​For system unspecified, Level 6
By Ethan B.
In the depths of the Jungle, there’s a primeval drum in a natural amphitheater. It has become a primal holy site for a tribe of carnivorous apes. The locals fear the site more than anything, and will defend it for they think a curse from the primal gods will come down if it is violated.
   Kind of a bummer there’s no system specified here, because this thing’s got flavor for days. I’m going to assume with the druid build and all it’s AD&D but calling out your system is a big deal.
   Having said that, the real beating heart of this adventure is pulp. The story hook, slightly obscure, apparently involves a Dr. Starling trying to capture an ape specimen and getting caught in turn, a massive fake sacred drum site claimed by both an ape troop and a tribe of savages, each faction uses the drum at different times. All the other local natives hate the savage tribe so go nuts and kill everything on every side. I think that’s the story, despite the very dense three-column format some information still appears to have been cut.
   As usual, when we have an outdoor map, we have a somewhat unclear expected progression. Its nice to see color here and the environment makes sense, but even without flying (level 6 in most systems will have occasional flights but not everyone air walking) the whole area is a little exposed. The three little cavelets are explorable but mostly you’re just wandering from point-to-point. There’s also a village in this adventure without any map at all, but it’s described decently. I’m not entirely sure how much use this map will get in play, which is a common outdoor site comment. Charming visual though.
   As is fitting for the pulp vibe, every single location seems to be some kind of trap. Pit traps, fire traps, pit traps full of firey centipedes…all good clean pulp. Giant orb spiders who inflict blisters painful enough to temporarily lose the use of a limb? Nasty. The big drum in the middle of the site is made up of dozens of taxidermied animals all stitched together to look like a dead dinosaur, stretched taut over a pit, played by dancing on it…and so yes, it can be knifed open, releasing sulfurous gas and very possibly sending the dancer tumbling into the sharp rocks below (also there are green slimes clinging to the underside, nice). This desecration means war, of course, including all the ape going apeshit.
    …which is not a metaphor. “Apeshit” is a game-mechanical term for the berserk state that the apes go into at low-hp. These apes are gnarly fighters. There are also a few jungle enemies to be had in side areas, like a “minotaur” (probably monitor) lizard and all the bugs. Up in the cliff an ogre hangs out just because. The savage tribe is not guaranteed to fight but if they do they have an extensive order of battle and some nasty tricks like poison darts wielded by Terror Trooper assassins which inflict hours of sleep onto the victims. I got a chuckle for the village description including “1 idiot” who is all about swiping diamonds from the skulls within the village’s central 400-skull pillar. Blood diamonds, natch.
   Treasure is…odd, and I think kind of low. All the apes and humans adorn themselves with treasure (50% chance of having 30gp worth), and of course 400 skulls x 2 eye sockets each x 10gp per diamond means there’s 8k in the evil village. The oddball eccentric doctor fellow pays 10,000gp for a live ape, which, um…I guess we were supposed to figure that out via mind-reading? Otherwise, you have a ruby necklace from a lovelorn centipede, 4,000sp with the ogre, a rando white leopard-skin rug worth 2k, golden-tipped drumsticks for the elephant ribcage xylophone…it’s okay, just odd. Magic isn’t awful, just an odd +1 weapon here or a spell scroll there. Of course there’s a bullwhip.
   Difficult as the adventure is to parse at time, it’s a pretty neat jungle site. I just wish I had a better bead on the story, feels like some critical cuts or a few assumptions missed messing up an otherwise solid location. 

Reviews from contributor copy, will omit our own from the ratings. Loved the idea behind this anthology, the vast majority of men and women in uniform aren't frontline fighters but those also serve who turn a wrench, stir a pot, or deliver the mail. 
​ Another Man's Treasure, by Ted Begley: Charming story of a logistics boffin wheeling, dealing, and making a continuous series of trades starting with expired MREs and ending with...well, it's a spoiler, but it's a hilarious series of events, all framed in said shuttle driver's dressing-down by his sergeant. *****
   Al in Logistics, by Addison Reid: Classic sci-fi short story premise, but told through a milSF lens. "Hide the AI" stories are all about the final discovery, and it's told well here. ****
   Manifest Destiny, by D. S. Ligon: Cryo-tech and a janitor save the day on a battle station under attack by aliens. Fun premise, exactly the kind of "lower decks personnel save the day" story I'd hoped to see in this series. *****
    Composting Status: Offline, by Xavier Anderson: Great little mystery where it's not about figuring out who did the crime, but how to solve the crime and exonerate the innocent being framed for it. For an anthology often about misappropriating military supplies, it's nice to see one story that makes it clear that not all theft is equal. Well-written. *****
   The Shell Script of Destruction, by T. R. Benjamin: Nice to see not every story is logistics or custodians, now we're in Bureau of Weapons. This one's a quick-hit sci-fi "figure out the technical problem" story that manages to be gripping and urgent, I like it. *****
   Masters of Mechamagic, Z. M. Renick: This one will be controversial. Everything else here is milSF, this is firmly in the "High Fantasy" genre. The fantasy mages here are technically backline support staff for the POG designation, but it ends with spell-slinging magi-battles, so it's not backline, either. I like fantasy so I was fine with this. ****
   Snipe Hunt, by Jason B. Hobbs: Another charming quick-hit, this time about a private being sent out on a snipe hunt where the snipe is (oops) actually real, leading to a snipe hunt of the snipe hunter. Classic "so no shit there I was..." story that feels very authentic, I love that stuff. *****
   Revision 12, by Daryl F. Mallett: I'm a sucker for this story, which is "officious bureaucratic clerk saves the day by reading the manual". If you want to make an argument that any story involving someone reading a tech manual is fantasy I won't fight you, but it's got good sci-fi action and I enjoyed it. 
   Life of a Deliveryman, by B. K. Gibson: This one was ours. We're really proud of it, an action-comedy adventure featuring deckhands and engineers as a small but heroic cog in a very large machine. It was a blast to write this one. 
   Sudden Death Overtime, by Malory: Final story in the anthology is a hilarious story about a bunch of radar operators misusing sensors to catch a rugby match and letting in a lot more than they bargained for. Personal favorite of the whole collection, this thing is funny throughout and has some genuine peril and stakes, too. Love it. ***** 

​For OSRIC, Level 4-6
By Szilárd Dreska
Scrotum was a hedonistic scientist and sorcerer who hosted many wealthy eccentrics in his secluded Sanctuary. He had many generous supporters, so he acquired a considerable fortune. However, 150 years ago, he disappeared, not even visited by guests, and his name was slowly forgotten.
   I'm going to assume Scrotum is a perfectly normal name in Hungary and let it otherwise pass without comment. Playtesters are credited, nice.
   The site's story here is going to be in the sci-fi/fantasy mix, which seems to be a common theme for the Melanian Renaissance (Hungarian OSR). Scrotum was messing around with some Star Trek level crap, to the point of this sanctuary having a central reactor powering strip lighting and multiple force fields. Then he did That One Wizard Thing where he messed up a ritual and turned his entire complex's staff into undead, while putting himself and his lady into stasis. So, your basic fallen wizard's lair, with added tech stuff. 
   Map is portrayed rather simply, but very clear and clean...looks like a graph paper scan with a lot of post-production. Love the symbols like collapsed staircases, locked doors, etc. It's three-level with tons of interconnections, flow is good. I find the number of big open rooms without walls in between them is interesting, slightly hard to adjudicate at times but there's a logical pathway or two, great stuff. Also pretty big.
   ...because then we get to contents and we get a slightly empty vibe. Many rooms are bare, while those that do have interaction usually just have a single thing. I will highlight a good bit of interaction, a devil statue as part of a carved fresco is chatty and willing to help, but also Charms a PC to go kill one of the servants because he's been slighted by the man. Some of the poison or death effects are a little random, but lead to stuff like "party member goes berserk", which can be interesting. The whole "shut down the reactor" bit where you have to figure out the sorcerer's favorite number for the passcode can be fun.
   I think part of my feeling stems from the rather simple monster roster. Wanderers are skeletons, giant rats, or ghasts, fine things to fight but not a lot of variation (and clerics get rid of the undead easily). The Melan-imagined "Breathstealers" are a cool undead, pity they're only fought once. Mechanical scorpions give a little variety, but beyond that it's just "bigger deal undead" like juju zombies and the nasty final chamber with a spectre and a shadow.
   I do appreciate the treasure distribution here. There's a steady drip-drip-drip mostly of bulky stuff (yes you can swipe the silverware) while bumbling around, with the main hoards near the bottom behind a bigger boss fight. The book that caused all this is a huge value and there's an opulent mass of statues and jewelry in the final room (behind the force field, so need reactor shutdown). I don't have issues with the amounts either...my only grump is that magic treasure feels a little light, three magic +1 weapons and that's about it. Players don't mind that, fundamentally.
   The site's location is cool and easy to put anywhere (secret passage beneath a monolith) but campaign managers will need to make a choice about how much high-tech stuff they're willing to have in their game, it's central to the location. Your mileage may vary, but if you like tech...

​For RC, Level any
By Jamie Henson 
A Foggy Night to Forget is as easy or hard as the DM decides. It can be used as: the basis of a single session (a simple in and out); a way to remove/kill PCs (of almost any power level—a campaign-fix); a method to introduce gear, treasure, and/or characters (ala aurum ex deo); or an introduction to domain play (the hamlet has to go somewhere).
   Danger Will Robinson, Danger! It can be a bad sign if an adventure has no level listed; that often is a sign of no playtesting, or some DM hand-waving, or just a sloppy oversight. Obviously, each of those things can lead to other, more serious deficiencies. But there’s a worse sign. A sign of terror. “For any level.” That means the adventure was written to nerf or bypass 90% of all the game’s default mechanics. This is actually the second such entry to this contest; the other didn’t even have a proper site associated with it, at all…that one will get reviewed at the very end along with a site that broke the 2-page limit. At least this one listened to page limits and does have an associated physical location.
   In other words, it might say Rules Cyclopedia, but it’s actually for AD&D 2E.
   Provisos aside, there’s nothing at all wrong with the site-as-a-site. The nicely-formatted and well-framed document tells of a magical cursed hamlet that appears in a foggy night? That’s Ravenloft Standard, nothing weird about accessing an adventure locale that way. Once the party is in the foggy village, they’re trapped there until they can either figure out what happened to make the village is way (it’s a curse, natch), or until they lose all their memories and become more inhabitants (or die before the curse sets in). Fixing the town’s curse involves solving the mystery (easy enough, they just murdered an immortal godlike being’s favorite servant) and them making the inhabitants admit what they did and say they were sorry. That’s a sticky wicket. Good luck adjudicating all the mind-control spells and deciding if the wizard charms a villager if that really counts. Also there’s a superpowered fighter at the middle of town who’s load-bearing if you figure out how to overcome his hugely inflated statblock. Good narrative setup for a story, proper players should work to sequence-break immediately. 

    Map is pretty standard for “outdoor site” which means its just a flat sheet of POIs to go to at random. There’s not a real “pitched battle” scenario around here but hey, trust the players, I never put a riot off the table and the picture helps run that. Despite the grid no clear scale given and it’s a weird stylistic semi-isometric. The existence of a stream automatically helps a little bit for shenanigans. It looks good, but I would prefer a larger village to be honest. Still, site is a site, so that’ll work.
   This is a social scenario like most mysteries, so there’s a need for plenty of interactive NPCs. Unfortunately, most the NPCs are a little on the spacey side, the village’s curse specifically making them somewhat unfocused, passive, and forgetful. Only a few of the villagers are original inhabitants, with extra NPCs like a passel of Gator-men, an amnesiac set of mercs (keeping the decapitated head of the immortal’s pet mystic), and a druid-turned-vampire in charge of a spider cult. Some of these can get very hostile indeed, and put a lie to the “all levels” designation. And that’s not even mentioning the automaton in the center.
   Rules Cyclopedia incorporates BECMI all the way up to Immortal, so the center figure with a -13AC, saving as a F36, is within the rules but it seems designed to be a purposeful “can’t fight this” middle mystery. Still, if it has hit points, it can be killed, granting vast riches plus a fix to the village curse-trap that is not “talk to people”. Players being players, that’s mostly like the avenue out of here.
   Assuming the players get out killing everything, there’s about a million gp, or a few dozen thousand if the middle fight gets avoided. That middle guy’s equipped with “Suit Armor +4, Shield +5, Girdle of Giant Strength, Warhammer +4, +9 against Spellcasters) And/or any other equipment & treasure the DM feels appropriate.” Otherwise the magic is a little spare, things like a few potions and scrolls, Stone Plate, a shield +1 and battle axe +1…not quite the reward I’d expect for tangling with a vampire-druid with 9th-level spells and or so on.
   Inclusion of this site is easy enough, geographically, but campaign inclusion is a mix of dangerous and difficult…a TPK or a Monte Haul, not much of a space in between, that would probably leave many players perplexed as to why. With great difficulty you could probably seed rumors into the world beforehand but that’d be a difficult task.

​For AD&D, Levels 4-6
By Grützi
Four centuries ago, the paladin Geren of Khaz defeated the demon Malgryth the Sanguine Blight by impaling it with his holy sword Schattenbann onto a rock in a hidden cave deep in the Broken Hills, trapping it alive but paralyzed. Mortally wounded, Geren left a warning and died there as the demon’s blood still seeped into a dark stream. Fifteen years ago, the halfling thief Barlo Lipply stumbled upon the cave, found the desiccated husk of the demon, drank from the stream, and saw his wounds healed and strength restored. Sensing profit, he enlisted his old accomplice, the human illusionist Thorman, and together they set out to exploit the cursed cave. Five years later they built a small cloister and shrine, sealing the original cave.
   Oh boy, it's a Grützi Site. If you've been with the contest long, you know what that means...dense, brilliant, dense, clever, dense, well-designed, dense, fun, and dense. The "Grützi Rule" restricting font size comes from our halfling-superfan friend and fellow judge, whose great Lipply's Tavern impressed every one of us once we got past the eyestrain. He's promised to be a good boy this year, let's see what we've got...
   Despite the name, this adventure site bucks the trend of ASC III and is not a religious location. Instead, as seen above this is the site of a con (run by another Lipply, hey) where demon-tainted waters heal people with only a teensy weensy 1% chance per use of moving them toward CE. Once that happens, oops, the demon takes them over, turns them into a pseudodemon, and then uses said servant to turn more evil all to free the stuck demon. As of the start of the site, Lipply just went nuts and slaughtered a lot of his monks and there are pilgrims hiding upstairs and all of en media is very res. Which, as you know, I dislike...
   ...but of course, in a long-term campaign, that is not how to use this adventure site. Instead, given its a shrine of healing and even limb-regeneration, you have this sucker in normal operation and just a normal feature of the game world, even used by PCs, until later ol boy snaps and goes demony and now your party gets summoned to help. The notional setup is best for a one-shot, but the integrated site is ideal.

   The map in this case is quite simple, but has just enough up and down, secret doors, and hidden passageways to make exploration worthwhile. The secret section of the map linking two buildings together as well as showing the way to the nasty demon death area, plus all the best loot, is classy. As always, hiding an essential part of your dungeon behind a single secret door can go very wrong but behind multiple possible secret doors, you are guaranteed to get somebody finding the way in. It does work well though, making sure that when the site is visited at peace there is an explanation for why nobody realizes what's up. Really big fan of this entire complex. 
   There are loads of wonderful interactive characters here if you go with the module's suggested scenario, paranoid and terrified monks and pilgrims being led by one-handed fighter is a good group just loaded with fun conversations, and The illusionist Abbot isn't evil, he is just trying to sneak around and find his partners key so that he can steal everything and leave. If you can't run something interesting off that, I don't know what to tell you. 
   Of course, the majority of the area is going to be dominated by those pseudo demons, very interesting and fresh enemies to have to fight, the main bad guy up and running around is Lipply transformed, and he has the nasty ability to transform other helpless victims into more pseudo demons. A lot of very chaotic and interesting fights available here without having to go with a vast number of different monsters. Traps are just going to be naturalistic and not very common, but the single best piece of loot here being a holy avenger embedded fully in the demon's body is a great temptation. Forget any measly 1% chances of slow corruption, wave that massive sword in front of the players and you have all the temptation you need to make sure that the final fight is against the big bad evil demon guy. 
   Other loot here is going to be a little bit funky, the location is not a legit shrine so everything in the main area is going to be cheap and shoddy. There are the occasional valuable bits and pieces to be found but the real loot is in the very clearly valuable massive iron safes that require not one but two keys, used simultaneously, to open. You need two thieves lock picking to do it at a normal success rate, which is great. I also like the bug out kit in the main guys lair, that is always a nice little bonus loot hoard. Outside of the amazing sword magic is going to be mostly restricted to what is worn and what has been squirreled away for a rainy day. I don't know if you will be able to steal everything if you rescue the terrified victims, but that is just more interesting gameplay as well. It is definitely a lucrative site for level 4 players, and even level 6 parties won't complain too badly about the amounts available.
   As I said, this site can go anywhere in any campaign and would be best served to be placed early and referenced from time to time. Regardless, this shrine needs to go into your campaign, and massive congratulations to the writer for making something that is actually readable without zooming in.

An adventure by Stella Condrey, level-agnostic
Written for Mothership
   Trifold time once more, now with Mothership as our system of choice. This is also a hexcrawl, although I should note, since I ranted about this last time, that the map is not spread across multiple folds. Rather than numbering keys or anything, the hex areas each have a different set d10 of dire omens and menacing encounters, along with a table (again d10) of dreams that each party member gets handed at the outset. The scenario ends when you come into contact with a massive heart that personifies the sentiment that “war is bad, maaan”. This makes me wonder if we’re even seriously looking at an adventure module.
   So I think we all agree the adventure is the thing that happened, right? It’s not what’s meant to happen, it’s not a plan, but rather the outcome of a whole series of choices (many of them stupid) made by the players in sequence, affected by random chance of the dice or cards or whatever else your system uses. That’s freedom, and a wise scenario designer exists not to design all aspects of the adventure, but to give clear and interesting situations that lead to interesting choices. These tables…well, there are sequences of events that can happen, but with nothing concrete or set, up to and including geographical distances (all hexes take 8 hours to navigate but are variable length). This makes the whole thing feel like adventuring via magic 8-ball plus a book of madlibs. But, y’know, grimdark.
   Uh, what I liked was, uh…the fact that the d10 tables go from 0-9, instead of 1-10? That’s good information organization when you’re using that vile non-Platonic solid for table randomization.
   What can be improved beyond my mega-gripe of “make it concrete”? Well, there’s also the substantive critique about your horror scenario design; namely, you need to intersperse light with the dark. All the encounters are some mixture of uncanny, weird, gross, or horrific, albeit delivered with such a hammering lack of subtlety that I cannot imagine any players actually getting freaked out. There’s a lot of “stumbles up” language where the PCs are witness to a scene, not something to interact with. Occasional oddities just added for flavor are fine on a table, but when you also don’t have navigational, timing, logistics, etc travel choices to make, then it all feels like a Disney theme park ride without any of the janky charm.
   The best use case for this one, I hate to say, is as a bleak but instructive warning for what not to do when designing an adventure. It’s also useful to depress a table of people, less due to content, more due to boredom. The heavy-handed nature of the MESSAGING might be useful to military recruiters or jingoistic war boosters, delivered as it is both awkwardly and somehow also thoughtlessly.
   Final Rating? */***** less because it even deserves that single star and more because there are products out there actively reprehensible, this is merely a waste of time and yellow ink. 

​For B/X, Levels 5-7
By Stooshie & Stramash
This adventure can be (1) dropped in as the location on a treasure map, “here be sea monsters!”, showing Rockall and the name of one of the named sunken vessels areas 2-5, or (2) to investigate strange weather, lost ships and reports of sea devils.
   There’s something romantic about the lonely sea stack of Rockall, remote and tiny and barren set amidst the storms and surf in the middle of the North Atlantic. It’s just a little dot on the map in the middle of the north Atlantic Ridge, but something about it calls to the imagination. So it’s odd, then, we don’t see more sea stacks in our dungeon adventures. Stooshie, second-place winner of Adventure Site Contest I, aims to rectify this lack.
   Story on this one is pretty normal, a horrible custom sea hag lives deep within the sea stack, hanging out and occasionally doing Hag Things, but otherwise chill. Rocs nest on the stack top, natch. This isn’t a site that reaches out to grab you, this is a rumor to plop on the map, as said above. The sea stack is a small part of a bigger seamount, most of which lies just a little under the water and is dotted with crashed ships, monster oddities, and a merman village. Despite the centrality of the above-water portion of the site, it’s very much all about the whole plateau. 

​   …as you can see in the maps. So, so many maps. Levels 5-7 is just a little into True Expert zone so there’s no handholding here with free water breathing or other gimmie solutions, you’re just suppose to figure out the “outdoor” site here. Given the nature of swimming this is almost a “fly anywhere” site, so just a collection of locations. It’s a smart collection in a very realistic site, but I’m not sure how much the proposed “kelp forests block pathing” aspect works. Still, a lot of interest in exploring here, definitely in the “DM maps this” category though.
   Our first challenge is in underwater combat. B/X don’t do it, so the writer tells you a correct answer (use 1E) or the popular answer (here’s a rule kludge). The in-module rules all look sane upon first glance, but I have no idea how they’d work in edge cases. It does look like the module expects players to be walking around on the seafloor with water breathing.
   I get a little nervous about the balance at the lower end here, there are a lot of wrecks around the sea stack for a very good reason; those two rocs are horrifically dangerous for most boats. They’re supposed to just be kidnapping lawful characters, but hard to communicate their intentions. Add in the (abstracted) bad weather too, I’m not sure how we envision pick-up and drop-off. Everything monster-wise is tough, especially to fight underwater…plenty of D&D sea monsters, of course, but there are also humanoid undead and I’m particularly fond of “panicky school of fish” acting like bat swarms but underwater. Tough as the hag is the real big fight is Gronda the Dragon Turtle, who, to be fair, takes a lot of effort to wake up/activate. I’m not sure why you want to wake her up, but hey, adds some chaos. The mermen are stated like a tribe of combatants but we’re mostly assuming negotiation with them. They’re reluctant to fight with the PCs but do provide some of their considerable treasure if an alliance gets hammered out. Traps and hazards are mostly “you’re in the ocean”, but there’s also the chance of trapping yourself in a giant clam, that’s fun…it’s baited by a skeleton arm with a gold ring, so you can’t complain that the module didn’t warn you. My favorite NPC is a desperate cleric trapped in a giant clam who’s been down there for years, sustained by magic. Kind of loot, all the best henchmen are the deranged and traumatized ones.
   Treasure here is appropriately fantastic, sunken wrecks with holds full of gold, magic weapons among the bones of monsters, jewelry and gems and in one place 2,000pp hidden under guano. The biggest pile of loot is under the hag and is extremely mobile (includes the rocs’ egg so if you did manage to talk to them there’s a sticky wicket). Dredging up piles of coins from undead-infested wrecks is a Logistics & Dragons moment…I like it, but some will complain.
   This is a big, tricky, and somewhat confusing environment but it’s also very cool, and very easy to insert into any campaign world with an ocean. I’m not quite sure how aspects of the underwater adventuring will play (particularly in B/X), but underwater adventures are rare and I’m impressed with the effort to make a good one here.

​For B/X, Levels 3-4
By Adam Szabo
The laboratory of Zhaggarog, the Chaos Mage, is located deep within a rock floating 30 feet high, visible only in the moonlight. He uses a teleportation spell to abduct creatures, including humans. Beyond developing special mutagens, he aims to conquer the region with an army of experimentally created perfect beings. The unknown floating rock has recently been sighted nearby, and the city has commissioned its exploration and destruction due to the disappearances it has caused.
   Floating castles can be conservative things, static locations under the command of cloud giants. Jack and the Bean Stalk stuff, basically. There's another option, though, in which floating fortresses pull from UFO/abductee literature, flying locations devoted to capturing victims for unknown (but always sinister) purposes. The passive flying castle is something to be infiltrated and robbed, the flying slaver ship is something to assault more aggressively. Themes are themes, that's just how it goes.
   In this particular case we mix the abduction UFO with "crazy alchemist wizard's lair" and have ourselves a floating rock. Said chaos mage is obsessed with making "perfect creatures", which mostly seem to be kind of umber-hulky. Mutagens make you buggy, this is established in the lore, it's fine. Fine little rumor table to wind you up, and there you are. Go there and fix the issue, my little level 3 darlings.
   Your first challenge is to understand these map interconnections. The shape is good, the layout is fine...but how do these stairs interact? Well, let's just look at the keys ohcrapnonumber. There's a lot of interconnection that just isn't keyed, because this map is too big. It's not bad in and of itself, but its too big for two pages, hate to say. Really do like the mix of stuff, and more sites need to do the thing where pit traps/holes drop you down below. 
   Going to note a great little piece right here: "-Character replacement: Opportunity for replacement characters in the cells of rooms 11 and 16." This is a very good thought for any dungeon that's remote/hard to reach, like this one. Those prison cells also have "four henchmen" as an offered benefit too, great stuff. 
   Beyond that, most of your interaction on this one is "stab" and "don't die to trap". That's not terrible if the fights are interesting, and most of the baddies have a little something. Random encounters are servants (crazy cultish fellas), slaughter beasts (bug monsters), and insidious gnome assistants (treacherous crazed little dirtbags). A few rooms have nasty fights contained by stasis fields; those are wonderful because the players see the danger, but of course no player ever can resist pulling a lever. Evil mage Zhaggarog has troll blood for regeneration and his spell loadout includes stinking cloud, fireball, and mirror image...level 3s must be pretty adroit over there in Hungary. 
   How much loot are you getting for this? Well...you won't go hungry. Straight coinage is a little rare, but you'll have stuff like "robes woven from pearls" (on dryad in stasis), or a jewelry box containing a diamond (5000at) (scorpion underneath because HAH)...it's solid stuff. Like everything else, slightly crazy. 
   Ease of campaign integration? Despite the zany premise and gonzo flavor, this is actually extremely ease to include in most games with magic. Floating monster-filled wizard rocks are a frequent and understandable problem that'll crop up in most such worlds.

   I​t's here... MilSciFi about the People Other than Grunts.  We wrote a logistics ship story, and there's also stories about mechanics, medics, comms guys, etc. There's adventure to be had over on the beans-and-bullets side of the house too. Several made me genuinely laugh out loud. I'll be doing capsule reviews again for each story, really enjoyed this one.
   Check it out here. It's on Kindle Unlimited too if you prefer paying nothing at all for it.

​For ASSH, Level 7+
By Joseph Griesel 
In the author’s campaign this small site sits in the middle of a hostile wasteland in a god-forsaken plain. The primary reason to go here is the destruction of an evil relic, or due to a treasure map/sage/etc leading to a sword of wounding. Decide what campaign appropriate dead language all writing in the dungeon is written in.
   Nothing about this site screams "Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea", but apparently that's what it is. Two-column text, classic blue-background map, breezy informal style, you know the deal, let's press.
   So this little tomb is suggested to be located either as a treasure map leading to the sword of wounding, or as a bit of paladin-bait for the usual "please go destroy the evil relic" reasons. It's a lich-hangout, where this Ithog character apparently just chills without much purpose, just being evil and lichy and occasionally experimenting with Evil Experiments of Evil. Nothing wrong with that, let's go.
   I like how the map looks like a little guy. Remove room 9 and it's a decent robot drawing.
   What it isn't, however, is a very interesting exploration.Linear hub-and-spoke dungeons are still linear even if you start them in the center. Meaningful choices are few and far between here, just poke and figure out traps. While a secret door can give a further avenue of exploration, if it's just "find doors check to finish dungeon" that's bad design. With nine rooms linearity can be reasonable, but it's definitely not a plus.
   Those traps are telegraphed, with 1a already activated by an unlucky thief; it's a classic walls-mush-together trap, which means the activated version also acts like a mild puzzle, "how do we pry these walls apart?" The other side has the exact same trap, untriggered. This is good use of symmetry. Likewise, the two traps to the south are spike pits so triggering one will warn about triggering another. Within one of those pits lies a bugbear with a valuable bit of loot, so of course you know it's going to animate as an undead (wight this time). In the "things to mess with" category there is a tub you can fill with meat to make an empty husk-clone that gets possessed very quickly by a demon (rules for this unclear, sorry). 
   As is often the problem with houses of the lich and famous, a single good cleric with some powerful turn rolls will obviate a lot of the threats. The initial fight (or a fight in the end if avoided upon entry) is with a massive swarm of flameskulls, who are turned as demon-special, and there's a desperate trapped nalfeshnee in one room, but otherwise it's a very dead space. The sword of wounding fight is a wraith trio plus a wight wielding said sword, so turn undead is huge against that. Mummy trio, likewise. The final boss fight against the lich involves him hiding behind a pair of bone golems and spellcasting, designed to be a nice cinematic fight. I'm always a little skeptical that these will play out as outlined, but it's an appreciated effort.
   Loot beyond the aforementioned sword is cash-light, with the biggest pile in the form of platinum filigree embedded in the floor, making up the demon’s prison. That’s good stuff. Lot of alchemical and tech loot, with vials containing potions (and poison, of course), techno-magical implants, etc. The squished thief was wearing a cloak of elvenkind, which is nice for the henchmen at this level. Our main draw, more as a quest item than as a useful artifact, is the wand of depopulation…it’s about as evil an artifact as it sounds, a wand that can only be used on a new moon that deals one hit point of damage to every single living thing in a ten-mile radius. As the text notes, given how most commoners are a single hit die…yeah, that’s a vast number of dead peasants and chipmunks. Very evil, very nice, I approve.
   Placement of the site can theoretically be anywhere, but ideally is within a nice blighted land surrounded by ashes and death. I will note the tech stuff in here…there’s a lot of mad science stuff including bionic eyes and an adrenal spine implant, that’s going to be a little clashy for some campaigns. It can be excluded, of course, but only at the price of removing one of the few discriminators on this little lich lair.