​Crapshoot Monday: This Free Thing I Found On Itch.io…Lost Ruins of the Tiger Men

A “zungeon” by Katt Kirsch, level not listed (highish).
Kind of maybe sort of written for OSE. Ish. Let’s not over-think it.
   Oy. I’ve seen this name recently. This is another zungeon, which is like a dungeon except you play it while eating a Zaxby’s Zensation Zalad. And also there aren’t real maps but instead you suffer through interpreting ball-and-stick graphs. Beyond that, pretty standard stuff, despite the zany font/coloration choices…start with a prologue, then hooks and rumors, then “map” (vomit), then bestiary, then finally very abbreviated keys for our “locations”. I don’t have much to say about format really, the nineteen rooms over eight pages ratio is reasonable, it’s just oddly arranged.
   I…don’t understand how tigers and lemons mix together as themes, but that’s our story’s themes. There these ruins, okay? And they’re lost. And they’re inhabited by tiger-men. And those tiger men grow massive lemons. And those lemons are traded with nearby villages. And some(?) of the lemons need blood to grow. And there are hunting tiger-constructs and were-tigers and a 4-armed priestess of tigers and a massive “you killed the boss” tiger golem that does rampaging when she’s inevitably killed. BECAUSE SHE HAS A STAFF OF HEALING AND A +3 SWORD. All told in punchy little two-three line keys or random encounters. So far, so weird.
   Yeah I’m going to punt on the weirdness levels because that’s a taste thing, so what I liked first will be that excellent loot amount. There’s some actual-factual GOOD LOOT in this adventure, which feels vanishingly rare in the sullied halls of Itch. OSE needs it, though. The final golem most has a coin value, sweet. If we had an actual map, the addition of a canal cutting through the lower half of it would be very welcome, as would the secret passages/rooms. Perfectly cromulent encounter design crops up here and there, with the were-tigers being professional and under the thrall of an expansionistic pagan priestess, but otherwise quite chill. In one homoerotic moment, a trio of them even invite your players into a hot tub, have fun roleplaying that one…but it’s a good idea generally to have NPCs willing to chat. I like the captured bandits willing to accompany the party; one of them erupts into a beetle swarm after a while.
   Wrongheaded territories abound after that, with what can be improved BEYOND HAVING A REAL MAP mostly consisting of “think about interconnections more” and “go deeper into your motivations”. Finding some ruins, getting yourself some fur, a second pair of arms, and the ability to turn cultists into were-tigers is all well and good, but you’re going to have to go a lot farther to show me how this plus a healthy citrus market actually nets us a world (or even region)-devouring threat. Binrix the local village militia leader ought to have some kind of plan too beyond “I hear there are rumors thataway, go quest young man”. Eight pages is quite a lot of room, there really is some missed potential here.
   In the end, the best use case is probably to just run this in OSE, have a somewhat disjointed abstracted dungeon crawl, and then retire with all your fabulous cash and prizes. I’m trying to think about what I’d extract from here to be useful in a different context and I get…absolutely nothing. That’s a little grim. Nugget yield: Zero.
   Final Rating? **/***** because I’m feeling incredibly generous. This is the best you’re going to get, because despite the fun bits in actual play, the lack of any quality individual pieces and the lack of a real map permanently cripple this one from ever being better than two stars.

Pictured: A crime.