pulp s&s vibes defined. This is a Kull short story made rpg scenario, pure and simple. And a good one too
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What an incredibly thematic adventure that just oozes Sword & Sorcery. I love the framing as the retelling of an adventure that already happened. The enemy choices are cohesive and allow for a touch of faction play. Using basalt throughout a HEX map is *chef's kiss*. The implied lore tells its own story too. A hex and a dungeon in tight quarters and neither feels like it got short shrift. By Crom, this submission is the work of a sorcerer!
Take a look at the keying for dungeon room 5. I think there's text hiding behind the room description.
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Voices of the Unknownone of the highlights of the jam for me! first, i love conan. second, i prefer minimalist layouts like yours. art itself, and the green tones really enhanced the adventure. but i have a few critical notes:
- on the first page, map hexes don't fit the inside key (D and E)
- on the island encounters table, i cannot tell if it's meant to be 1d6, or 1d10 with 7-10 being "no encounter" results
- looks like room 5's read-aloud text box covers text below
- little disappointed that this is not written for Barbarians of Lemuria (ok this is mostly a joke)
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Pickpockets of PurgatoryPerfectly on theme and whoa, fitting an hexcrawl AND a dungeon on 4 pages? That’s bold!
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The Widow of the Weirwoodthen you may also enjoy Scepter of the Thorn-Headed Regent
This is straight up just a Conan adventure! It rules! So first off: Great JOB!
Everyone else pointed out a lot of the good stuff but I wanted to commend how good the encounters were. They are both evocative and impart important information to the players. Just phenomenal environmental storytelling all around basically. I received a critique on my random encounter table for my game so I've been thinking about that more and you ACED it.
I think a few details got mixed up in final editing, I.E. the previously mentioned Hex D and E, but also at some point there is a reference to a "transformed stygian" which I would guess from context is the same as a "scaled stygian" but I wasn't sure if that was intentional or not.
Finally, amazing job working in the mechanics of BSH. All of the stuff that triggers off of Doom understand the mechanic perfectly, and I thought there were several clever uses of usage die as well! I almost designed for Black Sword Hack for my adventure and I'm kind of kicking myself reading over yours! Oh well!
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Mercy in the Ram's HallThis kicks ass, with an appropriate heavy metal backing track as it does so!
Great art, colors, & layout! I think labeling of hex D & E got swapped somewhere along the way, but everything else makes it clear which one is which. Incredibly on-theme, well-written, phenomenal loot, and oh so dangerous! An easy contender for finalist, in my view.
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Living Idols of the Gloam-WasteProbably the most on-theme entry I’ve read. You use motif really well throughout, and you make a lot of intelligent design decisions which seem extremely old-school, like save versus death & a massive gold idol being the final treasure, which of course collapses the dungeon if you remove it. I might rate this the most Appendix entry, period; you have the spirit!
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Misbegotten Children of IzanamiFirst things first: you got a really cool and funny title to work with! Probably everyone would have created something different and that's the fun of the jam. The adventuree is really packed and complete, lots of work to make everything going together, Then, I have never played the black sword hack so I must judge by experience with OSR, and seems quite brutal since the CON test says if you fail you die in agony. That's intense and a bold design choice that I should play directly to test it.
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The thirteen counts of charmDoesn’t really get more Appendix N than this does it! Squeezing a hexcrawl and a mini-dungeon into this without going for very short location keys is truly a feat. The dungeon layout itself is also really strong for something with only 7 rooms. Super playable, I’m sure a lot of folks are going to enjoy this one!
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A Crown Forged of LightningSo on theme. I like that it's a hex crawl but it's actually quite a contained adventure and in a lot of ways is much more like a dungeon. Then I scrolled to the last page and saw that there is in fact also a real dungeon inside the semi-dungeon! So yeah extremely playable stuff. The timer really ties it all together. Awesome work!
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Lament of the Jade ProphetThere is so much adventure crammed into this bad boy. I really like the magic items.
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Calling Upon the Bright BlizzardI could see Conan doing this dungeon run. Really great job!
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What Shines in the Darkness?Amazing entry! Feels like it was written for me. I love so much here: fitting a hexcrawl and a dungeon in this tight space, using venom as a key, the island sinking once the idol is stolen, clever magic items, weird shrines, sleepers from another age -- you've even got some Kim Holm art! The vocabulary you use is pitch-perfect for this theme: stygian, ebon, jet, ophidian, cyclopean... just an incredible entry here, really, really well done.
I did notice (what appears to me to be) an oddity on Room 5 of the temple, like maybe the green text block is occluding a line or two of the description block below. I don't think it hurts anything really, but it wouldn't be a jam without something to fix for the 1.1, eh?
Anyways, S-tier work! I expect we'll see this in the winner's circle, maybe even walking away with #1 theme.
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The Spiral Path of ChaosFrankly blown away by this comment. I think you picked out exactly what attracted me to this jam - getting to pack so many of my favourite things into 4 pages and getting to go buck wild with all my favourite pulpy vocab.
You're right about the text block. I've got a 1.1 version with the fix in place and some other tweaks, courtesy of feedback from WatcherDM. It's going to be a long two months knowing that error is there. Infuriating!
I am sooo happy you rate this piece. Even if it gets pipped at the post in the judging, I'll be very happy that someone out there thinks so highly of it. Thank you!
Very clean, I really like the approachability of this design. Excellent work!
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Sneaking Into JotenheimI'm going to put this in the 'definitely going to run it' category! I'm amazed at how you've used the limited space available to create not just a hexcrawl, but also a dungeon, both of exceptional quality! One of my favorites this year.
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The Mirror That Burned the WorldThe green is sooooo gorgeous, and really impressed you managed to fit in wilderness and dungeon in crawl and so much brilliantly playable Conan-content. Also really dig the classic trap causing an area to collapse, making the retreat matter just as much as the initial crawls.
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Storm Ring of ThalabaThank you! I really did wrestle with trying to get everything in, but it all worked out. I can honestly say layout is the part I struggled with most. The design and writing came very naturally by comparison. I hope when its run, it feels like a compilation of R E Howard stories - each hex and the final dungeon are all meant to feel like little story vignettes on their own.
Procedures is a really excellent subsection name, and is exactly the language I've looked for for a long time when displaying hex crawls. I don't want to call them Rules because as you say, they are more like a process to cleave to than a set of things to never or always be doing
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Where Outel's Edge Was ForgedSweet, my Black Sword Baby! Seriously, thanks for making this, we need more places to send our barbarians to die. I think the most obvious thing I can say here is: you understood the assignment. Excellent entry, and one I intend to bring to a table. Venom as master key is solid gold.
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Desert of DespairSetites, Lemurian ruins, heart-eating cultists, immortal sorcerers awaking from suspended animation... It is a glorious mix of Robert E. Howard, Grindhouse horror, and Saturday Morning cartoons. Definitely planning on running it!!
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The Helm of the Far-SeersA pulpy good time! So dense and gameable! Love snake priests in coffins!
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In the Shadow of the Tomb-Ship
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