[Review] The Black Wyrm of Brandonsford
Old School Essentials
There's a dragon in the woods.
Those friendly dwarves were the first to go, the poor things. And now the beast has been killing and eating the people of Brandonsford. No-one wants to leave the town's walls. With the humans out of the forest, fairies have taken over, and now the goblin king Hogboon seeks to claim the entire forest as his new kingdom.
An adventure for characters of 1st-3rd level.
Author: Chance Dudinak
Link
Other reviews: Axian Spice, Ben Milton, Bryce Lynch, D.D. Gant, Gundobad
There are two releases of the adventure. The second release was the adventure getting a facelift after it gained popularity. The art and layout are better; the goblin castle was made more complex, but some stats were lost. I’d love a third version!
I’ll be reviewing the second edition, and referencing the first version when useful.
Text and Formatting
The book keys 32 areas in 17 pages, managing to pack in a setting background and vibrant titular town. That’s fantastically dense.
The text is split up into major sections: Introduction, The Town of Brandonsford, The Woods, Barrow Mound (20-room dungeon), and Appendix.
Within each section are smaller headers describing notable NPCs or locations. There is normally a natural language blurb followed by bulleted, bolded information. Stat blocks are given their own visual block. Here’s an example:
I have the same criticism I had about Hole in the Oak - the method for figuring out how to cobble together “what do I say to the players” is unclear and inconsistent.
For instance, say that the players approach the giant’s house - what are the landmarks?
Thunderous snoring
Illuminated window
Smoking chimney
If they’re in the house, what are the landmarks?
The giant himself sleeping in a comfy chair with a glinting golden necklace.
Wriggling sack
Bubbling cauldron over a roaring fire
I’ve re-ordered these to be in the order that I think adventurers would notice them. That typically means big (in size, velocity, volume, smell, brightness, threat level, etc) things first. I’d imagine that the sound of thunderous snoring is “bigger” the fact that there’s chimney smoke.
Second, I’ve pulled information out of the description and into the bold. Previously, the fact that the chimney was belching smoke was hidden in the text, yet that’s something immediately obvious to an adventurer. They should never have to ask if the chimney has smoke coming out; it should be given in the original description. Same goes for the window (that there’s a light inside is very important) and the cauldron. This all comes from Campbell’s On Set Design which I encourage everyone to re-read every few months.
The main conversational loop in dungeon or wilderness exploration is that the GM describes a scene to the players, who then ask clarifying questions or start interacting with the scene.
If the GM describes too much, it’s really boring and players will zone out. If the GM describes too little, players will think they have to ask about everything to not die.
In that context, a room description should be built to satisfy two concerns:
How do I initially describe this scene?
How do I answer the players questions or respond to their actions?
Some modules will create boxed text to directly answer the first question. This has many pitfalls. Some modules will attempt to create a huge list of IF→THEN statements to handle player actions. This is fine for programming zork, but for real-life GMs, it’s less complex to list out the important features and let the GM apply their invisible rulebooks.
The Black Wyrm of Brandonsford seems to optimize for efficiently encoding a room, and bolds the text adjacent to each bullet point to create a sort of key-value pair; this simplifies searching the text for an answer or detail to figuring out which sub-header is likely to be the most relevant and reading that. Works relatively effectively.
It doesn’t, however, do a good job of making it easy to initially describe the room. For instance! Say the players enter the giant’s house. If you read off the bolded entries you get:
When you enter the room, you see a fireplace, a giant, and if he wakes up, wait no scratch that, and also a wriggling sack that contains a bound and gagged monk, Brother Dirk.
Main problems:
Not mentioning that the giant is asleep and snoring extremely loudly is a huge lack of information readily available to the players.
The giant has a huge gold necklace! Tell the players! It should be glinting!
The “if the giant wakes up” section is a pattern-break.
How could the players know that the sack contains a bound and gagged monk? How could they know his name is Brother dirk?
They’re never told about the cauldron.
Better is something like:
When you enter the room, you observe a giant snoring thunderously in an appropriately sized cushy chair. He wears a glinting gold necklace. A man-sized sack wriggling in the corner. A bubbling cauldron over a roaring fire.
This is spartan and way less purple than a lot of GMs I know, but keeps me sane and keeps my players engaged. In order to create this kind of description, I had to read the whole entry. This is an anti-pattern!
Compare:
Inside the House
Giant thunderously snoring in a comfy chair. Wears a gold necklace. 16ft tall. Head slumped to one side. Wears hide clothes (yellow-brown, homemade).
If the giant wakes up, chases after the party with intent to kill, shouting about how he “told you stinking little goblins to stay off my land!”
A wriggling, man-sized sack. Contains a bound and gagged monk.
If released he will loudly thank the party.
The monk is Brother Dirk. Dirk was captured by the giant on his way to Sir Brandon’s barrow mound (see Father William, pg. 4).
Bubbling cauldron over a roaring fire. Scorched bottom, rumbling lid. The cauldron holds boiling water and chopped vegetables. If the whole thing is tipped over it deals 1d8 damage + save vs breath or spend 1 round screaming in pain.
That seems better! Now it’s easy to construct the initial description by reading the bold sections, and still easy get a handle on the encounter and run it afterwards.
The Maps
Wilderness Map
Okay, this is some nonsense. I happen to own the module in print where giving dimensions in physical, on-paper inches makes some sense, but the PDF readers are left out to dry. What’s the distance between Brandonsford and the Barrow Mound? Let’s figure it out.
The DTRPG section says that the book is 8.5x11 (the book does not say this internally)
So we can pop that picture into an image program and check out the dimensions:
If we have 1456 pixels in 8.5 inches and 1762 pixels in 11 inches, we’re looking at 171 px/in or 160 px/in respectively. Let’s split the difference and say 160px/in.
Then, I can draw a box from Brandonsford to the Barrow mound and see that it’s 800x1050 px. Then we consult our dear friend Pythagoras to get that the diagonal is 1320px. Since there’s 160px/in, we’re looking at 8.25 inches. At a scale of 1in = 0.5 miles, that means it’s 4.125 miles from Brandonsford to the Barrow mound, as the crow flies. YAY!
For an easier way to calibrate:
The far left side of that black scale box to the far right side is exactly 2 inches, which is 1 mile. Can figure out how big that is compared to your finger, or plug it into a VTT grid, or whatever you want to do.
Compare (thanks BadRussel):
How far is it from Brandonsford to the Barrow mound? 7 hexes. 3.5 miles. If you provide a map that the GM is supposed to use to figure out the distance between things, MAKE THIS EASY. Hexes are easy to count. Squares are easy to count. Making someone get a fucking ruler and actually measure is not easy. It’s even harder with a digital product. Either use a grid or make it a point-crawl with distances supplied. This is a solved problem!
Dungeon Maps
The Goblin Castle is totally fine for a lair. The art is evocative, and there are actually at least 2 ways in (the front door and the garbage area). I had trouble figuring out what was accessible to the outside - maybe almost every room has crumbled walls? Hard to say.
Neither map bothers to tell you how large a square is. The closest thing we have to being able to infer dimensions is given in 10. Shrine
There is a 10’ wide ring of small stones on the floor encircling the statue.
Ah ha! A measurement! In the map for the shrine (which is mislabeled as #11; more about this later), the circle takes up 2x2 squares, which makes me think that square are assumed to be 5ft.
The Barrow was totally passable as a small dungeon; here’s the Melan diagrams:
The first level is linear with some optional rooms to check out and find treasure in. In order to get to Brandon’s Tomb, you can either go south and find the hidden door, or west and deal with the rats, spiders, and poltergeist. There are three routes east once you go west: through a salon, through an empty hallway, or through the crypts of Brandon’s homies (with their associated dangers and goodies). I did get tired of drawing 15x15ft rooms (the second floor has 7 of them), but otherwise good enough!
Content
Background & Hooks
This is fantasic! The author conveys the game-relevant history, setting, and adventure grist extremely efficiently. Compare this to KH1 - The Blackapple Brugh. They both convey roughly the same amount of information (history, setting, adventure grist), but I find Brandonfords’ much easier to digest. One thing I love about Blackapple is they give specific population information.
Blackapple village (pop. 408) is a rural community on the edge of a great wood.
compared to
Brandonsford: A quiet little town at the edge of the wilderness.
That 408 population helps me a lot. I have all sorts of charts to help interpret demographics and surrounding farmland based on population, as well as ACKS-inspired charts for equipment and spellcasting availability. Since I know Blackapple has a population of 408, it has ~3 law enforcers and has a radius of 15 * (population ^ 0.5) = 300 ft, so it’s about a football field from the edge of town to the center, and the whole settlement is ~6 acres.
I know that items that cost between 11 and 100g (armor, many weapons, war dogs, horses, etc) only have a 10% chance of being available. I know that you can probably find small amounts of 1st and 2nd level divine and arcane spellcasting services per day.
It’s harder to do this for Brandonsford without a population number. Medieval Demographics Made Easy - S. John Ross give that towns range in population from 1k to 8k, with typical values of 2.5k. Brandonsford says it’s a “little town”, so let’s go with 1.5k population. That means we’re looking at 10 law enforcers and has a radius of 580ft. There’s a 25% chance to get items worth between 11 and 100g, and you can get small amounts of spellcasting services up to potentially 4th level.
Rumors
Here’s something I think is interesting:
What do we do with this? Say you’re a new GM. You just read OSE Advanced Fantasy cover-to-cover. You’re going to run Brandonsford as your first module. You see that there’s a rumor table. The OSE rulebook doesn’t say anything about rumors. The rumor table says d8 - you know that means roll the 8-sided dice. What do you do? Totally unclear. Maybe you roll the 8-sided dice once, get a 5, and tell the party “You’ve heard that the dragon doesn’t exist. It’s merely an illusion conjured up by those wicked fairies!”. The players asked where they heard that. You don’t know. The players asked if they can research whether or not that’s true. You’re panicking.
Compare B1 - In Search of the Unknown:
Prior to the first adventure into the stronghold, the Dungeon Master will utilize this table to impart "background knowledge" (from rumors or legends known) to the adventurers. The table itself includes bits and scraps of information regarding the place to be explored—most of it accurate; however, legends and rumors being what they are, some of the information is false and misleading. It will be up to the players to act upon the information they "know"; the Dungeon Master will tell them that these are legends or rumors they have heard about the place, and that is all (it will be up to the players to decide upon the value or veracity of such information).
To determine legends/rumors known, each player character will cast a 4-sided die in secret conference with the Dungeon Master (non-player characters or henchmen/hirelings will get no roll). The result of the roll will give the number of rumors/ legends known by the individual rolling the die:
1 One legend known
2 Two legends known
3 Three legends known
4 No legends known
Rolls of 1, 2, or 3 will result in that many rolls on the Legend Table using d20. A roll of 4 indicates that the adventurer has no knowledge of any rumors or legends pertaining to the stronghold; any information the player desires he or she must attempt to obtain from the other players.
The legends/rumors known are determined by the player's roll of the 20-sided die, and the DM reads the appropriate information off the table to the player for each roll (this is done secretly where the other players cannot overhear). The DM then tells the player that this is the extent of background information known by his or her player character; whether or not the player chooses to share this information (all or only part of it) with the other players is a personal decision. In this manner each player is given a chance to see what bits of additional information their character knows before the adventure starts.
I don’t think modules should go full B1, but I do think it’s helpful to explain the procedure, since it’s not obvious. Something like “Each player secretly receives 1d4-1 rumors from the following chart en route to Brandonsford. Pick or roll 1d8 for each rumor.” would go a long way to expressing how the module is intended to be played.
Stepping all the way back, I’m not sure at what the point of randomness is here (though, that’s more an issue I have with random rumor tables in general). I print out all of the rumors an adventure gives me, cut them up into slips of paper, shuffle them, and then deal them all out. Why not give out more information? Why are we rolling for rumor count and then rolling for rumor index? If your table is cooperative, I think it makes sense to summarize the whole rumor table:
In the course of heading to Brandonsford, ya’ll find out that:
Shipments have stopped arriving
There’s a man-eating giant in the woods
There’s a witch who turns people into shrubs by looking at them
The dragon is an illusion conjured up by wicked fairies
The dread pirate Carmelo the Cursed buried his treasure in the woods
A family of dwarven miners are missing
The town’s alchemist is friends with the witch
The dragon hasn’t been since since the hunters got attacked
This information is not necessarily reliable.
Seems fine!
Turning toward individual rumor analysis, my philosophy is that true rumors are generally better than partially true or false rumors, and that false rumors need to drive interesting play and have some way to be investigated.
#3 drives really interesting play; the witch does have very life-like shrubs, but she’s just a hedge nerd.
#4 is a bit of a dud - it’s hard to imagine players acting on this information (yes, we’ll assume the dragon is illus… CHOMP CHOMP). It should become abundantly clear that this is fake as they interview the citizens and see the wreckage.
#8 is potentially interesting, though again, it’s hard to imagine the players acting as though the dragon is dead rather than acting like it might be alive (which is already how they were acting).
Imagine you made cuts, and trimmed the list to:
In the course of heading to Brandonsford, ya’ll find out that:
Shipments have stopped arriving
There’s a man-eating giant in the woods
There’s a witch who turns people into shrubs by looking at them
The town’s alchemist is friends with the witch
The dread pirate Carmelo the Cursed buried his treasure in the woods
A family of dwarven miners are missing
This makes it feel higher-value to me. The wonders of editing down!
The Town of Brandonsford
This is the best gazetteer I’ve seen hands-down. The NPCs are all wonderfully interconnected. They’re described in a way that’s quickly and immediately runnable.
Bently: Halfling, glasses, bald head with gray sides, jovial, talkative.
Quinn: White beard, boney, uncomfortably friendly.
Cedric: Stocky, bushy mustache, boisterous.
etc.
Compare this to Justin Alexander’s Universal NPC Template
Appearance: Arion is still a man in the flush of youth: Short-cropped, jet black hair sets off his piercing blue eyes. His frame is only lightly muscled, but toned and trained. The weight of his office, however, has brought bags beneath his eyes. And the late hours his sense of responsibility brings often causes his shoulders to stoop with exhaustion. But when the Syr gathers his strength, the image of a great man remains.
Quote: “Just give me time to think. There must be a way.”
Roleplaying:
A passionate man, but — increasingly — a weary one.
In desperate need of friends, but years of experience and loss have taught him not to trust lightly.
Rests his chin heavily into the palm of his hand.
and you can immediately see how much easier Brandonford’s is. We could reformat Arion into Brandonford’s template like:
Arion: Athletic, piercing blue eyes, passionate, exhausted.
and I find that so much easier to glance at and run.
There are a couple of snags, though: retainers and location.
Retainers
The adventure purports to be for B/X, for character levels 1-3. I think it’s fair to assume that when the adventurers arrive in Brandonsford, a lion’s share of them will be 1st level with 0 xp (since this seems like a starter adventure). At the Clumsy Fox (the only place offering somewhere to sleep), there are 4 retainers available for recruitment… but they’re all Level 2. B/X specifies that retainers must be of equal or lower level to the hiring PC.
I think there’s a very high chance that these retainers will be un-hireable (and more powerful) than the PCs for the duration of the adventure. None of the random encounter entries are with rival adventuring parties either, so it’s not likely that they’ll be relevant.
It’s easy enough to hand-wave this requirement, or reduce them to level 1 (half their given HP).
On a technical level, the stat blocks are messy.
The stats are listed in order of STR, DEX, INT, CON, WIS, CHA. This is a custom ordering, and is incoherent as far as I can tell. It’s most similar to 5e (STR, DEX, CON, INT, WIS, CHA), which groups the physical stats and the mental stats. The BX order is STR, INT, WIS, DEX, CON, CHA, which places the 4 prime requisites first.
What are we gaining here by using an unfamiliar order?
Additionally, the AC for all the hirelings is listed generically (Chain + Shield) rather than specifically. If Lady Hilda is attacked and the GM asks what the player running her what her AC is, the player looks and is like “uhh, it just says chain + shield”. “Hmm, what’s her DEX mod?” “I don’t know - it just says 9; is that a -1?”. “Ah, no, that’s a 0, so I think that’s… AC 15.”
The stat block has room for attribute mods, and the only way to get 15 AC with +0 dex is to wear chain+shield, so it’s not like we’re losing information by giving the number instead.
Finally! The numbers are consistently wrong throughout the stat blocks. Hilda has 16 STR, which means that her sword should be +2 to hit for 1d8+2 damage (not 1d6; that’s a short sword). Drop Dead Ned has a 16 DEX, which means he gets a to-hit bonus on his ranged attacks. Squints is listed as doing 1d4+1 damage with his sling, but the Halfling Missle Attack Bonus is for to-hit, not damage.
Here are corrected stat blocks (unless these retainers are deliberately not following the rules for some godforsaken reason)
Lady Hilda – Lawful Fighter 2
STR 16 (+2) INT 9 (0) WIS 10 (0) DEX 9 (0) CON 17 (+2) CHA 16 (+2)
HP - 10, AC - 4 (15), MV - 60 (20), ML - 12
Attacks: Sword (+2; 1d8+2), Dagger (+2; 1d4+2), Thrown Dagger (0; 1d4, 10/20/30)
Malzazerick the Magnificent – Neutral M-U 2
STR 12 (+0) INT 13 (+1) WIS 10 (0) DEX 11 (0) CON 11 (+0) CHA 15 (+1)
HP - 5, AC - 9 (10), MV - 120 (40), ML - 10
Attacks: Dagger (+0; 1d4), Thrown Dagger (0; 1d4, 10/20/30)
“Drop Dead” Ned – Chaotic Thief 2
STR 11 (+0) INT 10 (+1) WIS 12 (0) DEX 16 (+2) CON 13 (+1) CHA 6 (-1)
HP - 6, AC - 5 (14), MV - 90 (30), ML - 7
Attacks: Silver Dagger (+0; 1d4), Thrown Silver Dagger (+2; 1d4, 10/20/30), Shortbow (+2; 1d6, 50/100/150)
Squints – Neutral Halfling 2
STR 12 (+0) INT 15 (+1) WIS 11 (0) DEX 14 (+1) CON 8 (0) CHA 7 (-1)
HP - 6, AC - 6 (13), MV - 90 (30), ML - 8
Attacks: Dagger (+2; 1d4), Thrown Silver Dagger (+2; 1d4, 10/20/30), Sling (+2; 1d4, 40/80/160)
Location
Here’s a mermaid chart of the web of connections:
When you draw it like this, a couple things become immediately apparent! Farmer Gill is totally unconnected. None of the other characters ever mention him, and he isn’t tied to a location that the players are likely to visit with the normal adventuring procedure (secure food, lodging, and supplies).
Eric, also, isn’t mentioned by any of the other NPCs and is not tied to a location. Quinn and Warwick are really easy to miss if the players go to the the clumsy fox first, or have adequate weapons/armor (or insufficient cash) to go to a blacksmith.
Father William is never mentioned by any of the other characters, and so the players would have to think to ask about divine services.
OR
The GM can intuit these missing links (or audit the module like I did), and fix the web before play. Here’s how:
I think it’s extremely safe to assume that the players will go to Bently at the Clumsy Fox (it’s the only place to sleep). A GM can “force” this with their initial narration of Brandonsford by explicitly mentioning how inviting the inn looks/smells, how bad the weather has been on their journey to Brandonsford, and how tired the adventurers are from the trip, and that it’s the only inn in town.
Then, the Node-Based Scenario Design kicks in!
We place Gill in the Clumsy Fox, where he spins his tall tales and talks about his sons. Likewise, Father William can be talking to Eric the Town Reeve in the Inn, giving easy access to those characters.
Nameless patrons mention how much better Bently’s beer is than Quinns which has cratered in quality recently.
Bently should offer (rather than wait to be asked) information about the other shops in town (Warwick’s blacksmith, Cedric’s general store, and Ingrid’s alchemy shop) and then the web of connections feels way more complete. The characters, landing at Bently’s, now have a host of options to investigate, each of which point in more directions.
Random Encounters
I touched on this in On Randomness, but I think many of the random wilderness encounters are awkward, and could be revised.
My advice in the article is:
Go through each random element. How many times will that source of randomness be drawn from?
If it’s only once, replace it with it’s most interesting result. This allows you to both replace random table entries with pre-chosen results, and random tables with pre-chosen entries.
If it’s more than once, but significantly less than the number of entries, cut the weaker entries.
2-in-6 every mile means that we’re good for ~36 miles of travel before we start repeating. That’s enough to go back and forth from Brandonsford to the Barrow 5 times, which is more than enough. That means we don’t need to repeat entries!
As written, if 1 in 1728 tables that play through this adventure will encounter 1d10 stirges squabbling over a freshly killed deer as their first three encounters. Is this a result that we’re okay with? I’m not! If my table got the stirge encounter again, I would reroll, oracular power of dice be damned.
If it isn’t, we shouldn’t allow it to happen. The easiest way to do this is to convert random tables into ordered lists. We can do this by going to random.org's list shuffler and plugging in our results.
Additionally, I would replace all of the random creature counts with rolled results, combine the elvish hunters into the fae hounds, and replace #10 with the rival adventurers I was talking about earlier.
Here’s the result:
Wilderness Encounters. 2-in-6 each mile to encounter the next item in the list.
2 idiot dragon hunters.
Golden Fox
6 sprites
Rival Adventurers (Use the unhired NPCs from the Clumsy Fox)
2 Fae Hounds then 4 Pompous Elvish Hunters in 2d4 rounds (we already have a word for “combat turns”)
7 Stirges
4 Goblin Scavengers
3 Drunk Goblins
4 Wolves
Dragon Signs
The Dragon
1 Dryad
For bonus points, always specify the name of anything that might be willing to say it’s name. Naming things is one of the Two Hard Problems. For even more bonus points, re-arrange this list to make it narratively satisfying. We got lucky here in that the golden fox appears before the fae hounds (who are after the fox). The dragon signs appear before the dragon.
We also got lucky that the number of sprites in encounter #3 was at least 5; the text says they can cast 1 curse per five sprites, so originally there was a 17% chance that the sprite encounter could be happen without the opportunity to curse (which is way less fun).
The stirge encounter says:
1d10 Stirges. Squabbling over a freshly killed deer. Half will attack on sight. The rest will join the fray in 1d4 rounds when they have finished draining the deer.
This encounter feels really dumb with 1 stirge (ah yes, 0 stirges join the fray in 1d4 rounds), and still pretty dumb with 2 stirges, so if you must keep this random, i’d go with 1d8+2 instead of 1d10.
As a nitpick, all of the stat blocks in the book give a descending AC, and then an ascending AC in parenthesis, like AC: 9 (10). All except 2 Idiot Dragon Hunters, which lists AC as just 10. This should be AC: 9 (10)!
Other than these criticisms (I understand that the shuffled list rather than random table thing is a personal hot take), I think the actual content of the random encounters are great. Very cool situations. Evocative and terse. Ready to run immediately.
The Dragon
The beast moves like a fat alligator, dragging its bloated belly along the ground with each lumbering step, but with the potential to strike in an instant. Strings of spittle hang from its teeth, thick with foul poison. It lives only to eat and to protect its gold.
This is such a cool way to describe the primary adversary! I adore this.
The stat block has some missing information!
Check the OSE description of dragons. We already know this dragon is at least a little custom; normal dragons aren’t immune to normal weapons. Additionally, Black Dragon’s breath weapon is listed as a 60ft line.
So, given that we’re departing from the original stat block, it would be really useful to fully stat out the dragon. How many times can it breathe per day (3 is default)? Is a “spray of yellow sulfurous gas” a line, cloud, or cone? What are the dimensions? Can you save vs breath for half? Does it have the standard attack pattern (open with breathe, then equal chance to breathe or attack each round)?
As is, we’re having to consult both the text and the rulebook to run the creature, since neither is a complete source of information, which is lame.
Stream
We use a different encounter chart for when PCs are near to the stream. Layout-wise, the stream is printed on the backside of the normal encounter page, so you can’t look at both tables at the same time.
I think it would be a layout improvement to either add a full page of art (or slightly expand the town text with my above suggestions about more interpersonal connections) so that the wilderness encounters, dragon, and stream are all on the same spread.
The stream stuff suffers from the same problem as the normal encounters (repeats are weird), except amplified. Imagine that the players encounter a Leprechaun Fisherman crying for help. His beard is tangled in his line along with a struggling salmon. They help him out. They continue up the river for another mile. They find a Leprechaun Fisherman crying for help. His beard is tangled in his line along with a struggling salmon. Is this a horror module? A glitch in the matrix?
It feels absurd to re-use the Leprechaun Fisherman encounter (except maybe for laughs <_<).
The Nixie encounter is deceptively difficult to run well. At the surface, they want to trade 600g worth of pearls or lovingly perspective-switched mundane items (this is great conceptual density) for the PCs stuff. The difficult part is properly running this.
When do the nixies agree to a trade? How much do they value the pearls? How much are they willing to sell their various mortal items for? Slight guidance here would be sweet; even something like “they’ll pay a 5x premium for shiny or smooth objects, 0.5x for animal products”. I’m sure this was really sick in Chance’s playtesting, but I can only guess what the intent was here.
The Woods
The text details 8 wilderness locations: Vivian’s Hut, Faun’s Grove, Giant’s House, Destroyed Caravan, Dwarves’ Mine, Dragon’s Lair, Goblin Castle, and the Barrow Mound.
Dwarves’ Mine
I offered some analysis of the Dwarves’ Mine in On Randomness, so pull that in here for completeness.
This is a lot of bad all at once. It’s unclear whether multiple players can search at the same time (and if that speeds the process up), and it’s unclear what happens when you roll the same result multiple times. Say that a player rolls a 4 (1d4 gems), and receives 3 gems (which also have their own random value). Then they roll a 4 again. I assume that this is not an infinite money generator, and so on a 4 nothing happens. In order to find everything, they eventually need to roll all of the d6 numbers at least once, the #2 7 times, and #5 5 times.
That’s a lot of boring rolling.
Why not specify 13g instead of 2d20? Why not specify 20g citrine, 50g amethyst, 100g ruby instead of 1d4 gems (10-100g each)? The players don’t know the loot is random; so the drama is created between when they ask “what do we find?” and the GM tells them; extra dice rolls aren’t adding here.
While we’re at it, why is the loot random? It’s not modeling a complex system. This is pure output randomness and it’s not player facing.
Compare this to something like:
For every 10 minutes a character spends searching, have them roll 2-in-6. If they succeed, they get the next item in the list. Let them know when they’ve found it all.
14 iron ingots and a Mining Pick engraved with “Brol”.
11g and a dwarven corpse a mining pick engraved “Grelli”
20g citrine, 50g amethyst, 100g ruby, a mining pick engraved “Grimni”, and a dwarven corpse (Grimni) wearing the Soul-Catching Ring
A dwarven corpse and a mining pick engraved “Durni”
A bejeweled Silver Beard Comb (300g), a mining pick engraved “Breni”, and a dwarven corpse.
A dwarven corpse and a mining pick engraved “Kedri”
A dwarven corpse and a mining pick engraved “Hruni”
Note that we condensed the text about spending 3 turns to dig into the third entry, and each mining pick is now found with it’s associated dwarf except Brol’s pick, which is found first (since it’s the most important information), and Brol’s corpse is missing (since he’s the dragon). This runs much more smoothly.
If we want to go even further we can offer the players a choice between searching for 10 minutes to maybe find some things, or we can say they need to search for a combined ~3 hours (ie, 1 hour with 3 searchers) to find everything. This is my recommendation.
As written there is no cost (other than daylight dwindling) for searching. Wilderness encounters per the text aren’t time-based, they’re based on distance travelled. We could (and probably should) rule that players have a 1-in-6 of getting a wilderness encounter every 10 minutes of searching, but that’s not what’s happening in the module.
Then we have this:
Cave-In. The tunnel is filled with a mound of dirt and wooden fragments. If the players spend three turns digging through the debris, they will find a dead body underneath.
Dead Body. A dwarf killed by the cave-in. On its middle finger, it wears the Soul-catching Ring.
Putting on the ring: The ghost of Grimni, one of the dwarven brothers, appears as a hallucination only the wearer can perceive.
Grimni, the Dead Dwarf
Thick brown beard, miner’s clothes, serious, impatient. He was killed by his greedy brother, Brol.
Insists the wearer take his ring to his brothers so that he can tell them how he was killed. When he finds out his brothers are dead, he will be willing to help the PCs.
Knows where Brol might have taken the treasure: an old cave the brothers found out east (the Dragon’s Lair).
The ring could use a description to make it stand out and an entry in the magic item appendix to explain what it does (for if the PCs keep it). I wrote my own:
Soul-Catching Ring: Golden ring inlaid with interlocking triangles. Atop the ring is a polished hematite set in golden grasping fingers. The hematite’s surface swirls.
Collects the soul of its wearer when they die. The next wearer can converse with the previous.
The description helps signal to the party that this is interesting, which is important in a ruleset where players don’t have always-on detect magic.
The text says that Grimni explains how he was killed. Pop quiz: How was Grimni killed? We know who killed him (Brol, who is now The Dragon), but if the text explains how, I never found it. I can infer that Brol triggered the mine to collapse, but who knows?
Finally, there’s a major error in Grimni’s explanation. He says “Brol might have taken the treasure to an old cave the brothers found out east (the Dragon’s Lair)”. Yet:
The Dragon’s Lair is WEST, NOT EAST of the Dwarves’ Mine! The players would be totally lost!
Witch of the Woods
This is really well done. Vivian’s information is super useful, but first they have to get over their fear of the eerily detailed topiaries. A couple things that I would change here:
Have Vivian tell the PCs that the fauns appreciate sentimental items (this allows them to scheme/plan).
Give Vivian a stat block. There are multiple telegraphs that she’s evil and dangerous (polymorphed topiaries, town rumors), and the players might just try to ambush/kill her before she can cast her (assumedly poweful) spells. She needs stats!
Faun’s Grove
This is really cool! It interacts with the holy book found in the cleric workroom of the lives of the saints, as well as anything sentimental (Ingrid’s letters to Warwick, the dwarves’ pickaxes, etc), and is a major weapon against the dragon. A couple of suggested changes:
The Fauns don’t have stats! I think this was an accidental drop going from v1 to v2, as v1 did include stats for the fauns. Here they are: HD: 5 AC: 5 (15) Attacks: 1 headbutt 2d4, Morale: 12.
This is the first of sloppy ascending AC problems. In BX, AAC = 19 - AC. For the rest of the book, the author sometimes uses 19, and sometimes uses 20. I’ll point it out each time so folks can go through and ink their books or put a note in their PDFs.
12 Morale is bonkers. They fight to the death like undead? OSE Advanced fantasy has an entry for Satyr, which is what I think the Faun is here. Same HD, damage, description, etc. Notably, Satyr have a ML of 9. Let’s use that.
I think it’s very useful to include attack bonus (even though it’s implied by HD). I also think including move speed is important. Since you have to copy in the proper block anyway, here’s what I suggest:
Fauns - HD: 5 (22hp), AC: 5 (14), Attack: headbutt (+4; 2d4), MV: 180 (60), ML: 9.
The text states: “Sounds of mirth and music echo from an unknown source”. Is the expectation that players will never try to investigate the sounds of mirth and music? Are they in the faerie realm and players will never encounter them until they tap a tree for magic wine? Seems way better to detail the satyr’s location along with the trees. Diplomatic players are going to want to approach the Fauns and barter for the wine. Let them!
How much wine does the dragon need to drink? In the witch of the woods section, it says: “The wine is magically potent, enough to knock a mortal unconscious with the slightest sip.” Yet, presumably these fauns are able to drink it without a problem. What about a huge magical dragon? Some guidance about how specifically the wine interacts with the dragon would be really useful.
I think it’s worth pointing out how much more dangerous this encounter could be than any other in the book as written. The fauns have HD 5, ML 12 (they never flee), are intelligent, organized, do an average of 5 damage per hit, and have a higher move speed any any player possibly could. They won’t flee, cannot be run from, hit harder than the PCs, and have more health than the PCs. I think it’s worth calling out just how intimidating/powerful these folks are.
Goblin Castle
A goblin lair! Now here, we get specific quantities. It was 1d4 fauns in the grove. 1d1+1 goblins at the destroyed caravan. 1d6 goblins at the beaver encounter. But now! Now! 10 goblins in the common area. 3 goblins at the effigy. 2 goblins at the armory. Love it!
In order to properly run the goblins as a faction, I think it’s worth detailing exactly how many there are, that way the players can potentially exterminate them via attrition (building houses for murderhoboes). Going through the module, we have 1d4 drunks (random enc), 1d6 scavengers (random enc), 1d6 beaver fighters (random enc), 1d6+1 scavengers at the caravan, 18 at the castle, and 1d6 in the knight’s crypt.
If we preroll all of these (what I advise), we might get 3 drunks, 3 scavengers, 4 beaver fighters, 5 scavengers at the caravan, 18 at the castle, 4 at the crypt, for a total of 37 goblins. That’s almost exactly a lair (6d10; avg 33)!
For verisimilitude, I’d probably add 22 (60%) non-combatants and another 37 (100%) young goblins, but just using the combatants is simpler.
I think it’s worth pointing out that the simplified goblin stats here lack some really cool context from OSE. Namely, that they hate dwarves and attack them on sight, and have a -1 to hit in full daylight. Your goblins don’t have to have this quirk, of course, but I think it’s neat flavor.
Technical details:
I’m extremely sure that 3. Garbage and 4. Armory had their numbers reversed. #3’s description says:
Standing on the only corner left of the second floor, 10’ up. Tossing things over the edge that the king deemed worthless (books, crockery, torn up clothes, body parts, etc.) and laughing when they hit the ground.
The map at #4 clearly draws stairs going up to a second floor, and has what looks like debris on the ground to the west.
#4’s description says:
Armor pile. Helmets, chain shirts, padded cloth, daggers, arrows, axes, spears.
The pile in #3 looks like exactly that.
The description for Hogboon says
Counting up a pot of glittering gold coins.
The room it self does not describe such a pot, but no pot is described and the quantity of gold is not given anywhere. Since this is a goblin lair, I think it’s safe to use Treasure Type C, and say that it’s ~1000g.
Hogboon’s stat block is also weird:
Can he use those spells at will? If not, how many times? More about the ring in the Loot section.
Barrow Mound
This is well-done! I love how the wall mosiac in the Antechamber foreshadows the undead knights they fight downstairs. I love the cleaning-the-statue blessing in the Chapel. I love the knightly virtues puzzle in room 5+19. Love the content and concepts in general; super fun.
Aside from the general “what do I say when they enter a scene” problem I have with the rest of the keys (explained in depth in Text and Formatting), my main issues are technical.
Technical Issues
Sir Alfred’s and Sir Wyllt’s AAC values are wrong. They should be 14 and 16 respectively.
6. Chapel has double bullet points. Very sure this was just an editing mistake.
It would be very useful to detail how much oil is in each of the 9 amphorae in 9. Perfume, as well as how much it’s worth. Amphorae aren’t a thing that I have a lot of personal experience with, so I needed to look up at-the-table what these things were (since no one else knew either).
They’re huge roman liquid storage containers designed to hold ~100lbs of liquid. That’s way bigger than I was imagining. The rules cyclopedia gives that a flask of oil is ~10 coins encumbrance (10 coins ~= 1 pound). Thus, each one of these Amphorae is effectively 100 flasks of oil. At half the burning time for oil, it’s enough for 200 hours.
I’d also rule that each amphorae’s is worth 200g in treasure, though they’re bulky as sin.
In the description of 4. Relics, we have:
Inside are the quarterstaff and monastic robes of St. Arthur, which can be sold as relics (provided you can prove their authenticity) for 1,200 GP.
What does “provided you can prove their authenticity” mean. How can the players possibly do that? Totally baffled here. I’d love to hear from the author or playtesters how they did this, or imagined that players would do this. All I can think of is taking them to a cleric capable of casting the 5th level Commune and asking “Are these the staff and robes of St. Arthur”? Are people supposed to recognize these items on sight? Are they supposed to just believe that old robes and whatnot are authentic if the players show them to the barrow? I just don’t know.
I’m convinced (just like with the goblin lair) that 10. Shrine and 11. Slime Pool had their numbers switched. Behold!
10. Shrine
A 3’ statue has been placed on a dais near the south wall, with offering bowls placed at its feet. There is a 10’ wide ring of small stones on the floor encircling the statue.
Statue. A clay figure of a nude, antlered man. His arms are held out to the sides, and he holds a wand in his left hand and a spear in his right.
Stones. A ring of 10 Warding Stones (see pg.18). If anything passes over them, they begin to shake for 1 turn, creating a loud enough clatter to attract one of the Knights. Moving a stone out of place stops the effect.
Offering Bowls. One filled with 45SP and 20GP, the other with five rubies worth 50 GP each. Sitting near the bowls is a hollow golden amulet (contains a slip of yellowed parchment with a protection from evil spell written on it, worth 150 GP).
Searching the Room: Anyone examining the south wall will notice an incongruous groove in the stone, a secret door to Area 19. The door can be wrenched open with a crowbar or similar tool.
This seems like it’s definitely #11 on the map. That room on the map has the statue icon (a star), a ring around it for the stones, two little circles for the bowls, and most importantly, the secret door. Meanwhile, #10 on the map looks like a big ol slime pool.
I’d appreciate double-linking. 3. Knight’s Crypt says:
[They] have lost some of their party to the undead in the lower levels”
Then 7. Corridor says:
The bodies of three goblins lie in bloodied pieces at the bottom of the stairs
It’s super useful to reference this kind of stuff in both places. For instance, we could change 3. Knight’s Crypt to:
[They] have lost some of their party to the undead in the lower levels (see 7. Corridor)
and 7. Corridor to
The bodies of three goblins (see 3. Knight’s Crypt for survivors) lie in bloodied pieces at the bottom of the stairs.
In abstract, any time information in one room is directly related to another room, reference it. The door to the Ogre’s bedroom is locked and the key is in the Lizard’s den? Mention that in both places. Locks, keys, factions, puzzles, secret doors, etc.
Likewise, 5. Statues has the solution to the riddle in 19. Maiden. The text in 19. Maiden references 5. Statues, but not the other way around.
In 17. Crypt of Sir Myrddin, we get:
His hands are folded on his chest over top of two 6” rune stones each inscribed with 2 random cleric spells.
How about you tell us which 4 spells? What do these rune stones do? Clerics don’t need to learn spells like magic users. Are they effectively scrolls? If so, say this.
During prep, I used the rules for scrolls and maps to generate the spells. 1/2 chance of 1st level, 1/3rd chance of 2 level, 1/6th chance of 3rd level, then randomly generated the spells for the appropriate level. I got (Locate Object, Hold Persion) for the first rune stone, and (Striking, Growth of Animal) for the second rune stone, if you’d like to copy my homework.
In 19. Maiden, the maiden is missing stats!
Trap! If any one attempts to open the door without being knighted by the maiden, she will animate and attack, grinding across the floor like a giant chess piece.
Does the grinding across the floor like a giant chess piece have any mechanical implications? It would be really cool if she could only move like a queen or something, but nothing is given, perhaps most importantly like HD, AC, or damage values.
Notably, version 1 did have stats:
The AAC is wrong here; it should be 13. What’s her move speed?
Loot
The amount of gold and loot is good! There’s a goblin lair which has Treasure Type C. It seems we got lucky with the 10% of 2 magic items, but decided to have one instead.
We also have, effectively, a wight lair which is Treasure Type B, and gives us Brandon’s Magic Sword. The Dragon’s Horde is Treasure Type H and seems totally reasonable. We’re definitely high-rolling on the magic item tables (15% • 10% • 10% = 0.15%; fudging is definitely happening), but everything else is to spec.
Emerald Ring of the Goblin King
What are the specifics of this ring? Can they change castles into huge plants? Can they change parts of walls into seaweed? How long does the transformation last? How many times can they transform things per turn/day/week?
This is a general theme with the magic items in this book, and I find it annoying to suddenly find out at run-time that the item I just gave my players isn’t well defined.
There’s more to the ring in the appendix:
A golden ring housing an emerald in a setting shaped like a blooming flower. The ring has can be used to transform any nonliving, non-magical object into a plant, or change a transformed object back to normal.
If you kill the wearer of this ring and take it as your own, you become the new Goblin King. Goblins from Faerie will obey you unquestioningly. While you have the ring, you will also be hunted by the agents of power-hungry fairies who want the ring for themselves.
Getting an entire civilization to obey you unquestioningly is ridiculously powerful. Can they be commanded to commit suicide or harm each other? Do they have to obey commands indefinitely, or is it only when they’re near you?
If more details (especially descriptions and very important effects or downsides) are to be found on another page, for the love of god, mention this. I get that we’re trying to conserve page space and we’re sacrificing goats on the altar of minimalism, but we can still say:
Emerald Ring of the Goblin King: Grants unquestioning loyalty from faerie goblins. Can change a nonliving, nonmagical object into a plant or transform a changed object back. See magic item appendix p17.
There was plenty of page space:
Suggestion. Treat the goblin control effect as though it was charm person. That means the goblins get to resist commands that contradict their habits or nature, and suicidal commands are always refused. No turning goblins into the unsullied; perfectly regimental, fully behaved soldiers (it’s against their habits). Limit commands to 1 day duration.
Limit objects to logical objects (so can’t do a partial wall), and limit it to 100 cubic ft (so can’t do a whole wall). That’s big enough to transform a corpse into a plant but not get too crazy. Make the max duration a week, and say you can use it once a turn.
Silver Axe of Sir Wyllt
In 16. Crypt of Sir Wyllt, we get:
Sir Wyllt’s Skeleton – AC: 5 (14) HD: 2 Attacks 1 axe 1d6+1 SV: F2 ML:12
SP: When it lands an attack with its axe, roll for a random body part to be severed from the target.
Oh that sounds neat; how is the random body part determined randomly? The hit location table from gurps 4e? What are the mechanical effects of the severing? If the players are attacking the dragon and hit, and the only thing they could have feasibly severed is it’s head, does the dragon instantly die? This seems like the sort of thing that’s really important to get right. I’d love a reference to the appendix here. Maybe that’ll give us more detail:
Silver Axe of Sir Wyllt
A bearded axe made entirely of polished silver. Leafy vines are embossed along the shaft. The axe cannot harm inert material like stone, wood, or metal, but cleaves through flesh and bone like butter, able to effortlessly slice off limbs upon making contact.
Nope. Good luck! The appendix is less mechanically specific than the entry in the room. The appendix version of the item just says that it’s effortlessly able to slice off limbs, whereas the room-key version specifies that we’re to roll for random body parts to sever after every hit. Also! It specifies that it’s unable to harm inert material like stone, wood, or metal. Presumably metal armor counts. A cloth shirt and pants is inert, is it able to slice though that? So many questions.
Suggestion. Scrap all the bits about random body parts. Simplify to “+2 damage vs organic creatures, 1d4 damage vs everything else” (like a bad mace).
Lives of the Saints
A holy book with pages decorated with elaborately painted clerical art and gold leaf. The book is filled with stories about the saints and their triumphs over malicious fairies. Fae beings hate the sound of someone reading from the book, and fairies close to the reader will be doubled over in pain as if the sound of it is deafening.
All Fae beings, including the most powerful? How close do they need to be, just earshot? How long are they doubled over for? Do they just stand there instead of running? What if they’re attacked, are they helpless until they’re slaughtered?
Suggestion. Treat this like turning undead from a 3rd level cleric. Simple!
Firelight Citrine
A glassy orange stone the size of an egg and warm to the touch. Produces light as a torch when shaken. If exposed to an open flame, it causes a violent explosion. Worth 300gp to wizards, alchemists, and jewelers.
How much damage does that violent explosion do? That’s going to be very important. What’s the radius of the explosion? There’s a reason that the fireball spell isn’t worded:
Flame streaks towards a point some distance away and explodes into a ball of fire. Creatures caught in the fire ball suffer damage.
It could have been written like that! We could just be super vague with all of the spells and abilities, but then eventually someone’s going to ask how far it can go, what the width of the explosion is like so they can pick where to aim it, and how much damage it does so they can decide to use it or not. Do we want to make the GM answer those questions or the Game Designer?
Again, I understand the want for minimalism, but we lose little by saying:
A glassy orange stone the size of an egg and warm to the touch. Produces light as a torch when shaken. If exposed to an open flame, it causes a violent explosion in a 20’ radius sphere for 3d6 damage. Worth 300gp to wizards, alchemists, and jewelers.
I also think that the price tag is very low here. This is effectively a continual light torch plus a fireball scroll usable by non-magic-users at some unspecified level. I’d price it at ~1500g.
Suggestion. 3d6 damage in a 20ft radius sphere. Produces light as a torch for 1hr when shaken. 1500g.
Game Structure
The content is overall great. What does running it actually look like? This wouldn’t be a question for a dungeon, like hole in the oak; there’s a dungeon exploration procedure with explicit play per turn sequences. The book doesn’t explain, leaving that as a problem for the GM.
Say they players talked to Eric the Reeve who told them that George the Hunter is the only one who survived the dragon attack, and they should talk to him. How do they do that? He’s not at a place! How did they talk to Eric the Reeve in the first place?
My solution was to just handwave it.
GM: What do you want to do?
PC: We want to go follow up with George the Hunter
GM: Okay, you’re told where he is, you found him, it took a turn, and now you’re there. He’s got wild red hair and beard. He’s missing an arm and the stump bandaged and soiled. He’s stone-faced and hopeless looking. What do you do?
More complicated is how to actually run the wilderness exploration. Say that the PCs talked to Father William, and he told them
I remember that Sir Brandon once slew a dragon. I sent Brother Dirk to the knight’s barrow mound to retrieve Brandon’s magic sword, but he hasn’t come back. I’m worried about the lad.
So the players, smelling an obvious hook, decide that’s where they want to go. How do they go there? GM-side, we have a map:
We know where the Barrow is in relation to Brandonsford. At worst, Father William can probably tell the players “Follow this side of the river north and eventually you’ll see it on your right” or something similar. The players could tell you that’s what they do, you measure the path length without hexes somehow, and then you narrate the journey, rolling random encounters every mile. You’d calculate time by using the overland travel rules, applying a -33% speed penalty because this looks like a forest.
If the barrow mound is 4 miles away and the slowest person is in chain/plate armor (the fighter; 12 miles / 8 hours), then they travel at 1 mile per hour in the forest, so it takes them 4 hours to make it to the barrow mound, and 4 hours to make it back.
Along the way, they’d probably see the Giant’s house and Destroyed Caravan and might get distracted.
I ended up opting for a 1/2 mile hex grid that I gave the players. So, GM-side I had this, and then printed out a blank 8x11 hex grid to give to the PCs with Brandonsford and the river already filled in. When they’d learn about a new location, I’d put it in the correct spot on the map, and then they’d just show me the path they wanted to take.
Leaving each hex took 3 turns, and every 2 hexes triggered the 2-in-6 encounter roll. They could see all of the adjacent hexes. Made it way easier than trying to just do theater of mind. Highly recommend this approach.
Conclusion
Buy and Run! The module plays really well, and it’s fantasic vanilla fantasy.
Modifications:
Do an audit pass to fix the mislabeled areas, fill in magic item descriptions, highlight the important non-bolded information in the key, and fill in missing stat blocks.
Place the town NPCs somewhere; make sure that they all connect somehow.
Grab a the hex overlay and give the players a blank hex map.
Flesh out the detail in the magic items to taste.
Fix the dwarven mine scene.
Preroll all of the random encounter numbers (ie, replace 1d6 goblins with the result of rolling 1d6 ahead of time). Give the sentient creatures names.
Really awesome stuff.
I've really enjoyed reading your critiques of HitO and this module. What are some modules that you find near perfect, however you choose to define perfect?