Crapshoot Monday: This Free Thing I Found on Itch.io… Barrow of the Elf King

​A dungeon adventure by Highland Paranormal Society, level 1
For The Vanilla Game
  Well, we’re sticking to vanilla again this week I see. Not only is this a tomb adventure (elf-royalty-tomb subgenre), but it’s written for the enticingly titled “The Vanilla Game” system. Wait, you say it’s also eightish pages for ten rooms? And for “3-4 first level adventurers”? My we are in for a treat…
  The story is so perfunctory if you blink you’ll miss it. There’s a cairn. In the woods. Elf king buried in it. Rumors says its riches. Go loot. There’s a little bit of “entry into the underworld” in either stacking some rocks to open the barrow or crawling through a hole in a tree, then it’s loot stuff while encountering (no wandering encounters) a few rooms’ keys. There’s a very dangerous giant spider that is in her own skippable room, some bored skeletons playing dice, a stuck Whimsy Goblin, the king’s own ghost with a puzzle aspect, and finally a couple vermin fights with 1d6 1HD big bugs, so those are either negligible or overwhelming depending on the roll. One of the entry tunnels does have a very nasty “collapse the whole shebang, DEX save or 3d6 damage” trap, which given starting Vanilla Game characters appear to have 10-11 hp…that sucks. But if they survive there’s nothing wandering or active to threaten them while resting, at least.
  I’m being grumpy, what I liked in this little project actually is that trap, mostly, it’s a baited by skulls with valuable gems in their eyes. Just add a little more telegraphing or less damage, there is something great about “pick up skull, get hurt”. There are what feels like a ludicrous number of magic items in the module, but I do like their flavor and uniqueness. The total loot of 2,180gp is also good for the scope of the adventure, albeit none of it is hidden, just trapped or a challenge to retrieve. The giant spider is sentient, as is right and proper, and has a nice boon with a nasty cost on offer.
  That said, what can be improved is probably first “jettison the public-domain old sketches as your primary means of selecting encounters”. The most imaginative stuff is where the author didn’t have a picture he was trying to wedge in, just pure imagination. There’s also the map, which is dismayingly cramped and a lot more linear upon analysis than even the initial impression provides. The tomb is also static, which with spiders, carrion worms, sentient skeletal guards, and a sneaking goblin certainly wasn’t something that it had to be. A little movement in a roomier barrow complex, with some time pressure given by the place being active, would do wonders for the dynamism. As it is, it’s just a cute little succession of set-pieces.
  All that means that unfortunately the best use case here isn’t to have it whole, I’d rather swipe the trap, the giant spideress, and maybe a couple of the magic items. There’s potential for better here, but not enough to warrant using it as is.
  Final Rating? **/***** Just plundering some value out of the bits.

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