Crapshoot Monday: This Free Thing I Found on Itch.io…Petra Serpentis

A dungeon by Mike Kuhns, levels 1-3
Written for Shadowdark
  If you write something I like, I’m going to follow up and check out more stuff. I was not generally impressed with Shots in the Dark, a Shadowdark adventure compendium, but the pirate lair from Mike Kuhns in the set was quite good, so I looked to see if he had anything else, and hey, Petra Serpentis fits the Crapshoot Monday criteria quite well and given it’s using a nine-key Dyson Logos map over nine pages I’m curious to see how usable it is. Writing is fine, the pirate adventure hadn’t impressed me due to poetic language, but just because it would produce good gaming. In this case the map’s verticality, always appreciated, is actually used so I’m a happy man on the outset.
  The plot is that there’s a goblin mine near “the village” were elemental fire-infused “flarestone” gets mined and refined, mine’s been taken over by a rock snake who’s eaten all the goblins and is now eating the local livestock. Please go kill the monster, thanks. Oh also a lot of the goblins died in an explosion because the shale serpent leaks natural gas and the dead goblins got infused with flarestone and that makes them nonstandard zombies. I’m fine with this.
  To start with what I liked was how the adventure was extremely-not-system agnostic. That setup seemed odd to me at first until I remembered that Shadowdark has goblins as one of the default four PC races, so “goblin” doesn’t equal “assumed at war with the village”. The stone snake leaking natural gas is extremely tied in to both the verticality of the location (gas is thicker the lower you go) and also the Shadowdark system’s obsession with torches (burn faster/brighter the lower you go, exploding on the lowest level). Not only is this lampshaded very nicely with the village’s lanterns burning brighter whenever the sheep get stolen and an incautious goblin obviously exploded, but there’s also a way around the problem provided with nonflammable flarestone rods as part of the loot to be found. Very solid thinking overall, clever and consistent, and that’s shown in other little side thoughts with loot hiding spots and monster positioning. There’s also stuff like Shadowdark danger tags (used for random encounter frequency) becoming more severe the lower you go.

A Dyson, but a good one.

  Can’t all be good though, what can be improved is two primary thinks. First of all, have the courage of your convictions and remove that “1” from the recommended levels, you’ve basically got a dragon down at the bottom of the well here, with the 4d6 natural gas explosion and the stony hide immune to nonmagical weapons…those are fine, those are fun, but more for level nine, and not for level one. Or at least level 3, although the pair of +1 weapons findable in the dungeon are a good attempt to ameliorate the issue. Some specificity in terms of the village and more of that creative thinking focused on random encounters would also help, six rats aren’t an interesting encounter result. Although thank you for giving a number and not “2d4 rats”. "More ambition" is a vague request, but I'll make it.
  I’m a bit torn here on best use case, because spoiler alert, I will be using this. Played straight as a oneshot or in a campaign map it’s good, but the thing is such a good dragon’s lair setup I’m almost tempted to rework it into a higher level lair. The thing is specific, which is good, but that does mean it’s not designed to be strip-mined for bits.
  I’m waffling a bit but I eventually land on a final rating? ****/***** Feels slightly generous because it moves my heart to admiration instead of love but shucks this thing has a lot to admire, so…well done. And I will be using this in games.