Crapshoot Monday: This Free Thing I Found on Itch.io…The Maw of the Mountain

​A dungeon by Brian Richmond, levels irrelevant
Written for KNAVE (or Rakehell)
  There is no more essential lair than that of THE DRAGON. I have long decried the balance of Dungeons to Dragons being severely skewed away from our sinister scaly friends into the mundane masses of goblins, orcs, and oozes. Brian Richmond agrees with this trifold adventure, which populates its seven-room lair with only a WYRM and its BROODLINGS. No cultists or kobolds for him. I could wish it wasn’t written for Knave (the man plays Rakehell but keys for the New Hotness), I could wish the format was booklet instead of trifold, I could wish the keys were numbered or lettered (instead just labels on the map), but all of that is forgivable if you hand me a dragon lair.
   What I liked is that this adventure product has dragon and I like dragons. Yay. Unfortunately we’re going to rapidly run out of further praises. I like the idea of a little “rousing the wyrm” track. There’s a list of actions that the PCs can take (like casting spells, killing a broodling, or speaking of treasure for example) that each have a 50% chance of ticking off a box. The product seems to assume it’ll be done privately by the GM, but I might actually make it explicit what’s happening, but keep the details of what exactly triggers the check secret. The whole list is very flavorful, a nice mix of out-of-game traits and roleplay stuff along with practical in-game actions. That’ll be wonderfully tense and fun for the players. All the tables have great flavor like that.
   It’s often just my complaints, but when I talk about what can be improved here, I really do see all of these improvements being implemented. First, and this is pretty normal, a little more map complexity wouldn’t go amiss. Secundus, while the tables are flavorful as all heck, a lot of the rewards and contents are all descriptive, not at all practical. Knave likes loosey-goosey numbers but it’s not freaking Cairn, you are allowed to say “5,500gp”. Related to both objections, after the first very flavorful entry, there are three paths that have somewhat unclear different challenges. There’s a lot of great flavor here but a little less homework would improve things. Again, freeing yourself from trifold format restrictions would go a long way to fixing this. Running it in a real TTRPG system that is optimized for fighting dragons in dungeons would be the best improvement.
   Best use case for this is truly the ULTIMATE use case for any adventure: Use it to house a dragon that will melt your players’ flesh from their bones. There’s also a ton of flavor to be mined from its whimsical tables if you’re okay needing to invest a lot of work into it. Maybe its easier in Rakehell.
   Final Rating? **/***** but oh MAN does it make you want to rate it higher. If you’re willing to invest time and effort into the Maw, it’ll reward you.