A “zungeon” by Katt Kirsch, level not listed (highish).
Kind of maybe sort of written for OSE. Ish. Let’s not over-think it.
   Oy. I’ve seen this name recently. This is another zungeon, which is like a dungeon except you play it while eating a Zaxby’s Zensation Zalad. And also there aren’t real maps but instead you suffer through interpreting ball-and-stick graphs. Beyond that, pretty standard stuff, despite the zany font/coloration choices…start with a prologue, then hooks and rumors, then “map” (vomit), then bestiary, then finally very abbreviated keys for our “locations”. I don’t have much to say about format really, the nineteen rooms over eight pages ratio is reasonable, it’s just oddly arranged.
   I…don’t understand how tigers and lemons mix together as themes, but that’s our story’s themes. There these ruins, okay? And they’re lost. And they’re inhabited by tiger-men. And those tiger men grow massive lemons. And those lemons are traded with nearby villages. And some(?) of the lemons need blood to grow. And there are hunting tiger-constructs and were-tigers and a 4-armed priestess of tigers and a massive “you killed the boss” tiger golem that does rampaging when she’s inevitably killed. BECAUSE SHE HAS A STAFF OF HEALING AND A +3 SWORD. All told in punchy little two-three line keys or random encounters. So far, so weird.
   Yeah I’m going to punt on the weirdness levels because that’s a taste thing, so what I liked first will be that excellent loot amount. There’s some actual-factual GOOD LOOT in this adventure, which feels vanishingly rare in the sullied halls of Itch. OSE needs it, though. The final golem most has a coin value, sweet. If we had an actual map, the addition of a canal cutting through the lower half of it would be very welcome, as would the secret passages/rooms. Perfectly cromulent encounter design crops up here and there, with the were-tigers being professional and under the thrall of an expansionistic pagan priestess, but otherwise quite chill. In one homoerotic moment, a trio of them even invite your players into a hot tub, have fun roleplaying that one…but it’s a good idea generally to have NPCs willing to chat. I like the captured bandits willing to accompany the party; one of them erupts into a beetle swarm after a while.
   Wrongheaded territories abound after that, with what can be improved BEYOND HAVING A REAL MAP mostly consisting of “think about interconnections more” and “go deeper into your motivations”. Finding some ruins, getting yourself some fur, a second pair of arms, and the ability to turn cultists into were-tigers is all well and good, but you’re going to have to go a lot farther to show me how this plus a healthy citrus market actually nets us a world (or even region)-devouring threat. Binrix the local village militia leader ought to have some kind of plan too beyond “I hear there are rumors thataway, go quest young man”. Eight pages is quite a lot of room, there really is some missed potential here.
   In the end, the best use case is probably to just run this in OSE, have a somewhat disjointed abstracted dungeon crawl, and then retire with all your fabulous cash and prizes. I’m trying to think about what I’d extract from here to be useful in a different context and I get…absolutely nothing. That’s a little grim. Nugget yield: Zero.
   Final Rating? **/***** because I’m feeling incredibly generous. This is the best you’re going to get, because despite the fun bits in actual play, the lack of any quality individual pieces and the lack of a real map permanently cripple this one from ever being better than two stars.

A dungeon by Aaron King, level [404 object not found]
Written for some vague mysterious OSR idea
   By this point, artpunk is more or less a passing fad. Its influences are still felt in places here and there, with more projects cropping up on itch.io than, say, DriveThruRPG. But sometimes, we have anti-artpunk…and that’s what’s here. A twelve-page document describing six keyed areas seems like pure over-production, doesn’t it? Well…no. This thing is ‘zine-scaled, massive 16-point font, simple single-column, has multiple blank pages, you get the deal. It’s just a Word document somebody exported as a .pdf and I’m fine with that formatting decision. I might have preferred using italics, underlining, and/or bolding instead of ALL CAPS as means of emphasis, but it’s fine, it’s all fine. A bit worse is the choice to drop key story/setting information as asides mid-paragraph, but hey.
   What the heck is a stone mole, and why would one want a sauna? Well, apparently stone moles are human-sized moles made of stone. Huh. Figures. Why a sauna? Because they too find them relaxing. Although there’s also a Holy Mole (heh) that has now claimed the hot springs as a holy site and manifested powers and is causing tremors and I guess that’s why we’re invading the site? Certainly, the hooks are thin on the ground. There’s also a little bitty baby sun?
   Outside of the Redwall-induced fondness for charming moles, what I liked on this one is the map-given-its-scale. Two entries, meaningful secret door, mildly interesting choices in exploration…that’ll do pig. The infant sun thing is creative and interesting…it’s a great item, using it as a cleric makes his spells harder to resist, but he loses 1 HP each morning and -1 year of life per week used. That’s good. Nice that there are hints about this in ancient dwarven runes that dwarf-speakers can sus out, very solid. I like the primary treasure is CRYSTALIZED MOLE SWEAT, that’s great.
   Though what can be improved first is probably adding more cash value in treasure, it’s low even for silver standard games. Out fights are also a little dull, too, just bonkers or zappers or a lever that summons 6d6 damage of steam. Better hooks and rumors would be helpful to add some more pizzazz on this one. Honestly, there are scale issues here that tell me this is a modern D&D player…it’s a little lair laid out like a full-scale dungeon.
   That said, I’d still say best use case is to run this as a lair. Stone moles are charming but a lot of different creatures can populate this spot, it’s perfect for thirty minutes of fun upon discovery. Great treasure to steal, too.
   Final Rating? ***/***** as a lair, just perfect for a “book of lairs” style publication and now I’m considering where I’m putting this. Very well made.

A dungeon(?) by Jake Mix,“we don’t really “do” levels here.
Written for Vaults of Vaarn.
   I see the words “Vaults of Vaarn” and my stomach churns. My right eye twitches. My head begins to pound. I have been…somewhat less than impressed with Vaults of Vaarn during my long sojourn among the itchies. I don’t like gonzo, I don’t like post-apocalyptic…coupled with the garish blue-and-yellow cover, I didn’t walk into this one with high hopes.
   Although the intro page does reference The Sword of the Lictor, so that’s something…Gene Wolfe is not in the usual itch.io list of inspirations. Okay, that’s something. There’s also a lot more ambition that usual in this one’s scope, you’ve got a “hexcrawl” with twelve hex, an “adventure site” with nine keys, and a final vault with nine more keys, all contained in sixteen pages with a generous art budget and wide margins. It’s one of the most readable Vaults of Vaarn products I’ve seen. Despite the weirdness, I understood what was happening.
   …but don’t get me wrong, this thing is DANG WEIRD. It’s a MountRushmorecrawl, basically. Huge carved overseer statue, formerly lost in an eternal sandstorm, now exposed for looting. Overseer was a cleric of Azathoth Jr., who he was feeding genetic codes before getting sick. In an effort to live longer he tries to turn himself into a mushroom, like you do, but oops, grew a second head and got taken over. That’ll happen. He dehydrated himself so there you go. Over the eons, a crystal jungle grew up the statue legs, a Pattern Out of Space took up residence, the usual Vaarn stuff. Feeling whimsical yet?

A dungeon by Sandbox Plots, low level
Written for Shadowdark
   Have I written much about my selection process for Crapshoot Monday? It’s about as slapdash as it can be. Itch.io has an abysmal search function, but you can poke and prod it into submission with effort, eventually getting it to show you (mostly) free products, mostly physical. About half of all such products are creations even more miserable than the average adventure, one-to-six page “complete TTRPG systems”. I’m kind of curious to try month of crapshoots on those games, but I suspect I’d regret it. Anyway, after hitting the first random free or PWYW adventure and downloading it, I look for “more like this” at the bottom of the webpage and so I snaffle up the other freebies in there. Believe it or not, I weed out the lowest 20% after that, the outright disasters and headaches. Anyway, that’s how I usually pick these up.
   Or, in this case, the free adventure’s creator can just tag me on Twitter and say “hit me”.
   Opening up our download, we already have good signs. While written for Shadowdark, it eschews Arcane Library’s distinctive house style for a very simple three-page, double-column document with Times New Roman-esque normal fonts, simple .docx formatting, a tiny Dyson Map (thirteen keys). Nothing special, nothing weird, just…”here’s a site for adventuring in”. Cool. Spelling is a little wonky in places, which I think is an EASL thing.
   The story…is something we have to explore kind of like the players have to explore the site, buried and hidden in the keys. Sussing things out by slow examination, this appears to be the burial mound of the eponymous Ilya the Cunning, a great hunter and lover of books, along with his wise Nastya the Wise, who really loved mushrooms. Unlike the usual corporeal undead, in this case both dead people are meandering around down there as ghosts, stirred up by the invasion of a wolfpack and some centipedes. Both ghosts are able to fight if you steal their stuff, but they also give away loot for clearing out infestations. Also there was a great bow won by Ilya and being held by a bronze statue? No stats given to the bow, but there’s a story about winning it from a god of the hunt.
   Frankly, what I liked here is “most of it”. Map ain’t bad. Couple entryways, one with obvious wolf den danger, other with ambush-jellies, main hub has a statue puzzle to go right or left but there’s a side-step, you have pool of blessing, shrine to mess with, the only traps are sprung by players being greedy, monsters are simplistic but reasonable for low-level, and the bronze statue being a relentless eternal hunter of the bow’s thief is neat.
   What can be improved most here is less about what’s present, but more about what ain’t. The Cunning Bow is a fine idea but it isn’t hinted at or focused on, so we’re a little lost at how to run it. A lot of the best ideas are interesting hints, but require more effort to really flesh out. As is frequently an issue with tombs, there’s a static aspect to the whole place, a sense that this tomb is waiting for player interaction. As always, a third dimension would help both site dynamism and give more exploratory potential.
   None of that is lethal. Best use case for this one is to plop it down on your hexmap and let your players bump into it for a fun hour or two of delving. That’s what I did. Nothing here really screams to be pulled out of context and reused elsewhere. The unfortunate need to do extra work to properly seed the place into the map and to make rumors for the artifact-bow and the god of the hunt and everything else.
   Final Rating? ***/***** with a whole star added if you don’t mind adding in those preparatory bits yourself. Sorry author, I know you told me to savage this thing but I rather liked it.