Crapshoot Monday: This Free Thing I Found on Itch.io…The Long Hallway

​A dungeon by Vance Atkins, levels 1-3
Written for “OSR” (looks like B/X)
  Matt Jackson map time again, this time with text by Vance Atkins. This here is a very traditional adventure, with a decent-sized twenty-four-key map spread over ten big pages, organized in the bog-standard setup->keys->bestiary->wrap-up manner. This is fine, this is good, usually a writer determined to reinvent the wheel creates a lot of bumps. Convention exists for a reason, don’t knock it down unless you have a good reason. My only usability critique is mostly related to the keys being a little overwritten, but if the map is popped out separately it’s easy enough to track.
  Our story isn’t unusual but it’s nice. The titular long hall is the main site of worship for a god-of-tricks-and-opposing-vermin (cat), infiltrated and subverted by a god-baby of insects. Everything proceeds then as you’d expect from that setup. I’ve discussed Jackson maps before, along with my critiques (linear, kind of small), and this one is more or less along those lines. I like the big stonking hallway as the central feature with three secret doors leading to everything else, but the branches are branches, not tangles. An infested priest invites the PCs to the real shrine, which is the tip-off that there’s more to this, but the rest is fairly simple. Good luck fighting a half-baby, half-ant.
  Honestly what I liked starts with the baby-ant and the kind of weird corrupted cleric enemies, they have some neat mechanics and make for a nice challenge level at 1-3. Our formula calls for prisoners-to-use and indeed we have them, with nice little personalities. Traps are rote but the first long hallway has gilded honored mummies, which can be scraped for a nasty curse. The earliest secret door being a thief-trap, but also a shrine devoted to a tricky goddess dedicated to teaching the greedy their lessons…that’s good stuff right there. Magic items are good, with my favorite being a custom anti-vermin brooch delivered by the original god in the form of a housecat, that’s fun.
  I know it’s drastic, but what can be improved for starters is replace that map. Assuming you don’t want to just chuck it and make you own, modding the map for more interconnection and up-down stuff would be nice. The traps could use more pizzazz. There’s a little too much “they fight” default interaction with the cultists, that’s a bummer. Treasure amounts are a little too poor and there’s a lot in the very remote midden. Easy enough to improve, but it’s still something you want to touch up.
  Best use case doesn’t break the mold, it’s going to be a nice little temple site used in the middle of a hexcrawl campaign. It’s a leeetle bit big for a one-shot in the normal amount of time, but with dedication you could do that too. It’s a nice little dungeon, go put it on your map.
  Final Rating? ***/***** and that’s closer to a four than a two. I like this thing and I think you’ll have a fun session or two if you play it, it’s neither innovative nor novel, but better to do something fun and worthwhile than so many of the weird itch.io abominations we see.