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.

Adventure Review: DCC #79.5, Tower of the Black Pearl (Level 1)

Tower of the Black Pearl is one of the best starter DCC mods. Pick this up if you're introducing players to the system or want to run a public game, like at a convention. 

I'll start with the premise: there's this tower far off-shore, which is only accessible one night every 10 years, and that night is tonight! There's a pearl of great value inside, but other pirates are on the hunt. The players make their way out there, then have to deal with a series of challenges: the pirates (combat or roleplaying) and some puzzles (a rotten staircase, a trapped room which will flood and drown you all). They'll finally make it to the room with the pearl where they extract it...flooding the entire tower behind them and forcing them to race to the surface. 

Then, the usability: it's very easy to pick up and play--the entire thing is about 20 pages, including art and handouts, and in a large size font. That helps the GM scan at the table. The whole thing takes ~20 minutes to read through. And it's fairly linear, so you can do a good job from a single read through. It'll have a similar length each time you run it; in my experience, 3-4 hours. You'll have no trouble getting this to the table. 

Then, as an introduction to the DCC system: it starts with an easy combat encounter (all starter mods should do this!) so the players have a chance to acclimate themselves and learn how their characters work before making consequential decisions. There's a nice mix of combat, puzzles, and roleplaying. The players will need creative solutions to the puzzles at the end (how to get the pearl from all the snakes?) and have important choices to make along the way (backstab the pirates, or side with them?). I'm not sure it would do well as part of a campaign. The candles, which provide a way to snuff out every lawful hero in existence, have too much potential to derail things. But it's fantastic as a one shot.

New DMs, be advised: the biggest challenge is not the pirates, and not the water trap--it's those damn stairs. Most everyone tries to make the jump, most everyone falls, and then ends up with broken bones or dead characters. 

This is $6.99 at the Goodman Games website.

My Experience: I ran this for several convention games.

Link: https://goodman-games.com/store/product/dungeon-crawl-classics-79-5-tower-of-the-black-pearl-pdf/

Price: $6.99 (PDF)