Crapshoot Monday: This Free Thing I Found on Itch.io…Clash of Leviathans

​An adventure by Redcap Press & Ethan Scott, level 5
Written for D&D 5e 2024
  Whoa, this sucker’s got art. Credited artist for cover and for interior. Heavily formatted with custom fonts, text boxes, aged-effect background paper, special actions and custom events…all for a three-page railroad event that uses a kaiju fight as the background. A very pretty presentation though.
   We all enjoyed Pacific Rim, right? This is like that. Giant kaiju stomps in from the ocean intent on destroying Your Home Metropolis, giant Friendly Guardian Kaiju defends the city, while these two big figures enjoy massive audience-pleasing kaiju combat the PCs ride a complimentary flight of griffons to a conveniently embedded temple on the back of Bad Kaiju’s head where they poke it with a magic trident. The trident was removed by sahuagin cultists, natch, but in a handy bit of fortuitous propinquity the lead sahuagin is hanging out right there with the trident still in hand. So standard little “water temple lair” encounter set, but with a big noisy background.
   Yeah, I’ll be generous with what I liked and call the background good. Every round there’s a random roll to see what’s happening in the kaiju fight and if it affects the environment where the PCs are fighting their little encounter gauntlet. I like the idea of griffons taking the party to the Handy Dandy Monster Shutoff Point. Art and format is okay.
   All that being said, what can be improved first is probably stop writing these kinds of adventures for level 5. I like giant monsters. You know what’s cool? Fighting them. This is the thousandth Shadow of the Colossus adventure because D&D adventure writers are terrified to write anything for level 15+, where the demigods do demigod things. All the rest of the problems here stem from this failure of courage (or imagination)…its rinky-dink temple map scale, its railroad amusement park ride with the griffons’ “even if there’s a problem it’s okay” setup, its convenient and silly “McGuffin held right next to McGuffin”…all of this is because you had a scenario that called for a high-level party and yet you had to nerf it. All the problems stem from this.
   This means best use case, sadly, is limited only to “run it as it is”. There’s nothing here allowing for expansion because all the major cinematic actors are just that, non-interactable cutscene window-dressing. I guess the petrifying trident is usable? But even that is nerfed for its level.
   Final Rating? */***** with a sigh for the wasted talent. Redcap Press, your presentation is undeniably excellent; now, please go back to the drawing board and give us an adventure worth actually presenting. 

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