Crapshoot Monday: This Free Thing I Found on Itch.io…The Curse of Ardwick

​A dungeon by Matt Jackson, low-level
Written for White Box FMAG
  Hey, it’s Matt Jackson, cool. Of all the freebie-map-scriveners widely known online, Mr. Jackson draws by far the cutesiest maps, trending simple and direct. I didn’t realize the man also had released a PWYW adventure on itch.io, but it came up, so here I am looking at it. With nine pages for eight rooms, with generous margins, heavy font, and plenty of cute illustrations, Ardwick here is almost exactly what I’d expected visually. I appreciate the somewhat off-wall choice of “White Box FMAG” for the game system, but I’m sure its convertible. The whole thing is written conversationally, almost casually, with some excesses like skeletons as “skellies” likely to be a bridge too far for some readers. It’s very cute and written with a charming sincerity, though. 
  Our story here won’t win any awards for originality, but it works. Father Ardwyck (yes, his name is spelled differently from the title) is a nice village priest, falls in love (or at least, in lust) with a girl in his congregation, which is against the rules of this evidently Catholic-ish faith. She refuses him, he murders her, she curses him with her dying breath, he goes mad and raises the dead to protect her body…a tale as old as time. Apparently, the village gave up breaking into the church for a few decades but now the headsman is paying your murderous group of well-armed vagabonds to break in and “clear out the problem”. Okay, standard enough, but once you meander into the well-illustrated little linear chapel you’re not going to be minding going through the classic tropes of “fight undead”, “mess with traps”, and “figure out statues”. All standard D&D.
  I’ll dispense with what I liked about the art first: I liked the art. The composition of the “trio of enemies” setup means its probably AI, but at least the prompts were smart. Map at least looks really nice. The statues-to-monkey-with are well designed and good for several minutes of fun. Magic items are all creative if underpowered.
  …but what can be improved obviously first and foremost would be making those magic items less underpowered. And the statues more impactful. And the dangers in general more dangerous. All of that would be better. My only hesitation here is the on the other side, which is about undead defenses. Are undead difficult to turn in FMAG? Because you better hope the undead get turned at low levels here, because the vast majority of them are impossible to damage without magic or silver weapons. Whoops. This is low level, right? There’s a single silver knife here, I hope you’re okay with that being your only method of hurting the ghouls and the spellcaster. The map, while pretty, is also very linear without being very interesting, so that’s something that could be done better. Copyediting errors in titles and names here and there too. Pity.
  I reckon your best use case is to make it a haunted chapel to bump into in a village during your campaign. Magic items can also be raided, to limited effect.
  Final Rating? */***** with a desperate desire to make it one star higher, I really didn’t hate any part of this and it’s well-meaning as the day is long, there’s just not a lot of there, there. Alas.