Review: Cursed Scroll IV - River of Night

Today we're looking at River of Night by Kelsey Dionne and published by Arcane Library. This is the first release from the Western Reaches kickstarter and the fourth entry in the Cursed Scroll series of zines.

As is tradition with the Cursed Scrolls series, River of Night is 68 pages and contains a couple of new classes, some new spells and new weapons. And as is tradition with this blog I'm not really gonna talk about that stuff. The best part is the hexcrawl - here with twice as many hexes (352!) as before, with about 1 out of 10 getting a description vs 1:7, 1:8 and 1:12 respectively for Scrolls 1-3. So there is more to do in this region than ever before. 

Besides size there is another big difference from the previous zines - rather than a big 30ish room dungeon as the centerpiece, River of Night has 9 smaller dungeons. I was a little disappointed at this initially, but I think the intent was to provide more gameable content to fill out the hexcrawl. Was it worth the tradeoff? STAY TUNED! 

Let's start with the hexcrawl itself. Random encounters tables are minimalist, consistent with Scrolls 1-3. A shame given the excellent random encounter tables provided in the core rules, where rather than "1d4 gorillas" we get "A frantic rival crawling party offers a gold idol to the PCs". It would be tempting to just use the core book tables, but the River of Night does integrate some special encounters, setting-specific creatures and points of interest that would make it difficult. Still probably worth the effort.

The special encounters themselves are nicely fleshed out, including the appearance of Obe-Ixx recruiting dungeon crawlers and a group pirates looking for a good spot to bury treasure. This, along with some beefier rumors and a brief section on local factions makes for a more integrated hexcrawl than the previous Cursed Scroll entries. 

The hexes themselves are very well done, all of the 36 keyed entries provide an adventure hook of some sort, and in the vast majority that adventure hook will lead them to another location, and often another. Meeting the basilisk cult in hex 201 may lead the party to warn the archaeologists in hex 104 about an impending raid (or join the raid) only to find that they're camped out in hex 803, about to have their basilisk egg stolen by the cultists in hex 706. There's megajoules of potential energy here and as the party starts to explore they will gather momentum and really that's all I know about physics but it's the kind of thing that basically runs itself.  It gives the players something interesting to do at every turn, and provides great reasons for hacking through the jungle and exploring as many locations as they can. 

There's also a wonderful economy of words in the hex descriptions that provides just enough to give the GM a springboard without taking up too much precious space in the limited page count. The author has found a sweet spot between the ultra-minimalism of something like Wilderlands of High Fantasy and the detailed voluminosity of Dolmenwood. The larger entries, even at 1/2 - 1/3 of a page, could keep you busy for weeks. And the smallest entries still have opportunities for heroic feats and hijinks. Bottom line: Dionne does these sort of hexcrawls extremely well, and River of Night is probably the best yet. 

The format follows the author's previous "mini adventures" like Wavestone Monolith and Eroding Isle of the Executioner. Whereas her usual writing is pretty terse, this goes a step further, with less delineation between the initial room description that's immediately obvious and what can be discovered with further investigation. For the most part it's pretty obvious where to draw the line, but giving each location a once-through before running it will make sure the GM doesn't over-reveal. Which is to say that they do lose some of the "run sight-unseen" usability of Dionne's longer-form adventures.

 

I could not divine any rhyme or reason as the why some words are bolded and others aren't. In room 1 of Basilisk cult, "pillars" and "statues" are bolded but neither feature has any special interaction or importance. This inconsistency is prevalent throughout all the room keys. NPCs and monsters are consistently bolded, but otherwise it often serves to confuse more than aid. It had me reading and re-reading keys to try and find out what was significant about bones only to realize that the answer is nothing.

There are nine keyed locations so I'm just going to hit some of the highlights.

The first location "Army Ants" is written by Baron de Ropp. The party will explore a cave with a family of giant ants that's butting heads with a small army of skeleton warriors while a group of mushroom men secretly try to spread their fungus. It's got a nicely varied map along with a lot crammed into its 8 rooms. Too much, perhaps. The sense of scale is a bit wonky (the "broad underground lake" is more of a pond - no starless sea here) and I think it would benefit from some breathing room. But it is really nice to see mushroom folks be the jerks for once. 

"Black Ziggurat" is the home of the mysterious void beings that hide in the dark places of the jungle waiting for an eclipse so they can do whatever it is void beings do with impunity. Unfortunately their lair has a bit of the "museum" problem. You can look but there aren't a lot of things to touch. And they'll probably kill you. There are some interesting things in here from a creative writing perspective, but not a lot of interaction. The stairs are sharp and hurt you. A bunch of void beings are sleeping in weird tanks. And then you get to the end where a purple light will probably turn you into a void being. The whole thing is very thematic, there just isn't a lot to do. The GM is going to have to do the heavy lifting for bringing excitement and intrigue to this one.

"Chanichu" has a lot more going for it - a cave inside a volcano where vicious crocodile-birds called skandrill hide their valuable eggs and other treasures. The skandrill are also being hunted by an azer hiding in a lava pool and a researcher dressed in a patchwork skandrill costume. We've also got some nice environmental hazards and a skandrill rex sporting gold chains like a prehistoric Mr. T. This is a high-risk, high-reward dungeon that's going to push the players to do some stupid (or stupidly brilliant) stuff. 

"Eclipse Dial" is another void being location. This one has a flying car that the PCs can steal. It also has a dial that can create an eclipse if given a human sacrifice: "The Wheel. A living humanoid creature from this dimension must die by blood loss upon The Wheel's spindle to activate it. Upon activation, The Wheel turns a full rotation. The moon moves with it, causing a total solar eclipse that lasts for one week."

In another location ("Star Map Temple") we have this: "Broken Eclipse Wheel. A single, cracked wheel of obsidian. Its etchings show a disc moving across the sun to blot it out. Something shattered this wheel long ago, and it no longer moves; it's stuck on a day marking an active solar eclipse. The inscription below reads: 'On this day, enemies of life itself pour forth from the obsidian temples.' The wheel is missing a handful of smaller cogs beneath its main disc that were knocked loose. Replacing them would allow the cracked wheel to turn once again."

I feel like there is meant to be some sort of connection between these two things, but whatever it is isn't clear and certainly isn't explained. There are a few places in River of Night (and actually, pretty much all Arcane Library adventures) where these sorts of secrets and hidden interactions are hinted at but not explained. Look, I'm dumb. I need you to spell it out for me. It's cool to hide things from the players but it's not cool to hide them from the GM. Also, if all the void beings need to create a weeklong eclipse is a single human sacrifice, I think eternal night is a pretty achievable goal.

Overall, the mini-adventures tie nicely with the setting and are well done with a nice variety from strange alien storage facilities to lair assaults. Dionne knows what she's doing. But only a few had me really excited. And if I was running this I would still want to flesh it out with some beefier dungeons.

Here's the thing. As a GM, it's much easier for me to crank out a few 10-room dungeons to fill out the hexcrawl locations, or even to find some modules I can drop in and tweak until they fit. There are zillions and new ones pop up in my feed every day. But coming up with a really juicy 30+ room dungeon that ties to the setting and can serve as sort of the culmination of the campaign is more difficult. Not only does it take more time and creativity, but if you try to borrow something published elsewhere it's unlikely to tie into the various factions and mysteries that the party has been interacting with. So if I had my druthers, that's the one I'd choose to outsource. 

Art is superb, as is to be expected. The Basilisk Warrior on page 10 by Cameron Maas is probably one of my favorite pieces to appear in any Shadowdark book. Put that on a shit. Or on the side of my minivan.

So the hexcrawl is excellent. The dungeons/adventure sites are pretty good with a few missteps. All in all, a delightful romp.

On a scale of 2-12, the hexcrawl gets 10 stingbats and the adventures gets 8 stingbats, so River of Night gets an average of 9 stingbats.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/shadowdarkrpg/western-reaches/