An adventure by Leonard Schellauf, level not specified.
Written for His Majesty The Worm
I have an aesthetic objection. That “The” really shouldn’t be capitalized. This is an adventure that tests my general rule that specific is more adaptable than general. This thing is written for a very oddball system, with tons of tags like “wounds”, “disfavor”, and “roughhouse checks”. It’s written with this His Majesty The Worm system fully in mind, with things like the random encounter table being called “The Meatgrinder” and having XXI entries. No idea how that’s supposed to work. But I still think I could make this work. Nine pages, fourteen rooms, pretty decent prose for it.
The story is that this is the cellar of a famous vintner/alchemist, now sunken into the underworld and being used as a possible link between two levels of The megadungeon. I don’t think that’s a needed context, but hey, I admire the spirit. It’s a got a mysterious entryway via fountain, it’s got a river into deeper depths, this can be a solo adventure site but its written with a mind for integration. Rumors are a variety, alchemist wants stuff, heir wants wine, etc. All of this could be slotted in most urban crawls. Everything is bespoke and unique, but there’s also some very evocative art for them. Lot of effort put into this one.  

    I’ll start what I liked there with what’s not something I usually grade on, the art. The clay homunculi are pathetic and adorable, the monsters are creepy, the fountain actually shows what’s needed to show for the puzzle aspect…excellent stuff. I also liked the fountain as an entrance, stuffing the carved face’s nose with mint stops the water pouring out and reveals a passage down to the dungeon. There’s even a callback with a door getting unlocked by stuffing a carved mouth with food. Good solid design. Like the personalities of the little clay guys, always nice to have talky stuff in your dungeon. I like that there’s a recipe you can find that makes new homunculi with a super-rare wine as the ingredient.
Obviously as always, what could be improved is adding stairs and water features. The map is…fine, miss having a vertical element but the secret rooms all have reasons, the layout is logical with decent exploratory depth…yeah, this works, but it can be better. A lot of the interaction is on the random encounter table, including the Sword of McGuffin that has a taxidermied lindwyrm holding it. I don’t like driving so much action on a table, particularly with something like that which should have a fixed location on a map. There’s also a newborn wine godlet hungry for wine that’s a little more unfocused than I’d prefer. Could have been a little more developed there. There’s a random wine table that’s flavorful, but I’d love to see some more work adding game mechanics to each type.
I’d say best use case is to have this thing in a built-up city crawl and make it an adventure site to stumble into. It’d take a fair bit of translation effort to convert into a more normal game system, but it’s got the baseline you can work with and I think the juice is worth the squeeze. Inspiring a bit of creative improvisation? That’s cool. The individual bits are all very adaptable, too.
Final Rating? ****/***** which might be the best you can get with this scale. I’m genuinely charmed and surprised by this one, good job Mr. Schellauf.

   Last year, I reviewed Sigils, by the overblessed-with-first-names Sam Robb. I enjoyed it, finding it a genuinely refreshing street-level urban fantasy, written by a Christian without preaching, written with young protagonists without being YA, written clean enough I’d let my kids read without being middle-grade…altogether admirable. So, I was optimistic picking up A Sense of Murder, hoping I’d find another pleasant read.
   I found something rather more than pleasant.
   First, though, I shall begin with my biggest gripe. I open up this fantasy novel, and what do I not see? NO MAP. I understand why, having read the thing, but it’s going to be something I flag every time I (don’t) see it. The reason why it’s understandable is that the action here mostly takes place in a single city, so there’s no roaming around a vast territory here, just a point-crawl “market district”, “docks”, “embassy”, etc…if I were running this as an RPG scenario we could mostly do it theater-of-mind. But I’d still rather have a map for my players to point at.
   So is this another urban fantasy novel? Well, maybe. There are four main context-and-character combos you get in fantasy novels, the Wild Man in the Wilds (some Conan), the Wild Man in Civilization (some Conan, Edgar Rice Burroughs), the Civilized Man into the Wilds (Tolkien, Lewis, B. K. Gibson), and finally the City Man in His City (Dresden Files, most Sanderson, Grey Mouser). Most Urban Fantasy is not just the urban context, but about being the last in that list, City Man in His City. In this case, we start with our protagonist as a rough lawman / travelling circuit justice out in the Fantasy West, drawn into a city by a cosmopolitan figure (the series’ titular Road Mage) who is also more comfortable in the wilds. Although both men are educated and sophisticated, if we’re looking at archetypes then I’d classify them both more comfortable in the saddle. Let’s call it a fantasy cop show and then move along.
   Setting is easy to grok, but also pretty fresh. Multiverse Rome is fighting Actual Satan across a vast network of worlds, traversed by magic. Tech levels are…schizophrenic, with the Multiversal Empire having lightning guns and the wizard using a sword, while the lawman uses a two-shot pistol. There are electric lights and steamboats and sailing ships and horses, so if you’re happy with gonzo then you’re good to go. If you’re not, it all makes sense, just calm down and think about it for a bit. Magic is all about manipulating The Weave, with some mages just able to “do magic stuff” while other people are born with specific Talents…including our first-person protagonist lawman.
   How powerful is it to be able to just tell the truth? Pretty useful for a lawman, and would be pretty useful for the empire to be drafted into their millennia-long war…which is why said mage is brought in in the first place. Lawman has to hide his power while investigating a series of child deaths that leads to a demon in a carnival that leads to finding a warlock in the city. Very nice character setup, and good plot to start with as well.
   A note on content: This is NOT Sigils. My eleven-year-old is NOT reading this. The whole thing starts with multiple dead children, and it’s pretty gritty in its depiction of evil. I found that to be refreshing, honestly, because while it never got grimdark or nihilistic evil is shown as genuinely tempting, not for “mwahaha magical corruption” reasons but because demons offer knowledge for free for their own deceptive purposes. That’s realistic. The experiences also scar the heroes, but nobody wallows in grief or trauma. Everyone has a job to do and so they sack up and go do it.
   Good guys being genuinely good is something rare enough in the space I feel the need to highlight it, and it’s something that happens consistently here. Nobody’s an idiot, nobody’s lawful stupid, nobody is perfect or angelic, but just as the bad guys are all bad, the good guys are all good, being both wise as serpents while desiring to be innocent as doves. Scars and losses will accrue, but that’s okay, and there’s something deeply cheerful about Robb’s heroes that reflect his own faith…in the end, what do they have to fear? At worst, death. All will be made new. Evil cannot win, this is an Actual Factual Ontological Truth, and it’s true in this world as well. Refreshing.
   As this is an action-mystery plot, there are plenty of twists and turns, and the Final Reveal is obvious to the reader only about a chapter and a half before it hits the protagonist, which is the perfect timing. It’s a thoroughly enjoyable romp throughout and my only final complaint is that the mystery is wrapped up but the ongoing drama for the characters has only just begun; I certainly hope more Road Mage books are forthcoming.
   Go read this one so the man writes me some more; you won’t regret it.

 A leveless dungeon by Yochai Gal and Francesco Zanieri
Written for Into The Odd
Oh boy, time to get back in the reviewing saddle with an ItO joint written by a couple vaguely familiar names. I don’t have high hopes anytime I see “Into The Odd”, and I wasn’t sure why…I think it’s actually because of the setting. The game is written with a weirdo post-apocalyptic scavenging scenario in mind, which certainly seems to be an impetus for adventure, but as is often the case with nihilistic settings it means that ultimately everything is meaningless, like with Murgleblurk. Dream-like, pointless, meandering, no level-ups…it’s not something that appeals to me personally, of course, but from what I see it doesn’t appeal to anyone long-term. Nobody’s playing a deep and meaningful ItO campaign over the years. So, we just get occasional pop-ups like this, made for artsy 1-hour one-shots. Crushing.
Information is also terribly organized here, just bullet points under room names.
In this particular case, we have the single most standard sci-fi scenario known to man, “ruined facility where the controlling AI goes mad from Some Kind of Art”, this case a library where music plays that addicts machines and kills people. Otherwise, we’re mostly in the “weirdo experiment rooms” here, not really leaning into the whole library thing. The map is isometric, so it sucks, but there’s an attempt at a second ingress point with vaguely-sketched “tunnels” beneath the library.
So, what I liked. Well. I do like that the Voltaic Sheet Music deals 1d4 CHA to living beings. On CHA 0, head-explosion. That’s kind of charming.
What can be improved is the whole rest of the dungeon. First, it’s a library, so maybe lean a little bit into the concept of a knowledge repository? The experimental rooms are classic “random stuff to mess with and die or mutate”, but there’s not a lot of benefit there and there’s not a lot of hinting. Yeah, don’t touch the swirling orange vortex, we get it. For a system where all character progression is based on items, you should have some more interesting items…instead of a scattergun and a one-use lightning gun.
Also, “bullet shells”.
I’m scraping here for a best use case. Map isn’t anything to extract, the ideas aren’t innovative, the monsters are dull, the story is trite, and the music thing is hard to translate. I guess grab the trap idea of music that makes your head explode? Mining deep in the squishy warm stuff in here for our single nugget of dubious quality.
Final Rating? */***** with a demoralized nod of fully-met expectations. In the end, this Into The Odd needed to be a lot more odd.

An island adventure by Avaricious RPG, for levels who knows
Written for “OSR”
   I’ve had a pretty decent experience with the “Appendix N Jam”, it’s a simple four-pages-including-cover size, usually focused pretty well on a simple scenario, often with fond bits of nostalgia bait around the edges. This one does have the $4.59 sticker and the usual format, but rather than keys we have a large number of tables and a few descriptions of spaces outlined on the map. This is a danger sign:

    Uh so this island is right off the world’s edge, outside of time and space, where the god Time sleeps inside of a volcano about to wake up. He’ll in fact wake up every few weeks, cause and eruption and mass destruction in a tantrum, then revert back to sleeping state and reset everything because Time Stuff. There are also all kinds of interesting people and places scattered throughout the island, all refugees and wash-ups from a thousand worlds, complete with multiple factions each with goals and lairs and everything.
   …we are given to understand. Actually, because, as mentioned, this is only three pages of content so its abstracted and fuzzy and generated randomly by tables and actually nothing matter because, as mentioned, there’s a huge reset button. ‘kay.
   I’ll swiftly go through what I liked because there’s only one thing, there’s a pretty good event timer showing the sequence of disaster, that’s nice for this kind of scenario.
   What can be improved otherwise is almost infinite because we’re in the realm of “more pages needed”, so I’m not going to speculate about details. Each bad guy area needs a map with keys and/or order of battle, the island itself needs more map details and random encounters, the mysterious fate-programmer-spider needs motivation and a plan, everything need loads and loads of detail…or else the island itself needs to be massively de-scoped, made much simpler. As it is this is a fuzzy idea for a little campaign, not a practical one-shot like the page count really wants. “Guy excitedly telling you his idea for a story” problem, classic.
   That’ll bring us to the best use case, as a universal lesson on how not to properly scope out a module. There’s no details to use here because he ain’t got no details, the tables to generate content make some pretty darn generic content, and the island/concept itself is so bespoke that there’s nothing to port away.
   Final Rating? */***** that’s a swing and a miss.

We're out now! Check it out on Amazon, in hard copy or e-book/KU. Epic fantasy in a Classical World:
 
Stand tall, Citizens. Shields up. Spears out. Hold to the Passion of Courage!
In the world of the Three Seas, two city states stand at the brink of war. The city of Helemar faces destruction as hoplite armies prepare for battle. Within the city, Arete, knowing only a life of slavery, vows to seek freedom at any cost. She is thrown into the conflict when she and her master discover she is a Shepherd, one who has the mystic talent to kindle passions in the hearts of people. Passions of rage, joy, fear and courage... all rise and fall at her will.
Fifteen years ago Arete’s soldier friend Philon witnessed a single Shepherd destroy his army and take his people captive. Seeking not to control, but to understand the ability behind the destruction, he joins Arete on her quest to repay a debt, venturing where not even the creatures of myth dare to tread.
As Arete and Philon seek answers, the city-states clash, each exploiting the talents of their own Shepherds, and a greater unknown threat is growing. A power may yet rise that will lead to the destruction of all, one brought about by the war and the talent itself.
An epic tale set in a Hellenistic world that is both familiar and yet fantastical, in place that just may very well be real … somewhere and somewhen.

A hexcrawl by Sea Bartel, for levels undefined
Written for Green Country (OSR)
   Well this was twee.
   “Wilderness adventure” is its own little subgenre of product, one I’m far fonder of in concept than in execution. This one is pretty typical in scope, with two pages detailing a little ~5x8 hexmap region with nine of the hexes keyed; the rest of the region relies on the map illustration/encounter table to generate content. The writer has an art page so this exists as much to sell commissions as for its own merits, but there’s an adventure here, barely, so we will tackle reviewing it.
   Our story is that a teeny little mushroom person pops up while the PCs are camping one night, delivering a sob story about its master being kidnapped by some spriggans with alternate spelling. The players accept this quest because otherwise we’re not playing D&D tonight and they proceed to meander about the woods and plains of unspecified distance (hexes are 1-or-2-day travel affairs, distance abstracted), gaining  abstract “clues” from various encounters and locations. When three clues are gathered then 4-6 sproggans appear (more for large parties) at the nearest of four locations and then after a crushingly whimsical fight the mushroom king is rescued and he hands out a magic mushroom per character. Mushroom effects, surprise surprise, are abstract.
   Uh, what I liked was the map’s look. Well-illustrated, good visual design on the road/hills/river/forest/plains. Little questgiver mushroom guy appoints himself GMPC and can’t fight but will help with soporific spore-puffs and a little magic glow, that’s a handy friend to have along. I like the name “moonstag” and it’s pretty neat how hunting a moonstag nets you some healing venison. Decent wilderness encounter, that, pity numbers (both encountered and hit points) are abstracted.
   So I won’t shock anyone when I say what can be improved is “gimmie some numbers” first and foremost. We’re not buying this to do homework, oh writer, we’re looking for you to tell us how many dadgum boars are trampling through camp. All the encounter work is high on words but low on concrete mechanics or numbers. The locations are that way too. Clues shouldn’t be abstracted, either, but instead they should point to a set location/situation. Let the players figure this out. Same with distances. Same with monster stats. I know page space is at a premium, but this could be put in without hurting your margins all that much.
   Your best use case here is enjoying this twee little twaddle in the middle of a muddle while you battle with your buddies in a puddle with a paddle. Not much else beyond that, if it’s to your taste you’ll use the whole thing if it ain’t you won’t find much of value to extract.
   Final Rating? */***** with even the most charmed whimsy-fiend being hard pressed to add more than an extra star. I like the idea of a wilderness hexcrawl adventure but this ain’t it, chief.

How is it going, all? I'm delighted to see you, and lots of others, have been checking out Adventures Sites III. But did you know I also cobble modules myself? Well, I've recently released a couple, one for B/X, one for 5E (although I'll probably release an OSRIC version soon too):
Shrine of the Cabbage God is an updated and modified release of my No-Artpunk Contest II finalist, "Shrine of the Small God", prompted by me seeding it on another campaign map and having another party hit it. This one's been a blast to run each time, worth multiple excursions. It's extremely dangerous but the (surviving) players considered it well worth the risk, complete with cool rewards and Incan theming. Definitely worth checking out.
House of the Lost Shepherd functions as a tie-in to my wife and I's incoming novel, "Freedom's Vow", with a new class based on the novel's magic. It also works great as its own dungeon, I ran it in my own campaign (which of course uses gold-for-XP old school rules) and it was a great exploration. If you like 5E, feel free to check it out, or check in here next week for the OSRIC version. 
​Happy gaming, friends...

A dungeon by M. Allen Hall, for “low-level”
Written for OSE
   Hey, check it, OSE; two-years-ago’s most popular game in the universe, now shockingly abandoned. I don’t mind it, it’s just B/X, and B/X is lingua franca of the OSR. This module in particular is about as standard as it gets too, four-pager with a cover page, an explainer/setup/bestiary page (back cover), a page of keys, and a map. Would classify as a valid adventure site submission for the contest, and I wouldn’t get map about the information organization or writing at all. Only quibble is that “low-levels”.
   The story of the dungeon is actually very different indeed. Mad wizard attacks dwarven temple, takes over, melts all gold down into circuitry, enslaves a treasure hunter into being a Control Weather monkey to constantly summon lightning storms against the peaks, turns himself into an electro-lich, starts experimenting on how to raise a massive electrified army of the dead to conquer, uh, stuff. Speaking as an Electrical Engineering major, I can affirm this is a completely realistic and reasonable usage of electricity. Players come into contact with the dungeon because it’s full of legendary treasure and/or the wizard’s magic. Very reasonable motivation.
   What I liked first of all here was the monster setup (although it makes me wonder about what we consider “low-level”). The bestiary is just five things, all on-theme, with just minor tweaks to make them all electric, all making plenty of sense. The lich gets recharged on his throne if brought to zero, the skeletons have a single-use zap attack that’s recharged at nice obvious charging stations, adds just enough interest. I’m not sure how turning interacts with undead who’ve been raised by mad science, not necromantic magic, but that’s okay. Loot being melted-gold circuits that also zap you? Love that.
   Outside of what you do with a cleric, what can be improved first is, uh, “gimmie some magic loot”. There’s a lot of enemy hit dice here to fight, and while the gold rewards are fantastic, the only loot is Boots of Speed and “a scroll”, nothing unique or flavorful based on where you are. The “adept” casting continuous Control Weather is also handwaved, which is kind of nuts. Margins are generous here, I think you could take the extra space to describe just a bit more. Map is isometric, which isn’t terrible given the size, but it does manage to obscure how linear it winds up being. Some horrible Frankenstein res device wouldn’t go amiss either.
   All that aside, best use case is to make this a fine and dandy little one-off little adventure site. It’s fresh, it works well in theme, it’s rewarding. Just make sure it’s before your players get consistent energy resistance and figure out the turning rules ahead of time. I’d be happy using this in my games.
   Final Rating? ***/***** at about the max something this scale and scope can be asked for. OSE getting well-represented here.

A horror dungeon by K. Heath, for levels unknown…
…because written for no system in particular.
   Whaaaat am I doing? This sucker is huge, forty pages long, written system-agnostic, and horror (which is not my cuppa). I guess I’m just a sucker for scifi…this is my least-favorite flavor of scifi, post-apocalyptic, but hey, it’s got the promise of a six-level, fifteen(ish) room per level, complex exploration, that’s pretty neat. Margins are generous and the font, while flavorful, is clear, so it’s not all that bad. The levels are supposed to be randomly generated from a 3d12 roll for a dozen different map sections and the monsters/traps/items are all prerolled too, which makes me nervous that there’s not even a coherent story to the location…
   …which boy howdy is incorrect. There will be many critiques to level against Elysium, but “incomplete story” sure as heck ain’t one of them. There’s a lot going on. There was a nuclear war and everything is going to crap. You’re all a bunch of explorers (six pregens provided) trying to figure out the source of transmissions/power from Elysium Corp’s massive field of spikes and arrays supplying everyone in the society personalized individual prophecies from tabernacles, little boxes sold to encourage the population. Also once the facility is breached it becomes clear that they went HARD onto the mad science trying to “find god”, first scanning the heavens, then looting all the relics of Earth’s religions, then pushing test subject to find a deity within, then turning them into brains-in-robots, then uploading them to a massive evil computer core that might as well be a minor deity. Er, also, they made a lot of horror monsters along the way.
   Have fun kids.
   So while horror is not to my personal taste, what I liked was how well-executed a lot of the horror is. The monsters are gross and scary, the atmosphere is haunting, every level has a different theme, which is cool. The simple system implied, with the health-and-sanity tracks, works pretty well for a focused horror three-shot. I like how the military vet pregen has two states, sober with +2 INT and a max sanity at 60%, or drunk with -2 INT but max sanity at 120%. The backstory/setup really is about perfect in terms of amount of detail vs. leaving things vague.
    …but I’m going to also have a lot in what can be improved. First of all, those procedurally generated maps/traps. I get it, the initial idea seems to be giving them a new layout every time they leave and return, but that’s both a huge hassle in terms of GM overhead and, even worse, means that the maps and traps and encounters have to be rather generic. The maps aren’t a lot to explore and the whole thing becomes a little too small. Ninety-ish rooms, sure, but the vast majority are boring and empty. Everything flavorful noted above has to get drained so it can function as well in level 1 as in level 6. Bummer.
   Best use case here is probably to run it as a slightly edgy horror one-shot if you like slightly edgy horror. Scifi maps are rare, so there’s some utility in that page full of tech-tileset geomorph maps, simple as they are. Art is detailed enough to be used in other techno-horror settings.
   Final Rating? ***/***** with an extra bump if you really dig the vibe and don’t mind the extra homework. Pity about the vagueness letting some of the really vivid ideas down.

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