Crapshoot Monday: This Free Thing I Found on Itch.io…The Sanctuary of the Cursed Druids

Map looks familiar too...

A dungeon by Danger Is Real, levels diegetic
Written for Cairn
  I try, I really try, to not pay attention to who’s writing these things when I’m in the midst of my Monday Crapshooting. I recognized this one, though, Danger_Is_Real’s top-notch Legacy of the Black Mark was the very first contest adventure site I reviewed, and it was one of the final eight that made it into the compilation, and it was great dungeon to run too. So when I see that name making a one-page dungeon for Cairn, of all things…it’s like hearing that nice, stable, and friendly family man two doors down turning out to have committed multiple homicides in the past. Beyond the system, this slightly chaotic-layout module is ten rooms, easy enough to grok, no major complaints.
  Story of the location won’t shock anyone, there’s a cave in a forest (dark and gloomy flavor) used by druids (cursed flavor) to sacrifice villagers to a dark woods-demon. Also there’s a pair of harpies, a little bit telegraphed but not all of us will understand the Morse Code. I’m a little confused about the flavor of the area, which is natural cave->artificial rooms (with metal doors) that still have trees in them->harpies in a cave? There’s at least an effort here in making the map loop in ways that matter and the secret doors are present, so it’s ticking more boxes than most Cairn “dungeons”.
  I’ll kick off what I liked with an unmarked secret passage, the side-cave has a smoky wall on the side opposite the fire beetles’ nest, it’s a chimney that can slip down to room 4. Traps are classic, stuff like a falling boulder at the top of some stairs, love that. Good set-pieces in general, with dryads from tortured trees menacing in one room, a barricaded pair of adventurers, and the final horned lord fight around a massive evil tree surrounded by sacrifices’ skeletons that get continually animated every round.
  What can be improved first is to make the environment more consistent. That’s not really about fuzzy “feels”, so much as the discordant notes making the choices of where to go harder to determine for the players. The lightness of the Cairn system is also fighting against the clear desires of the dungeon to have deep fights and interesting poison/damage tracks…which, also given the generous loot tables, actually makes me wonder if this was initially written for a more standard system and then adapted. All of this is secondary to the biggest improvement: Give us some cursed druids like the title promised. Zero druids to be seen. It’s an insult.
  Okay, okay, the best use case here is still to play this as a perfectly enjoyable one-shot or adventure site, in an actually functional TTRPG system ideally. No elements to steal but it’ll work fine in most campaigns, and if it doesn’t, then shame on you for not having evil druids. Just like shame on this adventure.
  Final Rating? **/***** but both stars are happy and having a perfectly fun night of D&D. I’ll probably use this. Just annoyed at all the homework I need to do to make this workable. 

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