2d6 Stingbats

Today we're looking at Tyrant of the Pendulent Keep  by Scott Craig of Cutter Mountain Simulations. It is the latest in a series of four-page dungeons and this particular one was published on my birthday. So it better be good. The location itself is 26 rooms and very distinctive, being a keep hewn from enormous stalactites hanging over an unfathomable abyss. This alone creates an interesting verticality and several environmental challenges. Even without considering the foes lurking within, traversing the dungeon will be a deadly affair, and I have no doubt a few PCs will be lost to the black depths, where cure wounds can not reach them, and where death timers are irrelevant.  One of the most impressive aspects of the adventure is how the descriptions manage to be evocative despite a tight economy of words. "GAUNT STALKER wearing hooded cowl hunches behind imposing mahogany desk, fingers steepled." and "a statue of a sneering demon extends a hoofed foot expectantly....

Today we're looking at Ward of the Eye Tyrant by Derek Ruiz and published by Elven Tower. Elven Tower has been producing Shadowdark content since the early days of the system. I remember they got some feedback then that their adventures had a bit too much of that 5e feel. Let's see if anything's changed. The adventure begins at the home of a seer called The Prophet. She asks the party to defeat an evil cult that is trying to resurrect a beholder eye tyrant somewhere across the desert. They are also joined by an anachronistic Indiana Jones analog and told to join up with a caravan that is headed to an oasis that holds clues about the cult's whereabouts. I'm not really sure this qualifies as a hook. Which is to say, there's really nothing to hook the PCs in the way this is set up. There is no reward offered, no mention of the stakes or what will happen if the cult manages to resurrect a monster on the middle of a desert somewhere, and ultimately no reason why a...

Today we're looking at Grotto of the River Pirates by Ryall Hancock Hyatt. We've got a pirate hideout with a hidden temple to a frog demon that has corrupted the pirate leader and some of the denizens of the nearby caves. It's kind of like Goonies , Temple of Doom , Alien and The Shadow Over Innsmouth all mashed together. If that doesn't appeal to you, I don't know what the hell you're doing here. Grotto ostensibly has 18 areas but many of them are subdivided into smaller rooms. I'd say it's more equivalent to a 30-ish room adventure.  Let's start with the map. It makes great use of all 3 dimensions, there's a variety of locations and multiple routes to explore. And it's gorgeous. No notes I'm gonna put it up in my living room.  If you want an example on how random encounters should look, you should also print these out and frame them. You can hang them next to the map. Each region of the dungeon has a different table, and each table is...

Update: In my initial review of  The Sapphire Seas , one of my biggest gripes was with the layout. Menagerie Press has gone through and revised the entire ~400 page document to make it much more navigable and reader-friendly. The table of contents has been pared down, formatting is much improved and the whole thing just looks much nicer. They also added a hex overlay to the individual islands. I still have a few nits to pick but I would also say it is a huge improvement.  They also added a campaign guide that delivers on the kickstarter promise of a full 1-10 campaign. And even if you don't plan to follow it exactly, it also contains many details and plot hooks that were a bit difficult to find and piece together before. This will make running any kind of cohesive campaign much easier. If my initial review put you off of The Sapphire Seas, I think the latest update makes it worth another look. Today we're looking at Sapphire Seas by Alfie & Charlie Lintzgy and publish...

Today we are looking at Soulblight - Swords and Sorceries , a collection of 7 adventures and 2 settlements by Laurin-David Weggen. Although it is ostensibly for his Soulblight setting, any of the adventures could easily be dropped into any other setting you desire. So what is a Sword and Sorcery story? Besides the swords and sorcery parts, it's usually an adventure that moves quickly, with a focus action rather than character development, dealing with an immediate threat or need rather than world-impacting events or long-term story arcs. This is not the story of a party of adventurers methodically exploring an ancient tomb, peeling back its mysteries and puzzling out its secrets. Nor is it the story of an ages-long conflict between the forces of good and evil. This is a story of heroes taking big, violent risks for gold and glory, where one danger propels into the next until it culminates in a grand, bloody finale. It is, in some ways, antithetical to the sort of procedure-based du...

Today we're looking at Delve by Robert  “Bob World Builder" Mason and the folks at Eventyr Games. It bills itself as "a complete guide to building and surviving deadly dungeons with 200+ pages of dungeon-building tools and plug-and-play dungeons – and more monsters , treasures , player options, and traps than you can shake a 10-foot pole at!" This is a 5e conversion. The publisher and designers make 5e products. But they changed the cover from color to grayscale so I'm sure they nailed it. I'm going to take a closer look at some of the 12 dungeons included, but I want to address one thing first: "Delve" is a misnomer, in that none of these dungeons is very deep. The room counts are between 5 and 16 and the vast majority have 10 or fewer. I'm going to quote Gus L. again: "To make exploration meaningful the act of moving through dungeon locations needs to create a sense of ‘risk’ - tension and anticipation. In a scene or encounter based ad...