For Seven Voyages of Zylarthen, Levels 5-6
By Matthew Lake
Patracleo, a Late Kingdom princess of Old Ægypt, lived a short and tragic life. Her whirlwind romance with a Novo-Atlantean prince ended in civil war and suicide by snake bite.
Determined to enjoy her afterlife by indulging her passions for sight-seeing and blood sports, she now roams the world in a flying pyramid luring adventurers into a perilous gauntlet.
   Matthew Lake’s Tower in the Lake was ASC II’s winner, a brilliant module with tight design, clever construction, and a great story. Now we’re leaving the simplicity of lake-based wizard tower adventures behind to the surprisingly common trope of “flying pyramid”. Results are…confusing. But also wild. It’s a gauntlet/trick/funhouse dungeon that is technically within the page limit with only 2 pages of text but also has a nutty 5 pages of maps detailing the whole thing.
   Story is pretty standard. !notCleopatra, princess of !notEgypt, dies via snakebite in the traditional Anthony and Cleopatra manner, hopefully after a hilarious stream of snake jokes. She’s wandering around picking up poor innocent adventurers and “testing” them to retrieve nice magic items in return for some rather chintzy victory laurels (1k at best). There’s a nice little set of reskinned goblinoids in the form of “scarabites” to fight. C’mon, kids, let’s get to puzzling.
   The map. Oh the map. This map, you guys. I guess first I should say the things I appreciate…the side-view thing is appreciated, and should be done more often. Zooming the more complicated puzzle rooms in tighter is a must. The subliminal ankhs are cute. Overall, there is certainly a lot of complexity to explore. This leads to my fundamental issue, though, which is that this whole place is far too busy.

​   It’s a nutty madcap zone with extremely complex counters, often, that are relying on the map to get around word-count restrictions (#17 only the most egregious). I like the dice-puzzle room, that’s cool, but the full-up multi-stage area fight with multiple fighter factions…yeah, this is going to be hard to run in 4 hours. 7VoZ is a simple system, but, well, let’s just quote the map key: “10′ grid. Status fields are rainbow shaded areas. Anti-gravity field is purple shaded area. Red dots are enemies, circled dots are leaders. Portals are marked with ’P’.”

   That’s the grumbling out the way, now let’s be a little more cheerful. Individual encounters and puzzles are great, once you take a long careful look at each one to figure it out. Gravity puzzles, reflecting pools spawning doppelgangers, pivoting stairs, stasis fields with monsters in bubbles, a mummy room with a sprinkler system that can be loaded with holy water, conductive glass/copper wire lightning rod room, dice-pip-counting riddle/puzzle…each individual room is fun and zany and high-energy. Great. Just relentless and madcap, as well. Pretty punishing random encounter table. Altitude sickness and chilling cold environmental effects further nerf characters, normal enough.
   Similarly, as expected with Lake, there are interesting interactions with the people here. The area factions are all-vs-all so there’s a fun fight to have on that. A crew of berserkers are here hanging out just tired of all this crap and wanting to go home. The !notCleopatra mummy in the middle will be playful and cajoling and isn’t automatically hostile, although the second the party sees that she’s offering just a single 1k payout for a Staff of Lightning, a Mask of Illusion, and an intelligence scimitar, boy you know they’re going to start a fighting. Well and good.
   I’m a light under-impressed by the loot outside of aforementioned special (awesome) game-show-reward items. Jewels, gold statues, lapis lazuli tiles…a thorough looting of the pyramids will have nice rewards but that kind of flies in the face of the whole game show thing. Not sure how many metal victory laurels she has sitting around, that should be extra loot, not hand-waved. Of course REAL loot is the flying magic pyramid. My players, if they did not managed to crash this thing and kill a million innocent civilians with it, would first and foremost be obsessed with capturing the magic flying pyramid. There’s nothing to stop this in the module, either. Which, okay, wow, admirable. But whew. No XP for stealing the magic flying pyramid.
   How do you put this in your game? On the one hand, it’s awesome, I love the puzzles and tricks. On the other hand, it’s also a logistical nightmare to place in any ongoing campaign with the gonzo-levels set below “Anomalous Subsurface Environment”. Honestly, I’d be most likely to either trip rooms for one-off puzzle use or run it at a convention as a competitive module. It’d be great as a competition module. Very tough to site as an adventure site, though. 

​For ACKS II, Level ? (highish)
By Olle Skogren
Wrath’s Pass is a wind-carved, dust-filled, and bone-choked gap in the Dark Wall, a ridge of sheer basalt cliffs bounding the west side of the Zaharan Plateau. A wide trench anchored on each side by huge towers cuts across the pass. A narrow bridge spans the trench. The ever watchful sorcerer-wraith Atu-Gallu and his garrison of orcs, hill giants, and even fouler beings guard the pass against intrusion. Beyond the pass, terraced farms worked by the slaves of the sorcerer-wraith support the fortress.
   Olle Skogren, of the great Temple of Hypnos as well as other fine modules, made a fantastic entry for the Adventure Site Contest this time around, inspired by the “Isle of the Dead” paintings, built for exploration at a truly high level. Unfortunately, that site was four pages of text, not two. Fortunately, Olle is a publisher in his own right, so Isle of the Sorceress is now out on DriveThru, no muss, no fuss…and we get a second entry, this time at the right page count. Win/win.
   The story of the site is extremely ACKS. Evil isn’t just lurking in a bitty tomb in the middle of nowhere. This “sorcerer-wraith” is a commander in an Evil State, commanding an army of evil beastmen and giants and hellhounds. If the fortress is infiltrated by a high-level hit squad it can be overcome, but if a big army approaches then thousands of evil troops get summoned and it’s a brutal siege exercise. High-level as all get-out, with all the ACKS setup for a mass battle and domain scale action, but also a plausible reason for kings and high priests and crime lords that are the PCs to take action individually and dungeon-crawl. It’s smart design.

​    …looking at the map, maybe too smart by half. This is not an easily interpreted map for a gap fortification. 60-foot hexes make for an enormous scale, which is cool, but even with some side cutaways I’m a little confused on how the trench vs. the wall is supposed to interact. The usual problem with realistic fortresses (castles, towers, etc) is that they’re typically rather boring because they’re designed to be used by defenders in a practical way, this one only departs from “boring layout” when it goes for “confusing”. There’s nothing strictly wrong with the site, but it’s not a map that reaches out and grabs you. 

   So, who we gonna fight? Well, assuming it’s not a full army muster (and those are very nasty numbers, Do Not Do This), you’ve got a decent little pile of cleave or AoE, mostly orc and hellhound fodder. The hill giants (4) and gargoyles (6) aren’t quite as casually brushed aside, and there’s a squad of death chargers (15) that’ll hit pretty hard (death chargers are zombie riders sewn to zombie horses, four hit dice). I’m a little unclear on how these garrison troops are distributed between the two sides of the pass. I like the note that orc and giant troopers are undisciplined and prone to shoot first, ask questions later if infiltrators are spotted. The orc chief second-in-command is cringing and disloyal because he expects to get killed any day now by his boss, that’s usable. There’s also a secret tomb, walled-over, with seven mummies within who will challenge the sorcerer-wraith for control if released.
   Said sorcerer-wraith is very much the central figure here, and he’s been described in loving detail. I love that he’s incorporeal and just animating his wizard robes…his spell list is powerful, but he’s turned as just a wraith and is sensitive about that. He’s got a list of spells he uses intelligently and carefully, some for individual fights, some for the mass battle(s) or assaults. At high level like this, getting his full personality and plans is vital to running well, and he’s a rough fight if he gets the drop.
   Treasure in this setup is almost incidental to the site’s purpose, but you have to PAY YOUR PLAYERS, so the little lair of the sorcerer-wraith has the garrison pay-box and a magical workshop value, and of course he’s got some nice magic loot on his person (somehow being incorporeal), but the real treasure is the friends we made…wait a minute, no, the real treasure is the gigantic pile of grave goods in the secret chamber full of mummies. Of particular note in there are obsolete (?) property deeds for properties all over the region. That’s a fun little easter egg/quest challenge.
   In the end, Wraith’s Pass is an extremely solid hyper-dedicated chaotic fortress guarding the sole pass in a vast cliff wall, if you need one of those. Thanks to Tolkien’s Black Gate, that’s a use case that comes up a lot more than you’d think, but it’s still pretty dang bespoke. 

​For S&W, Level 5
By Jakub McFarland
Every full moon, seven wights rise from their icy slumber, ride down from the Black Mountain, in dark cloaks, on giant wolves, and reave the valleys for young woman to sacrifice to their evil goddess. Their leader wields a glowing red-silver sword and wears a brilliant diamond-studded crown.
A mad Sherpa raves: the black riders dwell in a dark fortress that looms on the cliff face of the Black Mountain. He has seen it. He can guide you there for a hundred gold coins.
   Confession time, last contest my #1 pick didn’t get first or second prize, although I did love the ones that did medal. But for me, my heart belonged first and foremost with the wild and energetic DRAGON LAIR Pit of the Red Wyrm, by one Mr. Jakub McFarland. So when I saw he’d once again blessed us with a submission this year, I was stoked. Then I read the overview (copied above)…
   …and I was even more excited. This thing’s story is mythic, all about seven undead riders from a snowy mountain fortress ravaging the lands once every full moon. What more do you need? Add in that their king appears to be in possession of a sentient greatsword named Bloodrime and they serve a mysterious dark goddess, apparently the consort of Ymir…heck yes, let’s do this thing.
   I had a few issues with this map at first, but upon a bit more reflection, I like it. There seems like only one path through on first glance, but having two rooms with upper galleries gives us nice climb options, plus there’s a secret room (5) with a hole going upward. Couple with the fact that the one way up visible from the outside on approach (12) has a concealed door leading out…there’s some good exploration here. Otherwise, it’s a nice scale for a site, just big enough for exploration and atmosphere (17->18 just screams “portentous encounter ahead”). Love the cliffside setting, not sure if the side-view was needed but it is classy.

​   I want to highlight that one map oddity, the pair of X’s along with the weird-looking cage square below them. That’s a floor-trap, leading to a chute, which in turn dumps the victim(s) into a tight cage hanging off the side of the cliff holding a ghoul, who takes two rounds to wake up from hibernation. That’s a great trap right there, slightly Rube Goldberg, but not entirely without reason (sacrifices being exposed on the mountainside seems to be a theme). Most of the other environmental hazards are slips and slides on ice, but hey, that’s fine for a site this size. Witchfire, another environmental effect, is neat…it can set mundane swords alight with ghostly green fire that also lets them deal damage to the more resistant monsters present.
   Our main bad guys are undead (not just the seven wights, but also draugr underlings) along with worgs and a giant spider, so despite being given a ton of flavor, there’s not a lot of interaction with most of the random encounter table or the room occupants consisting of “fight” or “march ominously then fight”. A welcome change of pace is a rival adventuring party…a pair of werewolves looking for the evil sentient sword. That’s a great NPC pair, particularly with them being “friendly, slow to trust, duplicitous, covetous”. Treacherous, obviously evil, but the kind of rivals that could join in on the boss fight is needed. And the tactical situations are nice and complex in multiple rooms, that’s neat.
   The aforementioned captured maidens are unfortunately less “NPCs” but more treasure, 100gp per rescue. They’re otherwise demoralized and not going to help, poor gals. Seven wights as the endboss means you’re going to lose some levels, so there’d better be some treasure in compensation, right? Well, there’s 1.2k in maidens, 2.1k in necklaces and worg-collars, 3k in lanterns-held-by-wights, and a 4k diamond crown on the boss-wight. Otherwise your see a nice silver dagger, ivory pens, and the werewolves’ gear. Feels slightly light for the threat level. I like the magic items that are here (wire spectacles acting as wand of clairvoyance, plus evil sword), but they feel slightly light here as well. None of this is terrible for level 5, but my gut is “treasure on the light side for 5” while it’s “threat on the heavy side for 5”. GM beware.
   This is a site that’s easy to place in any high mountain filled with undead-riddled ruins, and can be modded a fair bit too. I know I’m putting it in my campaign map. Just probably want to run the numbers on your XP hauls. 

​For Swords & Wizardry, Level 4
By Billinger Bence
Peristera Island is the only place in the world where the rare art of glassmaking has been combined with magic. The glass magic items made here are extremely powerful and valuable. The island's inhabitants guard the secrets of glassmaking more than anything else. One of the old workshops, located on a separate small island, was partially flooded and left to its fate. Who knows what treasures and secrets may be hidden here among these swampy lagoons.
   Sometimes we focus a little too much on gold and jewels for our loot found in dungeons, but while those have always been valuable, there are many other substances back in the day that were far more valuable to the ancients. Silks and wine get frequent nods, but what about spices and oil? And that's not even starting to talk about dyes, aromatics, prophylactics, abortifacients, fertilizers, seeds...an ancient merchant would give away gold by the pound for many of these substances. And then there's glass, an incredibly difficult substance to make. Romans considered the production methods of their glass to be darned near a state secret. Why don't you include more glass in your treasure hoards?
   Well here Mr. Bence has taken that question and added "magic" to it. Magic glassblowing workshop in a flooded lagoon, I can dig that concept. Beyond that initial idea there's not a lot more story, sadly, but hey, my players have committed war crimes for less.
   The map is a bit, uh...conceptual. Buncha buildings on chunks of islands in the middle of the water, okay. There's no scale given but really 5ft squares or 20ft squares, it doesn't really matter, because each island, and each building/room, exists independent from every other one. That's a bad sign. Compass rose is very pretty, but I don't know where we're supposed to be coming from. North? South? West-Southwest? Sometimes your map isn't really any better than no map at all. 

   The islands' keys are a little light on monsters but that random encounter table is loaded with monsters, pretty nasty for level 4 Swordwizards. A manticore lairs here, along with logical other nasties like giant crocodiles. The rolled d# encounters are rough at max, nobody wants their level 4s to tackle 5 satyrs, 3 harpies, or 3 wights. Oof. And frequency is 2-in-6 every turn, so I hope you like a violent hack-and-slash grind. Makes the keyed encounters (manticore, zombies, and a "wright"[sic]) almost a relief. Really the only nasty/weird keyed fight is a glass golem. Traps will be similarly kind of abstracted, like a pressure plate in the furnace room for fire, a poison dart trap in a treasure chest, etc. An old blower apparatus belching out poisoned air is nice, at least. Beyond deathtraps or monsters, the only interaction is a weird little setup with a glass sword in a furnace that is irretrievable without putting glass beads into the bars for...reasons. 
   At least the reward there is a +2 glass sword. There's also another glass sword that's +2, +3 vs. minotaurs, and a continual light glass vial, but most of the rest of the treasure here is rather abstracted, just gold, diamonds, or rubins. Glass golem is protecting "artworks" and there's a secret magic glass formula (no value given), but I really feel like the whole glass theme could have been leaned into a lot more with the treasure. 
   Plopping a choked lagoon full of ruined buildings onto your hexmap should be easy. In fact, I have exactly the perfect area in my campaign...but unfortunately, I'd rather just take the prompt "flooded glassworks" and make something where it matters if the map has a scale. Wonderful prompt though.

An adventure by Clark Nichols, level irrelevant
Written for Cairn 2E
   Oh boy. Pray me, my friends, as I dive into this one. “Cairn” is a dangerous sign enough as it is, thirty-two pages is scary, but then we come to this:

   A veritable witches’ brew of inspiration. Nightmarish. It’s being illustrated by the writer, which is also often a sign of someone a lot more interested in sketching than writing. Tone is breezy and informal, organization is…whimsical. The background is kind of a watercolor effect that makes it just a little bit annoying to try and read. 
   Let me begin by attempting to describe the thing...
   On second thought, that is too complicated, let me summarize. There's a concrete bunker that was used by giant heron riders in a long-ago war against a petroleum-lich (I dunno), now used by wannabe knights who want to become special super-powered Heron Knights but there's an underground group of apes who want to kidnap and sacrifice everyone to a blood-powered nuclear reactor. If the party doesn't interfere, 90% of the NPCs all die and the reactor goes nuclear. Yes this is supposed to be a fantasy game scenario, despite the fact that its post-apoc. 
   I'm going to put my aesthetic/tonal objections aside and say what I liked was first of all the map, despite the scribbly style there's a decent size here, with interesting flow and a nice vertical element. Color-coding the two different levels is the sole concession to readability here but it's a much appreciated one. Some of the sketches are helpful for scene-setting. The Room of Too Many Levers is a fun little spot with, as it says on the tin, too many levers that mess around with that all make changes throughout the facility. Information is generally well-conveyed, with NPCs given enough personality to run easily. Having "if nothing is done, here's what happens" should be a must for these plot-heavy dungeons, nice to see it. 

​   All that being said, what can be improved is probably most broadly assume that the PCs are the most interesting people in the zone. Agency is a nebulous thing, often enough, but one subtle problem is that if you've designed a dozen NPCs to be active and motived, then the GM is actually role-playing 75% of the active agents within the scene. That's not exactly of railroad, but it is a tendency to seize the steering wheel from the players. Having this random remote bunker focused on by Lich-Hitler in stasis is weird (and not much supported in the module). Despite being a thematic focus, the last surviving Great Heron, looking to bond with a noble party member and recreate the Heron Watch...just kind of is there, it's not a major focus.
   I waffled on the best use case here. I'm always hungry for good, or even functional, sci-fi adventures, a rarity in this hobby. I really wanted to see if I could mod this to use in my Stars Without Number campaign...nope. Couldn't do it. Even the map is just too wonky. So, I guess your best use case is actually using it for this one extremely bespoke campaign frame. Gamma world too maybe? Actually, this is perfect for Vaults of Vaarn. So, VoV fans, rejoice.
   Final Rating? */***** despite the tremendous and genuinely admirable production quality shown here. It's just...not compelling me to run it as a very fun adventure at the table.

   Our map is an old Dyson from back in his Matt Jackson period, high on branches but low on loops. With only twelve keyed areas I think that's okay, but a secret connection between, say, 7 and 9 wouldn't have gone amiss. How the players approach this one is going to be a little weird, I honestly don't see how most encounters don't lead to a single massive set-piece battle that either does or does not trigger the 50% tribal casualties mark, but if you roll low on caveman numbers and prep a lot of Silence I guess this can be a reasonable dungeon crawl. Looks nice.
   I already kind of touched on it, but there's a real problem here with the fighting. Namely, how do you deal with 152 ostensibly Neutral-aligned tough humanoid combatants? That needed a bit more thought, I'm afraid...it's ALMOST there, with the tribal chief and his cowardly brother having morale effects, a non-magical witch doctor, all the cavemen doing things by default...just feels like no order of battle is a whiff. Other fights are a giant snake, a black pudding, and a weretiger-princess, all solid combats. There's not a lot of traditional trapping going on in here but there are infectious diseases and "you know you should make the X mad" situations...except for a quicksand pit with an animate caveman zombie-head that chomps at the stuck victims. Rad. 
   Intractability is excellent. Most of the cavemen only communicate in hoots and grunts, but there's a fair bit of "person wants Y" in the text allowing for high-stakes (and hilarious) negotiation once the DM breaks out his caveman-voice. I like the allies possible to find, and the best bit of business is that the cavemen's dark evil god-idol has gemstone eyes and messing with them summons a MUTANT TERMINATOR T-REX WHO IS SINGLE-MINDED IN PURSUIT OF THE DESECRATORS. Straight into my veins. 
   Treasure in general is probably a little under-numbered if you look at the sheer number of hit dice here but it's probably over-generous in a sneak-and-loot or trick-and-swipe scenario. Flavor is good for everything except for the jewelry, but that's in-genre. If you're describing a sacrifice's heaving bosom you're not going to go long on the necklace she's wearing. Chief is wielding a +1 sword and +1 shield and the witchdoctor's club has a magic scroll taped to it. Charming. Not a lot of magic for the level though. 
   This is a lair full of cavemen. It's usable in any world of pulp D&D. The location is going to be more challenging logistically if you're the kind of person who wonders how a tribe of 200 is supporting themselves in a given region. Not really an OD&D question though...this thing is pretty cool. ​

​For system unspecified, Level 6
By Ethan B.
In the depths of the Jungle, there’s a primeval drum in a natural amphitheater. It has become a primal holy site for a tribe of carnivorous apes. The locals fear the site more than anything, and will defend it for they think a curse from the primal gods will come down if it is violated.
   Kind of a bummer there’s no system specified here, because this thing’s got flavor for days. I’m going to assume with the druid build and all it’s AD&D but calling out your system is a big deal.
   Having said that, the real beating heart of this adventure is pulp. The story hook, slightly obscure, apparently involves a Dr. Starling trying to capture an ape specimen and getting caught in turn, a massive fake sacred drum site claimed by both an ape troop and a tribe of savages, each faction uses the drum at different times. All the other local natives hate the savage tribe so go nuts and kill everything on every side. I think that’s the story, despite the very dense three-column format some information still appears to have been cut.
   As usual, when we have an outdoor map, we have a somewhat unclear expected progression. Its nice to see color here and the environment makes sense, but even without flying (level 6 in most systems will have occasional flights but not everyone air walking) the whole area is a little exposed. The three little cavelets are explorable but mostly you’re just wandering from point-to-point. There’s also a village in this adventure without any map at all, but it’s described decently. I’m not entirely sure how much use this map will get in play, which is a common outdoor site comment. Charming visual though.
   As is fitting for the pulp vibe, every single location seems to be some kind of trap. Pit traps, fire traps, pit traps full of firey centipedes…all good clean pulp. Giant orb spiders who inflict blisters painful enough to temporarily lose the use of a limb? Nasty. The big drum in the middle of the site is made up of dozens of taxidermied animals all stitched together to look like a dead dinosaur, stretched taut over a pit, played by dancing on it…and so yes, it can be knifed open, releasing sulfurous gas and very possibly sending the dancer tumbling into the sharp rocks below (also there are green slimes clinging to the underside, nice). This desecration means war, of course, including all the ape going apeshit.
    …which is not a metaphor. “Apeshit” is a game-mechanical term for the berserk state that the apes go into at low-hp. These apes are gnarly fighters. There are also a few jungle enemies to be had in side areas, like a “minotaur” (probably monitor) lizard and all the bugs. Up in the cliff an ogre hangs out just because. The savage tribe is not guaranteed to fight but if they do they have an extensive order of battle and some nasty tricks like poison darts wielded by Terror Trooper assassins which inflict hours of sleep onto the victims. I got a chuckle for the village description including “1 idiot” who is all about swiping diamonds from the skulls within the village’s central 400-skull pillar. Blood diamonds, natch.
   Treasure is…odd, and I think kind of low. All the apes and humans adorn themselves with treasure (50% chance of having 30gp worth), and of course 400 skulls x 2 eye sockets each x 10gp per diamond means there’s 8k in the evil village. The oddball eccentric doctor fellow pays 10,000gp for a live ape, which, um…I guess we were supposed to figure that out via mind-reading? Otherwise, you have a ruby necklace from a lovelorn centipede, 4,000sp with the ogre, a rando white leopard-skin rug worth 2k, golden-tipped drumsticks for the elephant ribcage xylophone…it’s okay, just odd. Magic isn’t awful, just an odd +1 weapon here or a spell scroll there. Of course there’s a bullwhip.
   Difficult as the adventure is to parse at time, it’s a pretty neat jungle site. I just wish I had a better bead on the story, feels like some critical cuts or a few assumptions missed messing up an otherwise solid location. 

Reviews from contributor copy, will omit our own from the ratings. Loved the idea behind this anthology, the vast majority of men and women in uniform aren't frontline fighters but those also serve who turn a wrench, stir a pot, or deliver the mail. 
​ Another Man's Treasure, by Ted Begley: Charming story of a logistics boffin wheeling, dealing, and making a continuous series of trades starting with expired MREs and ending with...well, it's a spoiler, but it's a hilarious series of events, all framed in said shuttle driver's dressing-down by his sergeant. *****
   Al in Logistics, by Addison Reid: Classic sci-fi short story premise, but told through a milSF lens. "Hide the AI" stories are all about the final discovery, and it's told well here. ****
   Manifest Destiny, by D. S. Ligon: Cryo-tech and a janitor save the day on a battle station under attack by aliens. Fun premise, exactly the kind of "lower decks personnel save the day" story I'd hoped to see in this series. *****
    Composting Status: Offline, by Xavier Anderson: Great little mystery where it's not about figuring out who did the crime, but how to solve the crime and exonerate the innocent being framed for it. For an anthology often about misappropriating military supplies, it's nice to see one story that makes it clear that not all theft is equal. Well-written. *****
   The Shell Script of Destruction, by T. R. Benjamin: Nice to see not every story is logistics or custodians, now we're in Bureau of Weapons. This one's a quick-hit sci-fi "figure out the technical problem" story that manages to be gripping and urgent, I like it. *****
   Masters of Mechamagic, Z. M. Renick: This one will be controversial. Everything else here is milSF, this is firmly in the "High Fantasy" genre. The fantasy mages here are technically backline support staff for the POG designation, but it ends with spell-slinging magi-battles, so it's not backline, either. I like fantasy so I was fine with this. ****
   Snipe Hunt, by Jason B. Hobbs: Another charming quick-hit, this time about a private being sent out on a snipe hunt where the snipe is (oops) actually real, leading to a snipe hunt of the snipe hunter. Classic "so no shit there I was..." story that feels very authentic, I love that stuff. *****
   Revision 12, by Daryl F. Mallett: I'm a sucker for this story, which is "officious bureaucratic clerk saves the day by reading the manual". If you want to make an argument that any story involving someone reading a tech manual is fantasy I won't fight you, but it's got good sci-fi action and I enjoyed it. 
   Life of a Deliveryman, by B. K. Gibson: This one was ours. We're really proud of it, an action-comedy adventure featuring deckhands and engineers as a small but heroic cog in a very large machine. It was a blast to write this one. 
   Sudden Death Overtime, by Malory: Final story in the anthology is a hilarious story about a bunch of radar operators misusing sensors to catch a rugby match and letting in a lot more than they bargained for. Personal favorite of the whole collection, this thing is funny throughout and has some genuine peril and stakes, too. Love it. ***** 

​For OSRIC, Level 4-6
By Szilárd Dreska
Scrotum was a hedonistic scientist and sorcerer who hosted many wealthy eccentrics in his secluded Sanctuary. He had many generous supporters, so he acquired a considerable fortune. However, 150 years ago, he disappeared, not even visited by guests, and his name was slowly forgotten.
   I'm going to assume Scrotum is a perfectly normal name in Hungary and let it otherwise pass without comment. Playtesters are credited, nice.
   The site's story here is going to be in the sci-fi/fantasy mix, which seems to be a common theme for the Melanian Renaissance (Hungarian OSR). Scrotum was messing around with some Star Trek level crap, to the point of this sanctuary having a central reactor powering strip lighting and multiple force fields. Then he did That One Wizard Thing where he messed up a ritual and turned his entire complex's staff into undead, while putting himself and his lady into stasis. So, your basic fallen wizard's lair, with added tech stuff. 
   Map is portrayed rather simply, but very clear and clean...looks like a graph paper scan with a lot of post-production. Love the symbols like collapsed staircases, locked doors, etc. It's three-level with tons of interconnections, flow is good. I find the number of big open rooms without walls in between them is interesting, slightly hard to adjudicate at times but there's a logical pathway or two, great stuff. Also pretty big.
   ...because then we get to contents and we get a slightly empty vibe. Many rooms are bare, while those that do have interaction usually just have a single thing. I will highlight a good bit of interaction, a devil statue as part of a carved fresco is chatty and willing to help, but also Charms a PC to go kill one of the servants because he's been slighted by the man. Some of the poison or death effects are a little random, but lead to stuff like "party member goes berserk", which can be interesting. The whole "shut down the reactor" bit where you have to figure out the sorcerer's favorite number for the passcode can be fun.
   I think part of my feeling stems from the rather simple monster roster. Wanderers are skeletons, giant rats, or ghasts, fine things to fight but not a lot of variation (and clerics get rid of the undead easily). The Melan-imagined "Breathstealers" are a cool undead, pity they're only fought once. Mechanical scorpions give a little variety, but beyond that it's just "bigger deal undead" like juju zombies and the nasty final chamber with a spectre and a shadow.
   I do appreciate the treasure distribution here. There's a steady drip-drip-drip mostly of bulky stuff (yes you can swipe the silverware) while bumbling around, with the main hoards near the bottom behind a bigger boss fight. The book that caused all this is a huge value and there's an opulent mass of statues and jewelry in the final room (behind the force field, so need reactor shutdown). I don't have issues with the amounts either...my only grump is that magic treasure feels a little light, three magic +1 weapons and that's about it. Players don't mind that, fundamentally.
   The site's location is cool and easy to put anywhere (secret passage beneath a monolith) but campaign managers will need to make a choice about how much high-tech stuff they're willing to have in their game, it's central to the location. Your mileage may vary, but if you like tech...

​For RC, Level any
By Jamie Henson 
A Foggy Night to Forget is as easy or hard as the DM decides. It can be used as: the basis of a single session (a simple in and out); a way to remove/kill PCs (of almost any power level—a campaign-fix); a method to introduce gear, treasure, and/or characters (ala aurum ex deo); or an introduction to domain play (the hamlet has to go somewhere).
   Danger Will Robinson, Danger! It can be a bad sign if an adventure has no level listed; that often is a sign of no playtesting, or some DM hand-waving, or just a sloppy oversight. Obviously, each of those things can lead to other, more serious deficiencies. But there’s a worse sign. A sign of terror. “For any level.” That means the adventure was written to nerf or bypass 90% of all the game’s default mechanics. This is actually the second such entry to this contest; the other didn’t even have a proper site associated with it, at all…that one will get reviewed at the very end along with a site that broke the 2-page limit. At least this one listened to page limits and does have an associated physical location.
   In other words, it might say Rules Cyclopedia, but it’s actually for AD&D 2E.
   Provisos aside, there’s nothing at all wrong with the site-as-a-site. The nicely-formatted and well-framed document tells of a magical cursed hamlet that appears in a foggy night? That’s Ravenloft Standard, nothing weird about accessing an adventure locale that way. Once the party is in the foggy village, they’re trapped there until they can either figure out what happened to make the village is way (it’s a curse, natch), or until they lose all their memories and become more inhabitants (or die before the curse sets in). Fixing the town’s curse involves solving the mystery (easy enough, they just murdered an immortal godlike being’s favorite servant) and them making the inhabitants admit what they did and say they were sorry. That’s a sticky wicket. Good luck adjudicating all the mind-control spells and deciding if the wizard charms a villager if that really counts. Also there’s a superpowered fighter at the middle of town who’s load-bearing if you figure out how to overcome his hugely inflated statblock. Good narrative setup for a story, proper players should work to sequence-break immediately. 

    Map is pretty standard for “outdoor site” which means its just a flat sheet of POIs to go to at random. There’s not a real “pitched battle” scenario around here but hey, trust the players, I never put a riot off the table and the picture helps run that. Despite the grid no clear scale given and it’s a weird stylistic semi-isometric. The existence of a stream automatically helps a little bit for shenanigans. It looks good, but I would prefer a larger village to be honest. Still, site is a site, so that’ll work.
   This is a social scenario like most mysteries, so there’s a need for plenty of interactive NPCs. Unfortunately, most the NPCs are a little on the spacey side, the village’s curse specifically making them somewhat unfocused, passive, and forgetful. Only a few of the villagers are original inhabitants, with extra NPCs like a passel of Gator-men, an amnesiac set of mercs (keeping the decapitated head of the immortal’s pet mystic), and a druid-turned-vampire in charge of a spider cult. Some of these can get very hostile indeed, and put a lie to the “all levels” designation. And that’s not even mentioning the automaton in the center.
   Rules Cyclopedia incorporates BECMI all the way up to Immortal, so the center figure with a -13AC, saving as a F36, is within the rules but it seems designed to be a purposeful “can’t fight this” middle mystery. Still, if it has hit points, it can be killed, granting vast riches plus a fix to the village curse-trap that is not “talk to people”. Players being players, that’s mostly like the avenue out of here.
   Assuming the players get out killing everything, there’s about a million gp, or a few dozen thousand if the middle fight gets avoided. That middle guy’s equipped with “Suit Armor +4, Shield +5, Girdle of Giant Strength, Warhammer +4, +9 against Spellcasters) And/or any other equipment & treasure the DM feels appropriate.” Otherwise the magic is a little spare, things like a few potions and scrolls, Stone Plate, a shield +1 and battle axe +1…not quite the reward I’d expect for tangling with a vampire-druid with 9th-level spells and or so on.
   Inclusion of this site is easy enough, geographically, but campaign inclusion is a mix of dangerous and difficult…a TPK or a Monte Haul, not much of a space in between, that would probably leave many players perplexed as to why. With great difficulty you could probably seed rumors into the world beforehand but that’d be a difficult task.