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Very cohesive and looks super easy to run. Spider theme is fully utilized in all aspects which I love, and it’s not forced. Layout is great. Rooms have interest and build to the conclusion. Simple premise executed well. Room descriptions are evocative but efficient. Very Appendix N! I want to run this. Some fun NPCs and clues along the way.
Good ol' dungeoneering here, with evil spider cult as a treat. I'd play this every night for a week, not gonna lie. Map is good, enemies are thematic and lively. Random encounters a little bit off imho. In the end, we need a bokk with a thousand dungoen such this.
The pin being 888 is funny, love that.
Pretty straightforward thematic dungeon crawl! The module’s layout is simple but functional, although a bit hard to read in A5 size. Interesting use of XP veering away from Shadowdark’s XP-for-Treasure.
One question, though: Was it supposed to tell me how many villagers are there in total? I get it that you get XP for all or any, so the number might not matter, but I’m curious if there was an intended number to put a cap to how many rests players would get before not getting any XP. Also, I guess players should be told that one villager dies each day, right?
Right off the bat, visual design is great, theming is great. Perfect Appendix N material, and I LOVE the paperback book w/ yellow pages.
Great hook, nice map. Eight Screams of the Spider Cultists is an excellent table. It doesn't even need to be attached to Area 8, it could go right on the front page!
This is solid and goes right into the "I'd run it tonight" pile.
The "aftermath" section could get a little more love - I assume the one duplicitious cultist might have an escaping sister who plots revenge, perhaps an artifact might tie the party's mage to the spider-magics, etc.
Like spider eggs under the skin, what I want from this module is MORE MORE MORE!
Has the feel of a classic adventure. Nice job!
In addition to other's comments, nice map! Lots of loops and variations and tricks for the mapper.
Another one for the "run" pile. Love me a spider cult and the map and interesting features made this a stand-out entry to me. Great job!
It's a dungeon and a spider cult, as promised - but there are loads of fun ideas in here that are really clever and keep it fresh. I love the cultist disguised as an abductee whose story immediately falls apart under any scrutiny or even mild observation of the surroundings. Things like that where players are very likely to overlook the obvious and then feel that any comeuppance is completely justified because the clues were so obvious in hindsight are so fun to play out.
Upfront I think from what Adobe Reader is telling me, there are 4 pages here which are all 8.5 x 11. Just want to throw it out there to triple check the jam requirements in case my gut feeling is right here.
The contents of Secrets of the Spider Cult themselves are a mixture of really nice archetypal stuff which I love to see represented so well (particularly for the theme of this jam!) as well as things like a random table to determine what a Cultist screams. AAAIIIIEEEEE indeed.
Crucially there are a couple different kinds of spiders in here and that's a great choice to have made.
A great effort!
GAH! Size fixed. I can't believe I missed that. Thanks much for pointing that out, and for the nice comments.
Of course! Thank you for your contribution, truly. I enjoyed your take!
Wanted to extend and invitation to join a collab I'm organizing for SD creators of the jam. If you're interested hit me up on Discord or Bsky.
Cool dungeon map, lots of interesting choices to make. I don’t think its helping the adventure but I lol’d at poster of spider on webline saying “HANG IN THERE BABY!” The corpse pile feeding the fly population to feed the spiders is evocative if also totally representative of the inefficiencies of spider cult food security.
It was very clever how you did the cover! Making the book itself an object on the page so you could both have the cover and use the front page. The dungeon is also well fleshed out, you could definitely just drop a party right into this!