snake themed adventure is a subgenre in itself, and this is one of the best snakey sumsission
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Love how much this trifold is an explosion of red! The logo is also super cool, even though I read “Grobus Ordains” the first time around :D
A super cool snake-y adventure! I reaaaaally dig the hand-drawn map, it is evocative and very well done. The white on red scheme is bold, but reading ended up being ok. The antagonists are thematically strong and their stat blocks look OK (I only have theoritical Cairn knowledge xD) One thing that I had a bit of trouble to understand is when are the players intervening? After the six kidnappings or before? Because the boy is present at the place of the ritual so I think they arrive on the last day? Nothing that a GM couldn’t figure out or improvise anyway.
Thanks for the feedback! The six have gone missing already, as you can see in the "about the missing people" section and rumors table. Sorry to see it didn't come clear, but yeah, I thought this adventure to be an investigation + dungeon crawling run against the clock. At midnight, the boy will be sacrificed as well and Orobus will be free, unless the players manage to stop the cultisssts
Really enjoy the art and design for this one. You pack so much game into this pamphlet. Very impressive! Definitely feels ready to pick up and go.
Great map with lots of charm (particularly the leaping eels), and I adore the absolutely luscious blood red coloring throughout! Combat was plentiful, but not overly lethal.
I don’t think anyone will ding you too hard for any existing grammatical errors, since none were so bad as to interfere with understanding. A very solid entry!
- Killer art and map! (The white text on red bg is a touch tricky to read in the longer paragraphs - but it really does look good).
- I like that there's a bit of a looping path in the dungeon! Looks like it would be very fun to get to the table.
Love the map! Super evocative and well laid-out. As other's have mentioned, the lore is a bit front-loaded, but the NPCs and locations are well fleshed-out. I could visualize the Founders' story like a movie moment in my head!
I love a good cult, and a reptile cult? Even better! Solid design and nice map. For my taste you could have spent some more real estate on fleshing out the dungeon and reduced some of the up front stuff. But all in all nobody's having a bad time rooting out snake cult!
A striking red for a pamphlet module? Yes please!
Such a fantastic module for a classic fantasy setting! It checks everything...city built on top of monster's prison where it is trying to break free, cultissssts, human sacrifice, cool dungeon map. The Orobus rhyme on the back also strengthen the theme.
I love the color and font choices. The cover art and map are both excellent. I love a human sacrifice ritual adventure.
I will say, when reading the poem, I was like, "Elves only have to give three blonde hairs but you have to kill two dwarves and a human baby?!" I see later you clarify the elves must die as well. Maybe change it to "it orders us to bring / three elven heirs, dying."
I like that your NPCs have personality characterizations.
I really like the dice icons you used and appreciate that you clarify which rumors are true and false.
A lot of the information in the About the City, section is superfluous or redundant. Could be tightened or replaced with other information if needed.
In the Three-headed snake section cultists is misspelled.
I think it would be worthwhile to develop the climactic ritual chamber battle settings a bit more. Is there high ground, cover, can Orobus cause an earthquake that makes stalactites fall, etc. Maybe there are baby snake guards or the cultists are murdering the sacrifices with venomous snakes or turning into snake men?
Everything feels very true to the theme and the Appx. N/OSR genre. I think it would be super easy to pick up and run this as written. Great work!
Thanks you for the deep analysis and for the feedback! For the elven sacrifice, I decided to use a synecdoche cause I liked the rhyme, but I get what you're saying. And for the ritual chamber, I thought there was not much space left but you're absolutely right I could have put some more flavour in that.
Everything glowing about this that I wrote still stands but there's a technical thing I've spotted which others haven't noted. Not sure if it's a font problem or a paragraph styles issue that happened in late edits but the first letters of some paragraphs didn't pick up the same font used in other places where the first letter is a blackletter font. This seems to effect only the first column of text in page 2. For example, "Surrounded by fertile fields" doesn't have a fancy S in "Surrounded"
Two words: Extremely Cool
What an incredibly bold layout choice! Eye catching, inventive and dripping with style! As others said, the color is excellent and the imagery is delightful. The map too is fantastic! Love the way this looks!
Dig the use of color, the map and cartography. Someone else already mentioned the overset text. Rumour table seems perfect for stalling overly heroic Players. Looking forward to running it.
Absolutely wonderful art and writing. I love how you make red color is really dominant. I love the Orobus rhyme, it gives me a goosebumps reading it.
The design of the title is so cool. I feel like it works on so many levels! The details on the map are also so helpful. This seems like a fun adventure!
One technical thing: it looks like some text might be partially cropped off at the bottom of the “background” section. Either that or there’s a weird artifact that looks like lettering?
Visually, I think it's an incredible piece of work, and it makes very efficient use of the space. I like adventures where, if the characters fail, it opens up the possibility of extending the adventure, raising the stakes.
Cool stuff. That map really sells what’s going on here. Love how efficient Cairn is at delivering this stuff, really lets you focus on the vibes and give the exploration some space to be. I love that the crone curses you for not bringing her specific potpie made by her specific favorite inn keeper. Karen the crone wants to talk to a manager!
A solid adventure for Cairn or other OSR games! I love the isometric style map. Nice layout and a fun adventure.




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