Crapshoot Monday: This Free Thing I Found on Itch.io…A Walk in the Harwood

A hexcrawl by Hilander, level nill.
Written for Shadow & Fae 2E
  This was intended to be a Halloween adventure, I think. It’s got itself some scope, which is always interesting to me if there’s a use case optimized for the Special Holiday One-Shot, are you planning on making a day of this? A two-shot? Twenty pages with a hexcrawl, a town, a timeline, and a twenty-three room dungeon is admirable for a module but you’re spending a lot of time on that unless you have incredibly efficient players. I don’t know what Shadow & Fae 2E plays like but this claims OSE compatibility and there’s some content to work through here.
  Said content is charming enough, a little village is perched at the edge of a haunted wood, the mayor’s son has disappeared along with his sword and shield, there’s a weeping spirit that keeps appearing and rumors of an old mean hag in the wood that need a’ killin. Because we need more complexity in our plot, the weeping spirit is actually a trapped demon, the hag is actually a good woods-warden, and the forest itself is in fact a liminal space between life and death filled with the haunting spirits of the wicked dead who are unable to pass the Gates into heaven. Also the village is made up of poor folk settled beside the evil wood for their protection. And there’s a whole bunch of on-theme side characters like an alchemist living on pumpkins, ogres, drowned lady story, etc, etc, etc. Illustrations/maps are cute. 

​  As an aside, there’s a little bit of what I’ll call “Bryce-Baiting” going on here. The writer has clearly read a lot in the OSR scene, referring to multiple other adventures and blogs in the main text of the module. The fairytale vibe is almost guaranteed to get a good mention when encountered by Bryce Lynch, prolific and highly influential reviewer of tenfootpole. Other things that Bryce talks about a lot like information density, formatting and bullet points, “active” random encounters with a lot going on in each entry, are all heavily featured here. These are all style notes, substance-neutral, but it’s important style if you want the single most important blog reviewer in the game to give you a positive review. It’ll give you a few approving lip-smacks on Fear of a Black Dragon as well. 
  What I liked here were several folktale elements that worked well, like a ghost lady next to a tree that possesses people to free her corpse all tangled up in the roots, and several of the monsters as manifested wicked spirits is a good idea. The premise as a whole is pretty nice with the gates leading to heaven, the dying warden who wants an apprentice to carry on his burden, a witch who also wants a minion…it’s pretty nifty. Good haunted woods environment, reminds me of Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell. Lot of nice maps, which does allow the reader to understand what’s going on.
  Ah, but what can be improved? Well…a lot once we get down to brass tacks. And I’m not going to get into the mood being a little overly twee, that’s just a personal taste thing. That aforementioned mansion, with 23 keys? All the rooms are just titled with notes on what loot is available is the party is looking to strip the place. There’s not much to fight, just menacing random encounters at a standard rate, no traps, no set-pieces, no difficult exploratory wrinkles. The hexcrawl procedure is pretty standard, but the hexes themselves are all written very vague at times. The Black Wyrm of Brandonsford expy “green wyrm” is the only major source of cash, which is an issue if it is truly OSE-compatible. There’s a nod given to an incoming Halloween festival (The Spirits’ Feast), but the details of how that incoming calendar event effects things…just aren’t there. Finally, GIVE A SINGLE LOCATION FOR THE MCGUFFIN KID. Randomness where no randomness should exist, the module wants me to roll a d6 to find out where the kid is and how he’s being menace. This is the inciting incident, the players assume it’s the main quest. Don’t be vague, module.
  This being said, the best use case here is as a self-contained pair to quartet of sessions, what the kids these days are calling a “campaign”. If Shadow & Fae 2E is one of those “not actually a TTRPG, but simulating playing a TTRPG” systems like Dungeon World or Trophy Gold or Knave then it might be possible to condense it into a one-shot. A few of the ideas and situations are extractable for value elsewhere, too.
  Final Rating? **/***** but it’s easy enough to add another star if the flavor is right up your alley, it’s certainly an admirable production with some real effort put in. 

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