2d6 Stingbats

Today we are looking at T he Devoured Labyrinth published by Bite-Sized Gaming, with Andrew Bishkinskyi and Zac Goins as lead designers. It is a collection of 46 dungeons, the vast majority being 1-2 pages, spread across a 160-hex region map. Let's address the elephant in the room: The Devoured Labyrinth is not a labyrinth or megadungeon. You'd be forgiven for thinking that it is, given the name. In fact the first two questions of the Kickstarter FAQ address this, where we are told "The 'Labyrinth' is a metaphor for interconnected buried ruins that have sunk underground." Ah, ok. It's a metaphor. So what it is, rather, collection of short 1-2 page dungeons that are loosely connected via themes and the overland hexmap. They are not connected literally. Maybe you shoulda come up with a different title. Since there are 46 dungeons in this thing I'm not going to review of all them, but I will dive into a handful.  First up is Doom Hold, a 12-room romp thr...

  Today we're looking at  Final Torch Issue #2 - Pirates of Barnacle Bay  by Ross Mahler. Barnacle Bay is a setting and hexcrawl (hexsail?) through a dangerous island/sea region. Besides the hexcrawl it's got rules for for ships and ship combat, a nicely fleshed-out settlement, an intro adventure, some tools for creating adventures, monsters, magic items, etc etc. It's what the kids these days call a "zine". The hexmap has 156 hexes, 35 of which are keyed. Not the biggest map geographically, but it's dense, having a better ratio of keyed to unkeyed hexes than most adventures I've looked at. And the descriptions are very well done, full of interesting scenarios, adventure seeds and connections to other locations, like a child lives inside a circle of conch shells on a deserted island. He's actually a trickster demon and the only monk that knows the truth has taken a vow of silence. There are sea monsters, vengeful ghost sailors, hags, dens of iniquity, ...

  Today we're looking at Lovely Jade Necropolis by Joseph R. Lewis.  After tackling 5e and then OSE, Mr. Lewis has added Shadowdark to his repertoire. This is a 100 location adventure for level 3-5 PCs. It's inspired by the works of Clark Ashton Smith and that is exactly my jam. The eponymous necropolis was once the site of a beautiful garden built by the fey for their human friends. The humans betrayed the fey, were summarily killed, and now the garden is a place where the dead cannot rest. A couple of necromancers have moved in and now they're fighting. Plus the fey aren't thrilled about the new tenants so they're trying to kick them both out. It's a nice whirlwind of intrigue and violence for the party to get mixed up in. We get some nice hooks and rumors and we're off! Okay, one more thing and then we're off. The fey and undead are given a few little twists from how they're usually presented. Rather than mindless fodder, we're told that the ...

Today we are looking at Inside the Everflowing Curtain , designed by Anthony J. Zinni  and published by Revivify Games. It's a level 3-4 dungeon with 16 rooms where the PCs are tasked with recovering the second half of a magical staff from a goat demon's lair. Everflowing Curtain   pulls double-duty, being written for both Mörk Borg and Shadowdark. We've seen 5e/Shadowdark and DCC/Shadowdark, but this is my first time for this particular combo. The two systems have very little mechanical similarity, but when has that ever stopped anyone? It has one of the most bizarre setups I've ever seen for. It assumes that a bunch of stuff directly related to the adventure itself has already happened and hinges on the PCs finding a very particular set of items to summon the demonic questgiver. "The GM must place the crystal ball, copper brazier, and lower piece of the staff where the characters can find them. Once a character touches the crystal ball, the scene described on the...

Today we're looking at Tower of Hapshut by Fenris-77. It consists of a small 5-hex region and a 29-room dungeon for levels 6-8 and was written for their Shadows of Empire setting. It could easily be dropped into other settings, even if you just take the dungeon. The primary adventure site is a temple currently occupied by an undead warlord. We aren't given any particularly compelling reason to go there - he doesn't have any nefarious plans that are about to come to fruition and no local leaders are offering a reward for his extermination. But there's reputedly some treasure inside, and in a game where gold = xp, perhaps that's enough. The layout is exemplary. Clear, attractive and informative. It smacks of effort and care. It can't have been easy to fit everything together this well, but sweating the details paid off and I wouldn't feel terribly intimidated running this sight-unseen. The text gets a little verbose in places and the writing overall has a very...