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Very nicely layed out. The maps especially are drawing me in.
Report of Playtest, September 2026
We played the adventure using the Moldvay Basic Set rules from 1981. Played BtB, apart from changing descending AC to ascending as that’s what everyone was used to.
It was a big group (9 players). Three were Greek, one German, one French, one Italian, one Finnish, one British, one Irish. I let everyone roll up 3rd level characters: two clerics, a dwarf, two elves, a fighter, a halfling, a magic-user and a thief. I let everyone choose one magic item from a list I had prepared (four items per character class).
We started in an anonymous port town where a local pearl diver reported his strange discovery. The party asked some questions and chartered the boat of the pearl divers to take them to the island. They learned from the pearl divers that shoalgat would allow them to breathe underwater, so they harvested some weed and left it on the beach to dry while they explored the structures on the shore.
The stone satyr masks perplexed the party. They tried to interact with the masks but didn’t think to ask a question. They were unnerved by the medusa head relief. They found the aegis but didn’t think to clean it.
Eventually they investigated Talos. The Greek players recognised him and started checking to see if he had a bung in his foot (I had omitted this part of the legend but perhaps I should put it in).
One of the elves started hitting him, causing him to animate and pursue them. They figured out if they left the aegis where they found it, Talos would not pursue them further. Despite this, the elf provoked him again, stabbing him with the javelin. He was smashed to death with two blows of Talos’ fists. The rest of the party got chased to the beach, where they grabbed their dried shoalgat and dived under the waves. The magic-user crept back for the aegis while the others distracted Talos and dove deep underwater to escape.
Due to this precipitous exit, they did not explore the labyrinth, instead finding the edge of the sea shelf and diving down to the sea bed and the Workshops.
The party moved quickly past the dancing platforms and ran into the mechanical fish, which they were able to defeat, helped by their sword +1, +3 vs. regenerating creatures.
In the Taureion, they puzzled over the bronze cow for a while and were very disturbed when they figured out what it was for. Together with the bull horns on the wall, they began to piece together the birth story of the Minotaur. (Although the Greek players instantly recognised Daedalus and Talos, they were unfamiliar with this particular legend).
Unsuspectingly, they headed into the Lair of the Sea Gorgon. They saw a shape flitting between the broken pillars. The surviving elf advanced and Pasiphaë emerged from the watery shadows to attack! The elf landed a blow against her before meeting her gaze and being instantly petrified. He was wearing the aegis but unfortunately had neglected to clean it so could not avail of the bonus to petrification saves.
The rest of the party averted their gaze. Three had mirrors, the rest closed their eyes. Eventually Pasiphaë, wounded, fled into the open sea.
I had included a scroll of Stone to Flesh on the magic item list at the start. Regrettably the magic-user had chosen a scroll of Fireball instead.
Finding their way into the mechanical workshop, they started to suffer from the poisonous fumes. In the Pyraion, they were driven back by the intense heat.
One of the clerics used her Scroll of Resist Fire on the halfling, who volunteered to sneak past the flame salamander. She made it and grabbed the first things she could lay her hands on: the Wings of Daedalus and the Antikythera Mechanism.
Meanwhile the rest of the party were locked in battle with the Zodiac automatons in the mechanical workshop. The fighter was hit by Skorpios’ poisoned sting — but made his saving throw. They grabbed what items they could and hurriedly left.
As it was nearly midnight, I wound the adventure up there, allowing them to escape the island with their loot and their stories, mourning the deaths of their two elvish comrades. The magic user used his Helm of Comprehend Languages to communicate with Boby the Mechanical Owl, allowing him to ask questions about some things they hadn’t fully understood.
If we had had more time, I would have had Talos stomp on their boat and stop them from leaving. Of course by this time they had the Wings and some other items that might have allowed them to escape.
Conclusion: It was a fun evening that put the adventure through its paces. I plan to incorporate what I learned from the playtest into a revised version.
It occurs to me reading "Abandoned Islands* that Delios would have great ruins I could turn into battlemaps and surface of the island maps, for the extended version
Further to this, if one is so inclined there are lovely little versions of the Minoan building remains available as aquarium furniture - if you wanted a waterproof tableau of the scenario. Which as Mr Q knows is the sort of lunacy I get up to for games. There's definite charm in arriving at a convention with fishtank full of water and ruins. Best to bring a smile too.
Arriving at a convention with a fishtank full of water and ruins sounds awesome and also the sort of thing that gets you banned from conventions.
Is that the reason!
i can see the effort put in the maps, but there is a lot that's not working on the game side. It's to straightforward to be memorable.
It’s a fair comment. The adventure is a fairly straightforward dungeon crawl.
When I got the title, I spent some time on research: reading up on the legends of Daedalus, watching the old Ray Harryhausen movies inspired by Greek legends (Jason and the Argonauts/Clash of the Titans) and I went down a rabbit hole reading the Mazes & Minotaurs RPG. I made a ton of notes but in the end Jeremy and I pulled the actual artwork and writing together over the course of a weekend.
While I’m happy with the thematic references, I agree with you that Daedalus is missing something. I felt more satisfied with last year’s entry (Witchbreed of the Sunken Vale).
I’ve arranged to run Daedalus with a group including several of my Greek friends. On the basis of their experience and feedback, I may do a revised version.
If you would like to give more specific feedback I would be pleased to hear it.
Ray Harryhausen is alway a solid place to start!
You may also want to take inspiration from -crawl adventures, where the whole point is not drive DM and players through the "chapters of a story" but set an open stage where they can move in whichever direction they may choose
Love the theme, love the map (especially how it changes from tan to blue as you go underwater) and even though I personally don't like the cover art at all, it really does look like some blueprint of a lost contraption that Daedalus was cooking up, so it really helps set the vibe!
This is a straight forward adventure with some nice treasure, interesting magic items, and very dangerous foes. This location is FOR SURE getting dropped into my current BECMI game!
Only thing this is missing is scale on the rooms/maps. Oh, and it would be nice to see some more interactivity and larger scale with the submerged Labyrinth (maybe some sauhagin gladiators or some other cool stuff) if you plan on doing a redux.
All and all, great job!
A great entry which feels that you can just print it and run it at your table. You both delivered on the art and theme levels too. Top notch work!
Great small dungeon with an Ancient Mediterranean theme played straight. The isometric maps help set the tone with little details like the Minoan dolphin. Love it. The underwater section adds danger and weirdness. Solid work. I also love the nod to Penguin Classics.
The front cover looked super convincing as a pulp novel vibe!
Love the iso-arranged map room designs! ... Its a dungeon full of great detail and goodies. Great at communicating a lot with a little. Straightforward treasure hunt with danger abound.
Classically Greek and equally spartan in its presentation, nonetheless packed with mechanical goodness and stunning isometric maps.
The cover and maps are pure gold. The background image on the text pages shone through as well. Well done. The adventure itself looks like a straightforward romp. I found myself looking for a more explicit reason to go explore - a rumor about the wings and divination device, maybe? So there's a little work for the GM to do to get the party onsite, but other than that, this just sings.
Excellent map! I particularly love the partially sunk labyrinth. Love the cover too. It absolutely looks like something that would be actually on a shelf. It looks professionally designed.
Great cover and wonderful maps. Liked the way you approached the Antikythera mechanism.
Looks like a blast to play. Extremely well written. Each aspect considered, interesting, playable. Holy crap the maps!!!! How were these done? Two small suggestions: loose the light background image on the inside pages. You don’t need it and it’ll be easier to read. (Ironic coming from me…my entry’s comments pointed to more serious readability issues in my entry. ) Last one is add some “hooks” that have slightly different motivations for exploration/ angles perhaps or hints at what they may find. Superb.
The maps are done in Dungeonscrawl (isometric) then exported to Adobe Illustrator, vectorised, extruded/walls put in, then exported to Adobe Photoshop for the finishing and shading (and lots of clone brushing to make corners and paths work). Then some minoan typefaces for decoration were made too small to be noticed before I resized things badly, scaled it like a lunatic and then ran out of time with StrangeQuark tapping their watch. I do not recommend this workflow. It's also useful to find a whole collection of isometric minoan assets online a week after you needed them.
Amazing. It turned out great. Looks super polished to me! I had big plans for bringing my paths from Adobe Fresco into Rhino (3d cad) and adding some 3d features to use as a reference, but I also ran out of time lol. Fresco is great and free btw. You can sketch in vectors and it is possibly the best at that aspect.
I have never used Fresco, it sits there uninstalled. New software always seems really appealing when you're doing a game jam till you get into it and end up reverting to whatever you know really well. Which in my case is "panic! quick mock it up in photoshop!"
I'm a sucker for Greek and Roman antiquity inspired adventures.
The maps are great.
I'm gonna keep an eye on this one and see if I can get it to the table.
Great 3D map and the cover is one of the better old book covers I've seen in the jam so far.
I really think the cover is really strong. Great work on the visuals - especially recognizing the perspective floor plans. Nice work on the cultural references and thematic unity.