Crapshoot Monday: This Free Thing I Found on Itch.io… The Tomb of Xul Lan Kwat

​A dungeon adventure by Madeline, level designators are for losers.
System neutral…or system hostile, given the sci-fi sheen.
  I’m tired of complaining about the maps, so for December I’m pulling from a Dyson Logos Jam in the hope that average map quality will go up somewhat. We’re going to start with this Tomb of Xul Lan Kwat here, a six-page adventure that keys a nineteen-key Dyson map that’s had the color balance messed with. All to the good, but then we see “system-neutral” and no level listed, and there’s some worry creeping back in. It’s got the standard stuff you expect with a “scifi fantasy horror” like weirdo monsters and mutations and is almost entirely focused on being a one-shot. I suspect that someone somewhere has an unholy Cairn hack-hack that’s all about this exact setting.
  The plot is that it’s a tomb. The flavor of tomb is “dead god(dess) dreaming”, which is I believe the second most common flavor after “noble with Jerry Springer issues”. Standard stuff, party is going in with a special box to seal away bits of the goddess that are causing issues, there are mutant monkeys, emo gnomes, mushroom women, and evil dire crayfish to bump into, a small mutation chart to ruin most characters completely, and occasional descriptors of magic computers to coat this fantasy premise in the thinnest patina of scifi. It’s only slightly static on the Tomb Staticness Index, and written in a clear format with a minimum of fuss.
  Jaded intro there aside, what I liked in this one is how it coheres and flows into a reasonable environment. The monsters are decent, although being system-neutral means that they don’t have mechanics to match their distinctive personalities and vibe. It’s a gross, unpleasant area that well captures the feeling of “dead(ish) goddess warping this place”, and although the map is more linear than I’d prefer, there’s enough here for exploratory gameplay in bits and pieces. If “Dark Gonzo” isn’t a flavor you mind, then it’s a competently executed flavor. A failure state that leads to a full-fledged campaign is admirable, if not particularly realistic.
  The first of what can be improved would be to open that map up. Make a teleporter or two, let the water feature that dominates the whole place be a little less brutal to traverse. If you have any system that cares about loot (OSR or 3.P), more places need hidden treasure as well, but as I mentioned this is pretty clearly a one-shot, so the games are made up and the points don’t matter. Horror trappings are decent on this one, but a line or two on the entry level to up the feelings of dread wouldn’t go amiss. Having stats for any specific system along with a level range aimed at would be helpful for modulating threats as well.
  Still, the best use case for The Tomb of Xul Lan Kwat is clearly as an atmospheric, gonzo, horror one-shot. It could be placed in a hexcrawl and the scifi bits could be either played up or sanded off depending on the system, but it’s world-changing enough in its consequences I’d be careful there. Unless you’re playing in a Dark Hersey sandbox campaign. Horror’s not to my taste, but a little amplification could definitely make this a decent horror game session.
  Final Rating? I’m going to give it a slightly kind **/***** because I could imagine playing with it. Don’t think I will though.

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