Cryptic Signals - The Plantiary, Bizarre Monsters, Lusus Naturae

Check out part 1 of our bestiary reviews here.

The Plantiary review by emmy

The Plantiary is a 47 page zine containing descriptions of 19 plants , published by Games Omnivorous. Written by Andre Novoa and brilliantly illustrated by Pipo Kimkiduk. Each plant contains details on its habitat, size, frequency and special ability. It is written in a playful style geared more towards silly interactions between plants and PCs, more than biological accuracy. I imagine them better suited for a gonzo or a science fantasy setting.

The zine itself is of an unusual format 29.5x14cm (11.5x5.5in), making it stand out (literally) from the other zines. Most of the page space is overtaken by flora. Each of the plants has a page of a unique colour, and all the illustrations use bright tones that pop out of the page. Joyful to flip through all in all.

The special abilities have plenty of interactivity to them. Ranging from being a helpful tool to absolutely game-changing to being a setting’s core feature. The descriptions seem to me as only a starting point, since they will need some detailing to fit into your world. Only a few sentences are given per plant, which is not enough to pick up and play for me. More information about the plant's habitat and relationship to its environment would be a great addition. My other gripe is that the zine doesn’t give any aid with rumours or player information about the plants. You will have to come up with how to inform players about the plant’s abilities.

Several of the plants feel really unfair. Their abilities activate when someone “passes nearby” and the danger is not telegraphed. For example there is a plant that gives a player a vision of death, and allows the GM to make that vision true by any means in any situation where it “might be plausible”. I really wish abilities like these were only activated on interaction and didn’t give the GM absolute power.

Overall it is a fun little zine to draw inspiration from and make your setting a little weirder.

Bizarre Monsters Review by Nick LS Whelan

Disclosure: My own most recent publication is a monster book of similar size and style to this one. As this book is 8 years old, no longer in print, and not being actively promoted, I don't believe it meaningfully competes with my own work in a way that would prejudice my review.

Bestiary of Fantastic Creatures Volume 1: Bizarre Monsters (A Rusty Dagger Supplement) is 36 pages and features 15 creatures. Very nearly all the creatures are interesting in at least one respect. They've got some bit of background, or ability that I'd be interested in playing with at my table. Unfortunately, few or none of them represent more than a single interesting idea. The entries are padded out with naturalistic justifications for the creature's one interesting feature, and the rest of the details are filled in by the sort of rote creature design that anyone can do in their sleep. The giants are dumb, the savages are noble, the the eyeless creatures have sensitive hearing.

It was a frustrating book to read because I kept getting excited about finding something good, then losing that enthusiasm as the promise led nowhere. It reads like a book that could have been a strong 4-6 pages, but had to be padded out to hit the assigned word count. Take the cover art creature, the Pohke, for example. "Exploding cattle" is a good prompt for a monster, but a whole paragraph explaining the effects of their explosion (which are exactly what you'd expect) doesn't help me run the monster better. Neither does the entire paragraph that details their domestication and mating habits (challenging), or the paragraph about the general attitude of a herd (not hostile unless there's a bull present). The paragraph explaining the exact process of internal gasses and rubbing anal sacs that cause the explosions to occur definitely wasn't helpful, though it was at least pretty funny.

Even as I go through the Pohke's entry for these examples, I am again frustrated by its highs and lows. All these paragraphs do contain bits of evocative information buried between passages like:"[…] if there is a bull present (average 1 bull per 4 Pohke), there is a 75% chance that the bull will charge if characters come within 60 feet. A charging attack needs a distance of 30 feet, and a bull charging will do 3d8+6 damage. A cow may charge, but…" That sort of hyper-specific instruction buried in the middle of a paragraph, that is itself buried in the middle of a page is self defeating. It's only possible for specific measurements like that (1 per 4, 75% chance, within 60 feet, needs 30 feet, deals 3d8+6 damage) to be useful if they can be referenced quickly during play. But since they're hidden in these blocks of text, they cannot reasonably be referenced at the table, and thus they fill space while contributing nothing.

And the Pohke are only middle-of-the-pack for good ideas. I quite like the eyeless people who wield weapons with large feathers on them that enable them to be exceptionally aware of their environment in the heat of battle. There's also the giants who can create fire with their mind, but aren't smart enough to understand their own agency in creating it; and the bugs that spit out fast-hardening, highly flammable cement. All great starting points for a creature, but none of these live up to their potential. I believe the author is capable of much better writing, but that their style is burdened by expectations that were established by the worst tendencies of older manuals of monsters.

Ideally each of these creatures could have been condensed down to one page, or even half of one page, preventing the good stuff from being diluted by boring stuff and allowing more of them to fit in the booklet. Alternatively, I'd like to have seen the table-reference info put into an abbreviated stat block form. The paragraphs of text could then be used to communicate the sort of information that helps round out a creature in the referee's mind. Snippets of history, culture, and motivation answering why a creature would intrude on the player's adventures, or why the players might be tempted to intrude on the creature's lives. The "Campaign Integration" section at the end of each entry makes some attempt at this, but they read like brief afterthoughts.

I will praise the book for how often local knowledge is referenced throughout. People who live near these creatures don't just have rumor tables. They have tried-and-true survival strategies, and #LifeHacks to share with any traveler smart enough to listen. Most of these creatures are species that live and reproduce the same as people and animals do. There's no way for creatures like that to remain completely mysterious. It's nice to see that second level of thinking about how they interact with the world, and represents one way in which this Rusty Dagger Supplement has a step up other monster manuals.

Overall, this is a book that falls too far short of its potential. Care and creativity clearly went into its production, but its ideas are undeveloped. Like a highly polished first draft.

Bizarre Monsters was written & illustrated by Casey Sorrow, and edited by Whitney Sorrow. As best I can tell it is currently only available in a digital edition from DriveThruRPG for $4.99, Though a print edition was produced at one time.

Lusus Naturae

Review by Ava

Lusus Naturae was a popular book during the mid-OSR G+ era when I first found this corner of our hobby, and I remember it being an influential book for me. It seems distinctly of that era when reading it, an LotFP-adjacent game text that is definitively horror focused, with prose more indulgent than the terse minimalism often found in OSR products currently.

The best of such prose opens the book, with Chandler declaring:

The truth then: monsters love us. They love humans. They need us.

They acknowledge the debt, in the same way that some people kneel beside an animal they have killed while hunting, and murmur words of gratitude; or clasp their hands over a holiday meal and express their thanks to some deity before cutting meat from the bone crushing between their teeth, washing the warm bolus down with wines and gravies.

When we see this perspective properly executed within the book, the work excels. Far from the somewhat gratuitous and entirely misogynistic scenes of body horror and gore that illustrated the core LotFP books, Chandler here understands that what is horrific is not the monster itself but what the monster reflects in is; how the monster recontextualizes humanity. Many monsters here, such as the Auspice, which produces prophecies when it feeds on human flesh, the Kakistocrat, which kills those who are ethical and capable, or Throatworms, which continue to be bred as articles of assassination, are less interesting in and of themselves than they are for the kind of social situation they are likely to engender and what they imply about the world.

Beyond these, there are occasional moments of sublimity, where Chandler so perfectly encapsulates a chilling human foible or eccentricity within a moment of monster description; the Abstruct, for example, who comes from a dimension where killing children and constructing citadels of their flesh is perfectly normal, and refuses to debate the morality of such an action, but is otherwise exceedingly polite, will “display happiness by wrapping its shawl around its body” if it “believes that it has made a friend.” Or the way in which the Rapturous Weaver keeps its gold it uses for sculpting fake prosthetic noses “arranged in neat stacks” and “the other treasures…dumped in a pit near the back.” Such behaviour is so lucid, so telling, so utterly human and banal that it serves as the best function of fantasy, to hold a mirror to the parts of us in something that seems so utterly unlike us. In the Abstruct I see terrifying humanity of the kind person who holds monstrous beliefs; in the Rapturous Weaver the single-minded obsession of the well-intentioned who has lost perspective.

With a collection as large as this there are often more misses than hits, however. Many monsters’ description comprises several pages of backstory that are unlikely to ever be relevant in play, or the interesting avenues of interacting with them can only be learned by incredibly esoteric means. Or, much ink is spilled on sentences which strain themselves to achieve a literary “weirdness” (as in the New Weird) and sufficient horrific effect, but don’t contribute otherwise to the theming of the monster or will be likely to be useful as descriptive fodder for the Referee. This to me seems emblematic of the mid-OSR period, which to me seemed to want to seek to differentiate itself traditional D&D through aesthetic means, emphasizing horror and surrealist fantasy themes, and that developed techniques like “don’t say the monster’s names” in service of such aesthetic goals. One also begins to see similar conventions re-appearing over and over, such as Chandler’s fondness for creatures displaced from their dimension whose mere presence chaotically alters reality, or behemoths who are insensible to the destruction they inadvertently leave in their wake, and the repetition tends to dull the initial novel effect of such creatures.

Another problem that presents itself is that, like Fire on the Velvet Horizon, these monsters all carry with them a heavy bit of worldbuilding. Most of them are unique entities, not something that you’d typically place on a random encounter table, and used as a collection from which the Referee would cherry pick one or two within a campaign, this would be a much stronger text; however, more than half of these monsters have some form of interconnection with a different monster in the text, with several “boss monster” types such as Davinia Marrow, Void’s Memory, and the Ideologue having large groups of subservient monsters with whom they form quasi-“storylines”. The book suggests a world in which every single one of these monsters is extant, but such a world immediately strains credulity by how absurdly horrific it would be; every third monster on this list is a reality warping terror, or at the very least causing widespread destruction to a region. Such unremitting horror quickly becomes bathetic in its monotony, and there are few entries which deviate from this emotional palette to offer something of a reprieve (Dr. Volt, a cartoon supervillain blasted out of their time period into a medieval fantasy world, is a notable exception).

On brass tack levels, almost every monster in this book at least presents a much more interesting potential fight than a simple hacking and slashing of hit points down to 0 (though Chandler relies a bit too much on Save vs Terrible Hallucinations Which Do Damage Also). Many of them fundamentally alter the rules of engagement, and have a strong context which makes it easy for a Referee to situate them within a world and adventure. I also appreciate the omens which tend to foretell each beast (useful for those using Hazard Dice!) and the strong, tactile descriptive language which describes them (along with some absolutely stunning artwork by Gennifer Bone). The Killing Blow mechanic, whereby a character that lands the killing blow gains some boon or effect is, I think, rather ingenious though often wasted on somewhat lacklustre or uninspiring effects. The monster generator contained within is also quite interesting, and given that it contains such concrete elements as what a monster says rather than the vagueries found in other monster entries is likely to provide a more serviceable “standard” monster most of the time than the weaker 50% of monster entries in the book.

Overall, Lusus Naturae remains one of the stronger monster manuals I have read, and a work that is worthy of revisiting. In its rougher edges I see a movement still in its aesthetic growing pains, perhaps too singularly devoted to a particular aesthetic without nuance or consideration for actual play at the table, but there are true moments of aesthetic delight within. Chandler understands horror1, and if you wish your game to bend farther that way, there is much inspiration to be found here, even if some of it may require a little bit of polishing.

[1] I actually think several of these monsters would find themselves a much happier home in a Mothership game than standard D&D.

Flying Dice — Flesh Hill

Having enjoyed Sacrebleu!, I went seeking other work from Tito B.A. Browsing his his catalog, Flesh Hill caught my attention because of its delightfully grisly title. As of writing this review I have read the module, but not played it.

The frontier settlement of Badama is a place built on treachery. Its megalomaniacal founder, Captain Gerrileau, hired singers and poets to spread rumors about a land of opportunity to lure in settlers. Once folk arrive in Badama, they're subject to the violent domination of local authorities and cannot safely leave. Also, at some point, Captain Gerrileau fathered a son who emerged as a half-insect creature. The Captain exposed the child, and used the incident as an excuse to begin brutalizing and enslaving the native peoples of the area. His conquest was aided to completion when the native peoples came under attack from giant ants. With the native population suppressed, the giant ants are now encroaching on Badama's territory, and Captain Gerrileau has resorted to his old tricks to lure adventuring parties to the area to take care of the problem.

Badama is where the adventure starts, and a little over a third of the book's length is dedicated to it as a location for adventure. Eventually play moves to a vast and arid badland the players must navigate, culminating in a delve into the giant anthill dungeon and a confrontation with the ant queen. In each phase of the adventure play is driven by encounter matrices, which I think is neat. For example, while players wander the streets of Badama, the referee rolls d4 to determine a style of building, then d6 to generate some event happening in or around that building which would draw the player's attention. Rolling two dice may be a little less convenient than rolling one, but it's nice to have your random table somewhat sorted. It allows the referee some flexibility they wouldn't have otherwise. For example, if the players have been hanging around a merchant's tent for a long time, and the ref wants a merchant-specific encounter, they can roll on that segment of the matrix.

The matrices do introduce a tricky layout problem: how do you fit the X axis of an encounter matrix onto a page? Most of the matrices use a d4 on the X axis, which mitigates the problem somewhat, but even 4 columns only gives you enough space for 2~4 words per line. It also seems like a lot of tinkering was done to make each table work individually without giving consideration to consistency throughout the book. Font size, formatting, and hyphenation rules change matrix-to-matrix. The resulting pages feel cramped to the point of being difficult to read. This is particularly unfortunate because I think the matrices are a great tool, but one that's hindered by its presentation. The book would have been better served if the matrices were printed on landscape oriented pages.

The content of the matrices—which is really what matters—manage a good balance between the weird and the mundane; the tragic and the banal. The one for Badama's streets, for example, communicates the bleak conditions there without needing to put a starving child on every streetcorner. The bleakness is background radiation among which normal people have found ways to live their lives, as people do. When players are confronted with it directly it's just as often in small things like worm-ridden fruit, tools dropped carelessly from a roof, or distant domestic disputes. The entire community is trapped by despair and apathy. Nobody cares enough about what they're doing to do it right. There are, of course, more direct examples of the powerful abusing the powerless as well. Badama is a place filled with NPCs who deserve a good murderin', but probably can't be killed because they have a ton of institutional power protecting them.

There are four primary keyed locations in Badama around which events swirl. There is the Slave Market, which is a slave market, where predictably despicable things happen. There is the Red House, a sort of multi-faith worship space that has been largely abandoned since the chief priest was beheaded for trying to stop the sorts of things that happen in the Slave Market. Incidentally, The Red House was intentionally built on a burial site used by the native peoples of the area as a means of demeaning them, which puts lie to the idea that Captain Gerrileau ever intended to live peacefully with them. Next location is the Slaughterhouse, where animals become meat and where a secret fight club operates at night. Secret not because it would be frowned on, but because the people who run it are personal enemies of Gerrileau. Finally there is the Graveyard, which has a number of little things for the players to find and learn.

Each of these locations has its own curiosities and dangers to navigate, which eventually direct the players towards the badlands and the ants beyond. Individually they feel a little shallow. In the Red House, players are meant to look for a secret stair into an underground space. There's nothing to explore down there, but if they stay for at least 10 minutes they'll get attacked by ghosts, and if they defeat the ghosts a map of the region will appear on one of their bellies. The environmental details of the location make it more interesting than it sounds, but the structure of it seems a poor vehicle for creating interesting choices for the players to make. The Slave Market and Graveyard suffer from similar issues. Taken together there is enough in the town that players could spend a whole session there, but everything feels like it's pushing the players out of town rather than adding interesting new wrinkles to the situation. The meatiest location is the Slaughterhouse. It has its own hooks for getting the party invited to a secret fight club, and introduces the only organized anti-Gerrileau faction. I particularly like the Cult of Tailo because they aren't anti-Gerrileau on any high minded moral grounds, they just have a personal grudge against him. None the less, this makes them useful allies to cozy up with. The fights the players can bet on or participate in are also good sources of information. Encountering their first giant ant in a controlled environment is a good education, and feels less forced than the graveyard's caretaker just happening to know a lot about the ants. The purpose of these locations is to help players equip themselves with the knowledge they'll need in the latter half of the adventure. This is good adventure design! I only wish the locations felt like they had a bit more of a life of their own.

I expect my players, and many players, might get stuck on the question of why this settlement is worth risking life and limb to save. Even if Gerrileau and his slavers were ousted from power, the hoodwinked settlers don't strike me as being particularly opposed to the slavery they've been benefiting from. In fact the module even notes that its introduction "appeased" them at a time when they were suffering from labor shortages. The closing notes of the module offer an answer: that once free from the predatory attacks of the ants, the last free native peoples may form an alliance with the party. In essence, if the party cures smallpox they can find allies to help them push out Columbus. I really wish this angle had been woven into the module much earlier. I had the distinct impression up until that last page that there was no significant surviving native population with which the party could ally themselves. Perhaps one of the fighters in the Slaughterhouse could have been someone who snuck into the city, and was trying to earn enough local currency to buy a friend's freedom. Maybe the ghosts under the Red House could have been more talkative. The party needs some contact with a native faction so that the players can conceptualize helping them as an option, even if the faction they encounter is too scattered to help them at the moment.

A final note before moving on from Badama: Tito's self-insert hireling & gravestone are a cute signature on his work. I fully endorse them. (Although 30 sp a day for a maceman's service? It's highway robbery is what it is!)

Depending on how much information gathering the party did, the wastes beyond Badama will be more or less difficult to navigate and survive. Even in the best of circumstances, treading a straight line for 50 miles through a featureless wasteland sounds nearly impossible. To complicate things, the base of the ant hill is down in a crater, so it won't be visible on the horizon until the party is quite close. This stretch of the game will depend largely on how an individual referee manages overland exploration. Do they enjoy orienteering mini games, or do they let the party zip straight across? It's a section of play that could take multiple hours, or less than a minute, depending on where a group's interests are. All the module offers by way of content here is hex map and a matrix of 24 random encounters, which is all it really needs. As before, the encounters are good, and I think this is the only place in the module where the party can encounter free native peoples: a group of 3-8 travelers.

The Ant Hill is not a traditionally mapped dungeon. Instead there's a navigational mini game in which players make a 2d10 roll that determines both how they move, and whether they encounter any notable chambers or foes. On the one hand this is sensible. Exploring an anthill using traditional means would be tediously labyrinthine. Obfuscating the process with a bit of random chance is good! On the other hand, completely randomizing navigation doesn't sit well with me. Play seems to devolve to the party rolling dice, the referee quietly noting their position, then telling them to roll dice again with a few breaks in the action for encounters. There's nothing stopping players from coming up with clever plans for how to bypass or speed up the navigational mini game, and it wouldn't be hard for a good referee to leverage this system to accommodate that. However, even in the absence of clever plans, I feel that the game ought to be offering choices to the players about whatever their current activity is. This need not be elaborate. Perhaps there could be two lists of clues: one that points towards the queen, and one which doesn't. Before each navigation roll, the referee reads a clue from each list. If the party follows the good clues they roll 2d10 as normal, but if they follow one of the bad clues they roll 2d8. Progress is made on a roll of 10+, so the penalty for bad choices is not onerous. I'm sure there are many options even better than this, but it's important that players have something to think about and learn from during any phase of play.

As an odd note, using the navigational minigame as-written, it's nearly impossible for the party to leave. The bottom 4 results of the 2d10 roll (10% chance of occurring) all cause the party to ascend. This low chance makes sense, since players wishing to get to the bottom of the dungeon don't want to accidentally go up, and would only do it if they got really lost. If players said they wanted to leave the dungeon, my instinct would be to reverse the table so the odds were weighted in the direction they wanted to travel. However, the book says "Those trying to ascend will roll 2d10+1." Which means only the bottom 3 results of the table (6% chance of occurring) can lead to the exit. Presumably there's a mistake here somewhere, either in the way the information is written or the way I'm reading it, but it's a very odd little tidbit.

Once at the bottom of the hill players can confront the ant queen and her bodyguard—Gerrileau's half-insect son. Even if fought separately they're both tough foes relative to other encounters in the adventure. I almost wonder if any party that could defeat them wouldn't be equally capable of simply taking over Badama by force. Sadly, fighting seems to be the only real option since the queen has her mind set on killing or subjugating all human life in the region. It would be nice if her description gave us a little more insight into her motivation. If the referee knew why the ant queen wanted to kill all humans they'd have some basis from which they could respond if the party attempted to negotiate. It doesn't need to be much: perhaps she's afraid the humans will destroy her if she doesn't destroy them first, perhaps she views the humans as competition for resources, or maybe she just wants revenge for all the ants who've been squished under human feet.

I do like that if the party defeat her they can discover a discarded bit of a god's body in her belly. Something that fell from the sky to make this crater, and which set events in motion when she ate it. There's a little table to determine what godbit she ate, with stuff like a toenail the players can use as a scimitar, or a kidney stone that protects the bearer from dangers.

This adventure improves on many of the things I quibbled over in my Sacrebleu! review. The information design is improved. The public domain art is used to better effect. The ant hill is a more interesting location to explore than Sacrebleu!'s goblin fortress. Flesh Hill is more ambitious. It has its own flaws, but in most respects is a marked improvement over the author's earlier work. I confess I don't find giant ants very compelling as antagonists, especially when compared to goblins with the memories of WW1 French soldiers. Perhaps I would feel differently if I'd ever been to the Argentenian Patagonia on which the module's setting is based. According to the New Zealand Deprartment of Conservation, the ants there are "one of the world’s most problematic ant species." I've only ever lived places where ants are cute and harmless. None the less, this is by a wide margin one of the better modules I've read for Bones of Contention.

Flesh Hill was created by Tito B.A. It's available as a PDF from DriveThruRPG for $0.75, discounted from $2.00. According to the book's launch announcement on Reddit, all profits from its sale go towards fighting children's cancer. I was not able to get in touch with Tito to confirm if this is still the case, or what charity the funds would be directed towards.

Update (July 11, 2022): In a post on his own blog, Tito B.A. clarified that the donation drive did happen when the book launched, but is not presently ongoing.

Flying Dice: The Valley of Karaccia

The Valley of Karaccia (kuh-RACK-see-uh) is yet another book I found whilst exploring the "Newest" category on DTRPG. As of writing this critique I have read it, but not played it.

The book can be broken into three parts: setting introduction, followed by two loosely-connected starter adventures. The broad strokes of the setting are standard D&D fare sprinkled with some charming details. For example, I like that the local dwarfs can often be found working with humans, but rarely recreating with them. I had not seen the social dynamic described in quite those terms before, but it suggests an interesting relationship between the two peoples. Similarly with the halflings preferring to live near human communities, but not in human communities. I also like the enclosed play area à la Thunder Rift: a pleasant mountain basin surrounded on nearly all sides by granite cliffs. Tiny settings where players will need to interact with the same communities over and over again have an intimacy I find more compelling than continent-spanning campaigns.

The setting descriptions lean into unnecessary wordiness. It never rambles on too long about any given subject, but does take time to state obvious or irrelevant information. The value of tropey settings like this are that we can rely on shared cultural knowledge to fill out most of the details. The author doesn't need to explain what a dwarf is. They can just describe the interesting bits, and trust that the reader already knows that dwarfs are short, stocky, bearded people who like to dig. To this author's credit they do exactly that with reference to some topics, but not all. For example they make a point of spelling out that "Assault, murder, slander, tithe avoidance, and theft are all illegal." This on the same page where the dominant religion is described as believing that "abuse, assault, torture, murder, and the like [are sins]." I can't help but feel like the author's creativity and page allotment—as well as the reader's time—could have been put to better use than explaining that murder is frowned upon twice on one page.

Religion plays a major role here. The Church of Erm is adhered to by 99% of the valley's inhabitants according to the book. It gives off an eerie vibe which I don't believe was intentional. The simple fact that humans, elves, dwarfs, and halflings all share an identical faith is odd in itself. Two of the three major settlements in Karaccia are called ecclesiarchies, but the only one described in detail—the town of Brink—more closely resembles a theocratic dictatorship. In Brink's description there's a papering-over of conflicts with the church which was probably done to orient players firmly towards the dungeons, but comes off feeling very Stepford Wives. Everybody in town is perfectly happy to be governed by the high priest. There is an imminent transfer of power as the old clerical dictator prepares a young successor to take over, but everyone in town loves both of them, so there is no issue. The retiring cleric is 14th level and has access to powerful miracles, but only provides healing for profit. A sensible mechanic when one is trying to restrict magic healing to players, but the sort of thing that ought to irritate townsfolk who already need to pay this guy 10% of their earnings.

The teachings of Erm are also suspect. For example the church "believes that the evil races and creatures (beasts like kobolds and orcs, dragons and the like) […] should be snuffed out." That's such peculiar phrasing to me. It's not a fundamental truth of the world backed up by unquestionable divine revelation. It's simply a belief that demands utter brutality. There's also the strange situation of Erm's sister divinity, Sra'ha, around whom the second adventure pivots. We learn that this other goddess was worshiped alongside Erm until about 100 years ago. She's described as being a death god the locals used to invoked during funerary rites, but is never described as evil, merely as banned. The party will even discover some writings contemporary to the banning in which the authors are clearly apologetic towards Sra'ha. If the players do everything right their adventures will end with Sra'ha literally manifesting into the world to save an important NPC's life. She is depicted as a loving God who takes care of the dying, yet once she's gone there's no mention of thanking her. Sra'ha presumably remains banned. I am tempted to call this inconsistent world-building on the author's part, save for the fact that it is consistent in depicting the Church of Erm as suspect in its ethics, and unreliable in its teachings. The text otherwise prioritizes clarity, and at no point is Erm ever framed as anything but capital-G Good. Nonetheless, if later releases in the Regulations Codex series see the players taking up Sra'ha's cause against a spiteful Erm, I would be impressed by the subtlety of the craftsmanship.

The book's art deserves some attention here. It leans heavily on stock images, though I didn't track down every piece and can't say whether any is original. Split between six artists, the visual style of the book becomes a little inconsistent. None the less the art is all full-color and highly competent. It also fits the content of the book well enough that I didn't realize it was stock art until someone else pointed it out.

The art falls into roughly two schools. The centerpiece images are of a "photo-realism but with elves" sort of style. Very popular, very technically impressive, but for my money there is a sort of uncanny valley effect. When you take something silly like a dragon fountain and depict it with such seriousness, it becomes farcical. That said, the armored elf on the cover who is in the process of chopping off her own leg to get free of a gelatinous cube is gorgeous. Dean Spencer deserves recognition for that one. The other school is more my speed: simple line work and flat colors. Much of this art is incidental stuff (a gem, a scroll case), but there are a pair of kobolds that I absolutely love. I am a long-time advocate for reptile kobolds, but the adorable dog kobolds depicted here are so distinct, so full of character, that I must admit I can see the appeal.

Cartography is all done in software, with varied results. I'll talk about the dungeon layouts when I talk about the dungeons, but artistically they're fine. The hexographer maps used for the overworld look like hexographer maps and are likewise fine. I probably would have skipped making any statement about cartography if not for the Brink map, which is assembled from mismatched digital assets. It's a style much in vogue with books that have higher budgets than this one, so I don't mean to pick on The Valley of Karaccia. That said, it's a style that values fidelity over both form and function. There is no beauty in its ability to cram detail and color into a tiny space. Also, and this is a nitpick, but the dark black hex lines on the Brink map are much too bold. A light gray, or maybe a green that was off-color from the grasslands would have done the job without breaking up the field of view so jarringly. My own frustration aside, it is just one map which doesn't impact the overall quality of the product.

The first of the two adventures is a straightforward cave dungeon. There are Kobolds in the area, they need to be wiped out. Notably there is never any mention in the text of the Kobolds doing anything to provoke this violence. Their cave does have a room filled with heads on spikes, but given that two adventuring groups showed up to kill kobolds on the same day it seems completely believable that these heads were gathered purely in self defense. I'm taking it as further evidence that Erm is not so Good as she claims to be. The adventure has a cute introduction, with a braggadocios local rushing off to claim all the glory ahead of the party, only to be found dead in the very first room. He then rises as a zombie to illustrate the dungeon's core gimmick: mysterious red light radiating from glassy veins in the cave walls causes anyone who dies here to have a chance of rising as an undead. It's a solid gimmick: the party kills a group of monsters, only to get attacked from behind a few rounds later by those same monsters turned to zombies.

The layout of the caverns is simple. It's not linear, but no path ever meets up with another path. It has a sort of 'radial-linearity.' Players may come to a crossroads where they must pick a direction, but each choice leads to a linear series of rooms, or perhaps another branch. Eventually all exploration will reach a dead end, and the party will need to return to a previous branch in the path to pick a new one. There are some evocative details here, like a series of rooms the Kobolds don't enter because they don't like the smell of the mushrooms which grow there. There are also some confusing bits, like why the kobold chief lairs as far as he can possibly get from the rest of his people; and how the kobolds have been in this cave long enough to collect 100 heads, but not long enough to figure out how to open the chest in Area 10. Also, I can't help but feel that if a creature is killed by direct contact with the magic crystal which is the source of the dungeon's red light they really ought to come back as something tougher than a zombie, like a ghoul.

The first adventure is simple, serviceable, and packs a decent punch for a 2-pager. It's followed by a strange bestiary of creatures which might be encountered overland. There's not much of a theme to the encounters, almost none of which are described beyond names and combat stats. I would be able to get more use out of this bestiary if it had 1/6th as many creatures on it, and those creatures were given some detail and purpose.

The second adventure has a somewhat more interesting structure. The party are sent to a dungeon to get an item, but all they'll find is a clue that leads to another location. In that dungeon they'll find a key, and only then can they return to the first dungeon, open a secret path to its lower level, and find the object they need. It's a fun structure. The dungeon with the key in it is particularly nice. Players must enter it via a vertical shaft filled with living plants that'll strangle anyone who touches them. Three different levels can all be accessed via the shaft. It's a great example of using vertical space.

The main dungeon in which the second adventure begins and ends is less interesting to me. It has the same radial-linearity that the first dungeon did, but expanded to nearly 60 rooms.  The lower floor is one big loop with linear segments branching from it, and the upper floor's only loop is hidden behind secret doors at both ends, neither of which have structural or textual clues to suggest their presence. Other secret doors are telegraphed better, which is good. However, behind one of them is the only clue that can lead the party to the second dungeon. Players ought to be able to fail, but it seems a shame to hinge more than half of the adventure on something as fragile as the players locating a single secret door. My preference would be to include 2 or 3 clues pointing towards the second dungeon, with perhaps the most revealing of these behind a secret door.

There are some interesting rooms and encounters in the second adventure, though these are outnumbered by the simple fights against zombies, skeletons, or ghouls. I want to note that there are statues of both Erm and Sra'ha here, but only the statue of Erm can animate to attack the players. (Coincidence?) There are a lot of untelegraphed traps in the second adventure, but also many opportunities for characters to heal. Neither are part of my preferred play style, but one can see how the two keep the party on their toes without just killing them off. There was one example I thought was a big wasted opportunity: a room illuminated by green light because the light is filtered through a green ooze waiting on the ceiling to drop on unsuspecting prey. A good trap! In a later room a gray ooze tries to get the party with the same ceiling-drop technique, and if it had also been filtering light this would have been a great opportunity for players to learn from earlier mistakes.

The second adventure culminates in a color-matching puzzle which is either very charming or very cheesy depending on your inclinations towards such things. Solving the puzzle unlocks a final combat encounter with a ghoul-priestess of Sra'ha who was interred alive when this place was sealed. (Given that it was sealed by clerics of Erm, this once again suggests to me that Erm is not the Good god she is depicted to be.) The fight seems like a fun one. The players actually encounter the object they're searching for before the fight, but can't access it because the priestess refuses to stop chanting prayers of warding. The fight with her includes some special powers and tactics, followed by the party needing to offer some deference to Sra'ha in order to access her relic safely. They can even offer a prayer to Sra'ha here in order to fully heal all their wounds. They don't even need to pay the exorbitant prices charged by the high priest of Erm!

There is a style of play which approaches tabletop RPGs like chess puzzles. The same familiar pieces, each with their familiar functions that can be learned and mastered. The challenge arises from shuffling those familiar elements into unfamiliar arrangements. That appears to be the school of thought which produced this adventure. It's not my preferred style of play, but neither is it the wrong way to play because there cannot be a wrong way to play.

The Valley of Karaccia was authored Matthew Evans, with editing by Jeffery Hines. Its illustrations were sourced from Dean Spencer, Donnie Maynard Christianson, Giulia Valentini, Jeshields, Rick Hershey, and William McAusland. It's available as a PDF from DriveThruRPG for $4.99. As of this writing the print edition is "coming soon."

Flying Dice — Sacrebleu!

 

Sacrebleu! is a book I first found 3 years ago while browsing DTRPG's "Newest" category, and something I wanted to revisit for this project. As of writing this review I have read it, but not played it. As an additional matter of disclosure, fellow Bones of Contention writer Gus L. is listed as an inspiration in the back of this book. He did not have any direct input on the book, nor on this review.

My most frequent frustration with RPG books is overwriting. Bloviating authors burying anything original or interesting about their work under too much detail, too much handholding, too much filler. Sacrebleu! is refreshingly direct. This is adventure design winnowed down into a sort of poetry. The setup is this: a father and his sons built a port town on this weird little island so they could control the harvest and sale of a narcotic moss which grows there. The sons betrayed the father, who got polymorphed into a goblin. Goblin-dad then became chief of the local goblins, killed some time-traveling WWI French soldiers, and ate their brains to learn how to use their guns and grenades. He sought revenge against his treacherous sons, but his efforts were foiled because the goblins unexpectedly inherited some PTSD from the brain eating. Now both sides are licking their wounds, trying to figure out their next move, and the players have landed right in the middle.

When I say the writing here is a sort of poetry I'm not just reaching for a fresh way of saying "thing good." I mean that, like good poetry, it conveys a density of meaning within a very few words. For example, it is a common trope of settlement description to include the menu of the local inn. I've never found much use for this. "Soup—1cp; Stew—3cp" doesn't tell me anything that will ever matter in my game. Sacrebleu!'s town of Fairmead also employs this trope, but cuts down on the space dedicated to it by including only a single Chef's Special from its two restaurants, and increases its impact by describing specific dishes rather than vague categories of food. Knowing that two common and beloved foods in Fairmead are "clam chowder with fried plantains" and "tiny fish sold in a sack for 2cp, very salty, leaves scales everywhere" gives me something to work with. It tells me how the town smells, what the local farms are growing, what the fishing boats are catching, what sort of trash will be laying in its streets. That's not even the limit of the useful information associated with the two eateries, let alone Fairmead as a whole.

There's an obvious trajectory for how the players are meant to interact with the adventure. They'll start in Fairmead, because it's the port and only settlement on the island. There they'll learn about the town's recent tribulations, and will likely have their interest piqued by the goblin's peculiar weaponry. With or without a mandate from the town's leadership the party is likely to set out along the road to investigate, engage in some set-piece encounters, and earn some treasure. The book also includes just enough for players to find when they wander off track. There are some interesting encounters, a few implied sidequests, but nothing big enough or profitable enough to divert them from figuring out what's up with the goblins that have machine guns.

There's an ambush along the road which is a particularly nice little setup, well illustrated by the art. Funneling players into a specific situation after the adventure has begun is anathema to OSR-style play, but it's pulled off very nicely here. Players are likely to follow the road, and goblins with WWI tactical training in their brains would absolutely set up an ambush along the road. It's an encounter with a high likelihood of occurring naturally, and nobody could complain about being railroaded into it. If the players are cautious enough to avoid the ambush, the book includes appropriate accommodations to reward their foresight.

Speaking of the illustrations, Sacrebleu! is not an adventure you would get for its art. Aside from the cover (with its charming promise of "Experience Points!"), and a lovely little hand-drawn hex map by Marcelo Lee, I believe everything here is taken from the public domain. That makes it difficult for the book's concepts to be illustrated effectively. In this regard the ambush is an exception rather than the rule. It also creates an unpleasant stylistic inconsistency, mixing medieval wood carvings and 19th century pencil sketches and old photographs in a jumbled pell-mell. There's also just too much of it. Nearly ever page has 2-6 illios, when 1 every other page would have been ample. All that having been said, credit where it's due: there is some nice collage work, and some well chosen pieces, and it must always be remembered that independently produced RPG books come from creators without budgets. A person need not be a triple-threat writer/artist/layout expert in order to make valuable contributions.

If the book has a major flaw it's information design. The situation on the island is laid out gradually, one bit falling into place at a time. This makes for enjoyable reading, but would be difficult to reference back to. Literally one of the last things mentioned in the book is that one NPC wants to kill another. At that point I'd thought I was well acquainted with both NPCs, but also thought they were good pals. When traveling around the map, encounter tables can be found on page 3, 6, or 11 depending on what terrain the players are moving into. The goblin's fortress will have different room contents depending on how the roadside ambush went, but the division between those possibilities is not always clear. In a short adventure like this one these are all minor issues. I'm confident I have enough of the book committed to memory that I could run the adventure with hardly any reference, but better organization would still have been a help here.

The primary dungeon on the island is—to use my own terminology here—not a dungeon, but a fortress. That is to say: the whole location is controlled by a single faction who are organized to defend it from outsiders. In this case there is a single room controlled by a different faction, but it's sealed off from the rest, so the fortress designation holds. Dungeons are a place to be explored, but players cannot really explore a fortress until they've taken it, after which the exploration is largely perfunctory. The primary play experience of a fortress is a big running encounter. Combat and stealth, broken up by the occasional reprieve when the last group of enemies has been killed and the next has not yet been encountered. I don't point this out because fortresses are bad. They're not, they just don't facilitate exploration based play. In this adventure the exploration is in the island's hexes, and to the author's credit the fortress is well designed for what it is. Not too big, with good interconnection between the rooms, and a mysterious machine to tinker with after the goblins are dealt with.

One final criticism—and TBH I'm reaching here because I don't want to seem like I'm fawning over the book—is that the final location, the temple, feels rushed and sloppy by comparison to the rest. Given that this is also the location with Tito, the optional NPC who was driven to madness by writing an RPG adventure, I suspect the author might agree.

Also, because I couldn't find anywhere else to put it, I just wanted to add that I like the weather system for the island. It's fun, functional, and has a 1-in-8 chance of literal frogs raining from the sky. I think that's neat.

Sacrebleu! was created by Tito B.A., using a map by Marcelo Lee. It's available on DriveThruRPG for $1.00.

Flying Dice — Portsmouth's Problem

 

Another perusal through DTRPG's "Newest" category brought me to Portsmouth's Problem. As of writing this critique I have read it, but not played it.

RPG play has no set medium for communication. A variety of disciplines can be employed: illustration, cartography, rules, poetry, prose, tables, layout. In the best examples of the RPGsmith's art all of these come together to form a more complete whole. However, it is a rare hobbyist producer who is practiced in all these varied disciplines. That's okay! A person can create a great game aid using just one of them so long as they use it to effectively communicate something fun and useful to play with. So while I was disappointed to see that Portsmouth's Problem consists only of text, two software-generated maps, and a photograph of a cobblestone street, that doesn't preclude it from being a fun and useful game aid. That having been said, the value and charm of this adventure could have been increased by the inclusion of amateurish writer-doodled illustrations. They were good enough for the three Little Brown Books, and they're good enough for me!

Bandits hiding out in the city's sewers is a cliché setup for an adventure, but the cliché at least gets a few unexpected wrinkles here. The hideout is new, and still under construction. The bandits are in the process of diverting sewage to make room for themselves, and have failed to account for how their work would impact the sewer's effectiveness. As a result the party have been hired to investigate the terrible stench wafting into the bakery district. As they explore they'll encounter a variety of "water" hazards created by the bandit's engineering. It's a fun premise. In my own games I enjoy getting back to basics from time to time, especially when I'm starting a new campaign or introducing new players to the game. But getting back to basics is—almost by definition—an easy thing for any moderately experienced referee to do. Without a lot more wrinkles I don't think this premise has enough to offer.

Structurally, Portsmouth's Problem assumes a rigid style of play I do not enjoy. Getting into the dungeon requires the party to follow a fairly long trail of breadcrumbs. It starts at a job posting board, then there's a meeting with the titular Portsmouth at which the party are meant to see a fragment of a map on his desk which he quickly hides from them. Then the party are supposed to find the location they saw on the map, and once there must locate a secret door to enter the sewers. All of this either represents the referee talking for a very long time, or pushing the party to make a series of specific decisions (the text suggests the latter). It could be that this is meant merely to be the optimal route. The sewer map does show a second entrance from that stinky bakery district. It would make sense if this entrance were easier to find, and the entrance behind the secret door were merely an option for clever players to pursue. However, the bakery entrance is not mentioned anywhere in the text. Moreover, one of the first encounters a party is likely to have when entering through the bakery entrance (Area 3) is described in great detail in terms which only makes sense if they are approaching said encounter from the secret-door-entrance side.

Chambers are often described in ways I find confusing. Aside from assumptions about how and from where the party enter them, their content can be jumbled. Area 6 is the most notable example of this issue. It's a sewage-filled hallway called "Rapids." The sewage is described as hiding the fact that the slope of the tunnel is rather sharp, which makes me think it must be somewhat deep. Yet it also says players moving through the space must make a Dexterity check or slip on lichen and slide down the chute. Try as I might I can't reconcile the elements of this room's description into an imaginary space I can understand. Similar problems exist in other rooms, aggravated by an excess of grammatical inconsistencies. Words and phrases are enclosed in quotation marks for no apparent reason. A solitary monster is described has having 26 hp "each." The text gives the impression of having been run through spellcheck without a human ensuring the computer's corrections are the right ones. For example, "The either bandits will attack." in a room with eight bandits. A minor error, but when all the minor errors come together the text becomes difficult to parse.

The map has similar issues. It's nicely Jaquaysed, but this is at odds with the unidirectional way the rooms are presented in the text. The relationship between Areas 4 and 5 is of particular note. There appears to be a solid wall between them, but there also appears to be a flow of water. The wall breaks the otherwise rigid grid pattern of the dungeon's layout, so it's clearly special. It could be that the wall is a new construction. Area 5 does have engineers who are described as "surveying the recent handiwork on the wall." However, other recently built walls in the dungeon (like those in Areas 4 and 8) are represented by the blue sewage coming to a halt rather than filling the room. There's a similar halt to the flow of sewage in Area 5, so my impression is that this must be where the engineer's wall is located. Additionally, if they had constructed a wall between Areas 4 and 5, sewage wouldn't be flowing between those two spaces. So I remain unclear on what's happening here.

I'm also confused by the behavior of the adventure's NPCs. Why would Portsmouth hire the party to break up his own bandit operation? He apparently doesn't want the party to succeed, but doesn't do anything to stop them aside from refusing to help after he hires them. He doesn't even warn the bandits. This adventure is only one part in a series, so it may be that this question will be answered in a later installment. It seems a glaring incongruity not to be addressed within the text though. The bandits also behave oddly. They attack on sight when encountered in small groups, but will initiate a parley in Area 7—the one room in which they might have a numerical advantage.

One last item I feel the need to address is the optional misadventure. It's meant to be encountered while the party are on their way to visit Portsmouth at the start. The details are left fuzzy. The players are not expected to engage with it. None the less it seems clear that it depicts the party stumbling into a domestic dispute of a sexual nature. I suspect the author intended for it to be a lighthearted dispute, but I can't know because it's literally just a naked woman being chased through the city by her partner. That's heavy stuff to drop into a simple bandit-bash adventure without giving it context or purpose.

If I understand correctly, Portsmouth's Problem is a write-up for something the author used in his home campaign. I'll bet my bottom dollar it was fun to play at the author's table. However, translating that fun onto another person's table would require clearer communication.

X1 - Portsmouth's Problem: An Adventure in Filbar was produced by Frank Schmidt, and is available as a PDF from DriveThruRPG for $3.00.

Flying Dice — Mother's Malady

Mother's Malady was the first thing that caught my attention scrolling through DTRPG's "Newest" category. As of writing this critique I have read it, but not played it.

The one-page format scratches an artistic itch for me. Limitation is always fertile ground for creativity, and specifically limiting the size of a work of art does much to make it approachable. I mean that both from the perspective of a reader and potential player as well as from that of the artist. One-page adventures are great for experimenting with an uncertain new idea, or an unfamiliar discipline. As with any artistic experiment it must then be asked: did the idea work out? How could the unfamiliar discipline be improved on next time?

Layout is perhaps a peculiar place to start, but unfortunately it stands out. It's one of those things no one notices except when it's done poorly. There's clearly thought and creativity behind the way the text and art were arranged. For example, the stairs cutting a line between two area descriptions looks great. The issue is an accumulation of little things that would have been simple to fix. The spot where the white background for the text wasn't spaced properly, so the map overlaps with a word. The rumor table that's completely disconnected from the paragraph which leads up to it. The excessive amount of white space that could have been put to better use. The single block of text, out of about 10, which is Justified, and has a line so dense with words they may as well not have any spaces between them at all. This stuff makes the adventure more frustrating to read than it ought to be, but adventures do not sink or swim on the quality of their layout.

The illustration of the dungeon entrance (visible in a squished form on the store page) is pure classic D&D of the best sort. The stairs rising up from the forest to tower above the treeline gets my imagination pumping. Their crumbling, gappy depiction also handily illustrates the dungeon's primary environmental hazard in a way that genuinely aids the text. The map is serviceably illustrated, but the arrangement of the spaces could have used a second pass. It irks me that the way the entrance is depicted on the map doesn't line up with the way its depicted in the art. Once inside the dungeon players are quickly funneled into a short series of linear encounters. The dungeon would have been improved significantly if the cliff-side opening meant to serve as an escape route were visible from the stairs that lead to the main entrance. Most players would avoid this difficult climb when there's a much easier path available, but clearly presenting it as an option would do a lot to make the dungeon feel less constrained. Plus if some party did opt for the cliff-side opening that would open the adventure up to the sorts of unexpected situations that make running D&D a fun pastime.

The "Deer peeplz," note which serves as the adventure hook legitimately charms me. Mother's Malady is generally pretty charming. If I were to sit down and run this I can guarantee we'd have a fun few hours of D&D. I'd enjoy describing that big looming staircase and performing as the kobolds. My players would enjoy the humor in the adventure's twist, then they'd probably try to get away with all of the treasure instead of the pittance the kobolds are willing to pay. Best of all, I wouldn't have needed to do any prep work for those fun few hours, and on that level the adventure does its job as well as any other adventure I've read. Hell, it does its job better than a lot of prestigious, award-winning adventures I've read. But there's also nothing here I might not have come up with myself if I decided to improvise a classic D&D adventure on the fly.

I think the whole of Mother's Malady is best summed up by a comparison of its two random tables. The first is a d10 table of room descriptions, used when the players are navigating through the first half of the dungeon. It reads like a general-purpose table rather than something written for a specific dungeon. The entries are terse to the point of being enigmatic, despite the fact that there's enough errant white space there that each entry could more than double in length without any issue. On the other hand there's this d6 table of Mother's treasures which are mostly evocative as heck. Boots with symbols of the elements on the soles set my referee's brain in motion in a way that "swarm of bats" does not. Which is to say, there's clearly potential and passion mixed up in this adventure, but a little more work would have done a lot of good.

Mother's Malady was authored and illustrated by Brett Sullivan, with additional work from James Hanna and Isaac Warren. It is available as a PDF from itch.io or DriveThruRPG for $1.00.