrific and moody if leaned in to, but it can also be pulled back, especially in the first couple of adventures. Everything is well-executed, and I think I’ll have use for pieces from every single one of them even as Not Particularly a Horror Guy, which you can take as an endorsement. It’s one heck of an accomplishment regarding its scale and ambition, and also an easy-to-parse module. Well done there.  

​   You’ve all been waiting for it, but now it is time.
   You’ve laughed.
   You’ve cried.
   You’ve been on tenterhooks, reading all the reviews (or listening in some cases). Now, at long last, you can know the answer to your most burning question…
   Which of the FORTY ADVENTURES submitted made it into the top eight? Who’s the new King of the Adventure Sites?
   Well, all the judges have spoken, and now we have them. All eight are excellent adventure sites, sites I’m proud to publish in the compilation. Competition for the top spots was extremely close, leading to a few ties in third and fourth place, but in the end, the winner and runner-up are clear.
   I’m extremely grateful to everyone who’s submitted this year, and I hope all of you consider submitting again. Over half of the sites I personally found usable enough to put onto my own campaign’s map, and I hope everyone who submits finds the feedback helpful, ideally to be able to take what they’ve made, fix it up a bit, and publish it independently to riches and fame. All that said, only the top eight selected by the panel of judges make it into Adventure Sites III, so without further ado, our finalists are…
   Albariño’s Icy Cellar, by Zonaru
   At last, we have a DRAGON LAIR among the finalist, this one a massive icy fortress of sweeping scope and ambition, not just a white dragon lair but also a full-up crawling fortress filled with mad dwarves and a full-up shadow demon. This is exactly what AD&D should be, and I look forward to my own players hitting this place when they next venture into the nearby glaciers.

   Crawling Maw of Malakor, by Danger Is Real
   Both “abandoned wizard lair” and “goblin caves” are such common tropes that they almost seem trite, but this one shows that if you mash the two together and add a hearty helping of Field Folio plus poison, you have a beautiful site full of danger, treasure, and a whole heck of a lot of poison saves. Memorable and clever, this one was great when my own players hit it…I just wish they’d rolled worse on those saves.

   Dweller in the Mist, by Sandbox Sorcerer
   This one is wild, and if we were having an art contest I think it would have won best cover in a heartbeat. It’s got it where it counts gameplay-wise, too…this thing has pizzazz out the wazoo with a crazy tropical island adventure chock-a-block with on-theme men and monsters all leading up to the DRAGON LAIR of the titular dweller in the mist. My parties aren’t, uh, partying in the oceanic tropics right now but the next time they set sail you better believe this stuffed little island is going on an ocean hex.

   Ophidian Temple, by Scott M.
   Still in the jungle but now amidst thick steaming dark-heart terrain, the drums and incense of returning finalist Scott M’s snakeman temple drips with a savage flavor, as befits the temple of a snake-gorilla demon. The clever mechanics like choking deadly incense clouds coupled with wonderful pressure-plate traps made this a blast when my group hit it just this past week. Classic and flavorful at the same time, a wonderful place to visit, just mind the giant ants.

   Rockall, by Stooshie
   Another returner from previous finals, this time around Stooshie presented us another ocean hex location, this time a hag-ridden, roc-haunted, merfolk-laden sea stack loaded down with the treasures of countless shipwrecks for a novel underwater adventure that has a lot of above-the-surface action too. Straining the bounds of what B/X can do at the eXpert levels, this thing will delight my players when they go back to voyaging…after roc and hag ruin their favorite caravel, of course.

   Spiteful Spring, by Zathras Adventures
   Coming equipped with frankly too much of a good think in the form of its manifold beautiful maps, Spiteful Spring leans into the ACKS setting with a nymph-haunted bathhouse ruin, infested by vermin and bandits and orcs and ghosts and a witch and giant frogs…sure, it’s Auran Empire, but it also translates perfectly well to any world that has ruined baths and villas, like my own…and this was an excellent jaunt for a low-level party hunting for fortune amidst civilization’s tumbled wreckage. It executed great, just what we want in a lowbie site.

   …but all of those came behind our penultimate site, a place of howling winds and ice and death:

Look to the compilation to release in the next couple weeks. I’m a little busy with other projects too but this one needs to be out in the world ASAP. You’re all going to love it, trust me.

A dungeon by Andrew Cavanagh, for levels diegetic
Written for Cairn
   When you’ve been doing this gig as long as I have, you’re able to identify danger signs with itch.io adventures. Chief amongst those danger signs, I regret to inform you, is the dreadful word “Cairn 2E”. As in all things, however, there can be mitigating factors. Eight pages for a thirteen-room dungeon? Better ratio. Using a Dyson map? Better than normal dreck. Lots of information loaded onto tables? Better conveyance than normal, too. It’s a dungeon adventure, which is a lot harder to mess up than an outdoor hex-or-point-crawl. Let’s head in cautiously hopeful.
   …and UH OH, BAD SIGNAL…we have a list of possible quests and d4 different potential titular Frost Witches. My usual answer for these things is “it’s all of them”, and there’s some coherence if we do that. A local horrible warlord’s son has been stolen, but the son is actual the witch’s originally and was stolen by the village mayor’s cult, also there’s encroaching ice from her ritual magic staff but there ritual is stopped by holding this icy heart thing and also there’s a noble frozen by the witch who’s really nice but he’s secretly a wight. This is a lot. I ain’t gonna hate on it.
   What I liked first was this merry stew of potential interest all meeting together in a tiny little map, if it was played in a real system you could in fact have fun with it. I liked most of the quests well enough, and there’s potential there for most of them to turn into something a lot more interesting in a fleshed-out region. I like how there’s a player map of the site with in-universe notes of dubious helpfulness, that’s a good artifact. Axe that attacks based on WIL but then keeps you awake with visions of bloodlust is neat. Witch freezing and breaking non-magical weapons that damage her is also a nice defensive ability.
   Alas, the map itself in my “what can be improved” bucket. It’s functional, but the “open site with several side-passages” doesn’t mesh well with the keys, it makes instead for an awkward flow through the site. This isn’t actually a dungeon, functionally, it’s a few lairs co-located with a linked theme. As always when you don’t have a single story/character but a table with multiple options, some of them are also much much more compelling than others, cull those options down. There are also some very Cairn-esque moments of diegetic fuzziness where some rules would be good. The witch has had some kind of trauma causing her to go all trauma, but it’s left iffy as to how that’s done. There’s a mirror that shows the worst memory of a person’s life for…some effect. Storygame fodder, but storygames need more setup.
   Best use case on this one is probably to use this as a lair/adventure in a real system, there are also a few mechanical bits and bobs (like the witchy freeze armor and the warlord’s axe) that can be taken for other games. Not quite the buffalo, usable in all parts, but there’s stuff to pull.
   Final rating? **/***** with a small bonus if you like the themes. It’s workable and not hateful, sometimes that’s all we can ask from these things. 

​   This is exciting. Our first published novel, Freedom's Vow, is up for preorder now. Karen and I have written more than a few, but there has to be a time when you stop just producing and instead start sharing. This is the first novel in an already-written trilogy, the Shepherd Trilogy set in our Greek-inspired Three Seas setting. The back-of-the-book blurb catches us pretty well:

   It's epic fantasy, high on adventure, something right up the alley of most of you who read this. The setting is secondary-world (so not Our Earth), and not anywhere near Ye Olde England, but the Greek influence makes it familiar too. If you're interested in reading something set in the Three Seas before buying, we have a novelette in the world as a freebie for signing up for our newsletter. Hey, free fiction, check it out.
   I'm proud of this story. I think it's really good, hitting the spot for anyone who loved reading fantasy before "Hard Magic", LitRPG, and Romantasy consumed the whole genre. Everyone who's read it so far enjoyed it too...and frankly, that's the most gratifying part of the whole thing. I'd still love it if you'd be able to check it out (and hey, it's on Kindle Unlimited, so you can even do that for free if you have a promotional month). I know this is good enough to be successful but in the Year A.D. 2026, that's only part of it. There are a ton of books being released out there every week, and it's hard even for something well-made to get noticed. We're releasing this whole trilogy regardless of sales but this is something we'd love to be able to do a lot more, so if you could help Karen and I out in this, we'd be forever grateful. 
​   On to adventure, my friends....

​A squarecrawl by Golden Achiever, for level 1.
Written for 100 Million B.C.
   There really should be more caveman adventures. There’s a lot of entertainment to be had playacting as a hooting pack of cavemans, thumping and bumping your way through a land filled with prehistoric animals, wielding thighbones and sharp rocks, inventing rope and fire, communicating primarily via grunts. It’s not a very serious prospect, but everyone needs a funny break every now and then. This is a little trifold crawl with less than a dozen keyed “hexes” (actually squares), perfect for a one-shot. Written with just enough Land Before Time-speak (bigmouth, man-eater, tree-grabber, etc) for flavor, the prose otherwise gets out of the way and just lets the humor emerge naturally. 
   Our scenario is just good clean disaster from a “caveman crisis” table. River dry. Need water back. Go plateau, fix river. Don’t die to sky-things (pterodactyls) or land-things (t-rexes) or water-things (giant frogs I think). Negotiate with the friendly local cannibals. Figure out how to move the wounded dying brontosaurus to unblock the river. Usual caveman stuff, just another day in the Stone Age. 
   I’m going to state for the record that what I liked on this one was the theme, hard to go wrong on that one for me. I liked the key descriptions too, well done understanding how a hexcrawl one-shot works. The personalities of your own tribe and the locals are well-conveyed, which is important, because as droll as it is to hit a dinosaur with club, it’s even more fun to cave-talk at other hairy hominids. Squarecrawl map is simple but it looks pretty decent. Weather table looks good.
   I’m less impressed with random encounter table, that’s part of what can be improved to add more interactive bits. The map’s orientation is a little bit unclear, I think I’ve groked it but if you told me the whole region is the plateau then I’d also believe you there. Simplicity of wording might be going too far in the monster behavior bit, we’re at “they attack” level when clever cavemen really ought to have more levers to overcome their monster challenge. This is particularly egregious with the brontosaur blockage, need to know how to unplug things a bit more. 
   Am talk more simple. Best use case am use for one shot. Make cave mans. Go bonk monster. Have fun. There’s not a lot to extract from the little trifold that’s broadly usable outside of its intended context, but that’s hard to critique very much when it seems written for a system built around that game type. 
   Final Rating? **/***** and a resounding hearty OOK. I won’t over-rating something this insubstantial but it’s a fun little notion. Good job Golden Achiever.

A scenario by OK, Robot for level nills.
Written for Mothership
   One of the deepest, most profound, questions someone may ask is when they look upon some horrific botch of an adventure is “who sinned, this man or his rule system?” Do some systems just lead to extra-terrible adventures? Or perhaps is it that warped and benighted souls are drawn to terrible RPG systems. I will tell you it is neither; this adventure was written so that the terribleness of horror scenario writing may be made known. 
   Bad sign Numero Uno: It is a pamphlet trifold. 
   Bad sign Numero Dos: It is written for Mothership. 
   Bad sign Numero Tres: It has one of those block-diagram-style maps for its eleven rooms.  
   Bad sign Number Four: It’s an underwater adventure. 
   Bad sign V: The credited artist/writer literally calls itself “robot”.
   I don’t know if all of these things add up to “AI made this” or if it is just the standard insipid demi-edgelord stylings put through the LLM-like filter of an unquiet mind. You have a lost underwater research station. It went quiet. It was infiltrated by the mind of a sentient geological subduction zone. The AI is mad and all seven scientists (using six bunks) are zombies. Standard stuff,  and I can’t even point to the LLM-characteristic innumeracy as a tell, because Mothership Writers Don’t Like Math. 
   I’m going to dive deeper than an oceanic trench myself in an effort to discover what I liked. It’s nice that there are notes around the base in decent voice, and the dead half-zombie crewman stuffed in a closest with a mouthful of water and the note “shoot me if I start humming” is pretty solid. Color-coding, while garish, does effectively highlight within the keys. Otherwise…
   What can be improved is to first and foremost refactor your genuinely unique cause-of-monster (intelligent geological feature) into something that has more unique results than “station AI is crazy, crew are zombies”. That’s the most trite standard-issue enemy set possible for a horror scenario, and no, the fact that the zombies try to infect via singing don’t make it better. Map could be improved by making it interesting to explore, environment could be improved by having the deep-sea setting actually matter outside of window dressing, and module could be improved by setting it on fire.
   The best use case for this adventure is to print it out multiple times on your work printers as an act of petty vengeance again the office supply manager. Yeesh that’s a lot of black ink. Otherwise, this is a fine exemplar of a Mothership adventure, probably top 95%. 
   Final Rating? */***** and a sad trombone. Despite the name protesting otherwise, this robot is not okay.