​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. 

   I know, I know, you want to hear about Adventure Sites 3. Trust me, it's coming...our last judge, Owen Edwards, if reviewing them on his YouTube channel in batches but he's getting me ratings soon. But there's another little contest being run in the meanwhile, Olle Skogren's Monstrous Mash. His Delightful Dungeons a year and a half ago was quite charming, and this time he's looking even smaller. Set-piece encounters from random rolls on the (quite good) ACKS II MM tables is a good idea, and shouldn't be too hard to write, either. If you get the chance to check it out, I can recommend the exercise for your own game-running skills. Dungeons are great but there's a whole big wilderness out there to explore too.

An adventure for level 1 by Jordan Thompson
Written for Shadowdark
   There’s a definite sub-category of Shadowdarkians who use the system primarily to play pirate-themed games. I don’t know why…I reviewed the core system in quite a lot of detail and nary a whit was seen about the shivering of timbers or the avasting of me hearties. Nevertheless, the nongame that is Pirate Borg doesn’t seem like enough for the RPGer who wants to be both swashbuckling and trendy. I don’t hate it, just don’t understand it. It’s a fine theme for RPG adventures, at least.
   In this particular pirate-themed Shadowdark adventure (seventeen rooms over eight pages), we’re in the classic “cursed buried treasure” territory with a legendary pirate queen sitting on a bunch of her booty in a sea cave, undead of course. I’m delighted to report she is, in fact, a bleeding ghost, unlike the skeleton portrayed on the front (beautifully done cover by the way, Mr. Thompson’s relative Cassandra seems like quite the artist). There’s also haunting music playing throughout the caves by an octopus on a pipe organ, because we’ve all seen the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise.
   I’ll start what I liked by being genuinely positive towards the map. It’s got multiple meaningful paths running through it, one an actual waterway, as well as three points of egress. Couple that with the diagrams working hard to show traps depicted on the main map and lots of cute doodads actually reflecting the contents of each room? Yessir, this is an admirable map. I like several of those clever traps, like a pool of sharp corals, a trap that dumps oil on water and lights it, sand-and-spike trap…it’s all solid. Good “stuff to mess with” too like a statue that blesses bleeders but curses vandals by turning them into fish. Solid.
   What can be improved most of all is applying some of that febrile imagination in the actual monster encounters. Skeletons attack. Castaways and mermen negotiate. Bleeding ghosts blood-scream. The octopus, uh, plays the organ and then attacks. It’s all very standard. Treasure is also a little bit insipid, which seems to be a Standard Shadowdark Problem. Nothing awful, but values are hard to translate to better XP systems and the magic items are meh. Ostensibly there are factions here but everyone is just sitting around in their rooms or on the somewhat labored random encounter chart. Which, by the way…1d6 darkmantles is potentially a little nasty for level 1’s, just sayin’.
   There’s a best use case here that’ll surprise nobody…just use this as an undead pirate adventure. There’s maybe a little bit to steal from with the traps but it all works together pretty well. You got a seafaring campaign loaded with pirates and mermaids and undead, throw this one at ‘em, they’ll have good time.
   Final Rating? **/***** because while nothing in here is particularly original or sparks joy, this is a competently made little dungeon module, worth using in a pinch.

​A dungeon by Nate Treme, level non
Written for Knave
   This month is "pamphlet dungeons by Nate Treme and Shadowdark jam results" if the theme wasn't otherwise obvious. Yeah, I don't know either. Look, itch.io giveth, itch.io giveth more of the same. You know the deal, two pages designed to be printed out and folded. As usual, the fold pattern is different with every single pamphlet product. This one is a seven-room dungeon, for what its worth.
   I don't know what a bat-serpent is, but the locals are being troubled by one lately. A temple previously devoted to some type of goddess is now taken over by a eye-takey-outy cult who worship the bat serpent. Hate it when that happens to my mountain temples. The front part of the little zone is a temple area, the back part is a hidden cave lair zone, all good. I don't know WHY there's a pond in one of the caves with a mermaid, but hey, one more encounter for the pile. Fight eyeless things and defeat the demon bat-serpent then cheer for your victory over the forces of somewhat less metaphorical than usual darkness. 
   I'm a simple man. What I liked were the temple themes and how the mess-with-it pool of water interacted with this cult's peculiar form of worship (moonshine and the pool is filled with severed eyes). Some very good mess-with-the-thing content in here, like the secret door being revealed by turning bat idols 180 and grave markers that do absolutely nothing unless messed with pointlessly (then it's skele-time). Treasure is flavorful, I'm always a fan of silver dentures as loot. Interaction is light but present in the form of the mermaid.
   ...which, hey, let's go with that as the first of what can be improved...THE MERMAID DROWNS PEOPLE IN HER POOL, THERE SHOULD BE LOOT DOWN THERE. Feels like kind of a big miss. Actually, upon reflection, it's more than a little weird how all the loot in the caves is found in handy-dandy chests. That's more videogame than it should be. The random encounters are, uh...definitely random. Bit too high on the "signs and portents" like shadows moving weird and lights going out, need more gnarly fights in this otherwise pretty sparse fighty place. The linear map isn't a problem, really, but more complexity would definitely not go amiss. We can always do better. Like writing it for a real system instead of for Knave.
   Let's be real though, the best use case here is using it as it is, a cute little lair suitable for 29-82minutes of exploration. One doesn't have a lot to extract without extracting the whole dang lair, but that's fine, this is a scale needed too.
   Final Rating? ***/***** with an added half star if the vibe suits your style and you use a real TTRPG system. Don't hate this at all, I might even use it for a lair in certain random exploration results. Good job, this one is usable, which is the highest praise I can give to any adventure.

​A dungeon by Matt Barninger, level 1
Written for Shadowdark
   Writing tip. The string "of the" is usually a sign of prose that can be cut. "The BLANK of the BLANKETY BLANK" in particular, while working in dialog or a title, should probably be something like "Savage Sorcerer's Caverns" in prose. Just a random thought.
   Oh, the adventure format? You know the Shadowdark Standard (or The Standard of the Shadowdark)...eight double-column pages for technically seventeen keyed locations (13-17 are "dead ends"). Rumors, hooks, random encounters, keys, bestiary, map, and finally a credits page that includes font for some dang reason. It's fine, writing is clear, layout is generous. I don't talk about it a lot for Shadowdarkian adventures because it is a pretty usable standard.
   Story is the usual "band-of-kobolds-allied-with-giant-spiders-sacrifices-magical-forest-guardian-unicorns". A slightly different twist is that the giant spiders' leader is a merchant's daughter wearing a cursed helm that turns the wearer into a spider, that's a fun and horrifying little thing. Rewards on offer are the merchant's $100 (yeah, players are definitely going to kill that lady accidentally) and a ranger with Bracers of Being a Gooder Archer. As is kind of normal for unicorn adventures, the best reward is probably the alliance of a magical horse that comes to a point. In this case, unicorns heal using horns. Cool.
   I'm not mad at a first level adventure having somewhat pitiful threats, what I liked here is that the random encounter table doesn't pull too many punches. Giant spider, 1d4 spiders, or 1d6 kobolds can lead to some interest. That there's also the Shadowdark Official Blow-Out-Your-Torch result won't raise too much ire. Ginger the Spider (transformed daughter) is pretty nasty, 2x bites with high damage and poison, whew. Always love to see rickety bridges over a chasm, the map has two of those:

   ...that said, what can be improved otherwise with the map (beyond "more verticality") is actually a bit more intelligent design with regards to flow. The final confrontation with the titular Savage Sorcerer? Room 7. That's...kind of fast. Also, outside of the random encounters, those chasm bridges are very likely to be fought atop, disappointing. Then, on to poor ol' Ginger, the text itself is unclear about how anyone is supposed to figure out that she's the merchant's daughter. A little telegraphing would be nice, else we just murder the lass and say "oops" afterward. Finally, treasure lacks a certain pizazz. It's just piles of 100gp or 2gp bits on the kobolds. I know, not a gold-for-XP system really, but still...
   I kind of wind down on the best use case for "play as a level 1 Shadowdark adventure". Sadly, there's not a lot either memorable or special to this one, like with the unicorns being given no personality, the transforming helmet being unclear, the situations being generic...there's an auto typing feel there that might indicate LLM but I'm going to be charitable and call it lack of playtesting. Not a lot of individual encounters or treasure bits to extract, either. 
   Final Rating? */***** without rancor or even annoyance. It's just all a bit generic. You can have fun with it because TTRPGs are fun, but it's not like the warrens of itch.io aren't rife with a thousand other low-level Shadowdark adventures. 

​A dungeon by Nate Treme, level obscura
Written for "old school"
   Pamphlet dungeon, ho...this time with vaguely 8-bit art and a silly theme. Okay, fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me thrice...nah, I won't be fooled. I like the old graphic style, but it's been too many times with a crummy adventure behind the look. This one is pretty standard, nine rooms described in two of the "folds", which is a lot of real estate left over for the two-page map, cover fold, and encounter stuff. I see you, Treme. I see you.
   Our story is appropriately weird, with the titular pescamancer a mad wizard all about making fish-mixed-with-other-creature hybrid monsters. The local fishing village doesn't particularly appreciate getting monsters instead of mackerels in their nets, so the local headman offers a hundred bucks and a magic fishing net to the party that kills "whatever is causing this". Simple enough. Go fight fish-monsters. 
   Silly as it is, what I liked was how this adventure conveyed its story simply and effectively, we get the story in and out with no muss, no fuss. Not everything has to be Shakespeare, sometimes its enough to have a delving excuse in some dank caves. Fishling monsters are fine beasts to fight. I like how there's a majestic mystic turtle to rescue, that makes sense. Having potions of water breathing, mermaid statues, and a sharkskin-bound tome on fish anatomy as loot is all good. Map iconography is good and communicative. 
   Once we get to the execution, though, we're deep in what can be improved territory though. Map is "loopy-doopy'd" but there's not a lot of exploratory gameplay despite the water features. Fish themeing is strong here but there's not a lot of mechanical stuff making the fish stuff matter...because, again, no specific system is designed for (drink). Basically, we have an initial idea, but there's not a lot of follow-through. Pity.
   Best use case here is to use as a handy-dandy little lair when you need an hour of gameplay at most. It's got a few cute ideas but it's rather insubstantial.
   Final Rating? **/***** because I'm feeling generous and my youngest child loves turtles. It's not very much muchness, but hey, sometimes you need a lair in your back pocket. It'll serve. 

 A regional adventure for levels 3-6, by Brynjar Mar Palsson
Written for Shadowdark
   Note, this one came in as a review copy, along with a very touching heartfelt message from the author…Mr. Palsson, as you may recall, wrote one of the first itch.io adventures I actually liked, Brigands of Bristleback Burrow. Apparently, my review was the first such he’d received, and he found it encouraging. He’s done a few other dungeons over time, which I’ve bumped into from time to time. Now he’s graduated from “a dungeon” to “full-up regional sandbox campaign” with the hefty tome before us. Legacy of Iskald is a hundred-page (‘zine-size) epic of genuinely impressive scope, written for Shadowdark of all things. I’m impressed by the ambition.
   As always, I don’t review adventures based on artistic merit, but there is a lot of effort represented here. Most of the art is black-and-white, with the occasional full-page or even double-page color spread setting mood. Every monster and most NPCs have portrait sketches, and I like…most of them, slightly uneven quality/style is to be expected when you have multiple artists and illustrators. Some of the stuff is really quite gripping, and several illustrations made me laugh. This isn’t a no-value-added thing or something just to break up text blocks, when we run something like this at the table, having example illustrations to flash to the players is really nice. Otherwise, formatting is competent and Shadowdark-standard, with generous margins, well-delineated tables, and the usual custom slightly-annoying but nevertheless readable Arcane Library font. Writing is casual, almost conversational in places, but very easy to parse.
   I had an experience that I believe most of us have had, where I mainlined the Sagas of the Icelanders and immediately started building a campaign based on them. In my own case it was set in an alternate Greenland, icy and bleak and cold at the edge of the world. This is another one of those, although it is not set in a real-world version of the earth, it’s still obviously built by someone raised on the sagas. It’s a good setting for D&D-style adventure, if you told me that actual historical Vikings believed in a gold=XP system I’d believe you. Couple that with the myths of the Norse being fully populated in D&D monster manuals and in all cases optimized for “hit it with sword” solutions, then you’re in the zone anytime you’re D&Ding the Viking Era. Even if it is in Shadowdark.
   A word on the Shadowdark system…it isn’t ideal for all that a regional campaign requires, notably lacking any kind of overland travel system (pre-Western Reaches Kickstarter), and also not overly focused on character death rules during a long-term play. As is tradition, the author improvises via hacking. First we have importing from other systems, in this case using Cairn’s watch system for overland travel and ACKS II’s heroic death rules for giving XP to new replacement characters. There’s also new stuff, like calendar and weather systems, travel and seasonal mods, and of course a ritual
tracking chart…
   …because, hey, there’s a ticking clock in this regional sandbox adventure. Actually several, but the biggest is a bunch of fishmen (the cultfish) trying to figure out a control ritual to enslave a local dragon who’s been chained for centuries beneath the mountain by the region’s long-departed warlord. There’s also a troll-wife desperately trying to keep the peace between a fighting pair of greater elementals, a centipede-using shapeshifting hag trying to poison everyone in the area and imprison them in nightmares for decades, some harpies raiding around, a mercenary company of were-creatures looking for lost members, a massive ice floe with dozens of wrecked ships haunted by cursed undead, and the usual petty set of side quests too. It’s a packed adventure, with a lot of various sites that all funnel into a central dungeon.
   Which is unfortunately going to be the source of my biggest complaint in this whole affair, Hrimskegg’s Tomb. I love the idea of the dungeon…it’s a central area accessed from four different locations throughout the region, rife with multiple factions, designed to be visited multiple times to complete multiple objectives throughout the region. Everything happening centers around this dungeon, and its themes are strong, complete with a final area containing an abused dragon who’s been chained here all his life. Brilliant stuff, compelling, interesting, and perfect as an anchor for a regional sandbox…but it’s all stuffed into twenty-four room tiny (5ft square) dungeon:

   It hurts to see. The dungeon itself isn’t even bad, I like the flow, I like the rooms, I like the traps and monsters and interactive bits, they’re all great. If this was one of the itch.io standard eight-page dungeons, I’d be giving it five stars. It’s written with that use case in mind, even, and for that it’s great. But this is a tiny little area that an efficient group can knock out in a single session. Since its Shadowdark, you don’t even have the 5E excuse that combat takes forever, fights are actually pretty fast here. This thing just needed 3x or 4x more rooms and a lot more space occupied to properly fit its role in the adventure. And maybe a couple more levels.
   It’s even more of a pity because there are other dungeons here in this region that show bigger scope. I love them, an overrun barrow filled with angry revenants and the Norns, an ice-crevasse filled with unique light-avoidant undead and a faithful ghost retainer seeking the heir of his master, the hag’s lair, a heist-ready inn/merchant shop, and a tower in the cliff…all of these take advantage of the third dimension, all of them are a good size for what’s being asked of them, and all of them have good design. The author can make a good adventure site. I just wish the main one had been a full-up proper dungeon.
   Regional adventures live or die based on the personalities, goals, and resources of the various factions and people within the area and this one is really excellent with that. Most of the people and monsters here have distinct personalities and are working some kind of angle, usually something that’ll lead to utter disaster for the region. This whole zone is a mass of a dozen different ticking time bombs, which is perfect for a sandbox. Freedom is infinite, but there should also be NPCs freely bumping around to destroy things if the PCs screw up. There’s also the Requisite Rival Adventuring Party around, complete and utter dirtbags. Love it.
   The other things I look for in an adventure like this are cool and interesting sites and magic and we’re solid here, too. Menhirs, swamps, giant primordial trees, a volcano (and YES IT MIGHT ERRUPT)…everything here is fun and interesting and conveyed on the map pretty darn well. This is a region filled with adventure and intrigue, just asking to be explored. There are a ton of new/custom monsters that work well, and although I might could wish for more new magic items, those that do get made are all useful and interesting.
   If you can’t tell from my tone, I really like this adventure. The central dungeon’s whiff at scale is mostly disappointing because the region does do such an excellent job at making everything else so big and epic. Level 3-6 is the “X” in B/X and it’s right and proper to step out of the dungeon and into the sagas. Legacy of Iskald does this for Shadowdark better than anything else I’ve seen and it looks like something I’d have a blast playing with even as someone who is not the biggest adherent of the system. It's here if you wanted to take a look.
****

By Jeff Simpson, for Seven Voyages of Zylarthen (or anything, really)
This is not really an adventure, or a site. This is a situation, something possible to find on a random encounter table perhaps, with the focus here on a frozen tableau with a warrior and a wizard standing in front of a dead thief, watched over by an angel. Angel has frozen them in time to wait for a rando party to wander in and render judgement.   
   It’s a quirky idea, entertaining enough, but certainly not what we’re looking for in ASC. That being said, if you like the idea for your random encounter table, it’s got some interest. All three mortals (warrior, wizard, thief) are brothers, with the wizard getting tricked by a devil, tricking the warrior in turn, and the thief for once in the whole history of the hobby NOT responsible for causing issues. Said devil can be summoned to also weigh in, but condemning him just gets an attaboy from the angel and doesn’t do much else. Rewards are an ancient sword of chaos (if you condemn the warrior), a spellbook (if you condemn the wizard), or the angel’s gavel (as war hammer, if you condemn the devil). Refusing judgement keeps everyone stuck.
   Some parties would hate this, some parties will love this, ymmv. I don’t have much else to say about it, other than being continually charmed by Jeffe’s impressive art:

​A gauntlet adventure for 0th-levels by Dimme van der Hout
Written for Shadowdark
   Okay, back in the saddle. Always a bit of a letdown after the end of Adventure Site Contest judging...we haven't announced winners yet, but now it's back to the Monday grind. Let's start with a sure winner, then, a top finalist in the Shadowdark RPG Independent Game Jam. It's a 0-level gauntlet. With a ten-room dungeon as the content. Over 11 pages, formatted in spreads of all things. Ah. Back to the ol' reliables I see.
   Story is that you're all a bunch of nobody scrubs from a sad village hunting after a giant boar in a nice traditional hunt and you bump into a sunken keep formerly owned by a Mr. Tusken, who wandered away and left his half-elf wife sad and her being sad made the keep sink into the ground and the keep needs to be traveled through because...reasons. 'kay. All the boar/village stuff is kind of handwaved anyway, it's just Gauntlet In the Most Literal of Senses.
   Okay, okay, I've been spoiled by ASC III, let's be fair. What I liked here was the look of the little map. The riddle-handout is nice, that's a nice little puzzle offered by a fairy who gifts a magic +1 dagger if the answer is given. I like the d100 treasure table, I'll use it for a decent mudcore list. I like that there's a hook for future quest in a riddle where Lord Tusken (yeah, that's his name) met his final rest. Good idea.
   Honestly, that means the first of what can be improved is just "expand stuff more". The hook is abstracted, the village has no ingame content, the boar itself is kind of forgotten...c'mon, help a brother out here. Improving the map for anything that gives exploratory potential would be good too, this is just a linear run with a couple little spokes. Despite having a vertical element, none of the height is taken advantage of...just kind of miss on the map overall. It's not nearly deadly enough to be a proper funnel experience. AND MORE BOAR HUNTING IN THE GIANT BOAR HUNT PLEASE.
   Alas, best use case is probably just "strip for parts". If you want a Shadowdark gauntlet, that's fine, I don't hate you, but there's better out there like Trial of the Slime Lord. Unfortunately, outside of the aforementioned little d100 treasure table and some genuinely nice little evocative pieces of art, there aren't really even a lot of parts I'd want to strip here.
   Final Rating? */***** Sigh. We're back alright.