A dungeon by Ryan Lynch, level unspecified
Written for no system in particular
   We’re ending July with a “watery octopus Appendix N Jam entries”, apparently. You know the drill by this point…nifty cover, four pages (this time covering eight keyed rooms), double-column format, bog standard highlighting and writing and everything else. Hey, you can put a lot more words in if you’re going to eschew such uncool things as “stats” or “system-specific rules”.
   Pirates, poor ol’ pirates. Always seem to be having such a great time, until they grab a bit of cursed booty and all become undead and live a cursed existence for all of time. Every. Single. Time. This group went around calling themselves the Curs, had a dog motif, and the cursed item was a sentient undead-causing dagger, it’s sentient because a sea nymph is trapped inside. All good. Hooks are fine, a mix of a panicky shellfish pick, and treasure map, and/or a woman in visions promising your dreams. Sure.
   So what I liked in this was mostly that dagger-and-sea-spirit combo. It’s a lovely mix of good loot, interesting story, and definite trap. The holder can command sea critters and breathe underwater, and I do wish there was an environment here where those powers could gain you other cooler stuff. I like how sea lady is shaping the treasure pile into a face and there’s a whole trap associated with it. I also like one pitiful pirate skeleton who’s jawless and just has a single arm, he’s friendly and talks a lot if his jaw can be found, that’s very classic in a LucasArts way.
   All that, so good. What can be improved though is the usual laundry list of issues. Map’s layout is adequate but as always with dungeon isometrics, it would have been better top-down. I think more size would have helped the whole “two rivals battling for decades over the magic dagger” factional conflict that got set up. More map space would help the whole site breathe with traps and encounter flow. Of course, the biggest improvement would be to WRITE THIS THING FOR A SPECIFIC SYSTEM. It’s a lot easier to adapt from a different system into my own vs. this vagueness. Treasure could stand a little more interest but that would be greedy.
   The best use case on this one is to make yet another pirate lair for your map, as long as you don’t mind the extra homework. I do think the whole lady-in-a-dagger setup is worth using, and if you are, the rest of the lair is adequate enough, I suppose. The best ain’t great but the worst ain’t bad.
   Final Rating? **/***** because it’s just kind of okay. If you’re truly truly desperate for Yet Another Pirate Lair, probably because you’re doing a pirate campaign (you poor soul), then I suppose you could do worse than this.

An adventure by Clayton Notestine, level nill
Written for Cairn
   Okay, that’s a darn cool cover. The Appendix N Jam produced some very cool visual artifacts, if nothing else. An LLM somewhere drank half a lake dry making this thing, huge production value for a little four-pager. Format is the usual two-column affair, just eight, uh, keys plus the intro, bestiary, and spellbook. There’s a credited editor, but the editing pass must have been for formatting, not content…the main raider is Poxlin “Feral Beard” Skuggs in one place, Poxlin “The Toxin” Skuggs elsewhere for example, there are multiple issues like that. Overall appearance is nice though, and more readable than some of these products.
   Our story here is the bog-standard “giant Atlantean submarine accidentally crashes into a lighthouse and is being actively looted while the mummy it was transporting attempts to escape”. As will happen. Hooks are thin enough to break with minnows, not just trout…your players are Poxlinite mercenaries, dreamers summoned by the mummy, or treasure hunters bereft of any other affiliation. Going to be some fairly major different approaches from that one, which is nice, but its not much supported via text.
   May Gygax forgive me, there will be multiple examples of what I liked here in a Cairn adventure, of all dang things. First off, the Atlanteans are wildly gonzo…they’re all psychic octopi in fishbowls piloting barnacle-encrusted skeletons. That’s neat. I like that the mummy is voiceless unless his lung-containing canopic jar can be returned to him. I like that there are new unique spells to discover (although they tend to be silly). Loot tables are decently flavorful as well, although of course if you’re playing in a real system then you’re going to need to fill in gold totals. I dig the broad personality notes, should make for positive role-playing. All positive stuff.
   …but be not alarmed, faithful reader, we’re still in Cairn-land, for what can be improved is “everything else”. First of all, the map. My friends, this is a CRIME:

Do Not Under Any Circumstances Do This Thing. There’s a potentially cool dungeon described here, a submersible Greek trireme stuck into a lighthouse being consumed by the tides. But yeah, art is hard. But the abomination that is this ball-and-stick diagram is terrible and obtuse and should not happen. The random encounters are also “events” which are awkward and probably would make more sense in a physical environment but given each circle is a wildly different space, the events are hard to manage. Also, despite the strong personality work on the NPCs, their motivations, or rather plans, are a little ambiguous. I don’t usually complain about a short adventure text but this thing desperately needed one more page.
   Naturally the best use case here is thus to strip this for its deliciously gonzo parts, assuming you’re wanting to run something zany. That Atlantean idea is a hoot and a half, and I like a lot of the rest of the scenario flavor. If you are a person given over to a depraved mind and wish to inflict bad gaming upon your friends, AKA “A Cairn DM”, then I suppose you could run this directly in Cairn.
   Final Rating? **/***** almost entirely because of the quality of the sizzle, not because of the steak. If this thing had half the effort given to substance that was devoted to its style, we’d have us a 5/5 here instead. 

An adventure by Clyde (@LowKeyTTRPG), levels 1-2.
Written for Shadowdark
   I have…questions. You have a production written for Shadowdark, probably the easiest system to write for in the world. Level one or two. You have a generous nineteen pages to explain your dungeon, which only has eleven keys (confusingly labelled 1-3, and a-h). You’re using lots of tables, color coding, and careful long faction descriptions for what gets encountered in those less-than-dozen locations. So…WHY WOULD YOU FEEL THE NEED TO MAKE A YOUTUBE VIDEO EXPLAINING IT? Alright, Clyde, it’s cross-promotion, I get it, game recognizes game. Even so.
   The story is about as normal as it can get, the second “undead knights + monster humanoids” we’ve hit in a row. Little more spice, this time at least there’s a solid connection…knights are cursed by a dragon they killed to rest uneasily, kobolds were lairing here just chilling until taken over by some dragon-worshipping lizardmen, now they’re stealing mining equipment to break into the knight’s inner tomb to steal his dragon-fire sword. Add in a lost wedding band from a confused wandering local villager and some bandits blowing a hole into the complex and boom, there you go. It’s a lot to stuff in to an itty bitty sub-Dyson.
   So what I liked here are actually quite a few of the little details. There are neat little traps, the magic items and the npcs of note are all named and with motivations, and the map has two entrances, which actually matters. All good. I don’t know why, but I was particularly charmed by the pair of vases-with-scrolls-in-them in the final undead room with clear “break in case of restless dead” instructions. More of that, please.
   Alas, all this good work is severely undercut by the teeny-tiny nature of the map; what can be improved first and foremost is to EXPAND THE MAP. Ideally, add water features and a second level or two. Conversely, the actual map itself is perfectly functional as a small lair map, but in that case the improvement would be to stuff it less. I’m also not fond of preset loot that then requires rolling on the system table; pre-roll that crap, particular if they’re in the adventure to be anti-undead priest scrolls. Rolls are fun outdoor or random encounters, not a pregen little lair.  I really think this guy had a good story idea with some good design intent but was really under-served by his map.
   Thus it with resignation that I say best use case here is to run it as a one-shot in 5E. It would be more useful if it was lighter, or heavier, but the puffy slow-combat shamble that is 5E needs that kind of over-engineered, under-sized craft. Shadowdark can handle a lot better, brother. I guess this is why we needed a YouTube explainer.
   Final Rating? **/***** but I really think there’s some promise here. Either scale up or scale down and we have quite a decent adventure writer. Give us more next time, Mr. Clyde.

An adventure by James Melo, level 1.
Written for Shadowdark
   Waitaminute, do I detect a repeat author here? I believe we’ve encountered Mr. Melo very recently. That one was a trifold, this time we have a full-bore twenty-page dungeon, complete with twenty keyed locations and all the usual rumors/hooks/bestiary. This ratio might make you nervous at first, but it’s okay…these are the Shadowdark standard of zine-scaled with margins comfortable even by your most short-sighted ninety-year-old grandma’s standards. It’s simple, but it’s also nice and complete.
   It’s a first-level adventure, so our story is about as standard as it gets: Goblins in a cave lead to undead knights in a tomb. Goblins have pet giant centipedes. Undead have giant rats. Default railroad is “players randomly bumble upon a convoy that’s just been raided hours ago, d12 victims have been taken and are getting et”. That’s a little convenient, but your modern players expect a little hand-holding. And this is a very, very, Present Year adventure:

   I’ll grant a single what I liked point to the map is that there are multiple ways in, there’s the Boring Assumed Way with the cave opening and then there’s the more interesting way with a bunch of standing stones on the hilltop leading down to the main tomb proper. There are a few nice bits of environmental interaction, like a goblin god’s idol inflicting negatives, a pool cavern only accessed via swimming, a portcullis that opens with a lever just out of reach…all fun little bits of interaction. There’s a fun bit with the giant centipedes eating a corpse with gold on it. They’re not evil or even aggressive, but don’t mess with their lunch.
   Unfortunately, what can be improved first of all is making a little more interest in all other NPC interactions. The goblins aren’t really built with many negotiation levers, the undead are mostly undead, and the one sentient undead guy you still fight just because he wants to hand off his magic sword to someone worthy. Not a lot of interesting fight stuff either, which is understandable for level 1 but we’re looking for places to improve here. Map, outside of the one water feature, is one of Dyson’s more boring ones. Loot could also stand to be a little better…the magic sword in particular feels a little underpowered unless we’re in a 5-minute-adventuring-day mode.
   I’ll say best use case here is probably to play a simple Ye Olde Game of Shadowdarke, not anything strange or unexpected, but pleasant and almost comforting. There’s nothing here particularly worth cutting out and using elsewhere. Nobody will be sad, it’s going to be a perfectly cromulent time.
   Final Rating? **/***** without rancor. It’s not offensive, it’s not even possible to mind this thing, but there’s nothing unusual here either.