Tyrant of the Pendulant Keep
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." Being minimally-keyed doesn't mean skimping on these details that fire the imagination.
Also, as if to shame everyone that's ever included "roll on the 0-3 treasure table" as loot, the magic items are similarly imaginative. A set of teeth that cast charm person if you're willing to replace your own will definitely make players think twice. Even the mundane treasure, like a "cinnabar lacquerware decanter" goes above and beyond what's expected and creates a unique and memorable location. This kind of specificity sets Pendulant Keep apart from other adventures that feel as though they were rolled from a table rather than being handcrafted with care.
Besides the imminent threat of falling to one's doom, the dungeon is pretty straightforward and lacks interconnectedness - for the most part whatever the party does in one room won't have an impact on the others. Which is not to say there isn't some fun interactions including strange statues and summoned demons to mess around with. There's also bit of faction play if the PCs go looking for it. Plenty of fun to be had, but a bit lacking in depth perhaps.
Very early in the dungeon the party will encounter a friendly mushroom man who promises to fight some bad guys if they can get the water turned on. The problem is that the water is turned on in one of the deepest rooms of the dungeon, and the aforementioned bad guys are in the very next room. It is possible that the party might venture directly to the 3rd level of the dungeon but they won't have a reason to, and as a result I don't expect this would amount to much in most playthroughs.
So the dungeon suffers a bit from being superficial. Although the place does have an interesting history, there is no way for the players to puzzle it out and use it to their advantage. They would need an NPC lore dump. I suppose that's what you lose in exchange for cramming this much adventure into 4 pages.
Layout is simple enough and easy to read, but there is no differentiation between first impressions that should be shared with the players, and secret information that should be shared after further investigation. So you might spend a few minutes with the highlighter before game night. This is a necessity of the abbreviated format, but that makes it a bit of an unforced error since the 4-page layout is entirely the choice of the designer.
The tight page count also doesn't leave room for art but the maps are very well-done with a nice balance between simplicity and detail. And the side-view is a very nice addition.
Maybe it's not gonna knock your socks completely off. But they're gonna be partway off. This is a damn solid dungeon in a cool location that will support 2-3 sessions of adventuring. It makes the most of its self-imposed page limit with custom magic items, new monsters and a nice variety of challenges to overcome.
On a scale of 2-12, Tyrant of the Pendulent Keep gets 8 stingbats.
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