Crapshoot Monday: This Free Thing I Found on Itch.io…The Shimmering Tooth of Kronos

An adventure by Casey Jones, level-free
Written for Vaults of Vaarn
   Trifold adventures have their points to criticize as a format even when executed well, but a truly baffling trend is the map spread across two folds. One would think that the whole point is to break up your two pages of content into six sections, but so often (as in this one), there’s a map spread across multiple folds, completely baffling whatever usability gains you glean from the format. Anyway, “dungeon” with three rooms and a hexmap with four keys is what we’re working with here, it’s Vaults of Vaarn, you know how this goes.
   The story here is your usual time-locked-battlefield-caught-in-a-six-hour-loop-eternally. Like Groundhog Day, or that excellent episode of Stargate SG1, but it’s a pair of armies who fought a battle and then shot at the titular Time Tooth, creating a region known as the Shimmer. Hooks are completely absent, but one imagines its mostly about loot the time dust stuff at the tower’s top because all the more interesting possibilities, like looting ancient weapons or tech or rescuing a prince or whatever, are all strictly precluded by the loop’s rules. It’s mostly wander around, encounter randoms, witness repeating battle, and try to find passwords to enter the time tower tooth.
   What I liked beyond the hexcrawl format here was the scenario premise, it’s a little like that battlefield/Good, Bad, Ugly module we saw a few weeks ago. Having everything in a static and fated battle that repeats itself is also pretty cool, there’s a bit of heist planning you could pull off by shadowing the armies during their “normal” course of battle, then performing hijinks based on that future knowledge. Nice potential, pity you can’t take anything permanent with you afterward. Hexmap looks pretty.
   Which, hey, gives me the first of what can be improved, in your hooks why not suggest a loot of knowledge? If you’re determined not to let the players mine the time bubble for physical goods, ancient time-lost secrets can be huge. Gimmie some hooks, brother, and I can swing something. The time-McGuffin in the center could use a lot more explanation. Also, let’s be honest, a better dungeon would be preferred, the three-room tower is a little bit lame. Finally, the random encounters are okay, but they don’t interact at all with the time thing, which is a waste of the scenario’s potential.
   I’ve been wracking my brain for a best use case, because it feels bad to say “play a kind of a bum Vaults of Vaarn session” with it, but unfortunately the monsters aren’t extractable, there aren’t any good items or traps or situations to extract for use elsewhere. Maybe the somewhat nice-looking hexmap itself? Anyway, just play this in your VoV game, you’re playing VoV, you’re clearly not picky.
   Final Rating? */***** with a mild sense of disappointment, but no surprise. I get it, time travel is hard. 

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