Crapshoot Monday: This Free Thing I Found on Itch.io....The Great Boar Hunt

​A gauntlet adventure for 0th-levels by Dimme van der Hout
Written for Shadowdark
   Okay, back in the saddle. Always a bit of a letdown after the end of Adventure Site Contest judging...we haven't announced winners yet, but now it's back to the Monday grind. Let's start with a sure winner, then, a top finalist in the Shadowdark RPG Independent Game Jam. It's a 0-level gauntlet. With a ten-room dungeon as the content. Over 11 pages, formatted in spreads of all things. Ah. Back to the ol' reliables I see.
   Story is that you're all a bunch of nobody scrubs from a sad village hunting after a giant boar in a nice traditional hunt and you bump into a sunken keep formerly owned by a Mr. Tusken, who wandered away and left his half-elf wife sad and her being sad made the keep sink into the ground and the keep needs to be traveled through because...reasons. 'kay. All the boar/village stuff is kind of handwaved anyway, it's just Gauntlet In the Most Literal of Senses.
   Okay, okay, I've been spoiled by ASC III, let's be fair. What I liked here was the look of the little map. The riddle-handout is nice, that's a nice little puzzle offered by a fairy who gifts a magic +1 dagger if the answer is given. I like the d100 treasure table, I'll use it for a decent mudcore list. I like that there's a hook for future quest in a riddle where Lord Tusken (yeah, that's his name) met his final rest. Good idea.
   Honestly, that means the first of what can be improved is just "expand stuff more". The hook is abstracted, the village has no ingame content, the boar itself is kind of forgotten...c'mon, help a brother out here. Improving the map for anything that gives exploratory potential would be good too, this is just a linear run with a couple little spokes. Despite having a vertical element, none of the height is taken advantage of...just kind of miss on the map overall. It's not nearly deadly enough to be a proper funnel experience. AND MORE BOAR HUNTING IN THE GIANT BOAR HUNT PLEASE.
   Alas, best use case is probably just "strip for parts". If you want a Shadowdark gauntlet, that's fine, I don't hate you, but there's better out there like Trial of the Slime Lord. Unfortunately, outside of the aforementioned little d100 treasure table and some genuinely nice little evocative pieces of art, there aren't really even a lot of parts I'd want to strip here.
   Final Rating? */***** Sigh. We're back alright.