2d6 Stingbats

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 are looking at The Zircon Zephyr by Cameron Maas & Jason Terry. Full disclosure: I have done some Shadowdark adventure editing for Jason Terry, although I was not involved in the creation of this adventure in any way.  This 9-room crystal on the back of a giant crab was written for the Appendix N game jam and is limited to four pages (including cover). Despite the limited space and time, it comes across as a very polished work, including beautiful original art and maps, and a clear, functional layout. The goal is to wrest control of the Zephyr away from a chaotic wizard and his bandit allies.  The dungeon is essentially a two-floor tower and towers are tricky. Despite being a popular adventure location they are somewhat limited when it comes to possible layouts and navigation options. There's only so much you can do within the confines of a tall, narrow building. One solution, employed to great effect in Sision Tower , is to do a side-elevation rather than an...

Today we're looking at The Lost People by Nick Campbell. It's the 3rd in a series of underdark adventures and although it has some ties to the previous entries, could easily be played as a one-off. It is lacking any explicit hooks, though. A few of the rumors could serve that purpose (protip: they're in the back of the book). The 14-room dungeon is the remains of an ancient creator race, rife with foul, stagnating magic and inscrutable machines. Along with art and layout that breaks away boldly from the Shadowdark template, the aesthetics are a breath of fresh air. It vividly communicates the vibe of the adventure before you even read the words.  And those words begin with "this is a puzzle dungeon."  There's a lot going on here. In addition to most rooms having some kind of puzzle, the players can sacrifice 1 hp to boost their rolls by 1d4. Once they do this 7 times, a leyline bursts and creates some kind of wild magic effect like "A fedora appears on y...

  Today we are looking at Tomb of the Moon Knight by Aaron Botter, a short 11-room adventure for levels 1-2. The party will explore the tomb of a long-dead Robin Hood type figure while contending with Sky Pirates and other hazards. It's pretty straightforward but also has some nice bursts of creativity and weirdness that set it apart from your typical graverobbing adventure. The layout and structure of the room keys pretty closely hews to the Arcane Library default. No points for originality but it's nicely organized and easy to parse. There's also a beautiful piece of full-page original art.   The adventure makes the most of it's low room count by providing a nice mix of interactivity - social challenges, environmental hazards, combat and a few light puzzles. No wasted space here. It also provides clear mechanics for running everything. A potential cave-in gives us the chance of causing it intentionally, the chance of it happening randomly, a DC for escaping and a DC ...

Today we are looking at Soulblight: The Dying Vale by Laurin-David Weggen. This is a smallish hexcrawl and hefty dungeon for his Soulblight setting, but also works as a standalone adventure and does not require any other books besides the Shadowdark core rules to run. The premise of this setting is compelling to say the least. "Rulakham is doomed. There is no saving it. No matter how many monsters you slay, even if you bring down the sovereign within the machine heart of the capital city, the dark eye sun will descend, the Chasm will open and on the ninth day, this land will be gone. Will you vanish along with it?" The PCs have 8 days to escape the blighted vale before the whole place sinks into a chasm, contending with desperate survivors, blighted knights and monstrous beasts across the desperate landscape of a ruined world. If Dark Sun has ever appealed to you, this is Dark Sun vibes cranked up to 11.  The driving force behind the hexcrawl is the "glimmer of...

  Today we're looking at  Shadows of Camelot by William Harshman. Mr. Harshman also has a Youtube channel called Runeforged Tabletop gaming. D ungeontubers have a pretty spotty record when it comes to writing adventures. Will we buck the trend?!  It's tempting to say that Shadows of Camelot is similar to the Cursed Scrolls, but that's not exactly fair. Camelot dispenses with the addition of new classes and focuses on the hexcrawl and adventure. What we get in return for skipping the player options are beefier hex descriptions and more structure overall to hang a campaign on.  A welcome tradeoff, in this author's opinion.  The setting is "post-Arthurian" with a dash of Robinhood. Important to note that there was no filing of serial numbers here. The figures of those legends loom large, including specific names, events and places. Folks that spend a lot of time playing TTRPGs are like to have at least a passing familiarity with these stories. Some might be surpr...

Today we're looking at Sanctum of the Undertoad Queen - a 3rd level adventure by Ross Mahler and Matthew Mahler. This one checks a lot of boxes on my personal "would I run this?" checklist. New and interesting monsters, creative environmental puzzles and hazards, a general competency in writing and layout, original art (just look at that gorgeous cover), a map with plenty of navigation options, A CUSTOM SOUNDTRACK, etc etc. Yes, there is room for improvement in a few areas but this is among the best 3rd party Shadowdark adventures I've seen. The setup is simple - the party is asked to retrieve the Lost Eye of the Jaguar Sentinel that is believed to be in the possession of the titular undertoads. Loot the place, bring back the eye, you know the drill. The dungeon has 20 rooms and a strong swampy vibe. We begin with a short hexcrawl with... 25' hexes? Yeah, 25' hexes. This section is labeled "optional" and I'm going to recommend you consider leavi...

Today we're looking at The Frozen Ascent by JP Coovert. This adventure was also reviewed on the excellent Between Two Cairns podcast. Though I'm a regular listener I have avoided that particular episode in advance of this review. Maybe it will turn out that we have similar thoughts. Maybe I will find myself at odds with two of the most well-liked personalities in the OSR/NSR. Let's find out! The premise is mythic. Every 1,000 years the Frozen King shows up and the whole land is frozen over. Someone needs to climb up Orn Mountain and set things right. Let's get this out of the way. The art is superb. You want to own a print copy of this just so you can leave it on the coffee table as a sign of your good taste. You want to put a poster of the cover up in your gaming room. You want a tattoo of a Frostbitten Cave Crab. The art is also a nice break from the de rigueur black and white fare that you typically find in Shadowdark adventures. Our adventure begins with some over...