Crapshoot Monday: This Free Thing I Found on Itch.io…Isle of the Evil Eye

​A dungeon by Itch_Rokas, levels 1-4
Written for Shadowdark
  I don’t know what obscure internet corner came up with the idea of writing Shadowdark adventures based on Weird Tales stories, but it’s a charming trend. Our author here tells us with boyish enthusiasm about the three short stories that inspired him to write this eight-page adventure detailing a twenty-one room flooded keep, it’s certainly made me interested in those particular issues’ tales. Besides mildly annoying me with the Shadowdark-template standards of sans fonts and only single-column, the writing gets out of the way and does its job with admirable efficiency. There’s a nice innovation or two with formatting and the three-level map is very clear, but this is otherwise the bog standard.
  Inspired by the pulps, we have our second sunken site in a row, this time a ruined ancient serpentman keep made out of green stone that’s half-sunken beneath the sea. There’s a story about a serpentman sorcerer summoning a demon and the demon turning the keep mad and turning its summoner into a giant snake, there’s a random sailor vampire in the upstairs, and there are fishmen just sort of there looking for one of their lost idols. I don’t know if I’d give any of \these disparate individuals the glorious title of “faction” but there’s some dynamism there and at least the murlocks don’t automatically attack.
  I’m eager to get to what I liked, because there are a few things this module does well. First off, the map is both reasonably realistic but also gives players a decently interesting site to explore. The little eye symbols are repeated in the given location’s key, symbolizing a place in daylight if it’s a daytime delve. The lower level’s flooding really matters, with the vault in particular a place where any treasure-hunting is also accompanied with the risk of tons of seawater thundering in. Couple with the multiple entrances noted (with perception DCs)…yeah, this guy plays. I also like the fishmen’s real reward being a “Blessing of the Sea” which lets players breathe underwater, very good adventure stuff right there.
  That said, what can be improved is probably first of all working a bit more to make all the disparate elements work together. The vampire in particular is something that doesn’t fit with the rest, as cool as a half-drowned sailor vampire who’s coffin is his lifeboat is. There’s also a stark difficulty curve that makes “levels 1-4” feel a little too wide, the fishmen “faction” is just four guys of a single hit die, you don’t need level 4’s to be encountering that. Again, that’s 40% of the system’s level scale. My wonder is if this was originally written for a different system (5E?) and adapted. Treasure could also be a little more inventive, the attempts to hide it are appreciated but some variety would be nice.
  There’s a best use case here that involves a very nice pulp adventure being had, perhaps even something like a Savage Worlds one-shot. It’s a good set of maps to pull and use, too, really didn’t compliment the site map enough. I sound underwhelmed with some elements but you really do have a fine use case in either one-shots or campaign play here.
  Final Rating? ***/**** because it’s above-average in the map/setting and you’ll have fun playing it, just feel like it could use a final editing pass to make it really pop.

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