2d6 Stingbats

Today we're looking at The Blackbridge Labyrinth: Expanded Edition  by  Connor Ludovissy. This was originally published in the Shots in the Dark compilation but has been revised with " a more compelling narrative, an easier-to-run labyrinth for tabletop play, and more powerful treasure to boot." We start with a rumor table and a mix of true and false rumors. There's some debate on the utility of false rumors. I believe they can be used to great effect when they lead to something interesting, and especially when they do that while subverting expectations. For example, rumor number one is that slavers have been driving wagons through town and kidnapping kids. So put some wagon tracks out there for the PCs to find, but instead of slavers they lead to a farmer beset by wolves or a peddler of strange elixirs that needs a wheel repaired or something other than "yeah there never were any slavers, you wasted half an hour of your life looking for them." The GM is th...

  Today we're looking at  Letters from the Dark Vol. IV: Borderlands by Chris Powell. This is the fourth in a series of nine (at the time of writing) supplements that include an adventure as well as a bunch of optional rules, classes, setting info, etc.  As the title implies, this particular supplement is an update on the venerable Keep on the Borderlands . KotB has been updated, remastered and retold many times in the last 45 years. So how does this one hold up? Instead of beginning at a fully functioning and stocked keep we are told that the forces of chaos of overtaken it, and it falls on a group of 3-5 level 1 greenhorns to clean it out. You know, instead of the duke or whatever just sending a detachment of soldiers to mop up the 15 low level baddies that just made him look like a chump. In the original KotB the party is a bunch of nobodies that need to make a name for themselves by stabbing some kobolds in a hole. But OK, we'll suspend our disbelief.  The rank a...

It's difficult to describe exactly what goes into writing a good adventure, as there isn't one true method. Gavin Norman's adventures look very different from Gus L.'s but they are both masters of the craft and I enjoy their work immensely. But I do think it will be useful if I try to enumerate what I look for when reading an adventure. Adventure design is a compromise between many different factors and it's impossible to do all of these things all of the time, but an author should keep them in mind. I may come back and update this from time to time. Let me know in the comments if you think there's something I should add, tweak or to let me know that I'm dumb and my opinions are bad. Tell the GM in plain English exactly what's going on. All the history, all the secrets, all the puzzles. Don't make them piece it together. Give them all the information so they can convey it to the players as they see fit. Information should be relevant to the PCs and a...

Today we're looking at Sanctum of the Undertoad Queen - a 3rd level adventure by Ross Mahler and Matthew Mahler. This one checks a lot of boxes on my personal "would I run this?" checklist. New and interesting monsters, creative environmental puzzles and hazards, a general competency in writing and layout, original art (just look at that gorgeous cover), a map with plenty of navigation options, A CUSTOM SOUNDTRACK, etc etc. Yes, there is room for improvement in a few areas but this is among the best 3rd party Shadowdark adventures I've seen. The setup is simple - the party is asked to retrieve the Lost Eye of the Jaguar Sentinel that is believed to be in the possession of the titular undertoads. Loot the place, bring back the eye, you know the drill. The dungeon has 20 rooms and a strong swampy vibe. We begin with a short hexcrawl with... 25' hexes? Yeah, 25' hexes. This section is labeled "optional" and I'm going to recommend you consider leavi...

Today we are looking at Righteous Vow Vol. 1 by Bill Horvat.  It consists of 6 dungeons meant to take the PCs from levels 1-5. Did ya ever notice how everything is a zine now? Let me start off by saying the production value is very good. Art is abundant and excellent. Layout is pretty much copied from Arcane Library but is done well. The writing itself has a competency that goes beyond most indie Shadowdark books. Diving in: the hook is kind of lazy. The party is sitting in a tavern when the noble of a fallen dwarf kingdom hands them a map and key tells them to help themselves to their treasure. I guess this band of level 1 murderhobos looks particularly capable and trustworthy. So it's pretty much "Hey gang, this is D&D tonight. Take it or leave it." Then we get a hex map. There's 80 hexes but only 8 are keyed, and 6 of those are the adventure sites. That's an awful lot of blanks for the GM to fill in. Turns out there's more to a hexcrawl than putting a ...

Today we're looking at The Frozen Ascent by JP Coovert. This adventure was also reviewed on the excellent Between Two Cairns podcast. Though I'm a regular listener I have avoided that particular episode in advance of this review. Maybe it will turn out that we have similar thoughts. Maybe I will find myself at odds with two of the most well-liked personalities in the OSR/NSR. Let's find out! The premise is mythic. Every 1,000 years the Frozen King shows up and the whole land is frozen over. Someone needs to climb up Orn Mountain and set things right. Let's get this out of the way. The art is superb. You want to own a print copy of this just so you can leave it on the coffee table as a sign of your good taste. You want to put a poster of the cover up in your gaming room. You want a tattoo of a Frostbitten Cave Crab. The art is also a nice break from the de rigueur black and white fare that you typically find in Shadowdark adventures. Our adventure begins with some over...

Today we're looking at Adventure Anthology for Shadowdark by Stephen Grodzicki. It is a collection of 22 adventures first written for Low Fantasy Gaming (which became Tales of Argosa) and "converted to Shadowdark" by William Murakami-Brundage (of Menagerie Press fame). I'm not going to review all 22, but let's take a peek at the first two: Call of the Colossus This is a 10-room, level 0 gauntlet. The setup is that you are the survivors of an ambushed caravan and you need to infiltrate a giant sexy statue to rescue those that were taken prisoner. There's a pretty cool 1d6 table for reasons that your PC survived, and if the PCs can manage to bring down a level 6 ogre there's a salvage/loot table of stuff they can find in the wreckage. That table is d66, which is not mentioned anywhere and might be confusing to some unfamiliar with that particular convention. After that we're off and running. The adventure tells us that the players can decide to go to the...