Dank Dungeons is currently hosting their second Appx. N game jam over on itch.

The jist is that you get a title assigned, based on the fantasy and science fiction literature that inspired Dungeons & Dragons, and then you have four pages to write a ttrpg module of some kind. Some of them have been and will be written for Shadowdark, and I will try to review all of those. I will grade these somewhat on a curve given the limitations of the format. Here is part three:

Pits of Olympus Mons
Knucklepunk Games 

In this adventure the party goes into a cave and gets transported to Mars. It’s the Mars in our solar system, I guess. We get a few setting details about how the population is divided by color, much like in the Barsoom books by Edgar Rice Burroughs – Red, Green, White, etc. And a few specific NPCs are detailed.

Once they’re on Mars there isn’t a ton to do – an impending sandstorm will push them towards another cave that is the home of a martian lord. There also isn’t much to do here. I think the author’s intent was for this to be a jumping-off point for a campaign on Mars but it doesn’t provide much in the way of hooks. The cave/home has some teleportation circles that lead to a few places with one line of description, and one place where a powerful being will try to send the party back home. There isn’t enough to do here, and there isn’t enough to inspire further adventure.

I find the whole thing a bit baffling. Here’s one of the room keys:

I think “IN: 12” means INT check DC 12. Imagine being a GM, asking for that check and then telling the player, “You know that guy you can see? This appears to be a place where you can see him.” 

I don’t see a lot of utility here. Transporting your characters from a fantasy setting to Mars doesn’t really make sense because it’s also a fantasy version of Mars. And there isn’t really anything you could do there that you couldn’t do in the completely fantasy world where your PCs already exist. Beyond that it’s just difficult to parse and lacks anything of interest. 4/12 stingbats.

The Kamelian Bloom
Strifey

This adventure is a short 7-room viperian lair for levels 2-3 with a slight twist – they possess Flowers of the Chameleon that render them nearly invisible and aid in making surprise attacks. As the party makes their way to the boss fight they’ll encounter a few giant frogs, some swamp related hazards and some chameleon viperians. 

Some of it is a bit undercooked, like this: “Disturbing the flowers releases stuporific pollen if inhaled. Lose 1d4 INT and 1/hour for one day DC12 CON or slip into a beatific stupor. Can be awoken with a hard shake or loud noise.” It’s not bad per se but I’d be shocked if anyone took more than two hours to run this so it’s unlikely to have much impact. And there’s no telegraphing the trap nor any way for the PCs to use these flowers to their advantage, so they’re just sort of there as a punishment for interaction. 

Or this: “Around a shallow curve in the crevasse are a series of 4 Viperian busts carved into the steep stone walls, two on either side. When stepped in front of, DC12 INT check or become confused for 2d8 rounds. Destroying the busts negates their power AC18.” I know Shadowdark doesn’t have defined conditions but if you’re designing an adventure you should tell us what “confused” means from a mechanical perspective, even if it’s just “as Confusion spell”.

There’s just not a lot to this. Interactions are pretty limited. Layout and presentation are dead simple and it’s not even 4 pages long. It would be a fine set of GM session notes but it’s not quite enough to publish and call an adventure. 5/12 stingbats.

Whispers From the Astral Veil
Fireside Tales

Rather than an adventure, this one is a landmark – a fleshed-out location to drop on your map for levels 4-6. A jungle cult is hanging out in some ruins trying to resurrect a fallen god. Beautiful artwork encompasses 5 points of interest within the location.

So you get a fantastic visual of the area that also serves as a map. It houses a cultist faction with some plans and a 1d8 table of their shenanigans along with how they impact the region. It includes entries like “A travellers’ caravan camps out in the valley for 1d4 weeks. Tensions quickly rise between them and the cult when a traveller goes missing.“ Nothing too crazy but enough to get the creative juices flowing, and also the kind of thing that easily leads into a night or two of gameplay and possibly some longer term impact. Besides that  the text details some foes and also a few friends that might help take down the cult. There are lots of great hooks and plenty of detail to set this up as a location that might be visited several times. 

I wouldn’t mind some details on the personalities/goals/secrets of some of the high-ranking cultists. But the text answers the big questions even if it lacks great depth in a few places.

I could use a lot more of these than I could use more 5-10 room dungeons. This is something that you drop into your campaign and it generates its own adventures. Something to fill an empty hex that will enrich your game world. 9/12 stingbats.

Gauntlet of the Blue Theurge
Tacoforce157

The setup is that you are on a pilgrimage to claim some power from your god by undergoing a series of trials.This one is baffling. I’m baffled. It begins with an overhead map of a 4-room dungeon. It has room keys like:

 “2. Busts and murals illustrate religious stories and treasured truths. A single malfunctioning plinth of an upsetting shape stands out from the rest. 

All of the iconography is made from materials that resemble the nearest pilgrim’s believes. Multiple pilgrims of conflicting beliefs can have amusing results.”

I have no idea how to run this room or even what to describe for the players. Why is “malfunctioning plinth” underlined? 

Then we switch to an isometric map where the party must complete a series of challenges to prove their worthiness to their god. The first is the test of presence, where they must move a stone slab that requires the “strength of 10 men” while 1d6+1 skeletons show up each round. We are also told that turned skeletons may be directed like sheep. So the solution the designer wants is for you to turn a bunch of skeletons and have them move slab. Too specific.

Then comes the test of sacrifice. Everyone gets impaled on a spike, takes 5d8 damage but doesn’t die, and can’t be freed until they get magically healed by more damage than the spike caused. Also too specific, and too obscure, and too dependent on the priest being able to cast Cure Wounds several times in a row.

The next test is broken and the only exit is a tear in reality. It is here that things finally get interesting, if no more comprehensible. Turns out the entire place exists to harvest divine power via priest spells in order to charge up a machine that can cast Wish. Apparently the guy who made it succeeded, wished to meet the gods and hasn’t been seen since. Now the machine is in disrepair and inhabited by various demons and devils.

The party can make their way through the machine and back to the trials where they will face judgement by a robo-sphinx. Their worthiness depends on how many spells they cast, with more than 12 earning the best results. There are other results like forever doubting the validity of your god, getting a question answered by your god, gaining a level, getting a relic or possibly blowing the whole thing up.

This won’t be easy to run and some parts are really difficult to understand but I kind of love it. Tons of creativity, a cool twist and a potentially wild ending. It swings for the fences. 8/12 stingbats.

Terror of the Neap Tide
Laziest Lich

Here we have a 14-point pointcrawl for level 3. Every once in a while there is a confluence of events including a neap tide that causes a magical fairy island to appear, tempting adventurers with a Dyson Logos map dripping with treasure.

The area keys read like a list of random monsters. This place has an owlbear and this one has an aboleth and there’s a sea hag over here and some stingbats up there. None of it is really interconnected. There are no puzzles to solve or mysteries to unravel. The only real situation to interact with is that the hag wants to drive away a group of deep ones and may ask the party for help. And come to think of it there aren’t any fairies. 

So there’s nothing very wondrous on this island. Some adventure to be had, but mostly stuff to fight and some loot to grab. A good GM could probably work in some kind of faction play but the text doesn’t help. It does have some nice random encounter tables and a custom reaction table based on the creature type. Those are nice inclusions. Otherwise it commits no serious sins. That, dear readers, is called “damning with faint praise”. 6/12 stingbats.

Pillar Tomb of Anat
The Vault Keeper

A bunch of archeologists got themselves lost and hurt screwing around in a 5-room Egyptian-themed tomb. The party needs to go rescue them and are offered 50 gp plus all the loot they can plunder. As if they needed permission to plunder. Also the archaeologists seem pretty quick to abandon priceless historical artifacts to a bunch of grave robbers but w/e. 

Anyhoo there’s a curse going around that depletes CON by 1d4 every hour. Again, it’s 5 rooms so only the sickliest of PCs will be in any danger. The curse is broken by either freeing the god-queen trapped in the tomb or by slaying the undead husk of a god-king that seems to be occupying her in the sarcophagus.

The bulk of each of the room keys is devoted to hieroglyphics that can be deciphered in order to learn more about the history of its occupants. There are a few clues to be gleaned here, but they are a bit obscure and I don’t know that most players will find them terribly useful. Besides that there isn’t a lot going on. The central puzzle of the dungeon is to find four artifacts and put them in the statue next to the sarcophagus. The most interesting interactions will come from the Lost archaeologists and dealing with their various dilemmas.

Depending on whether the party collects the artifacts or not, they will either free the god-queen or fight the god-king and then be granted some nice boons. The boons as well as the magic items in the adventure are nicely creative and I’m sure the players will find them worthwhile.

The themes are really strong in this one, and the dungeon is simple but it does have a somewhat compelling situation going on with the archaeologists. 7/12 stingbats.