Adventure Review: Lost Citadel of the Scarlet Minotaur (Levels 1-3)

 

Adventure Review: Lost Citadel of the Scarlet Minotaur

Shadowdark RPG. Levels 1-3. My experience: Run 2x for public games.

A tight dungeon crawl with room for things to go sideways.

This is the starter mod for Shadowdark RPG, and it comes freely available in the quickstart set. The quickstart set comes with level 1 pregens so it will be fast to get up and running.

I ran this adventure publicly twice, both with three person groups.  

I love the concept and theming. Kelsey based it on the ruins of Knossos on Crete—the original inspiration for the Minotaur myth—and it’s a cool labyrinthine complex. It's what you'd call a "xandered" dungeon, meaning there are multiple entrances and a lot of interconnections within a single level. There are multiple factions—Ettercaps and Beastment—that the players can interact with. They have their own goals and aren't just there to fight, so there's room for negotiation or conflict. The Ettercaps want treasure, which puts them into conflict with the PCs, but can also be a common goal and cause them to become allies. The Beastmen mostly want to hide but have access to secret tunnels that give the players more ways to navigate the dungeon. All of this is great design.

Then there is the minotaur. At a Level 7 creature, it is strong enough to kill or even TPK the party. And, they are bound to encounter it, because it becomes more likely every time they get a random encounter. That gives a fun sense of looming danger. When my players encountered it they ran and we had exciting chases through unexplored areas. You may want to exercise judgement regarding the danger level you want. When the players encounter the minotaur, if it wins initiative and rolls well it can kill someone without them getting a chance to respond. Or you could have it spend a turn bellowing and set off a chase sequence. If you do a chase, they can lose it by staying out of sight for 1d6 rounds, which is a fun dynamic. Its way better than a static boss.

At the same time it is weak enough that the players can overcome it. In one session they got it with help from the Ettercaps—they encountered it as they were leaving the Ettercap lair, having made a deal to join forces to acquire a magic sword. The Ettercaps webs locked it in place and the players hacked it to pieces.

Because there are multiple entrances and factions, every party will have a different experience. I could imagine things going south pretty quickly for an inexperienced party, though. In fact, the very first room on that route has an Ettercap that tries to escape and set up an ambush. If they do, the Ettercaps are strong enough that they can TPK a 1st level party. If the players aren’t careful that could happen fast. My more experienced group scouted the hidden entrances first, checked out the courtyard from above, and had a lot of strategic options. Player skill matters.

All of this is good stuff. One thing I would have liked: one group did a perimeter sweep and asked for the dimensions of the structure from the outside, and there wasn’t much to help from the mod. The labyrinth section isn’t clear about where the tunnel starts on the outside or how it transitions to the inside. In general I never got which parts of the dungeon were underground/above ground, and some artwork of an exterior view, or just some more dimensions, would have helped. I felt bad that I couldn’t give the players a better description there.

Regarding running time, I had a 3 and a 4 hour session and both worked, exploring maybe 50-60% of the dungeon. That was enough time for them to try out multiple entrances and get some of the passageways from the different entrances to line up and match with each other, which was satisfying. It felt like they were learning about this place. It works well as a one-shot even though there is more content than you can complete in a one-shot. 

I had the players map it out themselves which I recommend. It is challenging enough to be fun, and not so hard that they will get hopelessly lost. I had an experienced and an inexperienced mapper and both did fine.  

It is also easy to run as a DM. I spent maybe 30 minutes to an hour reading it and was ready to go. That said it could have done more to set up the motivation. There are these three old kings, each with a powerful magic items (sword, spear, greataxe) present which are a fun goal, kind of like White Plume Mountain, but the players won’t know if they don’t get it on the rumor table. I’d just give them that by default to give them a mission. It would be nice if the mod had listed where each one was up front. 

One final comment: the pregens you get from the quickstart guide seem much stronger, in terms of statline and HP rolls, than you would get with rolled characters. I would use the pregens, or it could be a very difficult mod. 

Overall, running this mod has increased my opinion of Shadowdark. I had run some of the overland content from Cursed Scroll #1 and it didn't work for me. The minimalist approach didn't translate as well to the hexcrawl and I felt like as the GM I had to bring a lot of my own ideas to make it work. But it is much better as a dungeon crawl and I hope to try more of those.

Expedition D&D Dev Log Part 2: Basic Expedition Rules

In the second post, I want to dive into the details of the expedition system itself. Following on the Source of the Nile rules, I want to have two base units you can hire: soldiers and bearers.

Soldiers are going to be pretty much the same by default. I’m thinking of the DCC retainers, maybe amping them up a bit because Simple D&D has higher HP. So I’ll set them at 4 HP, +0 to hit, and dealing damage by weapon (typically d6).  Their armor class is set by whatever armor they wear, and they have zero bonuses to their stats—generic mook-type characters.

Bearers, on the other hand, have no combat abilities at all. If a fight breaks out, they’ll run, scatter, or hide.

Next, I want to establish some carrying capacity limits. I love the way Source of the Nile handles this. Each bearer can carry about 10 units of supplies. Bearers don’t have weapons or armor, so they can always use their full carrying capacity for supplies.

For the soldiers, we’ll make a tradeoff. They will also have a base capacity of 10 units, but their weapons, armor, and other gear will count against that total. If you want to bring along a lot of supplies, you’ll need more bearers, because your soldiers will be partially loaded down with their own equipment.

For the heroes, I’m considering tying their carrying capacity to their strength score, like in Shadowdark. But I’ll put a pin in that for now.

Next, let’s get some numbers for food. Regarding food, I found a few sources from the Roman army; one says between 59 and 78 lb per man per month, while another gives 2.5-2.8 lb/day. I’m going to assume this didn’t change much. As our baseline for supply I’ll approximate 10 units ≈ 100 lb, so we’re at something like 1-2 units of food per unit per week. I decided to keep it simple at 1. Maybe this is generous to our expeditions, but I like how easy it will work in game.

For water, the sources say anywhere from 2-12 L/day (depending on conditions). The daily ration in WWI was 4.54 L/day, Vietnam was 3-5 L/day, but could go to 10 for certain duties. With 1L = 2.2 lb, that is something from 4-10 lbs daily. We’ll be generous again so that our expeditions can stay in the field longer, and say 1 unit of water daily per two individuals. But, we’ll give this multipliers, noting that multipliers up to 8x are historically plausible. Maybe we’ll have some rules to apply these in hot environments.

Finally, I want to make some other decisions about water. First, I don’t want to track containers. Caravaneer did this, and it worked only ok because it was a video game and I can’t imagine doing it by hand. Second, I don’t want to track it while you are along a water source. I like the idea of what this system will do for water tracking. It will be really demanding in terms of weight to carry water, so it will be hard to move away from water supplies. I like that idea and I’m excited to see it play out.

So there are our working Rules:

Bearers: Do not fight. Carrying capacity of 10
Soldiers: HP 4, AC and attacks as equipment (+0 to hit). Carrying capacity of 10.
Food: Each unit eats 1 unit/week
Water: Every two units consumes 1/day. Subject to multipliers of up to 8x according to condition. Do not need to carry if next to fresh water supply.

Development Log: Expedition D&D (Part 1)

 I'm going to start blogging about the OSR system I'm creating, which I'm calling "Expedition D&D". 

My goal looks back at the long history of adventure storytelling—a genre that stretches all the way back to some of the earliest recorded stories like the Epic of Gilgamesh or the Odyssey. Over time, that tradition evolved through tales like Beowulf or the Arabian Nights. It came to America with Last of the Mohicans and then the pulp fantasy of the 1920s and ’30s, with authors like Robert E. Howard and H.P. Lovecraft. And you can trace that DNA right up to modern adventure films like Indiana Jones or The Mummy.

This kind of adventure storytelling leads directly to what folks like Ben Milton call “adventure gaming”. I love that term because it places these games in the context of that literature and history. The adventure is the heart of Dungeons & Dragons. 

Modern D&D usually focuses on a small cast of characters, one for each player. Each one of these is a hero in their own right. It's like a Mission Impossible team where everyone crucial to the mission.

But the scope of adventure storytelling permits larger parties, which I'll call "expeditions". Think back to the Odyssey: it isn't just Odysseus alone, but Odysseus and his group of soldiers. I also like Michael Crichton's Congo, or Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness, or the historic Lewis and Clark expedition (the pair had some 40 people in support). 

---

To make this work, I want a system that supports three types of play. The first is expedition play, which is your overland travel. You're controlling heroes, but also a number of generic soldiers or porters, some perhaps with special abilities, who are part of the journey. Here you'll do hex-crawling: you’re exploring new places, dealing with hazards, managing the morale of your team, ensuring everyone’s fed, and keeping track of resources.

Then there’s the hero play, your classic dungeon crawling. Those smaller scale adventures where the heroes are engaging in combat or exploration within a defined location.

Then, I want to have some support for mass battle play. If you have an expedition with 50 or 100 guys, you might end up in a large combat and the hero play rules won't work. 

---

The simplest part is the mass battle element. For that, I’ll basically start off using the old Chainmail rules. If that ends up being a problem or not fitting perfectly, I’ll adjust from there.

For the hero play, there are a lot of great systems out there—OSR games, Shadowdark, and so on—but I’m going to use one called Simple D&D. It’s something I got from a friend named José. Characters start out strong enough to feel heroic, rather than super fragile at level one, and the progression slows down around level three. That means the heroes can become useful and powerful, but they won’t overshadow the rest of the expedition. They’ll still need to rely on their team and resources.

As for the expedition system itself, I have the least experience there. I'm going to start with the Source of the Nile rules. I actually played that game with one of the original creators, Ross Maker, who was part of the Blackmoor crew. David Wesley was the co-designer, so it has a nice link to RPGs. Source of the Nile is very expedition-focused—you have a hero, some soldiers, bearers, you track food and deal with environmental hazards—and I’ll be building on that as the expedition framework.