[REVIEW] Skalbak Sneer: The Stronghold of Snow

Skalbak Sneer

[REVIEW] Skalbak Sneer: The Stronghold of Snow (2023)

by J. Blasso-Gieseke

Published by 21st Centaury Games.

Levels 5–7

Hello, and welcome to part EIGHT of **THE RECONQUISTA**, wherein entries of the scandalous No Artpunk Contest II (banned on Reddit but the top seller in the artpunk category on itch.io) are subjected to RIGHTEOUS JUDGEMENT. As previously, the contest focuses on excellence in old-school gaming: creativity, craft, and table utility. It also returns to the original old school movement in that it assumes good practices can be learned, practiced and mastered; and there are, in fact, good and bad ways of playing. Like last year, these reviews will assume the participants have achieved a basic level competence, and are striving to go forward from that point. One adventure, No Art Punks by Peter Mullen, shall be excluded since Peter is contributing cover and interior art for my various publications. With that said and solemnly declared, Deus Vult! Let Destiny prevail!

* * *

Tomb of Horrors is one of those modules which, before it was inevitably reduced to a safe geek in-joke, had its black legend, a reputation for pitiless cruelty and character destruction. Skalbak Sneer is Tomb of Horrors for combat-centric scenarios, billed “a tactical deathtrap dungeon”, and living up to every letter of that promise. This is an adventure that, if run correctly, will make a bitter almost-TPK feel like well-earned victory, and could be properly titled Death Frost Doom if that was not already taken by the LotFP classic.

Skalbak Sneer is what you get when a clan of snow dwarves, given centuries of time and work, has dedicated its efforts to building the perfect, unassailable fortress on a frosty mountain peak, with multiple lines of defences to draw in, then grind down and destroy potential invaders. They have been at it for a long time, they have developed battle plans and contingencies, and they expect visitors. If they can stick to their plans, the invaders will die, or be driven off with heavy losses. If the invaders can find ways to break the pattern, they might win (the dwarves’ limited reconnaissance abilities may be an edge, and leveraging pre-adventure information gathering another). The dwarves are limited in numbers with 24 defenders including some named NPCs, but they have resources, trained monsters, and an environment designed to their advantages. It uses psychological tricks to lead besiegers into a doom loop which allows them to be whittled down and dealt a killing blow without actually breaching the fortresses’ vulnerable interior. If the players follow this subtle railroad, it will lead them into an ignominious end. Similar designs have been attempted previously. The 2e supermodule Dragon Mountain did it with kobolds, although it relied on gimmicks and unfair rulings to make it work. Skalbak Sneer plays fair, it just plays to win, and does so effectively.

Welcome to My Death Machine!

The module is basically a very tough tactical assault scenario set in a hostile environment, with dug-in opposition and formidable defences, Operation Overdwarf-style. Even the approach, a great winding stairway spiralling around the snowstorm-buffeted mountain peak, is a hostile place of natural hazards, and it gets worse from there. It is a hard scenario on both sides of the table. It will be tough for any party attempting it, but it also places heavy demands on the GM, who must understand how the snow dwarves’ deathtrap operates on multiple layers, then keep it in motion during play while adapting to the dynamics of play. You have fortifications, defenders, trained monsters, traps and other moving parts on top of each other, connected like a well-greased death machine. There is a lot of depth here on a complex map, which requires careful study. The presentation is very helpful – multiple colour-coded maps and alternate battle plans for alerted/surprised defenders are provided along with effective prose – but it is a lot. I don’t think it could be run practically on anything except a VTT.

In addition to the tactical play, the module has its strong, effective aesthetic. Much of the writing is very functional, with OSE-style barks like “Switchback: Designed to force the party past the barred doors and vicious claws of the tundra troll, yeti, and polar bear.” or “Spear-bolt holes: Allows Lieutenant Snull and the three Defenders in Attack Position 1 13 to attack through the walls.” Interspersed with this are bits of effective prose which give you an idea of a formidable, hostile place born of dwarven paranoia and madness, feeling more like a prepared grave for a death-obsessed clan than a place filled with life. It is cool, in multiple ways. “An arch of white icicles hang down like the fangs of some abominable hibernal beast. Beyond them, a yawning black gullet of Cimmerian darkness.” Or: “On each of the six sections of wall, a headless body, human, elf, orc, bugbear, hobgoblin and gnoll, hangs from chains in the shape of a Y. Between upraised arms, red stumps gape with frozen gore.” Or even: “A warm pipe running around the mountainside melts the surrounding snow. The musical sound of dripping water fills the air.” It is strong with expressive detail, Nibelungen-style tragic grandeur, and invocations of dwarven doom.

The rewards, if you gain them, are kingly. It is not sparse change, but enormous silver statues of stern dwarven warlords worth 10,000 gp each (and weighing 2,500 lbs too). The armoury of captured weapons, visible through arrow slits just beyond the entrance, is not just a few weapon racks: it is a room filled with a 3’ deep layer of war bounty from every conceivable destroyed invader, a grim warning to break the spirit of the attackers. The cooks and brewmasters, as much the masters of their craft as the garrison, shall die defending their precious trade secrets with their last breath. There is no quarter asked or given, only wintery death.

Skalbak Sneer is obviously not for everyone. It is not for players who aren’t heavily into tactical combat, formidable challenges, and being tested to the limits of their ability. The gulf between this module and the OSE fare you typically find on DrivethruRPG could not be wider. It is also focused on one particular thing, so if you don’t have an interest in it, it will feel fairly obsessive and one-note. That said, in its own genre, it is unmatched and perfect: a Masterpiece of Death.

This module does not credit its playtesters. This is a shame, because it would have been particularly interesting here to learn how they had fared during their assault.

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

[BEYONDE] Thief: The Black Parade [NOW AVAILABLE]

  

The Black Parade

“In THE BLACK PARADE you play the character of Hume, a hardened

criminal who was sent into exile as a punishment for his crimes.

The year is 833. You are now back in The City, a sprawling metro-

polis of soot-caked brick, greasy fumes and noisy machinery, with

many a sinister conspiracy whispered behind closed doors. Lost and

without a penny to your name, you are back to your life of thievery

and must find your old associate Dahlquist. Shadows and silence are

your allies. Light is your enemy. Stealth and cunning are your tools.

... And the riches of others are yours for the taking.”

 Regular readers of the blog may know I am a Thief: The Dark Project fan – indeed, it is my favourite computer game of all time, and one I have made a handful of fan missions for. Thief, today 25 years old, is a rich, complex and challenging stealth game that combines tight gameplay with excellent level design and top-notch mood. It is also a game which holds a lot of interest for old-school gaming: its roots lie in trying to simulate an AD&D-style thief on the computer, and there is much you can learn about dungeon design, open-ended scenarios, and even city adventures by playing it. A small but active level design community exists around the game (AD&D adventure designer Anthony Huso was one of the early greats in the scene), and there has been a steady flow of user-made fan missions over the years, from very simple thieving scenarios to full mission packs. However, not since T2X: Shadows of the Metal Age (2005) has a campaign approaching the scope and quality of the original Dark Project been attempted, let alone completed. (Your truly had tried and failed with The Crucible of Omens, a never-ever for The Dark Mod, a Doom3-based Thief spinoff.)

Until now.

Dark Mysteries

The Black Parade is a new, full, ten-mission campaign that has been released for the game’s 25^th anniversary, built over seven years by some of the best level designers in the scene, and made freely available for download. Set slightly before the events of The Dark Project, TBP focuses on the adventures of Hume, a former convict, as he becomes entangled in a dark plot concocted by forces beyond his control, and must use stealth and guile to survive and come out alive from the ordeal. The dark depths of Thief’s nameless City, a corrupt industrial metropolis, serve as the story’s locations: dimly lit streets, crumbling mansions inhabited by the idle rich, haunted crypts and thieves’ dens populated by the dregs of society. I had the privilege of beta-testing the pack (there were several rounds of testing by both old hands and new players), and I can report it is very much worth the trip.

Skullduggery and Deceit

The Black Parade spares no expense in constructing this world: the ten missions you will play through are sprawling, complex, and rich with detail. These are all open-ended, exploration-heavy missions offering multiple ways of achieving your objectives, built by a team who get Thief’s gameplay loop, but also know how to make missions that, while difficult, are never unfair or needlessly obscure. (They are a step up from TDP, but that is to be expected.) They are rich in navigation-oriented challenges (verticality, waterways, obscure entrances and hidden byways), tense stealth situations (from dodging patrols and sometimes security systems to shadowing a lone figure through the City’s streets), and careful decision-making between stealth and exposure. The missions, although connected by a joint plot and a dedication to superb quality, are very varied in theme and approach: the hands of multiple authors with different design styles are visible, but so is the refinement that comes from teamwork. These are all interesting, high-quality missions, and there are two in the lineup I rank among the very best ever made.

Corrupted Splendour

But the excellence of The Black Parade goes beyond level design (although that is the most important element). The campaign comes with well-animated cutscenes between missions; numerous new voice lines, textures and objects; new AI types (including some once considered impossible) and game mechanics. Many previous fan missions have done one or a few of these; but very rarely all, and never at this level of quality. In all cases, the updates to The Dark Project extend the original game while remaining entirely faithful to its mood and style: at no point does something stick out like a sore thumb. Thief has always been heavy on the mood, and this campaign pack returns to that level of quality, while taking advantage of the technical advances which allow a 1999 game to transcend the limits of its antediluvian engine and quirky level editor (as the quote from one of the original devs, goes, “Once upon a time, not only would DromEd crash, but it would go out and kill your family afterwards”). In its consciously low-poly architecture and grainy textures – no ill-advised attempt has been to make this look like a mid-2000s experience – The Black Parade builds scenes of labyrinthine complexity and deep SOVL.

A Labyrinthine Plot

This is also one of those rare mods that takes writing seriously: the main story was meticulously plotted before the levels entered the building phase, and the levels were then filled with fragments of readable texts, environmental storytelling, AI conversations and the evolving objectives Hume will face during the course of the missions. Although the writing quality tends to be high in the Thief level design community, this is a standout even by those standards. While the cutscenes convey the main plot, much in gameplay is information you need to piece together on your own – from clues that will help you reach your objectives, avoid deadly hazards or find carefully hidden loot; to pieces which reveal more about the surrounding world in an unobtrusive way.

Strange Perspectives

There is much more that could be written about The Black Parade, and I suspect it will be widely discussed in the following weeks and months. For now, though, this introduction should suffice. You can download the campaign here. A trailer, and a handful of screenshots by yours truly, follow.

Lost in the Catacombs

Back in a Smoke-Shrouded City

Venturing to Locales Long Forgotten

Pursued by Merciless Enemies

[BLOG] The Sinister Secret of Schloß Hohenroda

The Cauldron Crew

It was already 19:30, a mere thirty minutes before I was supposed to GM my first session, and we were not yet in Hohenroda. We had come far and we had come fast on Hungarian State Railways, the Austrian Federal Railways, and finally Germany’s Autobahns, racking up a speeding ticket in the process while rain was beginning to fall in earnest, but we were just not there yet. The staff at the car rental agency were out for lunch at the checkout time, and would not show up for a nerve-wracking forty minutes, nor be accessible by phone. On our way North, we were caught in the congested traffic of München’s ring roads, and later rural Bavaria’s labyrinth of third-class roads. Stuck among barns and church steeples, we pressed on to the great Autobahns, heavy with traffic, and mired in cars due to a massive automobile accident. From a rest stop, we proceeded along an agricultural road, hoping the BMW’s state-of-the-art nav software would not lead us into an ambush by Bavaria’s backwoods cannibals (these, we would later learn, are organised and numerous beyond the Autobahn system). In the end, though, in Stygian darkness and incessant rain, the timber-framed houses of Hohenroda appeared in view, and, on a side-road, the central bulk and side-wings of an ominous structure: Schloß Hohenroda.

World's Least Surly Hungarians

We travelled to the uttermost fringes of civilisation to participate in the events of Cauldron Con 2023, organised by the secretive German game club only referred to as “the Nexus”. Indeed, many brethren had gathered at the venue from the far-flung corners of Germany, the mercantile lands of the Dutch, the sinking island of Hibernia (at the time of the convention, just barely above the waterline), the icy wastes of Finland, and the barbarous wilderness of Skåne. From across the sea came Jonathan Becker, a slayer of men. All these, and the Hungarian delegation of five, would spend the next two days gaming, drinking excellent beers, feasting on suckling pig roast and the Settembrini clan’s bio-apples, and meeting people we had mostly only interacted with virtually.

It is often easy to overlook the work behind good organisation when everything goes smoothly. But things were so tight that it became noticeable: all the background effort translated into an experience where everything went without a hitch, and we could focus on the actual gaming. For being a first-time event, people organising mini-conventions could do well to learn from Cauldron. A lot of the larger gaming events are flabby affairs with plenty of idling, questionable seminars, and filler content. This con was all killer, no filler, with sitting down and playing at its forefront. A concentrated dose of dice-rolling over two days with local signup and a focus on the action. In the end, not only was the time spent well, there was still enough slack in the system to sit down for discussion by dinner, a bottle beer, or the miniatures table.

I ended up running three sessions and playing in two more with old friends and recent acquaintances. Only brief descriptions are provided here:

The Mysterious Estate

I GMed Urmalk the Boundless, an expedition to the Pentastadion Necropolis to recover the abundant treasures of a decadent magnate. A series of surface mausoleums were plundered, including one of the most dangerous ones (another was wisely avoided once the risks were calculated). While the adventurers did not make it down into the underground catacombs, nor find a way into Urmalk’s tomb, they made off with decent treasure, and avoided a costly confrontation with a bandit gang by bribing them with a valuable piece of loot coated with contact poison. Devin, 4^th-level Cleric (Caelin), died in an assassination attempt after the session, failing to secure a valuable shield he was tasked to recover from one of the tombs to settle a debt. (I mix things up a little by letting players draw from a deck of random items, missions and curses before session if they so please.)

The Convention's Winner Claims
the Cup of Demise Best Player Award

I also GMed Catacombs of the Pariahs, one of the dungeon complexes from the City of Vultures. Transported to the depth of the catacombs by the sorcerer Padog Miir, the adventurers had four hours to emerge alive from the labyrinth. An undead lord and his entourage of concubines were defeated, the tomb of a powerful magic-user looted, cultists fought, an enigmatic device of the ancients messed with (successful saving throws helped out here), and a band of pariahs press-ganged into the party’s service. The players made it back up to the upper level reasonably quickly, avoiding the dangerous depths visited in a much earlier playtest. Morrill, 4^th-level Magic-User (Patrick) was strangled by an invisible apparition who snuck up on the party. The company emerged from the depths with moderate but adequate treasure, and a magic sword.

Dr. Becker Racks Up the Kills

I played in Storming the Forbidden City III, run by Jonathan Becker. This was a series of three self-contained adventures developing sites in the classic TSR module. Having suffered heavy casualties in the previous round in a humanoid lair assault, the Hungarian team was augmented with new reinforcements to seek the treasures of the yuan-ti in their most ancient pyramid-temple. The adventure started with careful reconnaissance (probably overly cautious for truly effective play, but the second round made the veterans cautious), and followed with dungeon-crawling beneath the pyramid. We saw one of the adventure’s three levels, and found one of the major treasure-caches, where got embroiled in a fight against a well of water weirds. The half-orc Cleric who could immediately dispatch them with purify food and water was the first to be dragged under, and while he could survive effectively with his helm of underwater action, this made the battle into a much more perilous affair. The adventure thus produced Cauldron Con’s signature casualty for Marcella, 7^th-level Ranger (Max), who was drowned, revived, and subsequently fireballed by Chomy’s careless use of a wand of wonder. Another character, Thomas Peacock, a Thief-Bard, drowned ingloriously. Grabbing the bounty of the chamber and fending off the enormous giant spider that tagged along in the catacombs on the way back to ambush us from the rear, we emerged rich and victorious.

The Slyth Never Saw It Coming

I also played in Slyth Hive II, a high-level deathfest of a module by Prince of Nothing (now available on DriveThruRPG). This is kind of a scenario where you bring your best to fight the worst: the finest champions of multiple dimensions were called to face a world-ending menace. When your convention pregen is named Oberon, the Old Man of the Mountain, Jacques de Molay, Sir Giselher, Solomon the Magician, Brandoch Daha, or The Master of Summer, you’d better start paying attention (the most mighty of them all, the elusive “Kent”, was too powerful to handle by our group). Since this was a night session, we unfortunately had limited time to explore what is an enormous multi-level module, but we tore through two high-end setpiece battles, one with a horde of howling caveman in a cyclopean cavern passage, and a second with several hundred insectile slyth and their psionic overseers in a cavern littered with prehistoric bones. This is a tier of play where high and versatile player capabilities can be used individually or in combination, giving rise to unexpected hacks to regular AD&D procedures. We were somewhat constrained without a steady supply of mass killing powers that’d turn these confrontations into simple massacres, but ended up steamrolling the foe nevertheless with crowd control and targeted action. The session also featured gaming history’s laziest Djinn, whose expertise in avoiding having to do useful work impressed even this team of hardened adventurers.

An Expedition to Hohenwart

Finally, I ran The Saint in Hohenwart, a Helvéczia scenario, where the group was tasked with saving their friend, the young mercenary captain Konrad Göttlinger, from the influence of a strange and ominous saint in the high valley of Hohenwart. Travelling through a mountain wilderness, a grotesque recluse engaging in deviltry was captured, tried and lawfully executed by James Raggi; a duel was fought between two Italian clerics who turned out to be life-long mortal enemies (the affair was settled in a tense card game, eventually won with the devil’s assistance); and Konrad rescued from his predicament. Willem, 2^nd-level Dutch Vagabond (David), an agent of the Dutch East Indies Company not at all modelled on Prince of Nothing, was dashed on the rocks of a waterfall after trying to climb a slippery rock surface with a rope, and assuring everyone he had abundant practice in these matters on the high seas.

The Battle for Safeton Rages On

It cannot be emphasised enough how well things can go if players are focused on getting things done, and having a common interest. There was a lot of creative play demonstrated over the sessions, from clever spell use to bold and smart decision-making, and sometimes just pure on-the-spot improvisation. It helped that Cauldron Con was deliberately targeted at a specific kind of experience, and set up to deliver on that promise. But there was also the energy brought by the players, who all gave their best over two days. It was good to see that the con spoke not only to the grognards among us, but also a younger cohort; some recently acquainted with old-school gaming, and some entirely new to it, who came to Hohenroda to check out what this all meant. It was all focused, with a good fighting spirit and high cheer, and that’s the best thing.

The Revievers' Conclave Meets... Again!

Beyond the games, the convention also hosted a surprise star guest in the person of Mr. Bryce Lynch, reviewer extraordinaire. It has been a long four years since our first meeting in Athens, Ohio, so when we heard Bryce was in the general area, steps were taken to arrange what was, truly, a random encounter. Unfortunately, Bryce was on a tight schedule – he was travelling “to take care of family business”, and the way he stressed the phrase, we decided not to probe further – so most people at the con missed him due to ongoing sessions, but it was an excellent opportunity to catch up on things and shoot the breeze for half an hour or so. It may be too early to reveal details about Bryce’s new OSRIC module line, but we can all be sure it will be a “No Regerts”. Tentative plans of a Crusade to get rid of the sub-par creators littering the “OSR” with irrelevant junk were outlined, and we can promise with some confidence that the response to this particular “problem” will be highly effective, even if it has to rely on Mr. Lynch’s “business associates”. Unfortunately, Bryce had to leave early in his black BMW, so the fine details are still to be elaborated.

Extra-Fabulous Collectibles

Finally, Cauldron Con featured an auction of riches from the community: treasures from 1980s German comic books to uncommon old-school publications went to lucky buyers, some after an energetic bidding war. Settembrini proved a skilled auctioneer at introducing the titles and their context, and generous lucre was gained by the sellers, as well as various charity organisations. On the final day, an award ceremony was also held: hand-engraved copper cauldrons went to the convention’s best player, most effective looter, the player who died most (“the Cup of Demise”), and the best GM – the mighty Jonathan Becker, who will no doubt fill it with the skulls of his enemies back in the U.S. of A. And that was Cauldron Con 2023. With the pace and energy, it felt a day short, although that may be asking for too much from the hard-working hosts. There was just a lot crammed into it, and there were things you’d inevitably miss – an ongoing multi-day Chainmail battle to determine the fate of empires in the German old-school scene’s shared Greyhawk campaign, an OD&D hex-crawl, the classily named Don’t Fuck the Priest, The Smorgasbord of Adventure, and many more. As always, you can’t come away with everything, but it felt like coming away with a lot. We also saw a pizza vending machine, which proves, once and for all, that greatness is still within mankind’s reach. 2024 sounds like a nice number. Appetites were whetted. Spielen wir AD&D!

An Assortment of Excellence

Until then, stay tuned for part II of the convention report, where we will present the Handshake Firmness Evaluation Chart. Strict records have been kept!

Vorsprung Durch Technik:
The Pizza Vending Machine

[REVIEW] Tomb of the Twice-Crowned King

Twice the Heads,
Twice the Fun!

Tomb of the Twice-Crowned King (2023)

by Hawk

Self-published

Levels 8–10

Hello, and welcome to part THREE of **THE RECONQUISTA**, wherein entries of the scandalous No Artpunk Contest II (banned on Reddit but the top seller in the artpunk category on itch.io) are subjected to RIGHTEOUS JUDGEMENT. As previously, the contest focuses on excellence in old-school gaming: creativity, craft, and table utility. It also returns to the original old school movement in that it assumes good practices can be learned, practiced and mastered; and there are, in fact, good and bad ways of playing. Like last year, these reviews will assume the participants have achieved a basic level competence, and are striving to go forward from that point. One adventure, No Art Punks by Peter Mullen, shall be excluded since Peter is contributing cover and interior art for my various publications. With that said and solemnly declared, Deus Vult! Let Destiny prevail!

* * *

Tomb of the Twice-Crowned King takes you into the resting place of a murderous warlord who put his own servants and family to death to guard him in his unlife, which is definitely the thing to do if you live on a metal album cover. The scenario looks deceptively small at a first glance, but it turns out to be a lot larger than it seems. The scenario’s main value lies in how it is built into a carefully honed killing field where interlocking encounters present a deadly gauntlet over 31 keyed areas. A spirit of good competitive fun permeates the work – this is high-skill, high-stakes funhouse AD&D from an author who has mastered this particular game style, and developed the skills to present it effectively in written form.

The level range is getting respectable: this is clearly an adventure designed for capable parties with commensurate resources and solid player experience. Not every encounter has a clear solution, but the module trusts your players to use their capabilities to circumvent them on their own terms.  The module excels particularly at the baited trap encounter. The entrance is guarded by two bronze statues wielding massive hammers, which prove stubbornly inanimate right until the moment when all hell is let loose in the tomb, upon which they begin demolishing the bridge leading to the entrance, and set up a guard for escaping PCs. 10 mummies in another room do not react for 4 rounds, just enough to put the players’ mind at ease before springing into action. The titular crowns are out in the open in the tomb’s main hall, just within reach... you know you want to grab it, just to see what happens if you do. This is a nasty mousetrap of a module, where getting in is a lot easier than getting out. It is also a piggy bank of the really good stuff that makes it very tempting.

The skilful design extends to combat setups – both standard and souped-up monsters (e.g. a vampire with a nine lives stealer sword) are used to great effect. While tombs are mostly static locations, this one does a reasonably good job keeping things lively by presenting effective defences and throwing curveballs at the players (such as one group of hill giant skeletons trying to push PCs into a pit filled with ghasts under the cover of continual darkness, and another bunch throwing giant-sized pots of flaming oil from ledges above a rope bridge). Some of the higher-end guardians hunt intruders effectively until they can strike for maximum effect. These tactical setups and defensive schemes make for effective and deadly combinations – but at this level, you should have enough resources to crack them. Traps are likewise clever, like a statue with gemstone eyes that shoots disintegrating beams, and whose eyes explode if removed; or a room of stepping stones leading through a pit of slime that turns its victims into ghasts or wights – with some stepping stones rigged to just give way and sink if stepped on. These are killer encounters, but they are also killer encounters of the “I should have known!” variety. After a while, good play gives you an instinct for these things – a tingling sense in the back of your head. Tomb of the Twice-Crowned King rewards the use of this sense.

Finally, it is the small things that spice it up further. Minor descriptive detail is used to add a little extra even to the basics – random wights approach “screeching and screaming madly (no surprise)”, while ghasts “whisper words of death as they prowl”. A room of sarcophagi has a bunch of fun “sarcophagus contents” results like “Male and female skeletons embracing”, “Putrid tomb air is released: save vs. poison or contract random disease”, or “Mass of maggots eating corpse, underneath is M-U scroll”. This is decent extra mileage for what are mostly one- or two-line additions.

The presentation is rock solid. Everything is there on six pages, except one of those pages is dedicated to Hawk’s expressive rendition of the Twice-Crowned King, and ¾ of another is occupied by the map, so all that text occupies 4.25 pages of real estate. No space or word is wasted, but you do not feel short-charged in the end. It is all there and all effectively conveyed, from strategically placed stat boxes to room entries which are as long as they need to be, and not a line longer. While dense with text, this is, in fact, an example of what good layout should aspire to – a compact, play-friendly, effective presentation that puts all you need at your fingertips, but gets out of the way once that is accomplished. It is simple, elegant, and polished to perfection.

Tomb of the Twice-Crowned King rises high above the average, competent tomb-robbing scenario with its tight design and touches of individuality: it is a great example of doing great things with vanilla AD&D. It has charisma, an infectious sense of wild fun, and a strong understanding of what makes high-level, module-oriented play tick. Like a finely honed blade of the purest Japanese steel, it cuts through tanks and bad players alike, and brings a smile to your face when you hold it in your hands. High energy.

No playtesters are credited in this publication.

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

[REVIEW] Vault of the Mad Baron

Vault of the Mad Baron

[REVIEW] Vault of the Mad Baron (2022)

by Christian Toft Madsen

Published by CTM Publishing

Levels 3–5

A hollow Earth with a populated interior is a great setting for adventure stories, and a good way to place even stranger things under your fantasy world. From Verne, Doyle and Obruchev to Burroughs and Lovecraft, as well as the highly underrated weirdo children’s science fantasy series, Sunken Worlds (a.k.a. Spartakus and the Sun Beneath the Sea), it has been occupied by dinosaurs, UFOs, cavemen, nazis, punk pirates, dancing yellow pangolins, and intelligent lizardmen. This module is the second in a three-part series exploring the “Inner World”, two of which have been published so far. Journey to the Inside Out (itself an outstanding module I read but have so far failed to review) was a lost world setting with cavemen lorded over by a technologically advanced alien race, Vault of the Mad Baron is a bustling mediaeval city, and the forthcoming Labyrinth of the Dreaming Machine is going to be post-apocalyptic. The three modules are set in the same place, except separated by millennia (with time travel possibly linking them). For instance, the main dungeon of the first module is revisited here in a way that leaves most of the physical space intact, while showing how the place has been affected by the passage of time and repurposed by its new inhabitants.

Vault of the Mad Baron has a more conventional setting than Journey to the Inside Out, being set in Bergfried, a Late Mediaeval / Early Modern port city ruled by a hereditary monarchy founded by Northman conquerors, as well as a monotheistic church, the nobility, the guilds, and a rising criminal underclass. The pulp elements of Journey are still present, but fairly well hidden underneath the thick layers of a normal fantastic mediaeval society that reacts to these elements – a mysterious plague caused by messing with things that ought to have been left buried – in a fairly realistic way a fantastic mediaeval society would. Corruption, intrigue, the lust for power and revenge come to the fore as the plague spreads and things start falling apart, heading towards some sort of resolution between Bergfried’s competing factions.

This is the module’s basic premise: it presents a complex, interconnected sandbox setting in a large city with an eye towards realism, then throws curveballs when the characters start to dig deeper and events in the city escalate. It is sort of a low-magic and relatively low-level sort of D&D; light on monsters and treasure (perhaps a bit too low, especially on the latter), and high on realpolitik and competing factions. You could easily run it without the hollow earth premise if you wanted. The module notes it “contains topics which may be unpleasant to embrace in a fun pastime activity such as colonial aspects, abuse, murder, drug substances, poverty, diseases”, which is a bit like saying a candy jar contains candy, or a fantasy story features swords. Luckily, the module delivers on the good stuff in spades, without it being either preachy or puerile.

Vault of the Good Layout

The first impressive thing about the module is its scope, and its efficiency in delivering it. This is a 60-page book that would probably be a 240-page volume in lesser hands. “So what is in the sandbox?” “Everything.” “Everything?” “Everything.” The quantity of material crammed in is exemplary, containing everything you could conceivably need to run adventures in the city, with a gazetteer-style writeup, several random tables to facilitate play therein, detailed writeups of its six factions, their main NPCs and mapped headquarters, plus a large two-level dungeon system with a total of 80 keyed areas. “Good layout” has largely become a counterproductive obsession in this corner of the hobby, but that is not the case here. This is, in fact, good information design and good layout. A ton of information is presented, but it is being made accessible in the same breath. Page spreads are laid out to facilitate ease of use, with a plethora of random tables and charts next to the main text. The text is economic, and things are meticulously cross-referenced.

This efficiency is a necessity. As sandbox settings go, this one is heavily interconnected. The keywords are complexity, complexity, and more complexity. Everything relates to something, leads to something else, or is in conflict with a third thing. There are many moving parts, but the book does an admirable job of keeping them within the GM’s reach. There are occasional hiccups with table coding: is that Table BG, Table EG, or Table G1? It is not always completely straightforward to find where they are, and let me tell you, there are a lot of tables – it is hard to find a page spread without one, or five. However, this is the worst thing I can say about the module’s presentation. It is mostly just very solidly made.

Vault of the Shady Factions

The second thing that impresses about Vault of the Mad Baron is its handling of political intrigue. The rival factions are presented with their agendas, key objectives, things they want done in the city’s power struggles, and the people who run them. All of them crave power over Bergfried, but they do so in different ways – from the rising power of the Iron Guild and the doctrinal conservatism of the Church to the mystery cult of Dagon and the Baron’s grievously wronged wife who is plotting her revenge. This is not the railroady sort of political intrigue. Rather, you are handed the game board, you are handed the playing pieces with their capabilities and motivations, and let it play out in game as the players throw a wrench into the machinery. The city is a conglomerate of interlocking systems, and you can disrupt and destroy these systems through your actions.

In addition to the detailed static setting, a dynamic element is introduced through a simple but useful progression chart handling the advancement of NPC agendas – all based on how things get resolved through faction intrigue and player agency. Bergfried is a powder keg ready to blow, and there are serious opportunities for tipping the balance – with an element of moral dilemma. The city’s mighty and powerful all have something to hide, and are all eager not to have the skeletons in their closets disturbed. And disturb them you can: the headquarters of these organisations are written up as mini-dungeons (usually with about 30 locations each) ripe for stealthy and determined infiltrators. The cloak-and-dagger aspect is well done in both the physical and intangible sense, even if the room descriptions are mostly one- or two-line notes. As one-page dungeons go, they are the better sort.

Vault of the Vault

The Bergfried Dungeons form the module’s centrepiece. The two levels (three if we count the castle above them) are more detailed than the preceding city sites, using bullet point-based presentation with terse, matter-of-fact descriptions. The room entries are nothing to write home about – they serve their purpose, but you will not find entries that make you go “Wow, I should have thought about this one.” It is more of a low-key and realistic affair of prisons, workshops, guard rooms, cultist/bandit lairs and abandoned sections, without much in the way of “specials”. Realism takes precedence over whimsy. However, the dungeon system is ultimately saved by its interconnected nature, and even its size. This is an appropriately large place to explore, containing enough mysteries and dark secrets to uncover – all of which links back to things going on in the city. As a nice touch that will be mostly lost on those who do not have Journey to the Inside Out (an error you should redress when you can), the upper dungeon level is identical to the one in the previous module, and contains several callbacks to Bergfried’s prehistory. While the upper level is largely abandoned with the occasional guard outpost and NPC/monster lair, the challenge of the lower level involves four distinct areas, two of which are occupied and run in a systematic fashion by the Baron’s men, with guard schedules, checkpoints, and defensive systems. We also find the module’s weirdest things crammed in here, deep beneath the surface – and there is a large contrast indeed. It makes for a pleasant sense of discovery if the players come this far.

In summary, Vault of the Mad Baron is an exemplary adventure in both content and presentation. It lies slightly outside the standard D&D paradigm – it is a more-or-less realistic, low-magic Late Mediaeval setting with an underlying element of science fantasy, focused on a combination of cloak-and-dagger intrigue and dungeon infiltration instead of reckless adventuring. It lowballs its treasure values (something I am also guilty of, although not to this extent), so not that much character advancement will take place here, but that can be altered if you wish, and the NPCs largely play by the same rules. The tone is serious and tends towards the darker side; shades of grey and hard decisions all around. If you are looking for something after you are done with Hole in the Oak, this may not be the perfect sequel. You could say it is a bit like a LotFP adventure not written by edgy children. This is a module which inhabits its niche effortlessly: if you are interested in the premise, you will be happy with what you are getting. It is a large-scale, high-effort scenario that does “everything”, and does it very well. It comes with GM and player maps for VTT use. Oddly enough, there is even a trailer.

This module credits its playtesters, and that is, also, as it should be.

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

[REVIEW] Fractious Mayhem at Melonath Falls

The Chair

Fractious Mayhem at Melonath Falls (2021)

by Trent Smith

Self-published

Levels 5–8

Hello, and welcome to part SEVEN 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!

* * *

Consider, my brethren, the Parable of the Chair. How simple it looks! On four legs it rests, and a seat and a back it does possess. Naught more does a chair need – and it can sometimes do with even less. How come, then, that so few good chairs are being made, and that those dabblers who can not assemble a simple chair have set their eyes on fancier upholstery, obscuring the fact that the fruit of their work is scarcely fit for sitting on? Falsehood and clumsy workmanship lurk there. But these pretenders are easily unmasked, for their vile tricks melt away at once before the simple command: “Makest thou a good chair!”

Supreme skill is revealed in simplicity. High concept and fancy presentation can conceal faulty game writing just as much as too much spice can mask spoiled cooking ingredients. In a simple, straightforward design, everything is transparent. Can you work under the limitations of the general toolkit? Can you create “good vanilla”? This is a true test (note, not a “one true way”!) of design ability. Consider the deceptive simplicity of Keep on the Borderlands, the tutorial dungeon crawling of In Search of the Unknown, or the plain “orcs in a hole plus some tombs” premise of Borshak’s Lair. They are often dismissed as uninteresting and basic, their popularity only ascribed to nostalgic memories and a large print run (Borshak’s is an obvious exception – it has been virtually forgotten, even though the fanzine where it is found is relatively easy to obtain). Yet that cannot be the cause, as people who are introduced to them in our time, with no previous experience, love them just the same. Truthfully, they are not particularly deep or sophisticated experiences: they are elementary, even primal. Keep was allegedly written and playtested relatively hastily; there is nothing to suggest Borshak’s is anything but a zine article. On the contrary, many have tried to crack the “basic humanoid adventure” code, and failed. Very few remember TSR’s later efforts in this area, and few of the new old-school humanoid lairs have a reputation comparable to B1 or B2 (meanwhile, megadungeons have a modern canon). And this leaves the aforementioned as examples of pure, effortless craft.

The previous considerations serve to make the case for Melonath Falls, a humanoid lair adventure for mid-level characters. A multi-level complex of four, loosely connected caverns behind a mighty two-tiered waterfall, it is a low-key homage to Gygaxian adventure design which does nothing “special”, except do every “simple” thing expertly. A band of xvarts (why xvarts? and why do they crop up so often in great modules?) are operating from the caverns behind the falls, harassing the river and the rough lumber town downstream. The setting is quintessential North American frontier myth: grandiose natural wonders, outposts of civilisation populated by hard men not afraid of getting their hands dirty and ruled by charming individuals named along the lines of “Boss Bowlton” (indeed, the lumber town is scummy enough to present trouble for characters looking for a place to rest and store valuables without getting gutted), and a dangerous wilderness teeming with hostile tribal civilisations beyond the realm of men. Setting is not the main concern of the adventure, although the background it sketches up with a few broad strokes and later backwards references add a layer of intrigue to the baseline scenario.

Mighty!

The meat is the network of four caverns opening from the waterfall face. These entrances are connected by various treacherous routes, some obvious and extremely hazardous, and some only made available to players who can think about the environment and don’t fall prey to routines which will just channel them into danger. (While there are diagrams illustrating this all-important front sections, if there is one thing this module would need is a player handout giving the players exactly what they see – the written descriptions are exact, but long enough to miss details.) And here, we get the real core of the adventure: what on first sight looks like a vertical B2 homage in fact works like a WG4-style murder machine, where a gang of relatively weak monsters are operating from entrenched defensive positions to repel and harass much more powerful intruders. The xvarts of Melonath Falls are ready with rocks, harpoons and nets, deceptive and treacherous terrain segments, a freight elevator exposed to observation and missile fire, axes ready to cut ropes in a desperate situation, and a xvart Magic-User with a push spell, one of AD&D’s “never memorise” spells, used here for that “fractious mayhem”. Not quite Normandy, but it will take tactics and party discipline to clear the bottleneck – almost hopeless for a normal force, but then a mid-level party should have just enough extra juice to clear the obstacles with some trouble. Break out that Swiss army knife and get to work on the problem.

Just like the B2/WG4 reversal from fun smurf-killing excursion to deadly meatgrinder, the caverns do not connect quite the way you would expect them to based on knowing previous adventure classics. The two lowermost cave systems are inhabited by incidental monster groups unconnected to the xvart levels, and only connect to the main adventure core through obscure and hazardous connections – or, in the case of cave B, not at all. Adventurers who get it into their heads to just go in through an undefended rear entrance may either not find that back entrance at all, or waste a lot of resources doing so. There are climbing hazards, other environmental dangers, bizarre vignette encounters (a mushroom garden with a very strange gardener), and cleverly hidden treasure. The final cavern, on the top, is a strange enigma and easily missed.

Fractious Mayhem

The main caves are a more conventional environment (your usual combination of barracks rooms, a shrine, a prison, chief’s quarters, stolen good, the mostly unused caverns, etc. – all the common notes are being hit), where the remaining, lurking foes are supplemented with a landscape of finer-grain complexity which are an excellent test of player resourcefulness. Here, you can go deeper and mess around with stuff for fun and profit. Valuables will seem sparse on a surface scan, but some of the non-obvious stuff is rather neat, and it adds up. There are interesting choices to be made – how to get rich on stolen trade goods that are, technically, still owned by somebody, or what to do with loot pieces which are valuable but heavier than their gp weight, or connected to organised crime. The xvarts are allied to a company of shady wererats – mutual benefits, mutual distrust. The rat god may appear in person and give you the smackdown of your life if you mess with his temple (no stats, alas!) These minor touches contribute a lot to the “campaign-level” impact of the module, the stuff that happens afterwards. There are hostages, and a few NPCs to interact with. Unexpected possibilities like triggering a marble elephant figurine in enclosed spaces (ouch!) There is always a layer of very Gygaxian misleading and deception, which draws the players’ attention in one direction to hit them from another (or steer them away from the really good stuff). There are a few spots where it seems a bit “too clever” (a mild case of the “hidden depth” problem you find in RJK modules) – certainly, this is a module for highly skilled players. You have to see behind the façade and notice the odd detail or error in the pattern to get ahead. Some players who are not into this style of play would probably see the module as frustrating, while others would get a kick out of it.

The presentation is utilitarian – mostly clear two-column text, could use the occasional visual anchor because the information density can get very high in tight spots. Italics and boldface were invented for a reason, and were used in the TSR modules to good effect, so why not use them here? Likewise, another editing pass (or even map notations) to add cross-references to show how reinforcements and other forward/backward links work in the caverns would be useful, and even important to the flow – although all this can be added with a little effort. The content, however, is gold, without rushing forward to convince you of its originality – it is just there. It is also highly Gygaxian, but not in a tryhard way. The homage is obvious, but the personal take is clearly there too. Here we return to the chair analogy: if Melonath Falls was a chair, it would be the unassuming hand-me-down your eyes might skip over when appreciating the décor, but after a few hours of sitting, you would get up without any discomfort or back pain. How odd… A chair for sitting? Who has heard of such a thing?

This publication was not playtested (the author ran out of time due to the contest deadline), and it would no doubt be a little tighter if it was. Still, a mighty good effort.

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: ***** / *****