I like the content, I like the cover art used, I like that there’s finally a Daggerheart entry to be found. I love the ever-circling questioning of the players to build the world together.
I typed: “Do the KotBB have any motivation to kill the Owl King?” and then realized that that’s one of the questions asked at the very beginning. So good :)
I absolutely love this zine. The theme, which is I assume inspired by the Franco-German fairytale circle, is lovely and so fitting to the title. Sprinkled with a namedropping Hastur for Lovecraftian Eldritchness, superb. The beautiful map with the locked doors, ensuring the players “see” everything. The mansion and it’s surrounding, telling a story like all those eerie, bit spooky walking simulators, asking the players to read them without telling everything from the getgo. The visuals, the easiness to transport sich into a system. It’s wonderful.
And because I love it and will totally run it, I will now – unasked – tell you everything I will tweak. Because this was an almost perfect match to me – up to the. Very. Last. Paragraph. So let’s begin with the first paragraph.
The backstory is a bit up and down. One thinks “Oh, fairytale”, then “Oh, family drama”, then “Whoah, that escalated quickly”, then “WTH a cryopod doing here?!?”. Long story short: I’ll ditch the cryopod. Dead wizards can lie in marble tombs and are able to teleport eager adventurers, as well.
My startingpoint won’t be a dungeon with a fight. The players will prepare characters, but they will be children for a few minutes, playing an adventurer party as a game of chicken, delving into an old mausoleum near their village. There will be tension, but no combat. They will turn into their characters after they teleported.
Absolutely nothing to change in the mansion. I have an idea for the book in the library, turning it into a Mimic that reveals itself when they turn they third page just saying “Hastur”… Should be warning enough.
But – for me – there needs to be one big change: based on the story you wrote and for the sake of a twist, this cannot end with a battle against a wolf/knight hybrid in a Shellyian laboratory. It will take a bit of work, more than to be done in a itch-comment, but this has to turn against Hastur, breakting Illaria from him and ending all this: the experiments, the pain, the regret. All this came from Illara’s longing to be loved by her parents by being able to do magic. Because of this she turned to The Old One. We’ll have to make her understand that one does not have to change so others love you. Perhaps going the Disney-route and letting her parentghosts appear (That might be over-doing it).
This might have gotten more ranty than constructive. I’m very invested into your zine already 😉
It seems one could almost run it in LucasArts-mode without lethal combat, just letting the players explore the going-ons in that bubble of ice, water and snow.
This! This cozy, wet, everchanging bottle-episode of a ttrpg-module! I love it. The little village is completely digestable for players and GMs alike, the tasks to be done are so simple and unheroic. We just sit in a hut, teaching a child to read. And then the world from beyond the rain, the world the players cannot break out to, breaks in.
Just one thing: Please explain to me Noon, 3rd day:
Jimmu shouts to announce the brothers’ presence.
What is meant by that? Has Hiruko hired those ronin?
I am absolutely flabberghasted! To be honest: If I got that title, I would’ve just leave. But you took it and you not only embraced it and seemingly effordlessly combined it in a high fantasy hell delve, no, you also created a whole little community, interacting with each other, leaving so much room for the players to do everything right and everything wrong.
The car-stuff isn’t getting in the way; it’s just part of Beleth’s persona and domain. And the ensemble of NPCs is nicely connected. Reminds me more of the LucasArts and Sierra adventure games of old, going from screen to screen, looking for new interactions and puzzle solutions. The nice dungeon with the big fight at the end? Grandios!
Also: The Meta in the notes. Writing them in first person but still recommending the module on the first page? I actually laughed out. And that little handscribbled stat block for the main villain!
I absolutely love the introduction. I was captivated by the premise and when I was guided to table D I thought “That’s one mean stat block this guy has.” The hook and the rumors are very good and even my players will go for it (they are little contrarians at times ;)
The bead mechanics with all their tables look fun and random.
I just think the tower needs to be much bigger. I’d prefer a lot more rooms, perhaps even a castle structure around it for utility buildings/rooms, and - for my taste - would even de-randomize the bead locations for about half of them to trace the flight of the rebel through the structure.
The submission is a brilliant 4 page setting plus mechanic plus story, that hopes to see another 8 pages in the future :)
This is a beautiful setting ad a wild scenario. Putting up big glass balls (without even trying to explain them, great!) and slowly let them fill up with water - that sounds fun.
I get the problems of having to communicate a rising tide in a culture that reads from top to bottom. The second page needed some additional parsing, but as the information isn’t as dense as on the front page, it was absolutely “readable” and communicates the doom clock perfectly.
Overall I think the whole premisse needs much more space, to flesh out the ravine itself, possible dungeons/locations of the guradians, the sphere locations itself,… any plans for an expanded edition?
This is a very nice dungeon with an inherent logic, why everything is there (which I always like). I really appreciate the little backstory the players could discover - whatever happened to Mariel? They are not accounted for? - possibly turning this into a rescue mission.
What I miss is as reason for the group to go in there, but that might be my “Please hold my hand”-5e-brain there :)
Littlelest nitpick: It is the heart pumping blood, not the blood vessels.
I know what I think is happening at the lake, but the more comments this gets, the more I’m inclined to not elaborate on that and let each reader (and hopefully player) come to their own conclusion :)
I like it as a linear puzzle dungeon. I like it for the lore and very thematic encounters on the way to and in the cloister. It’s so straight forward in its rules of engagement and quite punishing for those players not heeding to them, I’ll absolutely put it on my pile of zines to educate my little murderhobos at home.
It duped me in two way, though:
First, it isn’t what I call a heist. It’s a linear puzzle journey/dungeon with a quick grab and run at the end. But perhaps I’m totally wrong and player will come up with elaborate plans. I’d be happy to be surprised in that regard.
Second: There’s a lady in… shall we say old-school-y garments on the cover, who does not even have a guest appearance in the module. I would’ve thought she’d play a lot bigger role, than… none?
I totally see how Lynch comes into mind. I do not know if I’m capable to deliver on that order ;)
But from the top of my mind one could chain the events in the vessel with another and intersperse several, analogous dungeon-scenes when everyone is sleeping.
But I’m afraid this would be more of a script than a ttrpg module, as it would be quite hard to make the interchanging happeings relevant to each other without building the finest railroad space has ever seen.
But I will let the idea simmer for a bit and re-visit it. Thank you :)
I love the in medias res beginning and the slow unfurling of the world. The scenario seems to be a quick one and done for a group of paragon, but could be a night of arguments for those groups with differing views on good and bad.
The art direction is all over the place and the module would greatly benefit from a straight line in this regard, but I won’t hold it against this quite complex scenario I will throw some of my players into :)
Took me a while to recognize this isn’t a one-time dungeon but a delightful way to answer an important question midst an campaign via a multi-month scavanger hunt with a chance of loosing your character.
The locations are delightfully strange/absurd/surreal, the items pure bliss!
What do we have here? A lengthly introduction read aloud text, a dialogue with the main NPC with set talking points, another NPC with exactly one task to fulfill. Then a check to get a bonus on the next day. Followed by another long read-aloud text, an encounter which can got one of one ways (follow the monster), a fight no DM would let the party loose as it’s literally the only combat to be had, and a check not DM would let the party fail as it leads to the final explaining readaloud text. After that a final reveal and the end.
You know how we call something like that. It’s a novel. And I like novels. It just wasn’t the assignment ;)
The prose would have gotten 5 stars, if the mother din’t poop out the spawn, but birthed them. A picture even more grotesque but fitting to the names of the creatures.
This comment will read like a bad review. It isn’t! I like the story, I like the imagery, I like the writing!
This is very straight forward and I assume quite playable.
Yet the start is also a bit messy. From the Background to the note how to enter the dungeon to the starting town to the first dungeon room. A restructuring of the paragraphs and one or two subheaders would’ve avoided that rumble.
The dungeon has all the components to get the background (plus a spiral room? I don’t know if Zorax didn’t get to complete it or the author). What is missing is some kind of hint on how to get the correct shutdown sequence of the factory (some manual in Zorax’s room perhaps? 2^11 combinations are a lot of combinations!)
Lastly the player’s leave the dungeon with the good feeling of rescuing the Reach, but Zorax’s chamber absolutely needs a loot chest ;-))
With these little tweaks, mainly a hint to the combination, this is a very runnable, on-theme module.
I hope to run the module for the more roleplay-inclined part of my player group, soon. I assume there will be some kind of paranoia, as they will expect a dark alien jumping from the shadows any minute, especially on the second round the characters await.
I guess there should’ve been a sentence in there that all the lists and tables are merely suggestions to be expanded upon. Sorry for the omission.
Wouldn’t dream of it. I think you’re on the right track, even including the module’s language into your own. Make sure not to step into a newer, bigger prison when entering the Sovereign’s domain. The vessel can only help you once.
I guess there’S a lot of lore, items and mechanics from the system referenced. Which is interesting to read, but difficult to parse when one tries to understand the module itself.
Nethertheless it’s a good read, the small nuances like “Drifts of dust and microplastic ash” make this dense and deep.
Also the idea of the map you can only go inwards on is a cool mechanic and a great interpretation of a black hole/singularity.
I read Dune and - don’t hurt me - Starfield in this, but that might be the theme and underlying system and not your intention.
Yeah, I made the switch into the dungeon quite blatant. I hopes the schematic of the vessel and the layout of the dungeon would make it clear what’s going on. From the comments I gather I was wrong ;)
The prisons were numbered in an earlier version. But the zine was already so table-heavy I made it a list. There are indead exactly six suggestions.
At first I thought it silly, but when artwork and factions came together with the writing it really clicked. There’s a small world with lots to explore and lots of incentive to fetch something for the hook - and treasure, of course.
So… you took the apostrophe in the assinged title and ran with it without ever looking back, did you?
This is a great location and premisse. My players will absolutely choose violence, guess I’ll prepare some backup characters :-D
I think the zine could loose lots if the first and second page as some things are explained multiple times. The locations themselves could benefit from a bit more space for fleshing out.
I wasn’t familiar with a “depthcrawl” but I see the beauty of escalating events in it and love what you did here with the theme. The two add. rules are a great expansion into the theme, the backstory itself is fanatstically interwoven as a root (haha) cause, but at the same time a bit subdued and not overwhelming the roleplay potential. VERY nicely done!
First and foremost and above all: I love the writing in the read-aloud text!
Followed by the implementation of the title into the modules mechanics and the whimsical cast of monsters.
I guess it comes with the system, but the last page is a bit of a downer as the stat blocks are a mix of plain table and - me-problem - unparseable.
Uh! And the chaging magic item is such awonderful and again very thematic conclusion!
It does not need to be said that the visuals are stunning, does it?
I haven’t seen anything like this module before and there are question that might be answered by reading it again more carefully, but that does not change the fact, that maps, theme and encounters look great!
I love the layout and really like the artwork. This seems like a sweet little campaign in a very approachable setting. I put this on my pile of “TO DO” zines!
Maybe it’s my Cairn-illiteracy, but how would the hydra-statblock work when heads are missing? Does it get up to 9 attacks but a single HP pool?
I think I’ll ignore the note about the duplicate ocean encounters, this seems quite stressful for up to 9 heroic tasks to be done ;)
My “D&D 5e-please hold my hand”-brain somehow needs a bullet-pointy adventure path to reach the conclusion, but that’s a me-problem.
