Adventure Site Contest 2 REVIEW: The Caverns of Despair

Continuing my reviews of the submissions for the second-annual Adventure Site Contest.

The Caverns of Despair

Author: Kurt
System: AD&D (Oriental Adventures)
Party Size: 6+
Level Range: 4–7

Deep in the swamps, a deadly evil festers within the ancient caves of Feng Hua - a small army of chaotic bandits, led by a gargantuan man, wielder of a legendary black longsword with a fist-sized nacre embedded within its hilt. The sleepy frontier town of Pai Lo, perched on the edge of civilization, lies a mere ten miles from these accursed caves. For months, it has suffered under relentless raids, as have its neighbouring hamlets to the east and west. Crops are burned, livestock slaughtered, and children taken in the dead of night. The town's leaders, weary and desperate, have turned to the only solution left: hiring mercenaries and adventurers to cleanse the caves of the evil that has taken root within.

Awesome...an Oriental Adventure! Or is it?

The intro is all a pretty standard D&D setup. The villagers pay the PCs 12,000 GP in loot plus the hands of the village shaman’s three daughters to take care of the bandits. A list of six rumors is offered, two of which are false. I don't care much for false rumors unless the DM provides the fake info to the players via a source that the players would have reason to doubt. Actually-false rumors tend to produce pointless, session-wasting efforts and create confusion among the players who believe the DM is giving them legit game information. Worse still, one of the "false" rumors in this case is that the bandit chieftain (an ogre mage) is "skilled in the art of shapechanging." One of the ogre mage's chief abilities is polymorphing, so what is false about that rumor? Granted, this discrepancy will be invisible to players, but it's a discrepancy nonetheless.

Despite this, the rumors establish some important adventure points: The bandits are led by a shapeshifter; they are allied with demons; they worship the "god-killer" Ma Yuan (nice inclusion from the Deities & Demigods book); and they have monstrous pets, though the "wolf-monkey" description is likely to draw blank stares from the players. So far, we have many of the elements of a classic (if generic) oriental adventure.

There's no information about the area surrounding the site, other than that the caves are deep in a swamp 10 miles from the starting village, so you'll have to figure out how the party gets there and finds the entrances. The dungeon itself is a full-on network of caves with 13 encounter areas. Using one of the two main entrances is going to find the party immediately fighting either a pack of 24 goblins, or 6 trolls and a 9 HD troll chieftain. From there, the party can push deeper into the lair to confront a small army of bandits led by a low-level cleric and then, ultimately, the oni and his bugbear guards. There's some order-of-battle notes but not many, which makes the encounter areas feel fairly static and lifeless.

There's ~35,000 xp to be earned in treasure and monster kills, which will be around 5,800 xp apiece for a party of six. That's a decent amount for a 4th level character but pretty paltry at the higher levels of the suggested range.
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1) THEME
(How strong/consistent is the adventure's premise, flavor, and setting?)

As an adventure setting, the caves are okay but nothing about them really fuels the theme. Patches of bio-luminescent fungi gives certain caves an otherworldly ambience, and a few of the descriptions provide some decent atmosphere, but there's not a lot of this sort of thing. Most of the dungeon inhabitants merely "occupy" or "make their home" in the keyed locations, and there are no wandering encounters, so the cave system doesn't feel very alive (or oriental).

The mix of enemies includes men (bandits), goblins (also bandits), yaoguai (troll overseers), a kennel of su-monsters (the "wolf-monkeys"), and their leader, an ogre mage and his cadre of bugbear bodyguards. There are also three wights that the oni controls somehow, guarding his treasure stash. Really disappointed that none of the creatures in the OA book makes an appearance, nor are there any OA classes represented here (the bandit leader is a bog-standard cleric with no OA spells). Granted, the OA classes are Japanese flavored, not Chinese, but an effort needs to be made to integrate at least some of this material if you're going to write an "OA" adventure.

There is some faction play, as the yaoguai can be bribed to "fight for" the party against the bandits, with whom the yaoguai have only an "uneasy" alliance. Presumably, however, the alliance was established by the oni boss, so killing his human minions would become a major problem for the yaoguai wouldn't it? Also, can the yaoguai command the su-monsters and would they join the fight against the bandits?

I have a problem with how the su-monsters were used (or weren't, to be more accurate). There are five of the creatures kept in a smelly, unlit cave as "pets" of the bandits. Its not entirely clear whose pets they are, but the yaoguai are described as tending to the creatures. The cave environment already deprives the su-monsters of a primary attack ability, which is to hang by their tail and slash prey with all four clawed limbs. So now they're just slightly meaner carnivorous apes, except according to the Monster Manual:

If more than 4 are encountered it is likely (50%) that the group will be a male, female, and young... The female will fight at double value for six turns if the young are attacked, and the male will fight at double value for four turns if the female is attacked.

There's a debate about what "double value" means. Some think it means to double the creature's HD for attack roll purposes while others think it means double damage (some believe it means BOTH). In any case, these details can transform this encounter dramatically and they've been left out of the description. If they're all males, then being su-monsters doesn't amount to much in this case (unless someone in the party happens to have psionics). I applaud the author for including a rarely-used classic monster, but they lend very little to this adventure's theme. Same with the yaoguai. Making them merely re-skinned trolls is weak compared to accounts of the real-world mythological creature. I would have loved to see the author come up with a new original monster to really infuse some oriental flavor.

Most of the treasure is fairly generic while most of the magic items are straight from the DMG, which is fine but doesn't give the theme any juice. A few valuables have some flavor (e.g., a jade tiger, a bead necklace, silk draperies, etc.) but more would help sell the setting. The armory contains a "variety of spears, swords, shields, and armour." Some specifics would have been nice here, as this gear could be quite valuable in large amounts (it would also give the PCs a potential clue as to what they're up against with the size of the bandit force in the next cave).

The big prize (seemingly) is the oni's weapon: a Dancing Greatsword of Lightning with a Pearl of Fire Protection in the hilt. Kudos for pulling this weapon from the DDG book, which is chockful of neat magic items and monsters that often go overlooked by designers. I love combining magical items together, and earning one of these unique and powerful relics can be a major hallmark in a character's career. One problem with this: According to the DDG, the sword "...performs as a normal sword when held by mortals." Enjoy your Pearl of Fire Protection, I guess. (More kudos for using at least one OA magic item.) Despite the bait-and-switch, the item itself is thematic and appropriately epic for an oni boss fight.

One last thematic quibble: The bandits (and the oni in particular) worship the evil god, Ma Yuan. There's not much in Ma Yuan's description that suggests bandits would find him an appealing patron, although a case could be made for a powerful oni being attracted to a god-killing deity. The difficulty with this choice of gods is that ogre magi are Lawful Evil while Ma Yuan is Chaotic Evil. The bandits are also described as "chaotic" in the intro, which doesn't preclude the oni from lording over them but creates an incongruity with the gang.

SCORE (THEME) = 2 / 5
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2) MAP AND ART
(How complex/useful is the map and/or art? How easy is it to grok the layout?)

The hand-drawn map is a slightly blurry cell phone picture rather than a scan, so the grid has a slightly- angled perspective and parts of the legend are illegible. At first glance, the map looks properly maze-like, but upon closer inspection, the entire southern half of the caves funnels into a single route that enters the heart of the lair where the bandits dwell. Most of the other tunnels arrive at either a single cul-de-sac cave or one of many dead-ends. The northern half is better, with a few interesting loops, but the party will need to fight a huge battle first for the chance to explore it.

The key indicates three entrances, but no details about how they appear from the outside. These are caves in a swamp, so presumably this is a hill of some kind. How many entrances are visible/detectable? Two entrances lead into the southern portion of the cave system, but a third entrance leads straight into the oni's secret throne room...can the party come in that way?

There is a confusing measurement system in the manuscript, using the (") symbol to mean 1 foot (e.g., 20" = 20 feet). The map scale is given as 5" (5'), meaning most of the connecting tunnels are about 1–2' wide according to the rendering. Armored characters are going to have a difficult time passing through, much less fighting in, these tunnels. Mass combat in the tunnels will be impossible.

SCORE (MAP/ART) = 2 / 5
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3) CLARITY
(How easy is the writeup to read/parse quickly? How well does the information flow?)

The manuscript is written in two-column format, with wide margins and lots of white space, making it fairly easy on the eyes and a breeze to locate a room description quickly. Key descriptions are typically a single paragraph, with the longest being about one full page column. The text could use a reasonable edit to tighten it all up, but there aren't any typos or major grammar issues to report.

There are organizational issues in the occupied caves in which the occupants/order-of-battle notes appears first, before the description of the cave proper, which is not ideal. The basic room description should come right after the title, then the details about the occupants and their responses, then any room details that require closer inspection, and finally the treasure details. This may seem like a fairly minor structural point but good, consistent information flow helps make the adventure easier to run at the table by an order of magnitude. You want your text to build muscle-memory for the DM's eyes and brain.

SCORE (CLARITY) = 3 / 5
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4) INTERACTIVITY/INNOVATION
(How well does the adventure use the rules to create interesting play?)

Many of the interactive elements in this one fall flat, I'm sorry to say. There is a statue carved of stone with a hollow inside that holds a magical Staff of Striking (good, thematic weapon). In the text, the only way to retrieve it is to smash open the statue, but doing more than 8 points of damage in smashing it also destroys the staff. Why force players to jump through these session-wasting hoops? The players have no way to gauge how much force is required to smash the statue and not break its contents, and they can't mechanically modulate their damage output in any case. Most players will just smash it on the ground or try to chisel it open, so how much damage is that? If anything, the item should get a save—which it is likely to make—rather than suffer automatic destruction if the player rolls decent damage. But why do it at all?

Better to just keep it simple: If they handle the statue (which can already be a dangerous thing to do in D&D), they hear something rattle inside. If they search it closely, they find a concealed cap. Open it and presto, you found a magic staff...satisfying and quick, without burning a lot of table time for something you want the players to attain. That's much better than going through a bunch of rolls and then saying: "Oh, you went to all that trouble but only the broken pieces of a magic staff tumble out of the wreckage." Boo!

Another example is the su-monster cave, which is filled with a powerful stench that causes "checks made to concentrate on spells and the like...twice as likely to fail." I like the stench as a casting hazard, though this would have been a more effective trick in, say, the yaoguai cave where spell casting could be critical to victory. Here though, it calls for a concentration check when none exists in AD&D. Better to call for a save vs. Poison to be able to cast/maintain concentration, though what "twice as likely to fail" means is unclear. I suspect this adventure may have started life in 5e and been converted over (which is fine...my ASC 1 submission was a rewritten 5e adventure site, so no snobbery intended). This theory might also better explain the inclusion of the su-monsters, which are much different in 5e.

Secret doors are present in the natural caves with no explanation of their engineering or their method of opening given. One airlock-style set of secret doors to the treasure vault features a pit with death-poison spikes. A potent trap, but it is placed between two of the oni's personal chambers instead of at the vault's other entrance from a common area. The oni has to traverse this pit every time he wants to visit his vault from the throne room and vice versa. Granted, the oni can just fly over it, but the whole placement of the pit makes no sense. These are nitpicks, but dungeon features should have a relatively obvious purpose and make sense to the setting to help bring the overall theme together.

There are some prisoners to rescue, which is nice but not particularly useful because the party will have already waded through the meat of the adventure's enemies to reach the prison cave. In fact, it's very possible their rescue will be an afterthought at the adventure's conclusion and any info/aid they could have supplied will be of little use. I suppose if some of the party is taken prisoner, they could ultimately meet these people and learn something useful. Maybe...

The adventure's centerpiece battle occurs when the party transitions from the southern half of the map to the northern half, where they pass into a huge central cavern containing a camp of 80 (!) human bandits. There's no way to avoid this cave or sneak around it, and unless the party is scouting ahead, they will simply emerge into the chamber. There is nothing written about how this area is lit (no fungus is indicated on the map, and there is no mention of torches or lamps). There are no details about what the bandits are doing, either. Obviously, everyone isn't just sitting around the pitch-black cave, fully-armed and armored, waiting for the PCs to arrive—but that's how it reads. So what is going on here? What is the bandits' daily schedule? When do they raid? How many are likely to be here at any time? A few notes here would be really useful to a DM.

As written, the PCs will engage in a huge battle against eighty 0-level opponents in full kit, most of whom can be killed with a single decent weapon blow. Still, that's a lot of attack rolls to contend with. Order-of-battle states that one bandit will flee to warn the captain and his men, bringing another 6 bandits and a 4th-level cleric after a few rounds. A guardroom with 3 more bandits is within 30–40 ft. of the common room, so add those in and the party is now dealing with a fight against 90 opponents, including a spell caster. This doesn't take into account the ogre mage and his personal guard, who seem unlikely to just sit in the throne room while his gang repels the party. (And this is where the question of what do the traitorous yaoguai do when the boss-man shows up may come into play.) If everyone joins the fray, the party is going to have a bad day. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but the battle kind of brings everything left in the dungeon to bear in a single combat.

This is also where the cave layout becomes a glaring design issue. The bottleneck at the cave entrance means the bandits can't maneuver around and flank the party unless they exit the entire lair via the oni's secret exit, circle around, and re-enter the lair from the other main entrances. The party—unless they're stupid—are unlikely to just wade into the room either, maybe making a shield wall at the (1' wide) tunnel entrance and allowing the magic-user to open up with area effect spells instead. The layout just doesn't lend itself to a dynamic, interesting fight.

The order-of-battle guidelines suggest that the designer's expectation is for the party to whittle down the bandits in multiple forays, culminating in a showdown with the captain and his men, AND THEN the party enters the throne room for a final showdown with the "big boss." It's one way to run it, but doesn't make a whole lot of sense, especially because, by this reckoning, it's entirely possible that the party will miss the oni's throne room located behind secret doors.

SCORE (INTERACTIVITY) = 2 / 5
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5) MODULARITY
(How easy would it be to drop/integrate the adventure into an existing campaign?)

While written for Oriental Adventures, there's nothing about this site that couldn't be easily reskinned and plopped into your campaign. Bandits led by an ogre mage could be a fun little side venture or hexcrawl locale without much prompting necessary.

SCORE (MODULARITY) = 3 / 5
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6) USABILITY
(How much work will the referee have to do to run this adventure at the table tonight?)

This adventure needs a good polishing with some additional details about the exterior of the caves, the daily routine of the bandits, and some tweaking of the map to provide more access routes and bypasses. The tunnels could also be widened to make them passable by normal people, and maybe split the central bandit cavern into several smaller caves with more manageable battles and the possibility of sneaking by some areas (rather than being funneled into a meat grinder). On the plus side, this shouldn't represent a lot of work on the DM's part.

If you want to keep this as an OA site, there are some decent bones laid out here but it's begging for more OA-specific content.

SCORE (USABILITY) = 3 / 5
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7) OVERALL THOUGHTS

There's nothing bad about this site, but it's only just okay. In the hands of a competent DM, the lair could be made into a vibrant environment for a fantasy hit-and-run assault, but its otherwise just a static stab-fest that will likely culminate in a singular battle for all the marbles. I got really excited when I saw Oriental Adventures, and then disappointed when I realized it was just a normal old bandit lair.

My advice to the author is to take this good premise and rewash it through the OA book to soak up some specific details. Look into some Chinese mythology for ideas about creating your own thematic monsters to replace the ordinary goblins, trolls, and su-monsters. Add some martial arts action. Add some exotic spells and items. Add more flavor. Put more Oriental in this Adventure.

FINAL SCORE = 2.5 / 5