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pulp s&s vibes defined. This is a Kull short story made rpg scenario, pure and simple. And a good one too
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.
one 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:
Perfectly on theme and whoa, fitting an hexcrawl AND a dungeon on 4 pages? That’s bold!
then 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!
This 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.
Probably 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!
First 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.
Glad you like it! Brutal is on theme for a Conan style adventure, but if you look carefully, it's the price you pay for greed. There's no risk for the first Blessing of Set and it's only if you taste the venom additional times to get further blessings that you risk overdose. High risk, high reward!
Doesn’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!
Have to give credit that your advice and feedback both during the jam and over the past year has played no small part in what I created here. Thanks Murk!
So 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!
Yeah, the hex crawl is deceptive as there are blocked routes. And I absolutely wanted to cram a one page dungeon in. Really pleased with what I've managed to include, reinforcing the theme as much as I could. My hope is that playing through it feels like a pulp story.
There is so much adventure crammed into this bad boy. I really like the magic items.
Yeah, and I wanted to write evocatively too, so it was a real challenge to fit it all together.
I could see Conan doing this dungeon run. Really great job!
I mean, this whole thing is basically my love letter to Robert E Howard.
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.
Frankly 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!
Thank you! It's very different from my Dolmenwood stuff, but I found it very refreshing to write.
I'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.
Oh, that's great! Please tell me how it goes if you do! I loved writing the island and the dungeon, but the main challenge was getting it to fit. Some credit to Odinson who gave me some good advice and guidance that cracked it. He's a wizard at layout.
The 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.
Thank 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
That's exactly it, it's describing process, so procedures seemed apt.
Sweet, 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.
I think my heart is very much worn on my sleeve when it comes to Sword and Sorcery. I suspect it shows. Thanks for the kind words and even more, thanks for the feedback you sent me - far more solid gold than my venom locks. And obviously if this hits your table I want to hear all about it.
Setites, 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!!
You just named three of my favourite things. Thanks for the kind words and let me know how it goes if you run it.
A pulpy good time! So dense and gameable! Love snake priests in coffins!
You and me both! I went hard on theme, and I've always wanted to write something Conan-esque.