​A dungeon by Itch_Rokas, levels 1-4
Written for Shadowdark
  I don’t know what obscure internet corner came up with the idea of writing Shadowdark adventures based on Weird Tales stories, but it’s a charming trend. Our author here tells us with boyish enthusiasm about the three short stories that inspired him to write this eight-page adventure detailing a twenty-one room flooded keep, it’s certainly made me interested in those particular issues’ tales. Besides mildly annoying me with the Shadowdark-template standards of sans fonts and only single-column, the writing gets out of the way and does its job with admirable efficiency. There’s a nice innovation or two with formatting and the three-level map is very clear, but this is otherwise the bog standard.
  Inspired by the pulps, we have our second sunken site in a row, this time a ruined ancient serpentman keep made out of green stone that’s half-sunken beneath the sea. There’s a story about a serpentman sorcerer summoning a demon and the demon turning the keep mad and turning its summoner into a giant snake, there’s a random sailor vampire in the upstairs, and there are fishmen just sort of there looking for one of their lost idols. I don’t know if I’d give any of \these disparate individuals the glorious title of “faction” but there’s some dynamism there and at least the murlocks don’t automatically attack.
  I’m eager to get to what I liked, because there are a few things this module does well. First off, the map is both reasonably realistic but also gives players a decently interesting site to explore. The little eye symbols are repeated in the given location’s key, symbolizing a place in daylight if it’s a daytime delve. The lower level’s flooding really matters, with the vault in particular a place where any treasure-hunting is also accompanied with the risk of tons of seawater thundering in. Couple with the multiple entrances noted (with perception DCs)…yeah, this guy plays. I also like the fishmen’s real reward being a “Blessing of the Sea” which lets players breathe underwater, very good adventure stuff right there.
  That said, what can be improved is probably first of all working a bit more to make all the disparate elements work together. The vampire in particular is something that doesn’t fit with the rest, as cool as a half-drowned sailor vampire who’s coffin is his lifeboat is. There’s also a stark difficulty curve that makes “levels 1-4” feel a little too wide, the fishmen “faction” is just four guys of a single hit die, you don’t need level 4’s to be encountering that. Again, that’s 40% of the system’s level scale. My wonder is if this was originally written for a different system (5E?) and adapted. Treasure could also be a little more inventive, the attempts to hide it are appreciated but some variety would be nice.
  There’s a best use case here that involves a very nice pulp adventure being had, perhaps even something like a Savage Worlds one-shot. It’s a good set of maps to pull and use, too, really didn’t compliment the site map enough. I sound underwhelmed with some elements but you really do have a fine use case in either one-shots or campaign play here.
  Final Rating? ***/**** because it’s above-average in the map/setting and you’ll have fun playing it, just feel like it could use a final editing pass to make it really pop.

  It’s finally over, I’ve reviewed them all save my own. That was twice as many sites as last time, which was a massive task…in (rough) submission order, we have:
 The Caverns of Despair
Sausages of the Devil Swine
​The Lair of the Lamia
Troll Market
The Cleft in the Crag
Owlbear Hill
The Calid Cryo-Caves
Mound of Akbarj
The Fall of Saddleroodle
Pit of the Red Wyrm
The Pit of the Muirneag
Tower of the Necromancer
The Copper Circle
Crimson Garden of the Crocodile Spirits 
The Herbalist's Son 
Scarborough Shire 
Moldiwarp's Burrow
Barbican of Blood
Stables of Zothay
​The Two Spires
The Tower in the Lake
Foundry Ovens of the Bitter Paramore
The Bridge of Ptelemegesser
Tor of the Vulture Lord
Warm Caves of the T'sai Dragons
Wailing Tower
Arena AEmilia
The Grand Retreat
​Galactic Funtime
  As before, the final selection will be based on averaging ranked-choice judgements from myself and the four other judges, who are busy making their own reviews now:
JB finished his reviews before even my own got done.
Scott M is going astonishingly in-depth for each one.
Grützi wrapped up a semester halfway through and so he’s been busy but still is rolling out reviews steadily.
Owen E is doing batch reviews again on his channel.
  As before, a big appeal for submitters has been seeing multiple different perspectives on their adventures, because every one of us has our own tastes and preferences. That being said, the other judges are certainly going above and beyond the call of duty here, I’m impressed with the levels of effort. No matter how many submissions these contests receive, I commit to always fully reviewing every entry with my general set of standards, other judges are welcome to batch-review with less of a word count needed. Impressive work.
  I once again really appreciated all of the entries, the levels of creativity, effort, and sheer exuberant love of the game on display made this a delight. Again the variety of different takes within (and in a couple cases slightly outside) the contest strictures impressed me, and I’m going to have a lot of usable content, personally, coming out of this. Sometimes, there’s even too much good stuff in the entries…
  The biggest thing I think I’m going to going to narrow down next year is going back to two pages and have a focus much firmer on the “single session”, there are several entries here that I really liked, but that would have been best with about two more pages and turned into a proper multi-visit dungeon, which is wonderful and needed thing as well. Please note what I did say about two more pages…98% of the modules released in the market these days are over-written, and cutting should be embraced by almost every writer…but probably if you’ve exhausted the alphabet in keying, you’re outside of the site designation and into the wild land of fuller dungeon.
  I hope every single submitter takes the feedback, good and bad, and improves what they’re written and releases it out into the wild. That being said, we have a difficult choice ahead, narrowing all this down to just eight sites for the final compilation. I can’t wait to see all the other judges’ final ratings, so watch this space...soon we’re going to once more crown a King of the Adventure Sites and give the community another wonderful collection of adventure. 

​An island pointcrawl by M. Allen Hall, levels…you don’t deserve to know
Written for Pirate Borg
  There’s a great old co-op game called Forbidden Island, one of the first mainstream co-ops. While the gameplay was decent (perfected in the superior Forbidden Desert), I’ve always been intrigued by the great premise…mysterious island, Myst-like, with an ancient civilization’s ruins dotted about, the players have to sweep up McGuffins while the island floods and sinks. Seemed like there was potential for a TTRPG session in there, and M. Allen Hall agrees with a sinking dozen-location island outlined in eight pages. It’s Pirate Borg, so better than Normal Borg at least. You’re on thin ice buddy, but I’m giving you a shot.
  Premise is fun enough, as you see up above in the cover page. “What if the baddies from Pirates of the Caribbean 1 fought with the baddies from Pirates of the Caribbean 2&3?” Lich and his undead army fighting off Deep One cult continuously trying to sink the island, eventually after the thing gets sunk and raised one too many times it becomes a wandering island, well and good. Players are invited to the island for a McGuffin heist, a lich assassination, a cult leader rescue, or of course just get shipwrecked. Functional, although I’m amused that the setting sort of assumes a dark cult dedicated to drowning all the Earth are just yet another group of guys they get friendly quests from. The cult is sinking spots as the character wander from point to point.
  Beyond my already-admitted fondness for the premise, what I liked were some of the encounters between the skeletons and the fish fans, they have some dynamism and would make for interesting play at the table. I like the lich’s ability to explode his skeletal minions, dealing bone-shard-damage, that’s a good boss fight ability. I like the setting, there’s a fun stuff with waterlogged jungles that have coral bits as well. I like the idea of there being waterlogged treasures from the deeps scattered throughout the islands…
  …but what can be improved first of all would be making those treasures more, well, treasure-y. A lot of the tables could use another editing pass for adding more verve. There’s also a need for less handwaving for what exactly get entailed by “the next location sinks”, there’s a lot of the adventure riding on this aspect but there’s nothing remotely gameable, alas, about the environmental effects. Another “you didn’t do the work” is the lich’s castle, the centerpiece of the module for most quest. Gimmie a map, a sketch, heck a stick-and-node diagram…this doesn’t have to be a lot of detail, but something in a couple pages to let a group plan sneaking, conniving, or assaulting the location. As it is this appears to be expecting that everyone just waddles up and politely knocks.
  All this makes the best use case for the module as a Pirate Borg one-shot, which to my understanding is how Pirate Borg is supposed to be run. I’d have some concerns about the time management, a sufficiently motivated Borgrunnar could probably make a “campaign” out of this, but I guess then the suffering is the point.
  Final Rating? */***** because it’s a bunch of excited idea but it lacks all the most key elements to turn this into an actually satisfying session. Pity, because I really do like this premise. 

Written by Shawn Metcalf
Stars Without Number, levels 3-5
Spider-haunted mall.
  The Galactic Funtime entertainment center thrived, separating people from their money and replacing it with fun. Of particular note was their Build-A-Spider center, where sophisticated and underregulated genetic assembling technologies allowed for the creation of living pets resembling Soupy Spider, Galactic Funtime’s corporate mascot. These pets were harmless, unable to reproduce, and designed to perish within a week.
  Sadly, the miniature nuclear reactor the center had installed to handle the energy requirements started to leak without regular maintenance. The genetic material used mutated, and began producing spiders that were dangerous, had normal life spans, and could reproduce. Before the machinery broke down completely, spiders with more severe mutations were created. Now the building is overrun with them.
  I was hoping for a couple more of these.
  Science fiction is my favorite genre, bar none, but one of the first things you have to learn as a writer is that Science Fiction is niche. Fantasy outsells sci-fi 10:1 from my own experience, and I think that’s similar in bookstores and gaming sales, even though I suspect sci-fi readers are more voracious than fantasy readers where the Venn diagram doesn’t overlap (which, to be fair, that’s a pretty big overlap, myself included). It’s also a lot harder to write adventures for, particularly site-based. It doesn’t matter if it's level 1 (or first-timers, for Traveler), you need to treat the area as a high-level adventure location, because tech means everyone can fly, shoot a gun, use binoculars and comms and sensors…there’s not nearly the limitations you see in early D&D. Space hulks are cool, I guess, but there are a lot of them.
  As an aside, there's something a little...chatty about how this one was written. Nothing overtly objectionable, but a breezy set of almost conversational interjections in the second person, e.g. "your players will ask to play the arcade games", makes for fine reading ahead of time but can mess up the user when the module is being referenced in play. 
  At least this isn’t a space hulk, I’ll grant. Instead, we have a ruined mall/Chuck-E-Cheese on a tomb world (fallen tech planet type) where a genomic hypertech version of Build-A-Bear has malfunctioned and made evil spiders that are swarming around in the radioactive building. Sort of an Eight Legged Freaks inspired post-apocalyptic Gamma World adventure, really. “Go there because it’s an active power source” is our hook.
  Map is a good-looking affair, nice clean key and icons, the art style wouldn’t work for a fantasy dungeon but it’s a nice sci-fi appearance. The choice to make the big middle room, the arcade, a green floor is usually the signal for grass, but it’s all indoors per the key. As is typical with a building, there’s a priority given to have the room flow make realistic sense over any particular exploratory interest, which is a bit of a pity on the gameplay side…normally the realistic building floorplan is helpful in heist planning, but this is a “monster-haunted-ruin”, so…shucks. Lack of elevation is a bummer too, not just for exploration but also because in a sci-fi location elevation and cover matter way way more in the firefights that gun-armed PCs prefer to get into. It’s also…small.
  I don’t know how efficient the playtesters were (this was playtested, good), but this location is a little bit…simple. My own SWN group would knock this out in a single session with some slack, and we play two-hour blocks. Go in, fight spiders of various size, try to not get too sick from the broken nuclear reactor’s radiation hazard, steal arcade machines for loot. A bit of dynamism is given to the giant villain spider Soapy (yes, the name is explained), he’s possessed of enough animal cunning to at least retreat and come back out when the PCs cut a hole in the roof to loot the place. That’s a potentially fun encounter.
  Fundamentally, there’s nothing wrong with this little site, I could see myself using it with a scrap-hungry crew scanning for value in a dead world, that’ll do, and it’s a decent ratio of danger vs. reward…I can just see other ways to add more scale and scope to it, so much like Bridge of Ptelemegesser I like what’s here, I just wish there was more of it. 

​Written by Thanateros777
B/X, mid-level (whatever that means)
Funhouse wizard retreat
  Beneath a ruined resort is an underground complex created by a bygone sage for his personal amusement and examination, accessible only by a small outbuilding long overgrown and ruined. Deep inside may be fortunes and perils alike, as the Great Sage was an eccentric, if not abnormal man. What mysteries and riches may the eccentric wizard’s sanctum hold?
  So it took a long time, but here in the penultimate adventure site we’ve finally hit it…font so weird and cramped and scribbly that I have to go up to 100% zoom. Then 125% zoom. Then 150% zoom. Then just copy-paste into a word document with all formatting removed. It was rough. Single column, all bolded, highlighting done via color…whew. It’s not going to be fatal, but it was definitely something that triggered me even more than the introductory text using the word “funhouse”.
  The plot, thin as it is, is complete bog standard for a funhouse dungeon…weirdo powerful wizard makes his strange lair “up in the hills”, abandons it, now its ripe for the looting. The hook does a clever thing, in a hoard of loot or by other happenstance the party comes into possession of a coin-sized silver talisman that grants them access to said funhouse, a cult wants this and sends an illusionist hit-squad to take it. Once you get in, it’s the usual room-by-room succession of challenges and interesting things to play with.
  The map almost doesn’t matter in a funhouse like this, there’s very little rhyme or reason here so as loopy-doopy as it is, there’s not a lot of exploratory gameplay. You’re going from room to room without linkages or the order mattering much, and the secret doors aren’t something that mapping really tells much. I do like how there are dangly bits that can be tied into different content, this is almost a “site” to be added to a megadungeon and there are connections for that. Good mapping software used, looks really nice and clean. Having a little side-spur with a “add more dungeon here” is a decent move.

  These kinds of funhouse adventures live or die based on the quality of the individual rooms/encounters, and these are mostly…fine. The initial ambush with a six-illusionist hit squad (each one has a single first-level spell and a book with said spell) is a fun idea, there’s some real personality to it and I can see it being memorable, with decent loot in the form of those books. Some individual fights will be a bit challenging, like a spiral maze with displacer beasts, a water room filled with swimming shocker lizards, a gelantinous cube with an acid-resistance ring inside it, just about as interesting a bunch of set-pieces as you can get in B/X. There’s also stuff like a leprechaun in a BDSM dungeon and starving trolls in a closet, nasty and not particularly interesting. Not a lot of talking to critters here.
  Also, a bunch of those critters aren't in B/X. I speak D&D 3rd Edition, I see your assassin vines and shocker lizards.
  Traps, as expected, will be mostly silly and forget verisimilitude but they’re fine in isolation. What is a dead end with two levers labeled “Fame” and “Fortune”, one giving an appearance curse and the other giving gold coins that hurt…is that a trap, or a treasure? What it is, however, is definitely not a thing that fits in most campaigns. A lot of decent risk/reward tradeoff encounters that are fine in isolation, just kind of exhausting all in a row.
  Treasure is, as expected by now, kind of all over the place. Hefty furniture, neat stacks of platinum pieces, “random jewelry” worth 8k…total rewards aren’t bad for a level 3 dungeon, terrible for a level 6, and we don’t know what the actual range is. So that’s hard to judge. Magic items are weirdo and some are genuinely fun, I’m fond of the bone monocle that shows humanoids below a certain INT threshold, that’s useful for certain spells’ targeting.
  I could never see myself using this thing as an adventure site, whole. That being said, like the apocryphal buffalo, most parts are very usable in isolation. I can see taking a room here, an item there, an encounter here, a trap there, and sprinkling them around in other dungeons or sites that have a bit more preexistence within an organic world. Although please consult your eye doctor before attempting to parse the content.

Written by Zed
B/X (+silver standard), levels 4-6
City Arena.
  Such notices hang in ever town of the region, and every 15th of the month plebeians and nobles alike from all over the frontier province flock to the amphitheater, for some well-earned distraction from the toils of imperial expansion. The arena has been around for some years now, and the novel directorial style of Titus, a decorated war veteran of the northern expansion, has proven to be exactly what the colonists needed.
  Cities are always best for adventure at their most decedent, and there’s not much more decadent than late-empire Rome. Or late-empire New Rome (Constantinople). And if you’re going all in on Rome…why not Coliseum? Zed’s answer is “sure, why not?” and he delivers a private arena/theatre in a Not-Rome, a popular place where gladiatorial fights take logical advantage of D&D healing rates and turn the fights into a WWE-esque storyline spectacle, complete with comedy and drama beats. This arena/manor also has shops out front, a training yard, Coliseum-esque below-arena elevators, ladies of the night-rooms with attendant rich barroom…it’s a compact location with a lot going on in it, probably a little too compact…
   …because there’s not a direct motivation given for a party of thieves, rogues, and magicians. The whole area is loaded with verisimilitude, but there’s not a direct reason to be there. It’s a very realistic-seeming (more important than realism) location that a lot of parties would have less reason to approach as a crawl target or an objective-heist by default than the titular Keep on the borderlands in B2. “Insert motivation here” is going to annoy some judges, it matters less to me than some others.
  The map is tight, those 10ft squares packing a realistic amount of content into each area, but it’s going to feel small to D&D players. As I’ve mentioned before, for a site built more for heists than dungeon exploration, having logically discernable layout is important for planning and this one is set up pretty well for reconnoiter shenanigans. I’d have personally gone a little busier with the map key highlighting things like a roof trapdoor, possible windows, etc, the clear and clean map could easily get a little more information added without hurting. There’s also an issue with the stairs going to 27 but the map says “to 28” but that’s easy enough to fix. Nice site map.

​  And now in NPCs we reach the part where I’m going to really want more from the module. Or maybe, information conveyed in a different way. A lot of page space is devoted to the personalities of the arena-owner, his servants, affiliated merchants, and semi-slave gladiators, but tracking where they live and move day-to-day is going to be a nightmare for any infiltration and/or social ruse, a lot of notes needed. Assuming a heist, alarm, or crawl, you’d also want an order of battle for when the whole place is turned out to fight or flee from a homicidal pack of unhoused people like the PCs.
  Going down to the actual monsters I do love how book monsters are used but reskinned. Household lares (Roman petty hearth gods) are pixies, the obese old gladiator trainer is an ogress, the exotic captured outsider slave is a neanderthal…this is good, everything has its own flavor and that flavor is extremely Roman. Most are humanoids, although there are a nice collection of large beasts in the lower basement (crocodiles, wolves, pythons, white apes) and summonable skeletons, some elementals…two of the household are magic-users, so there’s a light magic sheen on a couple fights, gives some magic traps a reason for existing too.
  Silver standard keeps tripping me up, but even multiplying the treasure take x10 there’s a pretty sad amount for a 4-6 group, except for a bank note worth 15k which only has a 1-in-6 chance of being found searching for a turn in the office. I love the flavor here, it’s dripping with Roman/Classic vibes like valuable tiles, olive oil amphorae, marble busts, a written comedy manuscript…love the flavor, and easy enough to fix amount, but still and issue. Magic loot is arms and armor in a few cases plus potions and scrolls, but also numen statuettes that give healing or other curative effects. It’s a low-magic “realistic” setting by default, so everything’s pretty subtle for the B/X baseline.
  This site frustrates me in the way only something with real potential can; it’s a great site, but to turn it into an adventure site there’s a lot of work needed. The flavor is wonderful and very distinctive, but any campaign that has Sword & Sorcery roots won’t find the highly-focused Roman flavor hard to integrate. I think it’s worth the effort, just keep seeing more ways to punch it up…probably the best approach would be to design an adventure with a specific goal to be pursued within the site, running through what would be needed for that particular goal would lead to outlining the information that’s needed for any goal pursued in the site. 

​Written by ShockTohp
ACKS, levels 4-6
Waterlogged clockpunk grave tower.
  In the salt district of the city, an old moldering water clock sits rusting. This marvel of hydraulic engineering, a gift from the local dwarf vault, was created as a heroic burial site of a human general of great renown, who once saved the dwarfs from a horde of lizardmen. The hero was interned with his spoils in a crystal dome, located in the basement of the tower (and surrounded by its reservoir) but in such a way as to allow admirers to look down on the interred from the ground level viewing gallery. However, its glory days are long gone, and the clock has been abandoned by its keepers. Now its ancient waterwheel creaks and groans, the machinery inside screeches like a tormented beast.
  The [blank]punk aesthetic is what we (meaning the internet, hi, I am The Internet) started to call any form of technology appearing in a premodern setting. First we have Steampunk, with its Victorian England stylings mixed with zeppelins and steam engines being used all over the place. Famously, the Eberron setting in D&D 3rd Edition era took the “DungeonPunk” art comment about early manual illustrations and leaned in on that hard, making a world with all the magic taken to a technological extreme. “Clockpunk” is the slightly sillier even earlier cousin to Steampunk, where instead of steam being used at absurd power/weight ratios it is gears that provide all your handwavy power needs, wound up either by hand or by magic. Dwarves and gnomes are frequent perpetrators of clockpunk, and it is no different here in the Wailing Tower, which is a giant enchanted water clock. Some may run away screaming from this; Warhammer Fantasy fans are licking their chops right now.
  The site’s story is pretty simple outside of the aesthetic…human general helps dwarves in a famous battle, then much later dies. Dwarves make ridiculous water clock tower tomb for general, complete with animated terra cotta statue guards and a crystal display case (as we all learned from Snow White, dwarves make see-through coffins for their human friends). General’s neglected peasant girlfriend haunts the tomb as a banshee. Tower falls to disrepair, now it’s lootin’ time. Sic transit gloria mundi.
  The map is a somewhat scribbly pair of phone pictures, which would normally be okay but given that the main thrust of the adventure is about disabling the mechanisms holding the tomb bubble underneath the water, which means we’re going to have to grade this as a diagram in a way…and it’s a little bit confusing as a diagram. With key access it’s workable, but I’m a little worried about how an exploring group of PCs organically grok the mechanism in the course of exploring it. 

​  By default, while the players stand around gormlessly discussing things, the dungeon solves itself violently. There’s a dungeon clock that goes on, with gear doors shifting, giant hawks roosting on the tower’s top come back from a hunt, a rust monster inside eats a spindle and locks the door into one configuration, and then finally on Turn 10, a rival thieving party breaks dirt within a proscribed radius and half the statues animate for a royal row. I don’t object to clocks. I like clocks. But I hate sites that are held in perfect stasis until the players hit the encounter button and start the clock…if you want a set-piece that’s great, and the timeline works fine for a racing exploration/looting of a tower, but more effort going in to how the players poking the site starts the clock would be appreciated. Potential energy, good, but something about how knocking on the door (or whatever) kicks of the sequence would be good, because that kind of sequence thinking also helps when player zig instead of zag.
  Monster roster is light, just said rival thieves, rust monster, yellow mold, animated statues, and of course, the banshee. She’s not the classic elfin Bane Sidhe here, more of a much gentler ghost with a temporary level drain and a fear effect. Pretty sure the author is channeling childhood fears of the library ghost in Ghostbusters there, but custom monsters are welcome here and she’s a good NPC/threat. As is only right and proper, the players #1 threat is the players themselves; they can very easily screw things up and wash away a ton of treasure in their enthusiastic attempts to get at it.
  Treasure feels just about right for level 4, although level 6’s might feel a touch underpaid. The whole of the site’s cash loot (no value given for all this dressed stone, ACKS-fail) rests on with the general in his crystal tomb, so players walk in and see it first thing…if the players go in the front door, which no players ever do. Good idea, though, and it’s a nice hoard, including an unlisted-at-first Sword +3 Frost Brand, that’s something huge at this level. Just getting to it is the difficulty.
  This is a very ACKS adventure, going into the precise volumes of water needing to be lowered, all kinds of Roman history, clockwork craftsdwarves…but none of that is in direct conflict with baseline D&D. The banshee, being called a banshee, might really mess up some genre-savvy players, but it’s a fine level 4 boss monster as it is, and the % chance of human PCs being the general’s offspring is really a solid idea. Would go up to 6 with it, but some 4’s would have a good night here.

​Written by Sneedler Chuckworth
OD&D, levels 5-7
Earth Dragon lair.
  The dread wizard Zothblimzo promises the party’s arcane casters both free training for 3 levels and to
them any spells from levels 1-3 (max 99% chance to know) if they find a treatise written by their enemy,
Forxximon, on the mating habits of Fire Elementals. Such a treatise is of immense import to Zothblimzo.
Zothblimzo has used Contact Other Plane to determine Forxximon has “died in a ditch” – the wording
exactly! - and said treatise was on the very person of Forxximon at the time of his death.
  There are some bits of internetism that I’m just not up on. As a 39-year-old I’ve got all the older millennial humor down pat, but there are plenty of jokes that are basically “after my time”, particularly in the splintering of subcultures that has happened in the last decade and a half. I see them, vaguely recognize that there is an inside joke there, but just have to shrug and move on. This adventure is submitted by one “Sneedler Chucksworth”, so I’m expecting this to be less than serious even though I’m not up on whatever this reference is. I know better than to ask.
  The names are a little silly, the writeup is wry and jokey, and the stocking is a bit random, but what we have here is actually a pretty normal “dragon lair with some stuff” site. A pair of earth dragons hang out in a cave with some elemental fire temple theming nearby, a mix of firetoads, naked giant crazy cultists, and the usual semi-random dungeon oddities (Fiend Folio heavily used) salted in. Not a lot of story here beyond the #1 hook seen above with a fire-elemental loving wizard getting himself scrunched. Wander around playing OD&D, very normal.
  The map would be dismayingly linear if there wasn’t a little vertical portion that consists of three shafts connected by a tunnel; that makes section-to-section able to be bypassed with care (although B and C are swapped from how they should be, going by key clues). Fifteen keyed rooms is a fine size for exploration, and you can go overboard with loops sometimes. I’d have liked a little bit of either explanation or mapping of the area above the caves, given the odd mix of stairs down vs. flyable chimney for the two ingress points. I’m not sure if I’d have displayed the vertical sub-tunnel bit like that, but it works great for an exploration zone.

  The monsters here are weird, as befits a Fiend Folio raid. Obviously, earth dragons are a FF standby in the far too common trend of “even more dragon types”, but there are also firetoads, a sheet phantom, quallans, caryatid columns, a freaking flail snail…you stare in shock at the giant spiders when they come up, standard creatures are that rare. Dangerous creatures are also typically telegraphed. Every dead body within the speak with dead timeframe has some knowledge noted, while even the rats and spiders can be spoken with. The firetoads being chatty is a particular surprise, while the dragon does not have much patience despite being described as “personable”…
  There’s a ton of interaction with not just monsters, too. There’s a statue looking like “the guy on the cover of the DMG” who demands blood sacrifice in return for fire powers, there are nasty traps around chests, there’s a dead-end trap room with a fake door and a dead end treasure hall with a fire-rat semi-cursed wishing well that defaults to granting a rat in a pocket. The traps are not telegraphed typically, nor are most secret doors, but hating thieves is an OD&D staple.
  As I’d hope from a dragon adventure, there’s some treasure in here. The main hoard at 144k will be the vast majority of the treasure here but magic items are all over the place, with items like boots of variable tracks and a lyre of interruption adding welcome interest. The cursed sword picked up early is very nice, and the biggest-for-a-campaign items are probably the trio arrows of fighter-slaying hidden in a well (with a bonus treasure map hinting at it). The crushed lost wizard is loaded out with a fire elemental seduction spell loadout, which, again, is kind of a weird joke but also makes for a valuable treasure result.
  There’s enough legit D&D here to make this a fun site, and despite the lolrandom elements a little shoving should be able to get this into a campaign. In a way it’s a pity there’s the humor element to the writeup because it would make for a satisfying night of D&D.

​A village adventure by Pointless Monument Games, level diagetic
Written for Cairn
  In honor of this stupid pointless game system, I’m going to write a small deathtrap dungeon called “Diagenes’ Cairn”, where everything is a pale and sad simulacrum of reality and if the player characters do survive the gold they plunder turns to ash in their hands. So needless to say I’m a touch ill-disposed towards Cairn adventures, this little one-pager is thus starting off on the back foot. It’s an outdoor woodsy adventure, which is the Cairn motif I do in fact enjoy, so maybe it’ll be decent.
  The story is told somewhat randomly in the single big landscape-layout page…there’s an old abandoned church, its being used as a roost by a gigantic crow, bucolic local rubes find the big bird’s predations objectionable, players go on a quest to solve this because that’s what we have to do or else we don’t play tonight. Oh, and I guess a local wizard wants giant bird eyes, so that’s your quest item if you’re in the “gather 10 bristle boar spleens” RPG quest design mindset. Unobjectionable. The whole thing is less set up as a key-and-location, more of a situation to deal with as the players see fit.
  So sure, what I liked is that there’s not a massive railroad setup here, just a set of clues, rumors, events, and then a consequence list, that’s decent design with its heart in the right place. I like that fighting the big bird in the church has a couple of quest-friendly results, notably eggs in the nest leading to possible flying-mount-training, and that the church needs to be re-consecrated due to bloodshed but the last priest of that particular god died two centuries ago, that have some potential. The author knows that ringing the ancient church bell is inevitable for a set-piece bossfight, good instinct. “What if we demolish the dungeon while it’s out hunting?” is also answered, so good thought. Map is pretty.
  What can be improved, though, is to playtest and think through what happens with your light railroad-free investigation when the players don’t put 2-and-2 together. Very tenuous clues mean that the DM will be going full GUMSHOE and just saying “so you put this together and go here” by the end of it. The non-consecration “potential consequences” things are also barely hooks, not particularly quest-spawning or even all that interesting. Basically, this needs to either be bigger to be fleshed out into a full-fledged investigatory adventure or condensed down into a two-line hex key entry. This is a Wilderland hex, basically. Said pretty map is sadly not very useful.
  So, tragically, we have an awkward best use case in either making this a little hex quest in a sprawling proper campaign, or else a rather thin 90-minute mystery one-shot. Nothing original is here worth stealing as a creative bit, alas.
  Final Rating? */***** but not a particularly angry one, its sins are more in scope of imagination than in any active issues. 

​Written by Alex Edwards
OSRIC, levels 1-9 (hee hee hee NO)
Roc nest full of bandits.
  A Roc nests in the ruin of a temple set on a 250ft stone pillar overlooking a desolate hex. Brigand Horde & other Creatures of Chaos use the caverns beneath the temple as a base from which to raid local settlements.
  If you enjoy striking prominences, this contest has got you covered. Obviously we started with a ridiculously tall monadnock, and recently a pair of desert spires menaced and confused us…now we have a rocky tor, less enormous than the others but still extremely prominent. Add all the towers we’re reviewing (and of yes, more to come), and we might even call this one the Year of the Spire.
  Imma get us to the content, but first I’m going to talk about this one’s format a bit. It’s…a little strange. First page is single-column, starting with a tiny blurb, a line of hooks in italics, then the bestiary, which is personality notes along with order of battle notes along with faction breakdown. Then you have two-column keys, with monsters highlighted in yellow and treasure highlighted in blue (which, by the way, is pretty unreadable if printed out), with a bit of referee notage in the back. Each paragraph is separated by grey vs white background, which is probably what the author had to do because of his hatred of whitespace. Then we get to the map, which, while clear, has a nearly random sequence of rooms keyed to the alphabet. None of it is fatal, but it’s a little weird.
  Our story is pretty simple, there’s a high tor that used to house a temple to Nike, now being used as a nest by a roc. A warlord with special Potions of Roc Control has set up camp in the caves and allied with harpies and vulchlings, enslaved some mongrelmen, tamed some hippogryphons, and now Plots Vague Villainy while his lieutenants squabble. Of and also one lieutenant is lawful good and trying to spy on the warlord’s band and has friends in the nearby woodlands. The adventure suggests level 1’s be introduced to the location by being swept up and dumped into the nest, their adventure then an escape, to return later to rescue a princess (who’s actually evil and shacked up with a minotaur lieutenant) or overthrow the warlord. It’s an idea, but one rather…fraught with risk.
  First impression of the map gave me flashbacks to EE 101, but it’s clear enough upon studying. My biggest question is how I’d convey the somewhat sketchy diagram style to my mapper (also there’s an error in the passage to the right T/S, need stairs there). It’s a neat environment, a ton of movement possible on the X, Y, and Z axis, and there’s a lot to explore in a lot of different directions. Secret doors are all in logical, realistic places, pity they’re mostly just nasty nightmare fights. Also bonus points for a well in the middle there, a fortress that might be besieged needs a good water supply. Very unique style but I think I dig it. 

  If you send level 1’s up against this one I hope you’re planning on making this a funnel, because there are a lot of instadeaths for them. Although technically the hit dice are enough to be a threat (120 brigands total, for example), I would also expect a level 9 group to butcher this fortress in moments. All the monsters and NPCs have a real personality to them and friendly reaction rolls, interrogation, and/or trickery should yield some fun interactions. Nice side note, there’s an “insert NPC prisoner(s) here” jail location that’s a great spot to add friendly captives for campaign integration. Nobody in this joint is particularly fond of the warlord, in addition to the spy and her waiting allies the mongrelmen aren’t particularly loyal, there’s twenty orc ladies in the harem that are getting bored with him, the Regulation Bandit Band Wizard is uncaring about anything other than demonology, the minotaur lazy but being encouraged to usurp the warlord…it’s a powderkeg, you love to see it. The roc herself (named “Vengeance of the Azure Abyss” and boy that’s a great title) has her own egg-related goals, and she ignores humanoids normally as not big enough to bother. There’s a good set of orders of battle for various rooms. The only thing I’m not fond of are the three secret rooms that are each filled with four mummies wielding +1 battle axes, that’s a pretty crummy reward for discovering a secret.
  This adventure is sure to blue-highlight those +1 battle axes. The fact that the author is counting the magic weapons for XP means that we’re thinking hard about the budget, and there’s adequate if not generous amounts here for the middle of the level range given (once again, this isn’t really 1-9). Pleasing mix of coins, jewelry, and a few bulky items (mundane equipment is in the budget). Magic items are going to be pretty mundane, +1 arms and armor mostly with potions, but the amounts are plentiful at least. +1 silk robes are a nice side for the poor wizards. A good spellbook in the warband’s wizard’s hands will make your own MU happy.
  Hard to imagine this one not working in most campaigns. I’d disagree with the suggested early inclusion and it’s not going to be much of a threat at the top of the level range, but midrange this is a very solid ultra-prominence to include in your game. As a lover of rocs, I think this is a roc done right.