​Crapshoot Monday: This Free Thing I Found On Itch.io…Ascend the Overseer

A dungeon(?) by Jake Mix,“we don’t really “do” levels here.
Written for Vaults of Vaarn.
   I see the words “Vaults of Vaarn” and my stomach churns. My right eye twitches. My head begins to pound. I have been…somewhat less than impressed with Vaults of Vaarn during my long sojourn among the itchies. I don’t like gonzo, I don’t like post-apocalyptic…coupled with the garish blue-and-yellow cover, I didn’t walk into this one with high hopes.
   Although the intro page does reference The Sword of the Lictor, so that’s something…Gene Wolfe is not in the usual itch.io list of inspirations. Okay, that’s something. There’s also a lot more ambition that usual in this one’s scope, you’ve got a “hexcrawl” with twelve hex, an “adventure site” with nine keys, and a final vault with nine more keys, all contained in sixteen pages with a generous art budget and wide margins. It’s one of the most readable Vaults of Vaarn products I’ve seen. Despite the weirdness, I understood what was happening.
   …but don’t get me wrong, this thing is DANG WEIRD. It’s a MountRushmorecrawl, basically. Huge carved overseer statue, formerly lost in an eternal sandstorm, now exposed for looting. Overseer was a cleric of Azathoth Jr., who he was feeding genetic codes before getting sick. In an effort to live longer he tries to turn himself into a mushroom, like you do, but oops, grew a second head and got taken over. That’ll happen. He dehydrated himself so there you go. Over the eons, a crystal jungle grew up the statue legs, a Pattern Out of Space took up residence, the usual Vaarn stuff. Feeling whimsical yet?

   Taste. Taste. All a matter of taste.
   Being objective here, what I liked most of all is the interesting magic item pair, a teleportation rod and a guidestone…activate the rod, you automatically get teleported six miles in the direct of the stone…and that can make you overshoot it, yes. That’s nice design. I like other stuff too, namely the interaction of a command panel with codes and switched accompanied by a malfunctioning old robot that knows the activation codes. Desiccated monsters wake up when wet with water or blood, classic. Good interaction there.
   Better interactions that could be managed on the monster aside, what can be improved would be adding more tactical interactions rather than “goop hurts you” or “two-dimensional NPC fights you without you being able to counter unless you have a space-warping weapon”. The motives of the Overseer and his god are also a touch unclear. More fundamentally, the maps need work…the statue clamber is presented as a hexcrawl, which is not the best method of presenting the information. The lap area is also non-exploratory. I don’t hate the head vault/dungeon, but it isn’t terribly interesting to explore given its acceptable level of non-linearity. For all the weirdness, everything is very surface-level, literally. For instance, I know my players would want to climb up the back.
   Breaking out my pickaxe, I’m definitely calling my personal best use case as stealing that magic teleport item, along maybe with the concept of a Rushmore Dungeon. If you’re a Vault of Vaarn Victim (aka player), then you are indeed blessed here, for this may be the single greatest Vaults of Vaarn adventure of all time, past, present, and future.
   Final Rating? **/***** with an astonished gasp. Two stars isn’t what I expect when I touch Vaarn, but Mr. Mix had some good creativity here.