Crapshoot Monday: This Free Thing I Found on Itch.io…Demise of the Demolisher

​A hexcrawl by Fell Fables, level 15(!)
Written for DnD5E(?!)
   What.
   Seriously.
   What?
   It’s rare enough to see 5E content on itch.io. It’s rare to see hexcrawls. It’s well-nigh unheard-of to see high level content. All these together? This adventure should be hailed as a monument to ambition.
   And then we go into formatting and I want to make that ambition-monument into a gibbet. Four pages counting the grainy cover, a hexmap that is aggressively mis-keyed, font designed by ants, for ants, tables that are randomly organized as heck, and then the final page is dominated by the titular Demolisher’s beefy 5E-statblock. Understanding this product is an act of psychological analysis mixed with intuition, almost occultism. I believe I am reviewing the author’s intended adventure, but there’s enough arcane inference taking place here that I’m not sure. Call this a review of my impressionistic interpretation of the adventure.
   High-level adventures struggle with their plots, and we’ve all seen the elements of this one, but it’s solid. We got us a fall-from-heaven scenario, Angel Crashdown. In this case it’s a Demolisher-class angel, designed to destroy your Sodoms, your Gomorrahs, your Ninevahs. He’s rebelled and wants omnicide, fell here at a cursed island dedicated to a scorpion-themed archfiend, and there’s a week before he turns into a devil. Infernal diplomats are wandering around the island to find him, there’s a volcano-tomb about to erupt, magic stuff is around the area designed to tell the story of this old island/battlefield, it’s a pretty solid hexcrawl-story being told despite the teeny tiny amount of content. A couple subplots go nowhere, too, but hey, whaddaya whaddaya?
   So what I liked here beyond “massive admirable ambition” were the nods to actual high-level play realities, including knowledge that some of the characters will be flying, accounting for the players’ own ship, random environmental effects with nasty damage totals, and plenty of high-level monsters. Once the confusing map notation is deciphered, I like how the notes show the Big Bad’s progress from hex to hex each day. This should actually be a fun adventure that semi-challenges a level 15 party of four D&D 5E characters…that’s an accomplishment. Artifact ring as quest reward is pretty decent.
   Oh but what can be improved isn’t just formatting. The day 2 environment effect has a fire event that deals fire damage if players can’t solve an algorithmically generated maze in a non-specified time period, which is admirably creative, but will practically lead to a ton of other issues. Those effects in general are the most random and hard-to-adjudicate things. Lore table is what I’d call “rumors” and those could be handled a little better on the usefulness vs. trivia scale. I dislike the “DC X” knowledge checks but that’s just the way of the system. The final critique is with the Demolisher himself, and the other outsider encounters, is that all fights are little bit too easy for the level. Scope is good, implementation is a little underpowered.
   Still in all, best use case for Demise of the Demolisher is “play as a high-level hexcrawl in a tradgame system”. Honestly. It’s a baffling series of choices in presentation that desperately needs two extra pages for text, but it basically succeeds at its purpose. Good job(?) I think. There are some decent elements here for extraction, like the map, the enemy, and little sub-hex ideas. Just, you know, bring your mining picks.
   Final Rating? ***/***** with two stars more deducted if you’re a little visually-impaired or don’t like the effort of overcoming a document actively attempting to stymie their efforts to understand it. Add two more if you’re desperate for content in a level 15 tradgame (you poor soul). It’s one heck of a something, that’s for sure and certain. 

WHAT EVEN IS THIS COORDINATE SYSTEM?