Written by zs.gothpunk
For “old school” (uh-oh), levels 1-3
Secret Forgotten Mausoleum
A simple night in a simple inn in a simple town. After midnight, shouting and muffled screams wake up the adventurers. It is coming from below! As they try to find the source of the noise, they walk into a trap!      
   I believe, upon inspection, this is an OSE adventure. The shine has come off the system somewhat, but it’s still a perfectly cromulent B/X retroclone, there’s nothing disqualifying about entering an OSE adventure here. But unfortunately a vague “old-school” flags every single panic button we’ve got. This one’s cool, it’s got stats and intent and whatnot, but specificity is king.
   Our story is absolutely fine. The site is suggested to be in a cellar trap underneath an inn being used by the party, but a cult-infested tomb can really go anywhere. The pathetic aesthetic is strong with this one, the tomb is run by a “dark lord” who’s just a ghoul, his cultists are five desperate poor rubes…it’s all got a pleasingly Warhammer Fantasy feel, which is great for levels 1-3.  Who the titular forgotten hero was and how the ghoul got in here aren’t mentioned, but hey, undead and cultists, go fight ‘em.
   Now on to the map, which is simple but clean, technically vertical but without a lot of interconnection. It’s a hub-and-spoke linear design, fine for something with a 14-key scope. The nonlinear bit is hidden behind a couple secret doors, which is good design in a couple ways…hiding your “final room(s)” behind a single secret door leaves you a bit more at the mercy of those find hidden doors checks, this at least gives you a couple chances, plus in a dynamic site you have a chance (or explanation) for the classic “sneak around back” encounters.
   Sadly the random encounters don’t take advantage of this dynamic; you just get 1d4 giant rats in most of the dungeon or 1d4 zombies in the hidden section. Bummer, but at least we do have random encounters. Other encounters are cultists (weak but prone to being tricky), in-room rats or zombies, an animated statue (preventable by opening up something elsewhere in the tomb), and of course the ghoul at the end. None of the fights are complex or particularly threatening, but each of them is trying to do something. Plenty of interest, a decent sign of playtesting (and this adventure does credit playtesters).
   As we’re in what’s shaping up to be The Adventure Site Platonic Ideal, of course there’s some old classics in the trap department…the pit is obvious, but the empty chest with a magic ice-blast afterward is a nasty curveball. Janky pressure plate, nice. The king of low-level traps, the venerable greased stairwell, crops up on the way down to the final room. It’s both dangerous and comical, love it. For the last bit of environmental interaction there’s a puzzle with statues and items retrieved further in beneath the Dark Master, very solid.
   Treasure is pretty good for the level, and helpfully summed up in the front section. Just a hair under 5k in coins and jewels, a couple magic swords, and a couple utility potions. Perfect. A few bits and bobs are available just lying around but all the major hauls are behind tough fights (animated statue, ghoul+zombies) or the puzzle. Just solid design work, top to bottom.
   This site can be placed literally anywhere and it really should be. Some might call it vanilla, and they’d be right, but vanilla is a wonderful flavor and this is pure vanilla-y goodness right here. Just make sure its hit at a pretty low level, I suspect a pack of level 3’s would completely steamroll this.  

​For OSRIC, Levels 4-6
By LouisJo
A glacial metal labyrinth, flanking a 1000’ clif , towering waves crashing its top.
A hellish beacon for minotaurs, draped in adders, who never get out of it (alive).
A lighthouse of sorts, for a barren and forgotten islet, its eternal light ablaze.
   Ah, the maze. Of all the dungeon layouts, nothing else is so controversial. Most of us find solving a maze comprehensible if not enjoyable, and it makes sense to put a maze into your dungeon, but the problem with mazes comes when we try to convey the twists and turns of the structure as someone with the map (the DM) tries to get someone else to solve it (the mapper) by way of precise instructions. It's good practice, but by its nature a maze is far far more mapping call-out than other gameplay. "Okay, you go 20ft and hit a T, left goes 30ft hits another T, while right goes 15ft and hangs left. No, left as you're traveling, not your left. No, wait, you've hit a key, let me check..." Not saying that it should be a problem, but it often is. 
   The story of this maze is that a strange islet existing at a confluence of the planes of Air and Water got a metal maze built by some cultists (drink!) to make a Hell-portal. They oopsied, but not before summoning a Horned Devil, who, uh, summoned minotaurs who now play a weird King of the Hill game in the maze. Also there are brownies underneath. And a pirate ship. I adore the cover illustration by the way.
   Map here is not a lot to talk about other than the maze itself. I like that the islet the maze exists on is also mapped, it's a weird environment that interacts with the maze via encounters and magic elemental waves, so having the whole thing out is good. I like how the cliff side of the maze is just open to the air, that's fun and it interacts with the wave hazard well. 
   So, The Wave. Over half of all the results on the encounter table (frequency 4-in-6 every three turns) is a magic wave that crashes over the entire islet in a random direction, forcing everyone on the ground to make a minor STR test or be tossed in the wave's direction. As a very intentional nerf to flying characters, it's a much more dangerous test for them. Also, the brownies have a continuous mass of dancing lights above the maze to make it visible but that makes it much harder see anything by going over the wall. Intelligent, if somewhat gamey, nerfs. There are also electricity surges (remember, metal walls). It’s a tricky environment. And altars to mess with for different emotion themes, plus King of the Hill rolls…each one has something odd to play with.
   Monster roster is mostly supplied by the random encounter table, which is pretty common for mazes. It’s not just the time-based encounter table, there’s also a chance for the “King of the Hill” (a hyper-buffed minotaur) to appear at every altar, and the bored horned devil after waves (or if he spots a flyer). Lots of randomness there. All the other encounters are in tunnels or little squirreled-away spots with oddball stuff like giant adders or a dead air-focused wizard’s ghost. Plus the brownies. Yeah, it’s challenging, but its weird.
   And the pirates…they have a complex set of motivations and internal factions, but I’m still a little confused about their plan’s interaction with the players. I love that the lieutenant in the planned ambush site is annoyed with his job and will leave if he’s given enough gold level up and a fighter trainer, that’s great interaction with the game’s rules.
   Treasure is very random as well. Worn on monsters most commonly, owned by neutral brownies in several cases, a melted platinum blob in a drain grate. All very strange, although the amounts are fine. Your players won’t feel impoverished, although the extreme randomness of the environment and the encounter setup means that difficulty vs. reward is going to be well-neigh impossible to calculate.
   Weird as this little site is, I’ll compliment it thus: You can put it into most game worlds. A weirdo isle at a planar conflux is very much in keeping with a lot of game worlds…at least if you can figure out where 1d8 swimming minotaurs are coming from once or twice a day every single day of the week. 

An adventure by Casey Jones, level-free
Written for Vaults of Vaarn
   Trifold adventures have their points to criticize as a format even when executed well, but a truly baffling trend is the map spread across two folds. One would think that the whole point is to break up your two pages of content into six sections, but so often (as in this one), there’s a map spread across multiple folds, completely baffling whatever usability gains you glean from the format. Anyway, “dungeon” with three rooms and a hexmap with four keys is what we’re working with here, it’s Vaults of Vaarn, you know how this goes.
   The story here is your usual time-locked-battlefield-caught-in-a-six-hour-loop-eternally. Like Groundhog Day, or that excellent episode of Stargate SG1, but it’s a pair of armies who fought a battle and then shot at the titular Time Tooth, creating a region known as the Shimmer. Hooks are completely absent, but one imagines its mostly about loot the time dust stuff at the tower’s top because all the more interesting possibilities, like looting ancient weapons or tech or rescuing a prince or whatever, are all strictly precluded by the loop’s rules. It’s mostly wander around, encounter randoms, witness repeating battle, and try to find passwords to enter the time tower tooth.
   What I liked beyond the hexcrawl format here was the scenario premise, it’s a little like that battlefield/Good, Bad, Ugly module we saw a few weeks ago. Having everything in a static and fated battle that repeats itself is also pretty cool, there’s a bit of heist planning you could pull off by shadowing the armies during their “normal” course of battle, then performing hijinks based on that future knowledge. Nice potential, pity you can’t take anything permanent with you afterward. Hexmap looks pretty.
   Which, hey, gives me the first of what can be improved, in your hooks why not suggest a loot of knowledge? If you’re determined not to let the players mine the time bubble for physical goods, ancient time-lost secrets can be huge. Gimmie some hooks, brother, and I can swing something. The time-McGuffin in the center could use a lot more explanation. Also, let’s be honest, a better dungeon would be preferred, the three-room tower is a little bit lame. Finally, the random encounters are okay, but they don’t interact at all with the time thing, which is a waste of the scenario’s potential.
   I’ve been wracking my brain for a best use case, because it feels bad to say “play a kind of a bum Vaults of Vaarn session” with it, but unfortunately the monsters aren’t extractable, there aren’t any good items or traps or situations to extract for use elsewhere. Maybe the somewhat nice-looking hexmap itself? Anyway, just play this in your VoV game, you’re playing VoV, you’re clearly not picky.
   Final Rating? */***** with a mild sense of disappointment, but no surprise. I get it, time travel is hard. 

​Written by Zoranu
For AD&D, levels 6-8
White Dragon Lair
A white dragon raids the foothills. Rumor says it lairs in an ancient, icy dwarf ruin in the mountains.      
   One of my favorite parts of DRAGON LAIRS is how they always tend to have intense environmental effects added in. Red dragons love volcanoes (or in last year’s case, a volcanic steam geyser), black dragons have acidic swamps…blues and greens are nice and distinct with desert/woodland, although that’s harder to evoke “lair” from. But WHITE DRAGONS, now THEY are peak for lair environments. You roll up to a white dragon, you know you’re getting an ICE FORTRESS. Evocative as all get-out.
   This one is an abandoned Dwarf Fortress, notably the kind where they all went a little crazy, ran out of booze, and died off, leaving the place to demons and derro. And, apparently, a white dragon, the titular Albarino. You know how this story goes, go raid the dragon and have fun.
   So, this map. Hand-drawn in a charming style, but sadly not stapled to the document. Key 1 is the icy entry. 2 is the secret door to not killing yourself. 3 is the white dragon on top of his massive hoard. Kind of wild how the whole thing could be two rooms (1 and 3) and then the big bossfight, if the party did their intelligence-gathering and loaded for a white dragon fight, then they could quite conceivably summon him just by the noise of breaking down the door, making the rest of the complex kind of a letdown. Which would be a bummer, because the rest of the fortress is pretty well-designed for dungeon crawling. It’s not aggressively loopy, but there are some alternate routes and the broken-wall ingress point is honestly more likely the one that gets used. The actual “final boss” is the lower section (helpfully highlighted in purple) where a shadow demon lurks, a linear final march that really conveys a sense of dread while they walk in, sometimes linearity is its own design consideration. Probably a little big for a single session, but pretty funny how short it could practically be.

   You’re heading up to a white dragon’s lair, you know what hazards await. Slips, falls, bitter cold. Actually that’s mostly in the dragon’s tiny little section, most of the rest is pretty low-trap. Don’t eat the rotten food, dummy.
   Fights aren’t dense but beyond the WHITE DRAGON most are pretty mild, just derro-and-friends until you get into the bottom level with shadows and a nasty demon that stops your cleric from turning the shadows while he’s still alive. THAT is a nasty kick in the jibblies, nice. Derros have good tactics and do have a few extra-powerful bruiser types and the occasional spellcaster; loaded up with cloudkill and a couple lightning bolts, that fella can tag PCs even at this level. One mixed boon/bane/monsterfight is a Dao in an iron flask at the end who pretends to be benevolent and wish-capable but only manages limited wishes and will attack parties if they’re weak-looking. Neat. No strict random encounter table here, but there’s a very solid order-of-battle notes section for how the dragon and the derro react. Derro might be convinced to fight the dragon, but they’re treacherous little monsters of course.
   As is only right and proper, treasure here is stratospheric. Level 6 given as the floor feels slightly ludicrous, with near half a million just in cash, plus scrolls, wands, trinkets, magic weapons, magic armor (most dwarf-sized, a few cursed), etc. I’m particularly tickled by the adventure slyly noting “subdued dragon =2.5 mil gp”. Oh you card. Most of the treasure is in bar form, so there’s less of a “how to we get a U-haul up here” discussion than normal, but its still a very bulky setup. Need to kill everything in here before you can steal it all.
   You better believe I’m going to put this sucker in my campaign. I’m not listening to the level range and I do not believe this will be a single session even with all the empty rooms, but it’s still really cool. Plus, it’s a DRAGON LAIR.

​Written by Alex Edwards
For AD&D, levels 6+
FREAKING VOLCANO DRAGON LAIR
An extinct volcano on a tropical island is home to Cavemen, Rango (a huge ape) and an Evil Mist Dragon: Kotomon the Hidden.      
   Okay, we just need to stop for a moment and admire this cover. Holy cow. Call me to adventure, baby. This is not an art contest, once again, but MAN did Sandbox Sorcerer knock this cover out of the park. The module is going to be a little terse up ahead, but this sucker communicates at least another thousand words. I could probably run the site based on the cover alone.
   Story is your typical tropical-island-giant-gorilla-cult-of-fallen-Altanteans-taken-over-by-a-mist-dragon-who’s-allied-with-pirates-who-also-lair-in-the-extinct-volcano. The island is only half a mile long and less than a quarter mile wide, so we’re trading a little heavily on tropes, but it’s a fun compressed space to encounter Polynesian-flavored adventuring, good setting. My only story complaint is that “extinct” word. All ingame volcanoes should be “dormant” at least…just like every waterfall should have a secret cave behind them, every volcano should be ready to erupt if the players monkey around with things Men Ought Not Mess With. Even so, if site has dragon, that makes site 100% better by default.
   This map might be too much, but it’s so bonkers that I don’t really care. Just wildly imaginative location, but it actually works for exploration gameplay, while making sense as a sort of hyperreal environment. The shapes here are oddball but there’s an explanation and we have neglected neither verticality nor water features, so of course there’s a lot of interest. Multiple means of ingress/egress, tons of space to crisscross, and the misty environment in the lower two levels means that despite the wide spacing you don’t feel exposed. 
   You are exposed, however. This thing will murder a few PCs if they neglect careful scouting and intelligence-gathering. Kotomon the old mist dragon is the most terrifying threat, but there are a bunch of other monsters, including the pirate crew, wights, an ettin servant, carnivorous apes, treants, dryads, giant crabs and octopi, plus a whole tribe, split 50/50 between evil dragon-worshippers and CG Noden-worshippers who consider Rango the huge ape his avatar. If players are careful, they can probably ally with the good faction but they’re not going to be inclined to be aggressive in fighting the bad faction and they’re sitting on some decent loot too, so players being players there will be added complications inevitably from their own greed. I’m always looking for interactions though, and everything here has a level of “talk to me” that’s rare to see. Oh, also there are wandering pterandons.
   Treasure is also suitably nutty. The dragon’s hoard is only 95,000gp in value with a few other choice magic items, but there are idols, narwhal tusks, pirate treasure chests, pearls, jewelry, etc for cash, while for other magic items there’s a load about the pirate ship plus a hidden crystal ball, a crossbow of speed, a +2 Megalodon Tooth battleaxe…it’s huge. It’s all great.
   It’s also, frankly, probably too big to be a proper adventure site. I don’t know how he fit this much stuff into two pages, but the sheer size and scope means even if you’re one of those competition crews you’re going to be hard-pressed to finish this one in a single session. And if you do, you’re kind of doing it wrong, this is a place that would reward multiple delves to fully appreciate the depth here. That’s not really a very substantial criticism, but it’s really the only thing that gives me pause. Everything is very high-level, 10,000ft view, which means there will inevitably be more effort on the DM’s desk to expand it once we get down to the nitty-gritty. There’s enough here to do the expansion work, but that is a problem.
   This sucker’s still going on my map ASAP though. 

​Written by K A
For OSRIC, levels 8-10
Fragment of a False Fallen Heaven
An Oracle came to the ancient country of Thamud, and in his Scrolls of Illumination revealed the visage of Paradise. Not meant for men’s eyes, this vision of unattainable beauty destroyed the kings of Thamud in mind and heart. They ravaged the world for its delights, and labored with sorcery and artifice to create even a passing shadow of the witnessed glory. In time, God [or a Greater Deity of the DM’s choice] smote these wicked men with flood and fire, and erased their False Heaven from the world. Only fragments survive, degenerate and hidden from the sight of the Divine by mighty sorcery. Herein is described one such fragment.      
   Lot of outdoor sites this time around. Well, this one is placed “in an underworld or slot canyon”, but it’s a big open area regardless. Challenges of not having a roof overhead: The players can go anywhere once they have command of the z-axis (which can be as early as level 1 with a thief+rope). Benefits of not having a roof overhead: The players can go anywhere once they have command of the z-axis. Don’t be afraid of it, but there’s definitely some added complexity when you remove the shackles of ceilings.
   One difficulty, as seen here in the map, is in how to convey the space to your players. The map here is one of the more complex Dysons, built not as a cave complex but instead as a full-up town, with wide streets and fairly simple buildings. If run along the ground as a dungeon crawl it could be mapped normally, but if this is a well-lit (relatively, even in twilight of a slot canyon) outdoor space then this almost needs to be plopped in front of the players whole, with buildings obscured. Which means either some hand cramps or some fiddly work with scissors and blocking paper. It also means navigation is a little meaningless, particularly if most of the buildings are unkeyed and abstracted, as seen here. This spot is designed to be navigated less like and dungeon and more like a city, albeit a very very small one. Which makes sense given the story but it means running can be a procedural headache.
   Speaking of story, I really like the concept here. As outlined above, this is a fragment of an ancient kingdom’s attempt to recreate Heaven on Earth, which resulted in a mix of Genesis Solutions: A little bit Babel, a little bit Deluge. Hooks are all solid, looking for a misdraw soul from a dead companion, looking for an angel’s heart, or seeking an illusionary wand. The place is pretty awful, a ruin of decayed grandeur and brittle glory, watched over by a False Angel, filled with damned and misdirected souls, alive with traps and monsters. It’s a neat vibe, ambitious and visionary, but the execution is at times…challenging.
   First off, there’s the basic environment. You have freely available food at all times, infinite knowledge, and vast wealth in the buildings…but the food is nearly irresistible and does Wisdom damage, the books are gibberish and increase Intelligence at the cost of insanities, and the wealth randomly extracted (destructively) damages Charisma. Wisdom to zero means you’re a gluttonous monster, Intelligence to max for a while means you’re convinced only human sacrifice will leads to more true, and Charisma to zero means you’re a wandering husk consumed by eternal burning jealousy of the beauty. Plus wasting time draws the False Angel.
   Said False Angel is a reskinned Deva who’s all about feeding you, knowledge imparting, or exile. If you refuse it twice, enjoy your bossfight. And of course, the angel will get regenerated. It’s a bit low on personality but that’s as much feature as bug for something that really is just a construct. Its feathers can be used to summon a Real Angel who will battle it while sending divine fire to incinerate the shard in 1d10+10 rounds. Yes, this is exactly as awesome as it sounds.
   There are other horrific and/or cool things, like a dozen giants trying to eat everything, an invisible banshee choir, a nightmarish bordello in permanent darkness dedicated to sensual touch that also contains black puddings. The whole place is powered by a vast soul-eating gem that yes, can be destroyed to ruin the whole site. Everything is extremely high-powered, as is fitting for a high-level adventure site. It’s very cool, but unwieldy. I’d have loved to hear if the mysterious author playtested this, because I can see players kind of wandering aimlessly here and the procedural stuff either TPKing them or becoming rather repetitive. Which is a pity, because everything that is detailed is very good.
   This site is pretty easily to place in any campaign, logistically, although it’s also a place of unimaginable wealth and death that nets a crapton of wishes if it gets destroyed, so one should really consider carefully how to seed it. Brilliant idea filled to the brim with creative flourishes, stuffed into a bit too tight of a page count and thus a little underbaked. Impressive as hell, though. 

Written by Patrick Dolan
For AD&D, levels 4-6
Druid Cave (vermin-flavored)
Rhodofon, a half-elf druid, found the Emerald Cave, a large chamber of smooth green stone located deep within a cave system, inhabited by giant beetles and a trapper. Rhodofon learned to communicate with and control the creatures with tapping sounds. She developed it into a language, which she taught the highly-intelligent trapper. Before Rhodofon died, she placed her prized possession, a pale green ioun stone (DMG 147, adds 1 level of experience), at the apex of the Emerald Cave. She told the trapper that it could eat well just staying in that spot, but Rhodofon wasn’t satisfied with the trapper as the stone’s only guardian.      
   Mad wizards are a dime a dozen, and in this contest especially evil priests are getting their day in the sun, but what about deranged druids? Unlike their more civilized magic-antagonist counterparts, a druid will tend to go crazy out in the wild, which leads to resulting dungeons a bit more…squamous. Nice to see Mr. Dolan shake things up a bit and add a druid lair to the mix.
   The story is as above, with the druidess dead and gone but her intelligent pet trapper still running the caves using her invented tapping language. There’s a fun and slightly sad little detail where 5-6 on the random encounter table is rhythmic tapping from the trapper, and Comprehend Languages has a little nugget where it’s asking if the druidess has returned. D’aww. Beyond that it’s a bunch of bugs and other verminous things living in the caves and just doing their thing.
   So last week we saw the unusual “series of rectangles” approach to natural caves, this time we’re going with the slightly more traditional “blobs connected by lines” approach, which, while not realistic, at least feels realistic. I believe the extremely faint squares in the background at 5ft but scale would have been nice. Now, I often will complain about maps like this where there’s no clear direction to go with each fork, but in the key descriptions we do have good indicators with stuff like “a dwarf or gnome will see this branch was constructed more recently”, so that gets a pass. The treasure chamber (9) being reasonably easy to see but inaccessible unless you grease up the hobbit, that’s great.
   Your love for this adventure’s monster roster is going to be entirely up to how you feel about giant bugs in D&D. Boring beetles, bombardier beetles, carrion crawlers, giant slugs, and purple worms join shriekers, violet fugus, shambling mounds, and that trapper…this is a chance for your druid to really shine and your illusionist to weep. Which, uh, I’m going to call bull on that “level 4” minimum unless you have a bunch more hirelings than those suggested up top. Like, squads of them. I do like how the boring beetles aren’t hyper-aggressive, just interested in defending their fungal farms, while the slug/shambler results are outsiders looking to eat said fungus. More interest and interactability than normal for “bug enemies”. The shriekers and violets are among the fungus in one of the caves and as usual that’s halfway between monster and hazard.
   Eating the fungus is similarly a boon/bane. Purplish (different from violet) is just rations, but there’s a brown fungus that functions as a cure disease and a bluish-green that works as healing the first couple times and then nauseates afterward. These are good for a week unless an alchemist figures out how to dry them/reconstitute, that’s a quest in and of itself. Surprisingly enough, there are no traditional traps but plenty of ways to make extra noise to get those random encounter rolls.
   Treasure here is pretty solid, and also waaaay higher than level 4. Most of the cash is in easily-moved jewelry, and there’s some decent magic too, with a pile under the trapper including +1 plate, +2 shield, and scrolls/potions (including one of halfling control, hah) and the narrow-crack treasure room even containing pipes of the sewers. All treasure is under hard monster fights or heavy concealment, with the pale green ioun stone lodged in the ceiling of the trapper’s room; chiseling it out summons those purple worms. Good treasure placement.
   These caves can be placed anywhere, with solid rumors and a nice backstory. Just really, really don’t think the level range is right on this one. 

For ACKS II, Levels 1-3
By Zathras Adventures
A naiad and witch battle for control of a ruined bath complex. Bandits, orcs, and haunts are all pawns with wealth and ruin as prizes. Will the party be unwittingly captured in the intrigue, or will they master the lies and enchantments to claim a prize of their own?
   I might need to modify my contest rules a little bit. Most of the entries have been very good about keeping to text length limits. I didn’t set limits on maps. Holy smokes. I might need to set limits on maps. There are six pages of maps in this darned thing. Sure, most are repeating things, but it gets a little, uh, overwhelming. I appreciate the crisp, clear style and level of detail here, but this miiiight be a bit too much muchness. I mean, look:
   As you can clearly see, this is set in a Roman-esque villa-and-baths built around a natural spring. It’s got quite an involved backstory involving a lovelorn patrician and his lecherous naiad lover, long-ago raiders destroying the location, and now the half-naiad daughter of the pair ruling the ruins in a bitter rivalry with a local witch…it’s convoluted. There’s also a bandit crew ruled by the naiad and orcs hanging out for Just Orc Reasons, who apparently have kicked the bandits out. Complicated as it all is, these motivations and personality sketches mean I could play every single named character with any possible reaction roll, so good job. Hooks are “loot it”, “you got robbed”, or “witch asks for help”, all fine reasons to investigate a site.
   Going on to the site map(s), we first note the slightly odd choice to not key them with numbers or letters but just with proper Roman names. I don’t hate the decision based on the scale, but it does make for some occasional hunt-for-the-room moments. The overland and under-tunnel options aren’t obvious for how to interact with both site locations, a watch can be sussed out to make the tunnels helpful but that’s not obvious. I suspect the cutting room floor has more than a few elements here because of the site’s size. Very nice realistic location maps are quite well-imaged, though, props for the look of these things

   Monster numbers are a little wonky here, probably because of cuts. First off, both the witch and the bandits aren’t anywhere on the map by default, rather existing in a sort of fuzzy nether space of “connected to the site via narration” or else appear in the random encounter table. The bandit leader wants “all twelve orcs” gone, but I only count ten. The rather heartbreakingly tragic naiad hangs out in her room unless she’s spying from a random encounter. Most of the monsters are standard low-level wildlife, like giant toads, giant dragonflies, spitting cobras (or vipers), etc. Three dead slighted women are haunts, which are a unique ghostly ACKS creature that, per page 175 of the MM, have a touch attack that deals escalating damage. MM referents are helpful if you’re not going to break out statblocks (cutting room floor again, I think). There’s a comment about the witch having a reanimated servant but no stats or anything. Everything is very fleshed out narratively, as expected by now in ACKS, but a little more spreadsheet rigor wouldn’t go amiss.  Not a lot more threats exist beyond the occasional arrow trap loaded with silver bolts…which I only mention because this adventure lists all the way down to level 1 as its range, and as near as I can tell that silver bolt from the trap is the only reliable method of hurting haunts if you’re out of magic or silver weapons because you’ve just started.
   Treasure seems fine for the level. Nothing especially special, just pretty baubles held by the naiad, loot near the orcs and the bandits’ old hide, and of course some heavy bronze statues.  In what feels like an ACKS-miss I don’t see repair costs for the facilities, which is a pity…this would be a perfectly serviceable lair, home base, and/or bordello spot once cleared.
   This one might be the first site I’ve hit where three pages of text really would have been perfect. I love the maps, I like the concept, and everything that’s here shows real potential. Unfortunately, there is a lot of homework needed as it is. Add another page or two (but certainly not more) and you have a darned solid site. It’s still worth it to me to put in just because I like the scenario so much, but that’s going to be more effort than some people want. 

​Written by Chomy
For S&W, levels 4-5
Interdimensional Tunnel Complex
these ancient tunnels were constructed by an advanced race of a long-forgotten time. They used the place as a shortcut between distant places. Now it is inhabited by the repugnant creatures called sluggobs - hybrid monstrosities with the upper body of a goblin and the eyestalks and lower body of a slug. Their leader and 'mother' is the Annis called Gran' Cursespitter, an evil being of significant power. Gran' Cursespitter provides safe haven for all manner of evil creatures who are willing to pay the price – her guests consider the tunnels a hostel and do everything they can not to slip the secret of its existence to creatures of Law.    
   Hey, check it out, it’s Chomy. Writer of the genius Webs of Past and Present, always great to see the Hungarian adventure-scribbler weigh in on one of these. In the case it’s a “hey we need a teleportation nexus” dungeon, which means there’s a purpose beyond loot n’ scoot. Interesting to see how it gets implemented.
   As you might expect for a place named after half-goblin, half-slugs who dwell within, the story is a little bit silly. Certainly, nothing’s wrong with that, but it’s something to note…one of our hooks is “elf prince spotted chasing orcs into entrance”, and said princess has been turned into an orc “because that’s the prince’s kink”. Strange. Easily ignorable, but the details often run along these lines. More generally, there are lots of little oddball rooms and visitors in this complex perched between realms, but it never falls into full “monster zoo” territory, because there are certainly reasons for why every weirdo is here.
   Our map is also a bit, um, odd-looking, but it’s got justification as an interdimensional travel nexus. Plenty of room to explore, with a subtle-but-present vertical component, this time paired with a water feature for added interest and a break to the linearity (it’s a pretty toxic liquid, though, so you’ll need a lot of protection if you use it). A player mapper should be able to grok this reasonably easily, which is important…this space is ideally somewhere that gets visited multiple times over a long campaign, ideally eventually leading to mapped nexus fragments linking up. For something so hub-and-spoke, this is a solid game map.
   Hazards within the tunnels are not merely limited to the water loop. Most of the inanimate hazards are of a distinctly boon-or-bane nature, like apples that resurrect the dead but petrify the living, curbed holy wells that need stagnant poison waters cleared first, or even the power source of the tunnels themselves, which needs to be fed a magic item to maintain them (180 days per item) but breathes out a 10’ poison cloud while it eats. Really only a seemingly-innocuous bucket-o-tar trap is simple…
   …which means even that has a kicker as the sluggobs toss torches at PCs doused by the flammable stuff. Nice. This whole “everything is a mixed bag” theme extends to the monster roster, with most of the individual rooms’ inhabitants willing to at least chat a bit before the killing. Quick, the gorgon demands a haiku about the meaning of life or he’ll breathe on you! The elf prince is a psychopath. The entrapped younger hag sister offers a wish for aiding her but she’s also mean. A ton of this stuff, every single encounter is a situation. Even the endboss herself has the animated head of one of her sisters on her belt, which offers some unique interactive potential. All of this is just that little bit extra.
   Loot, as you’d expect, is also nice. There’s a magic +3 intelligent sword that silences any magic users it sees. There’s a section with runes on the walls that can teach spellcasters new spells. There’s aforementioned apple. Cash money is a little lacking here, mostly just jewelry and gems, but another reward for this spot is as a transportation hub, that’s more than sufficient motivation for PCs right there. I like a site that keeps right on being used after conquest.
   In the end, this is a funhouse dungeon. Unlike many funhouse dungeons, there’s a good attempt as giving reasons for all the encountered oddities, so it doesn’t grate on my sensibilities like most will. Most if not all campaigns will find a place (well, five places) for this dungeon to go…and I think it’s a very worthwhile inclusion.

An adventure by Richard Kelly, leveless…
Written for Bite-Sized Dungeon or “system neutral”
   How do you feel about royalty-free public domain black-and-white art? Especially vectorized woodcuts? Well, this a one of those. If you’ve become intimately familiar with the itch.io indie freemium RPG module-cobbler scene (and why would you not?), then you’ll recognize what that means is coming for you. Danger sign numero uno is a couple pages of “generic terms” because we’ve resolutely refused to include stats or numbers or anything like that.  Twenty pages for a thirty-five key hexcrawl is pretty efficient, but the plot is as expected:
   We’re dealing with a misunderstood harpy and the villainous village of prejudiced yokels who all sound like your father when he got embarrassingly political at the dinner table. The harpy, who is cool and nice just like your aunt who let you smoke weed, gives the players quests for retrieve items from various spots in the hexcrawl. Because fetch quests. At least you’ll gain (MODEST) value rewards if you kill the birdlady.
   I cannot adequately describe to you how high the whimsy settings are in this one. ONION KNIGHTS, GOURD OGRES, a VAMPIRIC SUMMER SQUASH, a whole species of mushroom people…but hey, at least if you get past the QUILLGOBLIN GOAT-RIDERS you’ll be able to make your way to the FOLDED PAPER DRAGON and might get a hatchling after killing it. This is the whole thing.
   I’m going meta with what I liked and say “the concept of a hexcrawl with multiple factions”. That’s solid, a game type I like. You don’t need dungeons to play satisfying games of D&D, it’s very fun to meander from hex to hex, encountering new situations and battles, enjoying the weather, figuring out random encounters…great mode of play. Some of the fight-monsters were kind of interesting, too.
   There’s a bit in what can be improved that’s just to my taste, I don’t like whimsy/silliness at this level on a gut level but that’s not an issue for me to tell the author to fix. A more consistent critique that avoids matters of tone is that 90% of these little locations have a whimsical little situation that doesn’t relate to any other hex. Oddly enough, that’s a sign that the module should be longer in this case, with faction tables or charts or mind-maps or something added to show interrelationships between hexes in the crawl. What’s done in A3 should have a chance to impact D8, that’s Hexcrawl 101. Of course, all of this is secondary to my usual improvement rant, which is that you should be specific with your system of choice. Just let me convert, it’s fine, rather than have a cloud of unwieldy tags that make monster entries downright painful to read. Specificity is king.
   Best use case on this one is “whimsigorical hexcrawl in a rules-lite system”, which is a usage that personally gives me hives but if plant-based monsters who are mostly just silly little guys really float you boat, you could do worse. Nothing worth extracting for normal games in monsters or magic or anything.
   Final Rating? */***** because even at its best it ain’t great. More of a mood than a thing of substance.