A Pinch of Salt: Ekphrastic Beasts

 

• Reviewer: Dan D.
• Author: Janaka Stucky
• Art: Ellie Gille, Jeremy Hush, Joe Keinberger, Nathan Reidt, Arik Roper, Skinner
• System: D&D 5e
• Physical copy received as gift from third party
• Read, unused

Bucking all predictability, I am reviewing a 5e product for this Pinch of Salt. I am a maverick who must be stopped, soon there will be anarchy in the streets, cats and dogs living in harmony, etc etc.

Now, this obviously means there's a rather large bias to get out of the way. I will do my best, and likely fail, at passing by the aspects of 5e that would send me down a rabbit hole of yelling into the void. I am judging on a curve, and I am not going to read the stat blocks. This book is not designed for me, take that as you will.

What I am Looking For

As this is a bestiary, I have a rather concise list of things I am looking for and making judgements upon.

• Image - Does the monster have an interesting/noteworthy/memorable visual appearance (via art or description)?
• Concept - What a monster is and does outside of appearance. If I was telling you about a monster without the book on hand, would my description be cool?
• Connectivity - How does the monster fit in and interact with the world? What is its relationship to the environment, other creatures, and human beings?

The best bestiary entries, I feel, are the ones that provide a scenario that gives context to the encounter with the creature. If the intended interaction is combat, then there needs to be reasons for why, some sort of link between the monster and the surrounding world - "it's an evil monster" is worse connectivity than "its home river has been polluted and it is angry and sick".

An entry can get by with middling image and concept and good connectivity, but the reverse is rarely true, and all three is a welcome break from the trend.

(Now, these three points might seem to lend themselves to a sort of point-scoring system. I do not like point scoring systems, so these will remain the mere impression of one.)

The Opening

The book opens with a sizable forward by the author describing how the book came to be and some of the nature of its contents. While this is a nice touch, I do think that it ran entirely too long for the amount of context it provided.

Most noteworthy is the bit on how the implied setting behind the book took shape as the creatures were being written. I did appreciate these points of tying things together, but I tended to find that they only went one way: entries could directly reference backwards, but never forwards (for example, the Xivvians directly reference their servants the Lamplighters by name, but the Lamplighters do not mention the Xivvians.)

What's In a Name

Ekphrasis is the act of a vivid textual description of visual art. It is a very nice and cromulent word, but for all the focus it gets in the forward it is unfortunately absent from this book - the art carries all the legwork and I found the words to be weak overall. The writeups fall afoul of the bane of bestiaries everywhere, filler. Lots of words spent on how dangerous something is, when that is readily communicated by concept and appearance alone. Many monsters have their writeups truncated even further still by the size of their stat blocks, or by the addition of pencil sketches that eat up a column, or just leaving the column mostly blank.

The art itself is of varied but overall above average quality thanks to Ellie Gille's dark fairy-tale watercolors and Joe Kineberger's chaotic grotty messes, which are standouts. Unfortunately the other pieces give it a more uneven visual quality, especially later on with the Xivvians, where there is a cluster of works by the same artist on the same subject.

 

The Monsters

Arrikath - A cackling demon, and that's about it. There is the mention that some wizards will summon it, but the description does not tell us why they would or what they would get out of it. Few are the wizards who will summon a cackling demon simply for kicks and giggles, they should be looking for something only this demon can provide. It's the core principle of demon summoning.

Azithaenth - The description is good - predatory shadowy monsters that arrived with a rain of meteorite impacts, that have been nearly driven to extinction by organized hunting efforts. Solid concept here, I can imagine a rural township digging up what they think is just a huge chunk of iron and unwittingly releasing one of these. Let down by the art on this one, though, for reasons I cannot describe.

Bellmodeth - A wee demon who hunts down folks who have reneged on their contracts. Not much more than that. Does imply a setting where deals with devils are relatively commonplace, would have been nice to have had something else enforcing that in the book.

Bezglazzy - Creepy bogie in the woods who steals eyes. I was confused as to whether or not it was a unique monster. Did not have really any good ways of onboarding the thing, it mostly keeps to itself and you're most likely to just stumble upon it in the deep woods. Which is fine and good I suppose.

Bog Hag - Fey of the swamps that turned monstrous after the humans arrived and the trauma of having their homes stolen was internalized as festering hatred and sorrow. Now they lurk at the edges of settlements, devouring unlucky travelers and wayward children.

Böogrú - A minor old god summoned by pagans up in the hills, needs steady blood sacrifice to remain appeased. I like this one - gives off the idea that some cult long ago fucked up royally and now the descendants have to disappear people on the regular to deal with the problem their predecessor's caused. It can tie neatly into "the cult has disbanded, no one is feeding it, it's on the prowl." Good stuff, I can work with it.

Changeling - I feel like this one didn't need a separate entry, as its linked intrinsically to the bog hags. To whit, these changelings come about when a bog hag devours an infant and then gives birth to its changeling double, which is horrifically gross and I approve of it. Everything else is just normal changeling stuff, though.

Chiropterror - I keep calling them chiropractors in my head. Unavoidable I think. Here we get a somewhat anomalous (though more appear later) segment of italicized prose. There is no omniscient narrator description. They're nasty little cave monsters, and I do love me some horrible things in the dark, which makes me wonder why they are here because 5e is not a dying in caves game. But they would be a fine fit for a Jacob Geller video.

Daemdirisi - A unique entity, being an ancient warchief who was resurrected (foolishly) by the tribe's shaman, to predictable results. This is another one where I can see the hooks: the few remaining descendants of that people, the pressing threat of the past haunting the now. You have a good, solid reason to go track it down and fight it. I really like this one.

Death's Head Shrike - Skull-headed bird. Human skull, not bird skull. All birds have bird skulls as their head, except these, which do not. A swarm animal. Nothing to see here. Nothing of note.

Deepsea Wight - Love the art on this one; nasty gelatinous abyssopelagic undead. Mention of the fact that they will drag themselves onto land or on deck wins some huge bonus points for creep factor.

Den Mother - Ents are tree-shepherds, Den Mothers are that for wolves. I love the idea, but it's wasted as a bestiary entry. Would be much more interesting as an NPC.

Disciple of the Morning Star - Necromancer cultists in their tombs filled with terrible goodies. They have apparently been mostly erased from the historical record (entry says that very few institutions keep record of them, and those that do keep it restricted), and that to me says that what they actually did was interesting. We do not get that information, which is a shame.

Dream Serpent - Sleepy dream-hoarding dragon. No real hooks, unfortunately.

Drosyrad - Bog nymph, nothing of note.

Fibroh - This is just a goblin. It's a fairy goblin, a Midsummer Night's Eve type of goblin, but goblins is goblins and this is one of them.

Fire Sentinel - Enormous magmatic giants that burst up from the earth's mantle for the express purpose of "fuck this place in particular". 4/5ths of the page is their stat block, which is the first instance here of an unfortunately common trend in bestiaries, especially 5e ones: including stat blocks for entities that no one in their right mind would fight, because they are instant death.

Foundling - Feral children. Unfortunately, there isn't anything to them beyond that, just ordinary feral children. No strange gods or weird gang rituals or anything of that note. As someone who is also writing about feral children, I must register my disappointment.

Golkih - Fills a kobold niche, I suppose. Weird nasty dog thing, up in the mountains. Nothing of interest.

Grinlene - A variety of vengeful undead, undermined by the fact that there is no telling what causes them to happen. Possibly a drowned woman? So close, we could have had a build-it-yourself whodunnit adventure out of this monster but the text is silent as to the cause and place of death.

Hàskis - A column of ash with a burning skull on it. Would be a nothing of note entry, were it not for the fact that the text proposes the "legends" that they are either trolls that got dunked in magma and have been perpetually burning ever sense, or engineered hunting dogs for fire giant sorcerers. Both of these are great, except for how they are couched in "legends say", thus making the interesting part suspect in its veracity. Combine the two concepts and you have a killer monster idea, but hiding behind "legend says" implicitly tells the audience that these theories are not the case.

Horyx - Beast-headed men, warriors from afar. Could have said where they are from, or why they are here, but there is nothing.

Iwsii - Fey oracles. I like the design and the art, but they would be rather clumsy to fit into adventures.

Keyhoarder - Another creature that should be an NPC. A fey that loves gathering secrets. If the secret is locked away, they will steal the key. The write-up does say that one can and likely should make deals with them to get places, but continues on to spend half the page on a stat block instead of fleshing out the magic merchant aspect.

Kithrui Ghaisha - Possibly my favorite monster in the book. I really like this one for its clarity of concept - a big nasty demon that is drawn to sites of catastrophe and loss, feeding on all that bad mojo and then using the deaths of everyone who fails to kill it to keep on going. This is good! Actionable monster with roots in the world.

Kythys & Mhaothon - Gods with statblocks. Hard pass from me, don't truck with that. Another entry no one would fight.

Lamplighter - Overwhelmed by their concept. Protohuman sorcerers who astral-projected into the void, were seen and consumed by Spooky Alien Forces, now acting as servants and beacons in the world. Great for flavor, but I feel like I need some serious elbow grease to find a place to put them.

Murúch - Basically a siren or mermaid that disguises itself as a large fish, gets hauled up by the fishermen, and starts eating people. Likely a monster one hears about in retrospect and then specifically goes out to hunt, which is good.

Nagaraja - Enormous primordial serpents. There is no reason to fight this, or interact with it at all.

Plague Knight - Undead fascist crusaders. Ended up undead because they were playing around with occult powers and blew themselves up, which is funny. The plague aspect seems tacked on, though, it's got nothing really to do with the backstory.

Răzbuna - A nifty concept. Horrible monster caused when you kill a wolfpack leader, would tie in very nicely with the Den Mothers, and also gets a bonus for being a monster that feels like it has some real folkloric feet to stand on. I could imagine hearing this in a book of traditional stories from somewhere in the real world.

Reanimaggot - Pretty typical shambling undead, but the name is fun and they're nice and gross.

Rüu Gisin - Frog knights, but with no real way to interact. They're just the size of normal frogs and their only listed behavior is "protecting their home", which is hardly anything unique among the animal kingdom.

Scroll Keeper - I am a sucker for libraries at the center of the multiverse, but these guys are ill-served. The random table of scrolls have potentially fun titles like "Scroll of Political Discourse" and "Scroll of Mechanical Physics", but all they give is like a +2 to a skill.

Sea Shepherd - Like an ent, but a giant, and for the ocean. No reason to fight them. More an aspect of landscape than anything else.

Sel'gorach - Unique monster, duchess of hell, love the art (possibly my favorite of the book), the description tells us nothing of value. The big scary dangerous demon is big, scary, dangerous, and a demon. Also she cannot fly.

Spider Queen - What it says on the tin. Only real difference is that it looks mostly like a human, most of the time.

Strix - Bonus points for giving Lilith the proper screech owl rep she deserves. Doesn't really have anything to do, though.

Thounquis - Killer concept - island civilization ruled by necromancers, whose beaches are patrolled by these corpse-amalgamation monsters. Yes please, I love it, I would like to know more. The art is a let down, though, it's just kinda a multiheaded zombie in the black cloak. The concept carries it, without the island of the necromancers it would be quite dull.

Thoz'gorin - Centauroid battle demons. Nothing of note

Tomb of the Ancients - An inanimate object with stats. Brief mentions of horrible treasures of the old gods within, none of which are actually provided. A shame, because the text sets them up as loci for weird events and leftover arcane knowledge and terrible entropic/mutagenic effects.

Transdimensional Dragon - It has an ability called "Pure Witness of Quantum Revelation", which is rad, but again we must ask in what circumstances would anyone both want to fight this and reach any outcome that isn't false vacuum collapse localized entirely within your kitchen.

Unholy Creeper - Carnivorous plants on desecrated ground. Would honestly be better served as part of the writeup of potential hazards in desecrated ground.

Xivvians - My least favorite part of the book. A subsection of extradimensional flesh monsters that are following the Lamplighters to our world, fair enough. But the section just goes on for so long, with so many different varieties, and the art swiftly gets repetitive on top of being a step down from the other pieces. There's very little differentiation between the monsters, and the descriptions are rarely on the same page as the picture (a shift from the entire rest of the book). lots of talk of stuff no character will ever see, learn, or use. Artifacts mentioned, no list given. Overstays its welcome. All the names and forms blur together.

Ysherosz - So, so close. A "kingmaker" demon that is attracted to those who value power over all else. Let down by the fact that it possesses the victim, rather than a more engaging conflict point of someone making more and more heinous acts to please it. Making it an unvarnished possession makes it too smooth and neat.

Zhizhutu - A human head, but with spider legs.

All told, there are 16 aberrations, 5 beasts, 1 construct, 2 dragons, 9 fey, 7 fiends, 3 giants, 6 humanoids (which is silly, since they include the frog knights as humanoid), 6 monstrosities, 2 plants, and 7 undead.

Best in Show: Bog Hag, Böogrú, Daemdirisi, Den Mother/Răzbuna, Kithrui Ghaisa - I could plug these into a map with basically no elbow grease and it would work. All of these have strong enough hooks that I could make a scenario out of them with hardly any work on my part, and that's gold star material.

Final Thoughts

I'm saddened somewhat. The desire to make good art is here, and in many places shines through brilliantly, but it is hamstrung and stymied at every point by its attempts to fit in with a format that does not serve its strengths and multiplies its weaknesses. It falls short of its goals because of the mold it's been forced into, which is a major problem for an art book.

I'd like to get an answer from the author, or anyone else who is in-tune with the design philosophies of the 5e sphere - what is the motivation behind including stats for what should be instant-kill entities, or those that there would otherwise be no reason to fight? Is there an expectation that players will regularly be in an appropriate power range to fight these? Is it an obligation to keep with the 5e format? I legitimately don't understand. I get why it was made for 5e, but I don't get why that must entail making the exact same mistakes. The forward has a section addressing things like alignment issues, but alignment is still in the stat block. Saying that something is a problem and then doing it anyway doesn't solve the problem.

A cautionary lesson, I suppose.

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.

Dungeon Dioramas - Secrets Under Stone & Azag

I'm going to try something new this time and compare two similar game books. Both are descendants of the Advanced Fighting Fantasy game rules, or what, these days, we might call troikalike games.

Secrets Under Stone, written by N Weaver with a print edition by Soul Muppet, is listed as the first issue of a recurring zine called Deep Under Stone, although no second issue has been released yet, and the proposed structure of the zine series suggests that Weaver intends Secrets to stand alone as a complete game book. As proposed, future issues will apply the same mechanics to different settings. The art is from the public domain, including the cover collage.

Secrets Under Stone is set in a general British Gothic milieu, sometime in the Long Nineteenth Century. The setting is a departure from the other troika-likes, but it should seem familiar to anyone who has encountered Gothic tropes before. The primary innovations that separate Secrets from its sister games are mechanical, so those will get the majority of my attention.

One of the most common complaints I've heard about Troika is the random starting Skill score. In Troika, you roll 2d6+12 to determine Stamina, 1d6+6 to determine Luck, and 1d3+3 to determine Skill. These roughly correspond to Hit Points, Saving Throws, and Skills, respectively, in D&D. This looks really elegant when written out, but it means that about a third of characters have Skill 4, and thus only a 16.67% chance - the same as 1-in-6 - to accomplish any task that they don't specifically have an Advanced Skill in. You may recall me mentioning before that Old School designers love giving 1-in-6 and 2-in-6 chances for starting characters to accomplish things they are ostensibly good at, and that Old School players love to complain about how miserly and miserable they find these chances. Elegance on paper is not the same thing as a mechanic that players will enjoy using at the table.  

So it was a pleasant surprise for me to see that Secret Under Stone's primary mechanical innovation is to change the Skill mechanic by splitting it in three. Players roll to determine six Advanced Skills from across three categories - Brawn, Knack, and Knowledge. Each of those acts as a base Skill score for those areas of character ability, and each is 4 plus half the number of Advanced Skills. So scores as low as 4 and as high as 7 are possible but unlikely - most scores will be 5 or 6 - but low scores in one area will be automatically offset by higher scores in the others. Instead of the colorful Backgrounds from Troika, the nature of your character is determined by the mix of these skills.

To transplant the basic skill mechanic introduced here to another rules system besides those derived from Advanced Fighting Fantasy would take a bit tinkering, but it would be far from impossible. The basic mechanic is randomly selecting special skills and then using the total number of each type of those skills as the basis to generate ability scores. The first thing I was reminded of was Empire of the Petal Throne, where player rolled to generate ability scores and then received skills in order from a list based on how high their score is. That mechanic is essentially the inverse of Secret Under Stone's, and it's easy to imagine a contemporary take on Tekumel that used the mechanic introduced here. Another possibility is Numenera, which has pre-set ability scores by character class, and player-selected special skills that draw on those abilities. Once again, reversing and randomizing to use Secret's mechanic is easy to envision.

The other aspect of the Skill mechanic here that I really like is that each skill comes with a piece of starting equipment that uses it. I've mentioned on my own blog that skills in D&D and most other tabletop roleplaying games require a kind of two-factor authentication - you need both the skill and the equipment to actually do something. Thieves need lockpicks, bards need music instruments, clerics need holy symbols, etc. (There are some counter-examples, where you need just one or the other but not both, but for this review the trend is more important than the exceptions.) Depending on the version of the game you're playing, characters might be gifted these tools automatically upon picking their class, or the rules might rely on player skill to buy the right starting equipment. Here there are no character classes, only skills, but if you're good at climbing, you get a rope; if you know how to swordfight, you start with a sword. Combine this with something similar to the weapon-specific abilities I praised in my review of Root, and I think you could really have something interesting, something I'd like to see more of in other games.

An example character in Secrets Under Stone might start with Axe Fighting, Sword Fighting, Crossbow Shooting, Navigation, Astrology, and Spiritualism, Brawn 5, Knack 5, Knowledge 5, and own an axe, a sword, a crossbow with 20 bolts, a compass, an astrolabe, and a spirit board. Despite the lack of a named Background, it's relatively easy to imagine this character within a broadly Victorian milieu - an explorer perhaps, equally attuned to the practical and supernatural properties of the night sky, and ready to hack through underbrush and opposing forces alike.

The magic system and bestiary of Secrets both feel incomplete, and there is essentially no worldbuilding beyond what is implied by character creation, and no real advice about how to run an adventure using these rules, either in general or with an eye toward distinguishing it from its sister games. Astrology and Spiritualism, for example, are both skills that grant your character the ability to use magic, and there are about a half-dozen others that do the same. Weaver suggests that instead of Troika's spells, Secrets characters with the correct skills should be able to learn Rituals. The key differences appear to be that rituals are intended to seem more low fantasy than spells; they each have success, critical success, failure, and critical failure results; and there is no indication in the text how, or even if, the number of rituals a character might learn from each skill should be limited. Weaver has written two rituals for each spellcasting skill, and left the rest of the hard work of developing setting-appropriate magical effects with four levels of efficacy each to the referees who volunteer to use this new system. 

Magic can also be acquired by bonding with a Patron. These work quite similarly to patrons in Dungeon Crawl Classics. There is a well described ritual for forming a bond, with the Secret-standard four levels of effect. Each patron grants a Boon, a situational bonus that depends on the character's skill level, and knowledge of three Powers, which function exactly like normal spells in Troika, including the variable Stamina costs, and which mirror the three Patron Spells in DCC, Each patron also has a 1d6 table of Curses, which also mirror the Patron Taint effects in DCC. The levels of effectiveness are another similarity, now that I think of it. For the nine spellcasting skills, Weaver has provided two example patrons, leaving the other seven for interested referees to invent for themselves. I would be more forgiving if the anticipated second issue of the zine were intended to complete these rules rather than provide a palette swap into another new setting. I am interested in seeing the new setting, but this one still feels incomplete in certain key respects.

The bestiary is primarily made up of creatures referenced in other parts of the book. The mundane animals you might receive as "equipment" if you have the animal handling skill are here, as are the various servitors and familiars you can create with one of the listed magic rituals, and the mercenaries of varying quality you can hire to accompany you. I am gratified that there are no creatures referenced earlier that don't get an entry, but the lack of other entries feels like a missed opportunity to me. First because of the lost chance to expand the Secrets world, and second because Weaver has chosen to alter the math of Troika's combat by reducing weapon damage, dropping Stamina by half - from 2d6+12 to 2d3+6 - and replacing the "playing card initiative" with the standard D&D style alternating combat. Taken all together, I'm not certain what effect all those changes have on the pace of combat, but I am sure that you can't simply drop a monster from Troika into a Secrets Under Stone game without it tearing through the weaker characters like a wrecking ball. So some additional sample opponents would be helpful for preparing an appropriate adventure. The one saving grace is the addition of a kind of Luck check - another transplant from DCC! - that possibly allows surviving a fall to 0 Stamina.

Weaver concludes with a page and a half of advice about how to run adventures that incorporate investigation and the learning of new magical Rituals, and a couple pages of advice and encouragement for altering the rules to fit another setting. The most cryptic advice is from a page on the possible rewards characters might receive from adventuring - Luxury, Prestige, and Conscience. Weaver provides a list of milestone achievements, and the reward, in points, for meeting each milestone. These points do not interact with any system of experience or advancement. As Weaver explains: "This page allows you to quantify your achievements, which provides no reward beyond the pleasure of doing so. Think of it like a High Score table or ignore it entirely."

art by Logan Stahl

Azag is described as a complete game book, although as I understand it, a print edition with more art might eventually be forthcoming. It's published by Dank Dungeons with a print edition by LF OSR, and written primarily be Lex Mandrake, with additional text by Chris Boudreau, Diogo Nogueira, Safia Aldulaijan, and Mahar Mangahas. The cover art is by Luis Melo, with interior art by Logan Stahl, and maps by Daniel Walthall. The additional authors supplied short fiction about the setting; I'm not certain if they wrote any of the game material.

Azag makes some minor mechanical departures from the other troik-alikes, but here the majority of the authors' effort has been poured into creating an original setting, so again, I'm going to put most of my attention where the action is.

The opening sections of Azag start with a short story; an overview of the rules for skills, combat, and traveling; a second short story; the rules for character creation and advancement; a third short story; a section on Talents - which are Azag's version of Troika's Advanced Skills - and spells; a fourth short story; lists of equipment and tables for generating magic items; a fifth short story; and then we enter the much longer second half of the books, which is all about the unique setting of the game.

I will leave it to someone more qualified to comment on the style and content of the short stories, but I will note that each is only a page long and is accompanied by a full-page piece of art. They effectively act as section breaks between the steps of character creation. My one critique of this organization is that the sections are placed in the reverse of the order that they're listed as steps of character construction. Azag also declines to list character Backgrounds, and instead asks players to generate characters by combining the results from several lists. Following the instructions, you're supposed to start with a magic item, then receive mundane equipment, then pick Talents and spells, and finally write three unique Traits. In keeping with the reverse order of the other sections, the advice for that last step are right below the instructions for the character creation process.

Like Secrets Under Stone, the Talents in Azag are closer to D&D's skill list than to the more outre options found in Troika. You Talents might include Reflexes or Willpower; Ranged Weapons or Armor Specialist; or something like Awareness, Stealth, Lockpicking, or Wayfinding. Weapon damage is also based on different sizes of dice, like D&D and unlike Troika's bespoke damage tables that transform the effects of rolling a d6. 

Magic items are the one element of character creation that's random instead of chosen by the player. To create one you roll 2d12 three times to determine the Item Type, Prefix, and Suffix. So you might end up with the Bronze Gemstone of Might, which increases your Skill and makes Tests of Strength easier, or the Silver Sword of Luck, which increases your Stamina and causes you to gain and lose Luck points when you pass and fail Luck Tests, amplifying their swingy-ness. It's clear that Mandrake has considered the distribution of possible results, and has pushed both the rarer sounding names and the more impressive looking powers away from the center and toward the edges of the probability curve.

The second half of Azag is devoted to describing its game world. The organization of this section is very nice. First, a page listing the four regions of the world, with a one-sentence description of each, and a list of a half-dozen or so important locations in that region. There are the Coin Roads, a desert crossed by trade routes, the Crescent Sea, a Mediterranean coastline, the Shadow of the Great Glacier, a wintry northern region, and the Verdant Basin, a tropical jungle. 

Next, two to a page, each evocatively named location gets a paragraph description and a d6 table of possible encounters. These act more like storytelling prompts than like traditional D&D encounters. This section, if used as written, probably plays out much more like a storygame than like any other version of Advanced Fighting Fantasy, they contain both a setup and a conclusion and ask the reader to decide how the characters got from one to the other. The prompts could also be used differently than suggested, by a referee preparing ahead of time, as the starting point for more traditional roleplaying. One prompt in the Alabaster Maze in the Coin Roads region suggests "You became hopelessly lost in the labyrinth with no chance of escape. A being in the form of an albino bat offered to guide you out of the maze for a price. What did the bat ask of you?" Another, from the Invisible Library of Malazar along the Crescent Sea tells "Warlocks from distant lands offered you riches for escort through the library. When they found the text they sought you were betrayed and had to fight your way out. What knowledge had driven them to kill and how did you best them?" 

Used as written, these encounters presume a conclusion that might otherwise take an entire game session to achieve, if it could be won at all, and invite the players and referee together to retroactively decide how this was accomplished. I can imagine relying on the character's Talents and Spells and magic items to tell the story of how they escaped the maze or defeated the warlocks, but it doesn't seem like any of the previous mechanics of rolling dice should be involved. The dice help us decide the success or failure of something we attempt. Here the success is already decided, only the method used to achieve it has yet to be played out. Ryuutama uses similar mechanics, though on a much smaller scale, rolling the dice first, then asking, for example, how you got injured along the trail, or what happened in the night to disturb you sleep so.

After another short story, the next section is devoted to the NPCs you might meet while adventuring. There is a table for each region to generate NPCs. Roll a d6 three times to discover their Background, Motivation, and Unique Trait, though with only six traits per region, they aren't really so unique, and then consult the table of Plot Hooks. There are 36 possible plot hooks in each region, each determined by the NPC's background and motivation. For example, in the Great Glaciers, you might meet a mammoth herder who is obsessed with getting their deity to the best shrine in Barbasdu, you might discover that "Haunted by dreams of a mammoth-headed deity taller than the Great Glacier, they now believe the shrines of Barbasdu to be the rightful grazing ground of the magnificent beasts. These woolly giants will be mounted and ridden to the gates of the city to take their rightful home." Or in the Verdant Basin, you might find a basking cultist who wants to prove their innocence before their people, about whom you learn that "This cultist's jilted ex-lover has accused them of worshiping the Moon King. To prove their loyalty, they must climb to the top of smouldering Mt. Kirmak in the Frostfire Peaks and retrieve a perfect sunbleached opal."

The plot hooks are really what make these characters unique, and I think that Mandrake has given each an agenda that goes beyond, in both richness and specificity, what most referees might be able invent for themselves just from looking at the backgrounds and motivations. Each NPC holds the seed to an adventure, complete with locations, items, other NPCs. These seeds are the primary source of inspiration for running adventures in the world of Azag. Most adventures then, are likely to start with the players meeting someone with their own agenda, and deciding whether to assist them, thwart them, or otherwise take advantage of the conditions that agenda will create.

The final section, separated by a last short story, offers roughly 20 new monsters, each with a pair of abilities or interesting details. The creatures Mandrake has chosen seem consistent with his stated goal of building a game world similar to the stories of Clark Ashton Smith, and they seem appropriate to a world of harsh desert and dense jungle. There are several varieties of undead, giant insects, dinosaurs, and mechanical servitors. Ironically, what's missing here is a few examples of mundane or human opponents to provide a baseline chassis for the sorts of cultists, nomads, and magicians that show up in the encounter tables and NPC plot hooks.

State of the Sepulcher

To ring in the new year, our skeleton crew has decided to take stock of the state of our nighted sepulcher. Our conversation ranges over what Bones of Contention has accomplished so far, and where we hope it might be going in the new year. 

Ben: Let me kick the conversation off with some history and dry facts. Bones of Contention grew out of our discussions about the current state of review culture in the classical/OSR/Post-OSR space. We were all dissatisfied with the limited review culture, which consisted mainly of boosting products, and a couple of long running single authored critical review blogs and youtube channels. Ava suggested that any real alternative would need to be a multi-authored collaborative review site perhaps modeled on video game review sites. We debated the practical complications of reviewing in a small scene where everybody knew everybody else, how to handle conflicts of interest, how to select products to review, whether to require playtesting for all products to be reviewed, and the tone we wanted to maintain (critical where merited but respectful). We had some ideas we set aside like making all reviews anonymous and doing video reviews. We hit eventually on our principles, outlined here. 

So Bones of Contention rose from the dead on June 14th of 2021. In our 29 weeks of ghastly toil before year’s end, we managed to publish 28 posts. 1 was our inaugural post. The remaining 27 were review posts. 20 of the reviews were by single authors in one of our established review series by regular contributors. 2 of the reviews were by guest authors in the Grave Trespass series. The remaining 6 reviews were multi-authored: 1 in the Rashomon series of multi-perspective reviews, 1 in the Folie a Deux series of dialogues, and 3 of them a series of shorter capsule reviews by multiple authors in the Cryptic Signals series. In our reviews, we covered 27 adventures, 6 games, and 4 supplements. There was a mix of old (10) and new (27) products. 

Our most viewed post, after our inaugural post, was Zedeck’s review of Kriegmesser in his (P)late Mail series, followed by Gus’s review of the Caverns of Thracia in his Spectral Interrogatories series, followed by our very first review, the Isle of the Plangent Mage in third place. This confirms, by the way, that there’s an appetite for reviews of both old and new products. It feels to me like we had a good ratio (nearly 3:1) of new to old, with an appropriate tilt towards newer products that may not have received as much attention yet. 

Our pace of publishing reviews was decent if not ideal. We began posting once a week. In a moment of early hubris we briefly increased to twice a week, only to discover that we needed to dial it back. We closed out the year posting every other week, which is our plan for the moment, until we build up a backlog sufficient to increase the pace once again to weekly reviews. To maintain our momentum, we have increased the number of contributors. Our skeleton crew started out with 7 regular contributors, each with their own review series, and grew to 10, including the most recent addition, Ty, who slipped into the graveyard with a review of Death in Space right before the year’s end. We are continuing our recruitment of guest reviewers, with first review of 2022 by Warren D and others in the works at the moment. 

This diversity of perspectives was part of the rationale for Bones of Contention. Given the fact that our skeleton crew is all volunteer, and many of us are already stretched to capacity as ttrpg authors, we have tried to make a virtue of necessity. Now that the facts and figures are out of the way, I guess I’ll start by asking the rest of the skeleton crew what they think is working well on the blog, and what they’d like to see us do more of or differently in the future. Let’s start with you Gus. 

 

Gus: Bones had a good ½ year, the reviews offer variety, and variation without paying a cost in quality. While each writer has brought their own style and concern to their Bones reviews, they all strike me as far more nuanced and thoughtful then many older blog based reviews by fans or foes of particular products and designers. While I suspect the economy and size of the RPG industry will mean that a healthy culture of critique is unlikely, it’s great to see efforts in that direction succeed. 

Personally I intend to continue looking at the history and development of dungeons and the dungeon crawl, though given the length and limited number of reviews, I suspect Spectral Interrogatories will focus on more well known projects, especially those that are emblematic of certain key ideas in classic adventure design. My goal though isn't to burnish or tarnish the reputations of already well known designers, but instead to offer perspective of and criticism on well known works so that other, lesser designers, including myself, can learn from them. Planned reviews include a look at the revised Deep Carbon Observatory, discussing both its status as an exemplar and model for mid-OSR design as well as the many experimental aspects of the adventure. After DCO I suspect I’ll need to look at the outer edges of dungeon design, works from the indie and/or story game communities that seek to provide dungeon adventures and see what lessons can be learned from play styles that entirely reject procedural exploration. 

For Bones I look forward to it’s continued expansion, with the addition of more reviewers from varied design backgrounds, both out of an interest in seeing how this cross-pollination of design ideas helps provide insight and inspiration for the contributors and readers own projects and because the tabletop RPG community is too small for contentious disputes over play style. 

 

Nick: Discoverability is always an issue for artists. It hurts to pour your heart into something, even as you know nobody will ever see it because you lack the flair for marketing yourself. It was edifying to pull books right off the freshly printed line and give them a fair shake. I’m looking forward to doing more of it in the coming year. 

 

WFS: I was an early latecomer to this project, but I was pretty happy with my first review in my Pedantic Wasteland series, which evaluated A Rasp of Sand in light of its stated roguelite goals. Not only was it an opportunity to shine a light on this neat adventure, but I got to address concepts like metagaming in a way that’s a bit more practical than a theory-post on my own blog. Due to constant juggling of other projects (for what am I if not a jester), my pace of solo reviews will probably be about two a year. One review I’ve had bouncing in my noggin has been the Red Hand of Doom adventure, which I think illustrates several interesting trends in big budget adventure design. However, where this blog really shines are the more collective reviews. It plays to our strength as a group of game thinkers and tinkers that solo blogs aren’t able to do. So I really look forward to more reviews in the Rashomon, Folie a Deux and Cryptic Signals series in 2022 and beyond. For the Cryptic Signals in particular, I hope these become more tightly focused around either genres of games, particular authors or adventure anthologies. 

 

Anne: There are a few things that really excite me about the multi-author format Bones has going right now. First, several of us have clear agendas in terms of our planned reviews. Gus is mostly looking at famous older adventures. Nick is mostly looking at new works that he picks because he knows nothing about the authors. I also like the distinctive visual style of the different posts. Each review looks like a page torn from the author’s home blog and pasted into our scrapbook - especially for those of us with a really distinctive formatting style, like Gus and WFS. And finally, of course, having multiple authors means that we can work together, and write more and better than we could individually. 

My agenda isn’t quite so straightforward, but I hope that pursuing it for another year will turn up more insights about how to write certain kinds of adventures well. My goals for my writing are to look closely at the important moving parts of the thing I’m reviewing, and to understand both what they’re trying to achieve and how well they actually accomplish it. I hope that whether you agree with me or think I’m wrong every time, that what I say is detailed enough and clear enough that you’ll know enough about the thing to form an opinion of your own. 

For next year, I’m going to try to write more Cryptic Signals entries. There are some interesting small projects out there that could be well-served by short reviews. I might also be able to do something Ben did early on, and pair a couple of related items in a single solo review. I’ve agreed to something like three Folie a Deux team-ups with some other skeleton crew members, and I want to get at least one or two of those out this year. It’s also my personal goal to recruit at least one guest blogger to write a Grave Trespass. I’ve asked a couple of people I know well who I think would do a good job, but so far I’ve yet to successfully bring someone in. Ava is the real champion on that front, since the people she invites end up becoming regular columnists. A final goal is to have at least one “book club” article where some of us read a book that might interest gamers, but that isn’t a game book specifically - something like The Elusive Shift or Finite and Infinite Games. This is probably my least likely goal since, as others have already noted, we’re all busy with other projects, so trying to put together an actual book club is kind of a big ask. 

* * *

Dan: The collaborative aspect of this whole endeavor has been my favorite part - both in the variety of voices and keeping things rolling without folks getting burned out. For the future I definitely want to run more (much easier to write a better review that way), and I hope we’re able to do more Rashomon reviews - it’s a fantastic way of using our format to our advantage. 

Ben: You know, I think I agree with you all that the real strength of Bones has been the collaborative energy that is most on display in the more conversational reviews in the Folie a Deux, Rashomon, and Cryptic Signals series. It’s important to learn about the perspective of individual reviewers in their own series, since this gives us a sense of their pre-occupations and critical orientation. But it’s even better to see those individual perspectives come together in dialogue. For me, the high-point of the blog came in the recent Folie a Deux review of Luka Rejec’s Holy Mountain Shaker. It was especially interesting because Luka was trying to do something new and interesting in adventure design. Gus’ perspective on the centrality of space to procedural dungeon crawls gave him a critical perspective on the attempt, which contrasted with WFS’ interest in procedural and improvisational play that led to entirely different evaluation. In a sense the disagreement was really about what a dungeon is in the relevant sense. I found it absolutely fascinating. In the future I’d guess I’d like to build on that strength by experimenting with more of these dialogue style reviews. I think a book club would be a great idea as one new format we could experiment with. I also hope that as our critical perspectives become more developed, there will be a lot of cross-pollination between individual reviews, in the spirit of Ava’s Wheel of Evil review that brought together so many different threads of OSR relevant theory, including by Bones authors. 

 

Ty: As the new kid on the block, I'm just happy I’m allowed to hang out with the cool kids and that I managed to sneak in under the wire at the end of 2021. In 10 years from now I can say "I've been with Bones since year 1, baby." 

I'm eager to write more for the site, trying to alternate between larger read-throughs of entire books and smaller, more condensed reviews that pack a punch. The next review I'm working on is the Distant Lights supplement for Stars Without Number. Anne and Ben, I really love the idea that the two of you started, which was actually using the procedural creation tools in books to create something instead of just talking theoretically about them. I can't wait to give that a spin. 

I'm also ready to bribe and beg all of you into doing a joint review, because I agree with what’s already been said: the collaborative reviews are a highlight of Bones and wonderful to read. 

/ /

mv: another new contributor here. I personally had lot’s of fun reviewing the short and sweet Mouth Brood, and now aiming to go after bigger books. My sights are set on Suldokar’s Wake, a monumental review that will be exploring both the setting and system of the core set. My goal now is to get a couple of sessions going because I’m much better at getting a feel for a game from play. 

Speaking of collaborations, I’d love to do a joint sci-fi module review with Ty, since our interests align in that area. Overall in 2022 I want to cover modern sci-fi and science fantasy game materials. Seeing how they explore the genre and push it into the (actual) future with new concepts and ideas. Stay tuned for some awesome Mundane Vacations. 

Glad to be part of such a wonderful team and looking forward to the reviews of all types. My favorite thing was discovering perspectives from different cultures of play that I would otherwise have ignored. 11/10 would bones of contention again.

 

Ava: I’m immensely proud of what Bones of Contention has become over the past half year and even more excited to see where it goes. When I floated the initial concept I really didn’t expect anything to come of it, but major credit goes to Ben for organizing and making it a reality, as well as serving as basically our de facto Editor in Chief and handling all the day to day work of running the blog. 

The inaugural review on this site emerged out of a four session playthrough of Isle of the Plangent Mage and by far my favourite aspect of Bones so far has been the opportunity to play and critically discuss different modules and systems with an absolutely dynamite crew of folks. I also love the evolution of the blog towards producing more critical analysis from its original conception of producing more product-oriented reviews; highlights of this style for me have been Gus’ Castle of Mirror’s review, Zedeck’s review of Kriegsmesser, and Marcia’s guest review of Pokemon Dungeon Crawler. I hope that this isn’t too lofty a comparison, but the energy on this blog reminds me of the early days of Kill Screen, which I remember reading at a time when no other places were consistently talking about videogames in a serious way. I think this evolution can even be seen in the two reviews I posted this year, with the first being much more concerned with the standard evaluation of usability and such while the second was a sort of analysis of the historical trends and styles contained within a particular module.

My hopes for the coming year ahead is, hopefully, to publish more than two reviews. I have a long backlog of adventures which I’ve actually played that I’d like to review, but more than that I had hoped for the focus of my series to be an investigation specifically into different systems and I’ve yet to review a single one. Of course, like everyone else has said I’m also really excited to do more collaborative reviews, as well as wrangling up as many guest writers I possibly can.

_______________________

So concludes our review of the state of the sepulcher. We hope to see you around these unholy precincts as our skeleton crew marches with the tireless resolve of the undying into a new year. If you have a favorite review from 2021 or something you'd like to see us do in 2022, join the conversation in the comments below! 

Grave Tresspass - Hole in the Oak

THE HOLE IN THE OAK

By Necrotic Gnome
A Review by Warren D.

The end of the year and beginning of the next in RPG-land prompts thinking about how to get our non-RPG friends and family into the hobby. It is also a time when soon-to-be DM’s receive their first rulebooks and seek recommendations on what to run. The options are numerous and rapidly climbing to the top of many recommendation lists is The Hole in the Oak. In this review, I hope to outline why I think The Hole in the Oak deserves such a position by describing its opening, evaluating the content, and touching on how the adventure facilitates world building.

This review arises from 4 three-hour sessions of The Hole in the Oak which started after a TPK playing its sibling module Incandescent Grottoes. I used Old School Essentials/BX D&D as it is my preferred D&D flavor and the players randomly generated 2 clerics, 2 dwarves, 1 elf, 1 fighter, 1 magic-user, and 1 thief. I have no relationship with Necrotic Gnome or its products beyond being a fan.

THE LAY of the LAND

The Hole in the Oak is billed as a low-level dungeon situated in any “magic forest” possibly constructed by wizards, definitely inhabited by creatures of a fay bent, and currently being used as a base of operations for an evil gnome cult. More specifically, it is a 60-room dungeon well “jaquaysed” by 5 large loops from west-to-east and boarded by a large cavern to the south and a fast river to the north. Monetary treasure guarded, buried, forgotten, or secreted away totals about 17,000 GP which will take a party of 8 from 1st level to about 2nd by the end (using the Fighter XP progression as an average). Total magic item count is 11 which includes magic scrolls, a spell book, potions, rings, a couple of pieces of armor, and weapons of note. The opposition to the PCs’ clandestine infiltration includes three cannibalistic and duplicitous fauns, a slumbering ogre, three troglodyte fishers, seven (!) hungry ghouls, twenty (!!) heretic gnomes that worship a demonic tree trunk and finally four giant lizards.

The map for Hole in the Oak

Interestingly, while the module as a whole has a “French vanilla D&D” feel- meaning it’s a well-done dungeon featuring many classics of fantasy adventure- it is a heterogeneous environment that doesn’t feel like patch-work. This is a skillful trick and it’s worth a moment to list the adventure’s thematic clusters. If you imagine the dungeon as a compass:

• East “places of worship” cluster: alters involving a giant statue, defunct lizard-cult, & demon tree stump
• Northeast cluster: “Hot house” gardens, giant lizards, and a lizard cult
• Southeast cluster: Weird gnomes & weird caverns
• West “areas of experimentation” cluster: trap rug, magic mirrors, & mysterious levers
• Southwest cluster: Tricky fauns & a mutant ogre
• Northwest cluster: Drowned ghouls and fishing troglodytes
  

Often in D&D modules of lesser quality the presentation of an equivalent amount of heterogeneity requires far more levels. With each of those levels being a very expected presentation of those environments. Or conversely, the same number of environments are presented in a more patchwork fashion making it feel as if it was assembled merely from die rolling on random tables. The Hole in the Oak employs its environments to unify seemingly disparate D&D classics. For instance, I would expect troglodytes in a cave environment and ghouls in a crypt environment. Here, the presence of the river allows both of them to be tied to the theme of water-ghouls posing as drowned corpses and trogs that have fishing spots (and even a “feed the fish” sign). This “classic but clever” presentation is exactly what I wanted for my two players who grew up with B/X D&D and is also exactly what I want as a DM at the table when giving new players their first taste of old-school play and D&D in general.

Let’s delve into the specifics of why I think Hole in the Oak is a present day classic…