Today we’re looking at The Syndicate by Micah Abresch. It’s an adventure and collection of related encounters and campaign supplement for the author’s Aetherdark setting. Aetherdark, if you haven’t heard of it, is a Spelljammer-esque sourcebook for Shadowdark that includes rules, random tables, monsters and just about everything else you could want to run a campaign about visiting strange worlds in the astral seas.
The Syndicate is an interesting type of book and I’m not sure that I’ve seen its like. It outlines an unscrupulous faction but it does so from the lens of how the PCs will interact with them. You have the typical stuff like their goals, available resources, tactics etc. But 50 of its 57 pages are devoted to open-ended encounters that the party might have. It’s a very gameplay-forward way to write a faction and thoroughly answers the question of how a GM should use it.
It kicks off with a gauntlet called Taking the Ship. Gauntlets are tough because they have a few jobs that are somewhat unique to the format. They should teach the players what the game is about, they should provide a nice starting off point for a campaign with some opportunity for further adventure and of course they need to be fun. Taking the Ship has the added burden of introducing a setting that even fans of the fantasy genre are unlikely to be familiar with, as well as some mechanics that are beyond what’s found in the Shadowdark core rules. Let’s see how it does.
The setup is pretty simple. The PCs are prisoners (classic) and the ship they’re being carried on crashes into something (turns out it’s a space kraken, natch). So the party has to wrest control of the ship and drive off the kraken. In order to do this they’ll need to traverse the 9 keyed areas and contend with the ship’s remaining crew as well as a number of other environmental and tentacle-based hazards.
The presence of the kraken is felt throughout – half of the random encounter roll entries describe some way a tentacle punches through a wall and attacks a player or knocks everyone down. It’s very thematic and even more deadly and capricious than a regular random encounter roll where you would be rolling reaction checks and there may be an opportunity for parlay. It’s perfect for a gauntlet where grievous harm should lurk around every corner. There are also certain actions and locations that will trigger random encounters more frequently.
This was a smart move, and helps to make the most out of the relatively short dungeon. Encounters with belligerent Syndicate sailors become a lot more interesting when an errant tentacle shows up and snatches someone, and opportunities to search for gear and loot become a life and death decision.
Once the kraken gets bored and leaves (1 hour into the adventure) the party will still have to contend with the wounded captain, Ca’Resh, and the cannibal chef, Amelia. Amelia is properly scary, singing songs about orc steaks and elf tartare while standing amidst a pile of butchered bodies and wielding a knife that beheads on a hit roll of 18+. Fighting her head-on would be a massacre so the PCs will have to get creative – maybe enlisting some of the remaining Syndicate sailors if they can. But I’m not sure the adventure contains enough tools for the PCs to deal with her besides throwing bodies at the problem. We’re told that Syndicate sailors will “try to eliminate escaped captives” so it may be difficult to win them to the cause, if they haven’t already been dealt with. It might be possible to roll a cannon (or bombard as they are called here, I’m sure there’s a technical difference) up to the door and blast her but the part of the ship where the cannons reside is destroyed when the kraken leaves. I’m sure some very creative players will come up with something but others may be stumped by this encounter.
Dealing with the captain will be much more interesting. Wounded and beleaguered he may be willing to bargain. But we get no guidance on what his terms may be or what he may offer to PCs that spare his life. A few words on that subject would have been helpful but it’s not beyond the capabilities of a competent GM to improvise.
The layout is mostly very clean and easy to follow. There are a couple of places where words are bolded without any kind of follow up and additional information. For example, it says, “…complex sigils cut into mithrite blocks extend floor-toceiling, occasionally flickering with hints of emerald flame.” In Aetherdark these runes are essentially the jets that propel the ships. But you know the players are going to ask about them so you’ve got to arm the GM with something interesting, or some way to interact with them.
Otherwise the adventure’s biggest weakness is its linearity, at least from a navigation standpoint. Not much room for branching paths on a disabled ship. But linearity is maybe misunderstood. The purpose of having branching paths in a dungeon is to provide opportunities for players to make impactful choices. But going left or right is the only choice to make, and besides, many dungeons have multiple routes for no real reason at all, only to check a box on the “dungeon design checklist”. So looking at the map doesn’t provide the whole picture in this regard, and a multiplicity of Jaquaysed loops isn’t a requirement for a non-linear dungeon when it comes to supporting player agency. The adventure looks a little better when viewed through this lens and despite it’s limited map I expect no two tables will have the same experience. But I think it could be improved by giving the Syndicate sailors and other NPCs a little fleshing out, as most of the decisions will come down to how to deal with them.
Take the Ship is short but will definitely be action-packed. I could see it having one of the highest room count to body count ratios in all of Shadowdark. And while it’s not the meatiest of adventures, mostly devoid of the sort of exploration and resource management you would get from a longer, more complex dungeon, it serves as the perfect amuse bouche for an Aetherdark campaign. At the end the party will likely have a ship that needs repairs that is also stolen, and some powerful enemies to contend with.
Following the gauntlet we get a series of escalating encounters that aren’t meant to serve as a campaign or adventure path per se, but are designed to be slotted into a broader campaign and to give the Syndicate an ever-evolving presence.
Some are pretty direct. In “Aether-Liner Raid”, a Syndicate slaver ship is attacking a worker transport ship. The faster the PCs get involved, the more people will be saved and the greater their reward will be. It’s not terribly complex but it gives the GM all the tools they need to run the encounter effectively and provides some nice details on Syndicate crew as well as the boons enjoyed by a successful party. And then you get some that are just wild – a magic topaz is merging the dead bodies from two crashed ships into a giant fleshmonster. If the party can figure out how to kill it, they can claim the topaz and use it to mutate their enemies (or themselves?).
What the encounters have in common is that they are open-ended and allow for a variety of approaches from the PCs. They also serve as great examples of the types of encounters that can be had in an Aetherfaring campaign. If you’re like me and your GMing experience is more around traditional fantasy or even traditional sci-fi, it’s very instructive to get a peek into the sort of gameplay that was envisioned when the author was writing Aetherdark. And even beyond that, there’s a lot here that could be adapted to any seafaring or island-hopping campaign.
But in a few places this open-endedness tips over into “directionless” where it’s a bit unclear exactly how the PCs might get involved. In “Recently Raided” the party descends on a settlement that’s recently been raided. The residents are in hiding. And that’s about it. It could use some more teeth to grab the PCs, I think. Maybe the raiders will return and the party might stay and help. Maybe they stole something valuable and ask for help recovering it. Something to propel this into actual adventure. This and some of the encounters will require some work from the GM to answer the question, “why should the PCs care?”.
I would say this book is indispensable if you’re running Aetherdark and it is certainly best suited to that setting. But beyond that this type of book is something I’d like to see more of. I don’t think that adventure paths and linear 5e-style campaigns are a great fit for Shadowdark, but something that is modular and flexible, that can supplement and enhance a broader campaign is very useful. The Syndicate is a great template for that sort of resource.
I’m having a difficult time scoring this one, considering the gauntlet, the encounters and its overall utility as a tool. They all work together very nicely to become a bit more than the sum of their parts. On a scale of 2-12, The Syndicate gets 8 stingbats.
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