Crapshoot Monday: This Free Thing I Found on Itch.io… Fountains of the Beast

​A dungeon by Guilherme Gontijo, levels unlisted.
Written for Bronze Hack
  Oh boy, a dungeon crawl for an unrecognized heartbreaker? And it’s a lavishly colored trifold? What joy. The only way to make this a classic Itch Trifecta is a completely unsatisfying node-diagram “map” pasted over a landscape. And no…we rather have a new, fresh, abomination before us, a blocky greyscale ascii-art map that somehow manages to ape the stylings of Rogue or Dwarf Fortress with none of the charm. A scale is given so it’s usable, but this is one very unique method of conveying information here, let’s see if it works for him, Cotton. The whole thing is written in an oddly chatty style, with many “lots of X” and “there’s a Y” turns of phrase, it’s a little strange and nonspecific.
  The plot of the crawl is pretty standard. Rich guy has exotic garden. Rich guy’s son dies. Rich guy makes pact with dark powers and returns son to life as monster. Monster eats stuff and takes over garden. Rich guy asks to clear garden to reclaim it. Son in human form mysteriously helps PCs. PCs accept quest or we don’t play D&…er, Bronze Hack, tonight. The challenges to overcome on the way to the titular Beast are all what we expect from that premise, whenever there’s anything specific (traps are just marked “trap” on the map, not detailed). Vine “walls” are presumably impassible, as are water squares? There’s pools that turn bathers to gold and back again, there’s random bugs and leopards to fight, there’s a backstory that the adventure is pretty optimistic players will find…and the Final Bossfight can be solved with a lute playing a song?
  What I liked about the adventure was the art, sorta, which being uncredited means I assume is AI-generated. The map isn’t completely hopeless in terms of layout, that’s good. I’m not sure if the backstory gets conveyed successfully but I do like the idea of the history of the site mattering in the final confrontation. Pools that turn people into gold are a fun thing to mess with, although the Inevitable Player Monetization Schemes are left unaddressed.
  That all seems negative but looking at what can be improved yields quite a bit that’s hopeful. A lot of things that are unclear, like the traps, could be settled with just a little bit more explanation. Things like “d100 bugs” or “d4 leopards” or “d100 coins” could be standardized into definite numbers, which helps. As with any mystery with clues at a TTRPG, multiple chances to gain access to the useful backstory bits would be wise. Couple those improvements with a little more thought on things like the infinite gold-making ponds and you have a nice little minidungeon.
  We live in this reality, however, so the best use case here today is to take the communicated vibe and/or the backstory-puzzle-situation to a better map and ignore what’s presented. Running this straight out would be a little dull but wouldn’t be torture.
  Final Rating? */***** as a less than inspiring first impression for Bronze Hack. Better luck next time. 

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