Today we’re looking at Kneel Before the Goblin King, a level 1-2, one shot adventure for Shadowdark by Joseph R. Lewis. Your band of inexperienced but intrepid adventurers will traverse a small but dense 8-room dungeon and challenge the Goblin King himself.

The brief intro is exactly what I want when I crack open a new adventure – I really hate feeling like I’m flying blind and this tells me what’s going on, and what’s really going, in a clear and concise manner. Along with a description of the region, hooks, and NPCs the whole setup takes only a single page. But it’s all laid out in a way that’s easy to grok and it’s all the GM needs to hit the ground running. This is one of those things that’s so simple you’d think even rookies would nail it, but probably half the adventures I read screw this up.

The author wrote three one-shots, all straightforward and based on classic D&D themes. The other two are Let’s Slay a Dragon, reviewed here by Nick “Cri” Campbell, and Wake the Dead, which isn’t released yet but we can probably guess what it’s about. Here we’ve got a goblin king leading goblin attacks on villages and some of the landed gentry have gone missing. And there’s some neat artifacts to be found. We have a little twist in that the goblins are actually humans that have been transformed by the goblin shaman. 

The “dungeon” is inside a thick bramble where no light can penetrate. It is brief but the keys are meaty, each taking about half a page. No surprises with the layout but it is eminently legible and easy to follow. And there are no wasted words here. Certainly no wasted rooms. Everything gives the GM useful information about how to run the various hazards, obstacles and NPCs. 

And even for a scant 8 rooms there is a really great variety of challenges. Sneak by sleepy worg puppies, make a slippery jump past an oily pit, avoid tripwires that trigger a barrage of poisonous frogs, rescue a noblewoman in a cauldron rapidly transforming into a goblin, or maybe foment a worg rebellion. So there’s lots of HOTTness and lots to do besides stabbing goblins.

You might be wondering what kind of rookie PC is going to fall for a tripwire, but the adventure places an enticing treasure beyond the trap, so they will want to mess with it. Hidden “gotcha” traps can feel like an arbitrary punishment. Much better to make the trap somewhat obvious and give the players a choice based on risk and reward. 

We also get some interesting tools for dealing with the multiplicity of challenges. You ever see this under a “treasure” subheading? “A lump of fresh worg scat (attracts nearby worgs and repels other animals for 5 rounds).” Besides that there are environmental features like thorny walls and choking smoke that clever players will be able to use to their advantage.

But don’t worry you still get to stab goblins. Although they aren’t treated like complete fodder. They get a name, a little motivation, maybe a description of their behavior. No one is just standing around waiting to die in this goblin hole, and the frequent activity should make it feel like a dynamic location.

Complaints? I’ve got a few, but not too few to mention. Monsters are all from the core book. So no help to surprise and delight your players there, but at least they have the right number of hp. And too many of the challenges can be overcome, as written, by a simple skill check (like the tripwires). If I were running this I’d do that lame old OSR thing where I ask the players to explain to me how they will bypass or disarm the trap and make a ruling from there. There is also a way to turn goblins back into humans by placing them on the goblin king’s throne, but there’s no way for the PCs to really learn this besides trial and error. And if they do figure it out, it will be after the goblins are all dead.

There’s this sort of apocryphal anecdote about Miles Davis when he was playing with a young Dave Liebman. During one gig, Liebman was firing on all cylinders and played a solo that made the crowd go wild. He walked off the stage feeling quite proud of himself, and Miles said to him, “That was good. Now don’t ever play it again.”

Kneel Before the Goblin King displays the technical competence of a seasoned pro. It hits all the right notes and will make for easy listening. Grab it, run it, have a blast. This and the other two adventures in the series should absolutely be in your arsenal. I haven’t actually read Wake the Dead yet, but it’s a sure thing.

But next, I would like to see something that pushes the boundaries a bit more. Something unexpected. Mr. Lewis has shown us he can produce a Kind of Blue. Now I’d like to see his Bitches Brew. 

On a scale of 2-12, Kneel Before the Goblin King gets 10 stingbats.

https://josephrlewis.itch.io/kneel-before-the-goblin-king-shadowdark