Review: Adventure Anthology for Shadowdark

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 eponymous colossus or head to their original destination, Therg's End. But Therg's End was recently attacked and we're told there's no hope to be found. So I guess it's the colossus either way. GMs are told to check for random encounters every 12 hours during the one day journey. One of the random encounter entries contains the parenthetical "(Dex vs Perc to notice the trapdoor)". There's no "Perception" skill in Shadowdark so this is clearly leftover from Low Fantasy Gaming and doesn't tell us how to run it.

Once at the colossus, we've got a level 4 "lesser gargoyle" and a door that we're told takes "a few minutes" to force open. Depending on your definition of "a few minutes" this could be tense scene where the PCs struggle to open the door as the gargoyle picks off a few or it could be total massacre. Minutes don't really have any meaning in Shadowdark where time is either measured in real time hours or rounds. So this is the kind of thing that should probably be well defined in terms of rounds. I'm not getting warm fuzzies about the thoroughness of the Shadowdark conversion.

PCs with a deathwish may also choose to climb to a door 90' feet up while they fend of the same gargoyle.

Once inside the first room we learn that "Noticeable scuff marks on the ground suggest the doors have been opened/closed recently." No shit. How do you think we got in here?

This room is a scything blade trap. We're told that "[the BBEG] maintains the chamber, which is reasonably clean and free of the blood of past victims." I've seen adventures that don't telegraph traps but I've haven't seen one go this hard in the other direction. The players will learn they must always be searching for traps because there will not always be a tell. Not making a value judgement but the GM can decide if that's a lesson they want to teach their players.

In fact the dungeon is full of traps that many would consider "cheap":

• "The door is unlocked. Opening it without first activating the safety switch (depressing both eyes) causes the stairs to drop flat, sending intruders tumbling back down, causing 1d4 points of damage. Furthermore, one random adventurer lands in the doorway of Area 3 (if still open), which slams closed, crushing the victim to death (DEX 12+ to avoid).
• "The entry is trapped with a swinging log, which activates when the door is half opened (Womek disarms the trap with a safety catch on the inside when he uses it). A character opening the door with their hands is knocked off the colossus and falls to the ground (10d6 damage, DEX 12+ avoids)

It's probably intentional - this is a gauntlet, after all, PCs are going to die. But overall the adventure feels too difficult, even in that context. And the short, linear nature does not allow for the kind of player agency needed to overcome these obstacles.

In general, the room descriptions eschew any modern conventions for usability and information design. There are no bullets, random words are bolded and there's no differentiation between what is appropriate to share with the players and what is not. Just a paragraph or two of prose describing the room. Old-school but not necessarily in a good way.

So the PCs climb to the top of the sexy statue and face off against the BBEG. We're told he has a crab claw but he doesn't get any special abilities in his stat block. Just a middle-aged dude with a mace. A missed opportunity - seems kind of anti-climactic. Seems like the perfect place for a big set piece battle or a boss with strange powers.

For the most part treasure amounts and finds are randomized. Average potential treasure haul is 1,475 gp and 2 each of 0-3 and 4-6 random treasures. That's a huge chunk of change for a gauntlet, let alone one with only 10 rooms. Probably enough to get the PCs to level 2 or 3 if they're thorough. By way of comparison, the core book recommends 20gp per treasure find at level 0 and there are maybe 10 here if the party ransacks the town. Put another way, the Arcane Library adventures typically have about 20 gp per level of monsters encountered, vs the ~50 gp per level in this adventure.

AFTER the dungeon, we get details on the town. I almost missed it because the intro to the adventure says "Heading to Therg’s End for reinforcements leads to disappointment. The outpost has been recently raided by barbarians, decimating the population and protectors. With so few guards remaining, there is no help to be found."

15 areas in the town are keyed and many of them contain people that will try to kidnap the party and take them to the colossus. Besides that there are a couple of random treasure finds. Generally I'm not a fan of random treasure in a pre-written adventure. I'd rather have treasure that is suited to the particularities of the place where it is found.

Overall, Call of the Colossus has some vivid imagery and interesting traps but falls down on a technical level - the formatting is bog standard and fails to employ any lessons learned about layout since the TSR days. The conversion to Shadowdark is poor, referencing rules that don't exist or failing to reference the correct rules/mechanics when needed. And ultimately it fails to capture the imagination - it has a similar vibe to Sailors on the Starless Sea but that adventure is more creative and evocative by several orders of magnitude.

Vault of Goblin Dreams

In this adventure for levels 1-3 the PCs will invade a goblin vault rumored to hold hoards of precious metals.

The author tells us: "As a rule, in the confines of the Argosa, goblins are nowhere to be found. Nor are bugbears, gnolls, kobolds, orcs, and many other monstrous races. But this rarity does not necessarily mean such creatures do not exist." Then he dives straight into this:

These goblins live completely sequestered underground, hibernate in 60 year chunks and somehow have the most advanced technology in all of Argosa (or whatever medieval fantasy setting you're probably playing in).

The map is a sprawling catacomb by Dyson Logos with dozens of rooms and long hallways. In this adventure only 7 of those rooms are keyed. For the rest you are meant to roll on a 1d8 on a table with exciting entries like: "Common Area used for socialising when the goblins are awake and between victims. Rickety chairs, table and throw rugs abound." It's a bit of a strange choice to use such a complex map but to only write 15 keys and rely and randomness for the rest. I think 15 thoughtfully keyed and laid out rooms would be a stronger design in this case. The map and the adventure presented are mismatched.

We are told that random encounter rolls happen "every hour the party spends in the vault". Not really sure if that means real-time hours (which would mean maybe 3 random encounter checks per session) or in-game hours (which are not measured in Shadowdark). It's also definitely not how random encounters are handled in Shadowdark. Seems like one the very basic things you would look out for when converting an adventure. In the broader context of this dungeon, where actual keyed locations are few and far between, rolling a 2:6 random encounter every IRL hour, random encounters would be so infrequent as to be irrelevant.

The actual gameplay seems like Keep on the Borderlands on easy mode - sneaking through the caves checking for traps in the floor, but all the goblins are all asleep. But we get no order of battle or advice on how monsters will react to intruders - a crucial element of a good lair assault. There is also very little to support faction play between the three goblin factions. In fact we're told that they are on friendly terms and their descriptions mention no schemes or goals.

Treasure is also handled in a strange way. We get finds that are listed as "one 4-6 treasure’s worth of sapphires, zircons, onyxes and other gems". I guess you roll on the 4-6 treasure table and just take the value and say that's what the gems are worth. Seems like maybe the designer should just decide on a value that makes sense given the nature of the treasure and adventure level range.

I'm just trying to imagine the player experience here - wandering through long halls of indeterminate length, searching mostly empty rooms. Then you run into a steampunk goblin with a stun gun in your "low fantasy, swords and sorcery" game and probably decide to give up and bust out the Uno deck.

I skimmed through the rest of the adventures. There are some worthy and interesting ideas here, but they are all a little undercooked. Maybe instead of writing 22 adventures it would have been better to take the 5 best ideas and really flesh them out with some additional support for the GM, specificity and real interaction with Shadowdark rules and procedures. As it stands, these need a lot work.

On a scale of 2-12, Adventure Anthology for Shadowdark gets 5 stingbats.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/512063/adventure-anthology-for-shadowdark