Review: Righteous Vow Vol. 1
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 hex overlay onto a map. Look at any of the Cursed Scrolls for a decent example.
The wilderness random encounter table consists of minimalist entries like "2d4 Wolves (SD p264)". Random encounters are an opportunity to teach the players about the setting and to break up monotonous travel procedures with interesting situations. Let's look at one from The Frozen Ascent as an example:
"Three Stonebelly Dwarves (Balessia, Gragnar, and Harmon) are investigating the frost. They were traveling to make an offering of iron to Fersera but didn’t make it back to Donendar before the gate was sealed. Now they are locked out. "
There's so much packed into this little encounter. Who are the Stonebelly Dwarves? Who is Fersera and why do they make offerings? Why was the gate sealed? How can the party help these dwarves and what can the dwarves offer in return? It pulls the players into the setting and leads to other locations and further adventure.
At the very least, hop over to d4 caltrops and grab something from the encounter activity tables. But as it is, the random encounters are barebones, and combined with the paucity of keyed locations there isn't anything here to support a hex crawl.
The adventure then kind of defies convention by putting the monsters and magic items before the dungeons. The monsters have some great art but the stats don't really rise to the occasion. Besides the lich king, only one of the new monsters has any sort of special attacks or tactics. The crypt crab (which looks AWESOME) can do a grab, but that's it. There are 6 kinds of skeletons but little to differentiate them. The prodigious amount of low level undead also means that priests will have a field day.
Ok, let's get to the first dungeon - Fortress Duncan. It is a single-level affair with 11 keys. First off, the keys have a tendency to give too many details away. For example: "The room is covered in paintings of noblemen. Each one has the eyes scratched out and markings in black ash are etched across the faces.* I would rather have the second sentence revealed only when the PCs investigate the paintings. As Bryce Lynch over at tenfootpole says, "The key flow in a game is the back and forth between the party and the DM. They ask something or take an action, the DM follows up. That causes the party to further follow up. This back and forth is the heart of D&D." Revealing too much in the initial description diminishes that conversation that is the "heart" of D&D. Similarly, having "A quick investigation reveals the bodies of two adventurers* in the initial description robs the PCs the opportunity of, you know, investigating. This problem is prevalent throughout the book.
There are also several mechanical omissions and mistakes that, taken separately seem nitpicky but in aggregate would become frustrating. Chests are locked but there's no DC given for breaking open or picking. A crossbow trap doesn't indicate a to-hit roll or DC to avoid. A secret door with no indication of how it may be found or how it works.
The gameplay in Fortress Duncan leans heavily towards stabbing things and looking for traps. There aren't any puzzles or any sort of interaction beyond that. You walk into a room and whatever's inside it attacks you. Then you search for treasure. Maybe the treasure is trapped. If the players made a beeline to the boss fight, they would need only traverse 4 rooms and the only creatures they will encounter are rats.
The rest of the dungeons are pretty much the same, even to the point where they all share a single random encounter table You show up at a little fortress, fight a bunch of skeletons through about 9 or 10 rooms, kill the boss and then I guess wander through the forest for a long time because I don't see any clues to give to the PCs as to where the various dungeons are located. There are no mysteries or puzzles to be solved. No dilemmas to debate. Precious few decisions for the PCs to make at all (do I search this bookcase?). Fight, find the treasure, fight, find the treasure, etc etc.
There's this thing Ben Milton calls TUNIC: Time Until Next Impactful Choice. He argues that the advantage that TTRPGs have over other games is that they are more open-ended; they offer more choice. And the way to capitalize on that and have the best time playing is to make choices impactful and to keep the time between them short.
Providing players with a dilemma is a great way to keep your TUNIC short. Which faction do we align with? Do we take the long, safe route or the short dangerous one? Will eating this strange fungi cure my temporary blindness or give me diarrhea? Something for the players to think about and discuss. Something with consequences.
There are also choices and dilemmas that come naturally out of the dungeon crawling gameplay loop and supply risk. The party has limited torches, limited gear slots, limited hit points, etc. As they get deeper in the dungeon and supply gets limited, they need to make impactful choices about what kinds of risks they are willing to take, how long they will push their luck. But the longest dungeon in Righteous Vow is 15 rooms and most are 11 or fewer. That's not enough for supply risk to become a factor and for those decisions to come to the fore.
The final battle is against a lich king. On the one hand, he's kind enough to keep his phylactery in the same room where he hangs out. Acererak hides his in a demiplane unknown even to the gods like a total dick. On the other hand, there is no mention of the throne where it lies in the room description and no clue anywhere throughout the book about what the phylactery looks like or that it needs to be destroyed. So in a meta sort of way it is very well-hidden. Planting clues about this sort of thing in the other dungeons would go a long way towards making them feel more impactful and more interesting. There is a secret door to the surface in the final room, Skyrim-style.
The author clearly cared about this product and the presentation is very good. In terms of art and layout it's well-realized book. There's a palpable enthusiasm in the writing. There's just not a lot here from a gameplay perspective.
On a scale of 2-12, Righteous Vow Vol. 1 gets 5 stingbats.
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