[REVIEW] Dust and Stars

Since the module has no
cover, here is the next best thing

Dust and Stars (2021)

by Settembrini

Self-published

Levels 9–12

Hello, and welcome to part SIX of **THE RECKONING**, wherein entries of the infamous No Artpunk Contest are taken to task. This promises to be both a treat and a challenge, as the competing entries were written with an intent that is close to my heart: to prove, once and for all, that the power of old-school gaming is found in a fine balance between finely honed and practical design principles, and a strong imagination. That is to say, it is craft before it is art, and this craft can be learned, practiced, and mastered. The following reviews will therefore look not for basic competence – it is assumed that the contest participants would not trip over their own shoelaces or faint at the sight of their own blood – but excellence. The reviews will follow a random order, and they will be shorter than Prince’s original pieces. One adventure, the contest winning Caught in the Web of Past and Present, shall be excluded for two reasons: one, the author plays at my table (and I have previously played in his one-offs); and two, I am going to republish it in an updated edition. With that aside, Deus Vult! Let Destiny prevail!

* * * 

As discussed in the review for Tower of the Time Master, tower adventures are hard. The constraints of narrow, vertical spaces – which are by and large also limited by the “realism” of height – do not leave much room for extensive or  creative floorplans, so these adventures have to find other things to excel at. While Time Master was outstandingly creative with its interior spaces but playing safe with its room descriptions, Dust and Stars goes the other way in designing a fantastic tower.

This is a high-level AD&D adventure, a very different genre from the OSR’s common “dirt farmer” aesthetic, or the “sweet spot” of mid-level adventuring. This is the point where challenges head into the stratosphere while PC capabilities proliferate unpredictably, leading to unexpected creative solutions. What if the Magic-User enters the dungeon through another plane, or a complex magic puzzle is devastated by an anti-magic field? What if I put the portable hole in the bag of holding? (This is where those DMG edge cases come from.) Conversely, what if the dangers come from unexpected fronts, the puzzles are tough and have no pre-set solution – say, a crucial item is encased within the interior of a stone statue, or a chamber is guarded by ethereal mummies? Creative magic use and reality hacking are to high-level AD&D what ten-foot poles and coils of rope are to its low-level counterpart – it is about being faced with the impossible or improbable, and doing it nevertheless. And of course, you still have to fight your battles on your own terms, or face the consequences. These are the expectations – how does the module stack up?

In Dust and Stars, we visit a tower left behind from a devastating space/time war and shielded from the world by reality-warping magic. An outpost for astronomical research and magical spacefaring, it is an oddity in your standard fantasy world – high-tech by way of super-magic, but certainly sufficiently advanced to be indistinguishable as either to your average dirtfarmer-tier guy. Therefore, the effects of adventuring in this tower are either bound to be revelatory about the nature of the greater world beyond what is “known” (something handled deftly, but with risky consequences in DeepCarbon Observatory), or it is bound to be integrated into a campaign where the characters already know a lot of things going on behind the scenes. This element of the adventure – inscrutable magical technology, bits and pieces of information connecting to a broader context – is handled in a way that the tower can work as a complete mystery, or it can work as a place to find crucial campaign information, or an important item.

There are no navigation- or exploration-related challenges herein, and for all the background, the tower is kind of a monster zoo from a functional perspective – you mostly move from door to door along the tower’s staircases and corridors, defeat the creatures inside (most rooms have some kind of tough monster inside; a few may be negotiated with but most are inimical to mankind), and ponder the clues left behind. This slightly static approach, combined with a gated final area, represents a weakness in the design. The ultimate foes, the star-born sentiserps (high-HD snake guardians) are melee brutes, where the main challenge is how to defeat them without nuking the site. Yet it also has to be said that the combat opportunities are fun, with a variety of opponents requiring different strategies – unleashed elementals, a rakshasha, a bodak with its death gaze, etc. There is something for everyone, including nasty surprises for those proceeding ethereally or unleashing their psionic powers.

Then there is the exploration and investigative part, where the place becomes quite fascinating. Removed from their original context, the artifacts and background elements of the author’s campaign make for a hell of a weird collection of enigmas, a bit like landing on Easter Island and pondering its great stone faces. There are mysteries to untangle and bizarre devices to mess with, fun treasure (a set of slide rules which will fetch a great price, but only from a mathematician, or a set of precision lenses for a telescope, or… particularly valuable erynies panties?!), hints of cosmic going-on, and just a few opportunities to invite great disaster on a planetary scale (“However, the inclined DM may decide that only the continent is destroyed”, he wrote, generously). This is the kind of adventure that would leave character who stay on the surface level non-plussed, while those who enjoy experimentation, non-standard problem-solving, and putting together vague clues would find it memorable. Much depends on whether the GM can convey the tower’s stories to the players – will they see all the complexities, or just weird stuff to breeze through? There is a relationship chart that may enter play – but it is very likely not to. Some sort of play notes on monsters’ communication potential with the players may be good. Then there is a plot-critical steel door that needs a specific key to access... but what if the answer is “LOL, passwall / teleport / disintegrate / dig”? At this level, it is highly likely the party will come in flying through the tower roof, wallhack-style. If they can take it apart this way, a steel door will not stop them.

This contest entry is obviously a snapshot of a larger campaign that had grown rich and complex over years of play, and it is a bit limited by only being what it is. The contest may not be the best introduction to it. The tower is nice as a legendary locale if you are willing to work with it, and you are prepared to accept the premise (specifically, quasi-magical technologies, although not necessarily starfaring). It is a bit like something out of Moorcock’s stories, or Spelljammer but not lame. That’s an accomplishment.

This publication credits two groups of playtesters.

Rating: *** / *****

[REVIEW] The Temple of Hypnos

Better opium than copium

The Temple of Hypnos (2021)

by Olle Skogren

Self-published

Level 5

Hello, and welcome to part FIVE of **THE RECKONING**, wherein entries of the infamous No Artpunk Contest are taken to task. This promises to be both a treat and a challenge, as the competing entries were written with an intent that is close to my heart: to prove, once and for all, that the power of old-school gaming is found in a fine balance between finely honed and practical design principles, and a strong imagination. That is to say, it is craft before it is art, and this craft can be learned, practiced, and mastered. The following reviews will therefore look not for basic competence – it is assumed that the contest participants would not trip over their own shoelaces or faint at the sight of their own blood – but excellence. The reviews will follow a random order, and they will be shorter than Prince’s original pieces. One adventure, the contest winning Caught in the Web of Past and Present, shall be excluded for two reasons: one, the author plays at my table (and I have previously played in his one-offs); and two, I am going to republish it in an updated edition. With that aside, Deus Vult! Let Destiny prevail!

* * *

Just how much stuff is there in your usual old-school game? How far can you go with the basic building blocks? Give a bunch of  creative and driven people the same general kit, and you will find out soon enough. One of them will make The Keep on the Borderland, but with completely new and completely fun content. Another will build a vampire castle. A third will do the island on the back of a giant turtle, with djinns. And some weird guy will just mess with the Lego pieces until they run DooM, thus proving once and for all that DooM can run on anything. The Temple of Hypnos is a module that makes dirt simple D&D look and feel like some bizarre sword and sorcery hallucination, without actually changing anything in the rules. The module takes your D&D adventure to the temple of a Greek-style mystery cult dedicated to dreams, and now a site of mysterious disappearances. Something evil has set foot inside the bucolic sanctum, and turned it to its own malign purposes. There are multiple strong hooks to reel in the company – stealing an idol’s enormous silk tunic for a giant who is too large to enter the temple, helping an insomniac magic-user recover her ability to sleep (can relate… can relate), or beating a force of 100 men intent on sacking the place by… well, plundering the best stuff first.

Not everything about the module is about clever reskinning, but clever reskinning is definitely a central part of it. It is an old and very useful GM trick to “invent” bizarre new monsters by just describing the equivalent of a 2^nd or 3^rd level Fighter as “a slim humanoid figure, with lush green leaves sprouting from its torso, and roots in place of its limbs”, or “a cadaver in a terrible monster mask, grey from volcanic ashes clinging to the desiccated flesh”. The Temple of Hypnos runs with its theme by describing everything in a way any specific D&D element might look like in the context of the dreaming temple. What were “zombies” are now “sleepwalkers”, semi-catatonic worshippers lost in opiate dreams. “Bugbears” become “brutes of Hypnos”, described as “large men, their shaggy hides and goblinoid faces hidden in robes of midnight blue and beaten copper masks in the image of Hypnos. Their voices are droning and monotone due to the way the mouths of the masks are shaped”. Damn, that’s good! Satyrs, of course, fit right in. The priests are really Magic-Users. It is not a radical idea, just a smart, thorough implementation. Everything in the module radiates outwards from the central premise, and balances variety with internal cohesion flawlessly.

But there is strong craft there, too! As the adventure hooks suggest, this is an open-ended module that can be played in multiple ways. There is a central situation/problem in the form of a night hag who has taken possession of the temple, and who is now a formidable master of this environment in more than one way (recalling Strahd’s role in the original Ravenloft – she has a battle plan, and a fallback option). However, there are many ways towards this problems, and not a few around it – dealing with the night hag is only one option. What the adventure does is introduce a roster of enemies and NPCs who inhabit the temple area, the night hag’s behaviour, an adventure-specific mechanic (“drowziness points”, to simulate the characters slowly drifting towards sleep and dreaming), and then use these elements in different combinations through the room key. The main challenge then becomes to adapt to this environment, learn the patterns, and either disable/evade them or turn them to your advantage. This sort of “environmental hacking” is always satisfying to see in a module, and The Temple of Hypnos provides ample opportunities to engage in it. There are alternate degrees of risk-taking for an enterprising party – do you dip your toes or go in deep? Mess with the barricaded section which is probably barricaded for a very good reason? (Editor’s note: it is barricaded for a very good reason.) You decide. Help the temple’s priesthood, put an end to them, or just sneak out with some nice prize? Your call.

The room key first describes the temple grounds with 6 loosely keyed areas. This is stage-setting, although you can see the craft already from the interesting nature of the situations you encounter – “field of opium poppies and edible herbs worked by 2d6 zombies overseen by acolyte of Hypnos (2^nd level)” and “30’ doric column overgrown with vines. A satyr at the top piping a languid tune that carries far” are the kind of images that stick. It is, however, the temple where the author’s creativity is on full display. I was fully on board when I hit on this gem in the Anointing Room (4):

“Ceiling only 10' high. Bronze squid with leather sack body hangs from the ceiling. Black stains on the floor. Pulling its two longer tentacles it squirts fragrant black oil (olive, soot and herbs – adds 1 drowziness). If emptied completely the oil will cover the entire floor of the room.”

Hell yes! This is why I signed up. This little detail is perfect – the strangeness of an artificial suspended squid, the ritual use, the fragrant black oil, and the consequences of using this temple device – it encapsulates the essence of weird fantasy in a single side encounter. “It is going to be a 5, right?”, I asked myself with some concern. “Of course”, I responded, reassuringly.

The locations make sense as the mysteries of a weird dream religion, like an enchanted garden of sleepers crossed by a milky stream laced with diluted poppy milk, or an orgy around the triumphant idol of Hypnos. They are also highly interactable – there is a lot to do in a multi-layered environment, from looting the precious décor (which is where the treasures are mostly hidden) to messing with the temple denizens to interacting with weird dream experiences. Audible and visual cues are used to lead deeper into the complex (or, in a memorable case, to “a domineering satyr (…) teaching an increasingly frustrated bugbear the harp”), or into devious traps (such as a pool inhabited by a multitude of shadows). The treasures are fun, and it takes some attention to find the really good stuff, like an antelope horn hanging from a wrist strap on the limp left arm of a priest (wand of magic missiles), or a library of rare works on scrolls. This is a high-density dungeon. The encounters are close to each other, and they often involve a lot of “stuff”, sometimes all kinds of moving parts on stage at once. While the writing is excellent, it takes GM processing power, especially if a multi-room situation develops – so read carefully, underline, and prepare to be tested!

Much about The Temple of Hypnos recalls the better Judges Guild products: a willingness to think beyond the basics without actually breaking the game with runaway rule inflation (it is almost all core), creative encounters, the care taken to make the scenario useful for very different gaming groups. Most of all, though, it is the willingness to go fantastic, and let the alien beauty of the imagery guide you. It is all very well done. Highly recommended. And damn good showing from a module with zero production values.

This publication credits a playtester (was it a solo game?) and a proofreader.

Rating: ***** / *****

 

[REVIEW] Vault of the Warlord

Vault of the
Succulent Grapes

Vault of the Warlord (2021)

by Justin Todd

Self-published

Levels 1-3

Hello, and welcome to part FOUR of **THE RECKONING**, wherein entries of the infamous No Artpunk Contest are taken to task. This promises to be both a treat and a challenge, as the competing entries were written with an intent that is close to my heart: to prove, once and for all, that the power of old-school gaming is found in a fine balance between finely honed and practical design principles, and a strong imagination. That is to say, it is craft before it is art, and this craft can be learned, practiced, and mastered. The following reviews will therefore look not for basic competence – it is assumed that the contest participants would not trip over their own shoelaces or faint at the sight of their own blood – but excellence. The reviews will follow a random order, and they will be shorter than Prince’s original pieces. One adventure, the contest winning Caught in the Web of Past and Present, shall be excluded for two reasons: one, the author plays at my table (and I have previously played in his one-offs); and two, I am going to republish it in an updated edition. With that aside, Deus Vult! Let Destiny prevail!

* * *

One of the good ways to make an adventure more enjoyable is to place it within a broader context, ranging from a home base and a handful of rumours to a wilderness section to a full-blown mini-setting. If done well, this can pay off handsomely. Now you do not simply have an adventure location, but you have a place where you can learn about it, hire retainers and buy equipment for expeditions, and talk to NPCs who will also have an active interest in helping you succeed or setting you up to fail. Getting to the adventure may be more than a matter of GM exposition; it may be a risk, or a matter requiring preliminary exploration. Consider Keep on the Borderlands, and why it is superior to a hypothetical TSR module just called “B2: Caves of Chaos”. This is a solid formula to get more bang for your buck, since even a few pages of extra material can greatly enlarge the scope of an adventure. (There is a point where it starts to go into diminishing returns, but we will discuss The Marmoreal Tomb on a different occasion).

As might be expected, Vault of the Warlord is a smallish dungeon with an enlarged scope, turned into a complex adventure combining investigation, wilderness exploration, and dungeon crawling. The module revolves around the titular resting place, now located somewhere near Pine Lake, a peaceful rural backwater introduced in broad strokes. The Vault’s exact location has been lost, and finding the way to one of the entrances requires local investigation. This element opens up the range of options before the characters. There are multiple ways into the Vault, all involving quite different approaches, from following in the footsteps of previous adventurers (whose remains will be found later) to cracking the mystery of the local interest groups (as usual, not everyone in Pine Lake is who he seems), or even partially draining the lake to reveal a now submerged entrance (this will also alter the dungeon’s half-flooded areas considerably). There are simple, interesting decisions embedded in the module, with simple, interesting consequences following from them. They are not illusionary choices; they matter. The easiest way to the dungeon has no return option. Others will come with better, and rather different information to solve its challenges, but perhaps their own baggage.

Mr. Pac-Man? What are you doing there,
Mr. Pac-Man? Oh NOOOOO!!!!

The dungeon, with its 27 areas, is short, compact, and heavy on the kind of punchy dungeon rooms which are fun to mess with. It is also a place which has seen the passage of time (considerable environmental damage, flooding, tunnelling), attempts at looting (sprung, half-sprung, and malfunctioning traps, dead adventurers still shuffling around), and previous tomb robbers making things worse with their meddling (an enormous stone block trap suspended slightly above ground, resting precariously on an upright immovable rod switched to the “ON” position). High interaction, strong environmental storytelling, and interesting (perhaps slightly illogical, considering how small the place is?) random encounters combine into a good mixture. The rooms give you enough rope to hang yourself with, but also enough footholds to turn to your advantage, perhaps even massively. There are some really funny ways to die in here (c’mon… push that button! try to get that rod!), and there are encounters with no easy, straightforward solutions (such as an enormous patch of black pudding which can easily engulf much of the dungeon if let loose), or which will massacre the reckless (the burrow of a basilisk). It is the good kind of funhouse environment, which makes just enough sense to let you suspend disbelief, but otherwise encourages and rewards player creativity. Monetary treasure is very scarce except for the odd magic item you may pawn off (but most parties won’t) – this “XP-poor” environment is noted by the author in a transparent fashion.

The module features terse, matter-of-fact writing. It could stand to be a bit more ornamented, but this is more personal preference than objective truth. The homespun interior art is stickman level but funny, which is vastly more than could be said about anything WotC and its ilk are doing. What stands out is how helpful the text is. The adventure communicates ideas clearly and efficiently, presents its underlying assumptions in a fair way, features effective play advice to customise the module for your group (this is rarely done beyond generalities) or complicate it further to put the thumbscrews on the party. There is good advice in running the module as a one-shot, and even offers eight example characters who come with simple personal hooks for more variety. This is a lot of support for most possible situations. It is not layout hocus-pocus: it is clear, effective advice.

Vault of the Warlord is elevated above the norm by the care that has gone into making it work smoothly, but particularly by how the simple premise of robbing an old, decrepit tomb is turned into a rich, open-ended scenario which offers a lot of ways in, and perhaps even more possible outcomes. It is not big, but no effort has been spared to make it work smoothly. Impressive, and looks like tons of fun.

This publication credits three groups of playtesters. All this effort shows!

Rating: **** / *****

Pusssssh the button. Pussshhhhhhh the button!
Push the button!!!!!

[STUFF/NEWS] The Nocturnal Table on Chartopia, Red Room Interview, Echoes #09 in PDF

News on the march! Here are a handful of things of interest while yours truly wrestles with the Deadline Gods (none of which has to have anything to do with gaming, sadly, except for delaying various projects in the making).

* * *

Mind the Lepers

The Nocturnal Table on Chartopia!

Tuirgin has been kind enough to adapt The Nocturnal Table to Chartopia. After EOTB’s excellent Fantasy Grounds integration, this is a web-based implementation of the supplement. You can just click on the link, and roll up stuff for those nighttime adventures. It is all free, at your fingertips, and offers you most of the supplement's content.

For instance… adventurers Yakko Sarxs, Zeep Ulbem, and Mark the Marrakian learn from clandestine sources that an important meeting will take place “by the benches at the peacock mosaic… wear a rose”, and they swear to get there before the intended target!

• They head out to the market – it is daytime, and they meet 2 Drunks (LVL 1), offering them some work. Declining the offer, they start looking for a suitable rose seller.
• They encounter a “Jovial yogi selling opium, as a last-ditch gambit” (the GM gives him 1:6 to know of a rose seller, but comes up empty), followed by a “Paranoid, perverted lord selling advice, to corner the market, who miscalculates the price”. This is apparently someone who knows the market, but seeing that the characters are in need, gouges them for a hefty sum. In any event, the rose is acquired!
• The peacock mosaics are in the Thieves’ Quarter. On the way there, the GM rolls for another daytime encounter: 14 Sailors/Pirates (Fighter 2), confronting the party by trying to stop them. Not eager to blow their chance, the characters grudgingly bribe the sea scum… but note them for further retaliation. By the time the altercation is over, night falls…
• In the Thieves’ Quarter, the GM first rolls for local colour: the characters note “Stone arms (4) propped against brick wall.” Odd! An encounter from the Nocturnal Table proper follows… “(384) Wererats (2d4 (5)), carrying diseased rags in enormous bundles, and scattering them everywhere.” Hooded, hunched men and women are donating colourful rags to the local lepers and beggars – a spectacle the characters choose to avoid (the consequences will manifest in a few days anyhow…)
• Arriving near the peacock mosaics, the GM rolls again for local colour to set the scene, and a simple nighttime encounter to see what kind of passersby are to be found nearby. A “sleeping dog cradles carved bone-hilt dagger (15 gp)” near the benches, and a “Mercenary (Fighter 8)” tries to seduce one of the characters with a ballad, attempting to lure them into a nearby dive… but noticing the rose worn by Zeep Ulbem, he gestures to them to come closer, and inquires whether they have come for the Brotherhood contract. Zeep Ulbem nods curtly.
• The man leads the company to a nearby storefront, and knocks twice in rapid succession. A panel is slid open, and they are welcomed into a dimly lit store, stocked with… “miniature drums” and “ritual mummies”. The shopkeeper, who introduces himself as Invenor, reaches into his robes while the adventurers wait nervously for the next step.

This is the kind of improvised stuff you could cook up with these tables on a step-by-step basis, or you could spice up a premade adventure as well. It is all free (although you can also purchase the supplement in print and PDF), and it is all courtesy of Mr. Tuirgin. Much appreciated!

* * *

The good Melan is in the Lodge, and
cannot leave.

Prestigious Interview!

Yours truly has been interviewed on video, and a very special place it was! Having spread beyond the Black Lodge, The Red Room is a new Youtube channel from Portugal (but broadcasting in English), featuring reviews, commentary, and interviews with various villains of the tabletop RPG scene. This conversation has followed the successful crowdfunding campaign for the Spanish edition of Helvéczia (€6700 out of €5500!), and it mainly focused on this game – its aims, sources of inspiration (including the original picaresque novels of the 17^th century), historical context (and the liberties it takes with history), bestiary, why the Old Swiss Confederation is an ideal adventure setting, and how far you can take the game in various odd directions. This has been a blast – thank you for having me on! Are the owls what they seem?

* * *

Echoes Fom Fomalhaut #09 in PDF!

The newest Echoes issue is up on DriveThruRPG, and features 60 pages of stuff, including a new setting to the northwest of the Isle of Erillion, an adventure set there, and a B/X dungeon for first-level characters… lots of first-level characters, as it turns out! Bring lots of character sheets, and a good number of followers.

The next issue will be #10, a nice number indeed. I expected it to come out this time of the year, but, again, real life has had me chained to Winword, Excel, and other unholy things for the last few months, and that has thrown a spanner between the gears. Realistically, late April or early May looks possible. I am also translating a handful of Helvéczia adventures for the Spanish edition, and once I have them in English, it makes sense to publish them as well. And of course, other projects are on the table as well: a forest adventure I am particularly fond of, as well as a guest contribution centred around an old well… The Well of Frogs!

Oh FU