The Bridge of Ptelemegesser
Author: Peter McDevitt
System: BX/OSE
Party Size: ?
Level Range: ?
Whoops, this one's missing a couple of pages. Wait, no... it's only one page long. That's a bold strategy, Cotton. But hey, you can do a lot with one page, so let's see if it pays off.
The site begins with a cold open. The party, while traveling, has come to a bridge over a mountainous gorge. At one end is a shrine to the deity of travelers; at the other end, ancient petroglyphs carved into the rock face credit the construction of this bridge to “Ptelemegesser, He Who Beheld the Firmament.” Not sure why that makes him a big deal. Anyone can behold the firmament by looking out a window.
The text does not indicate which end of the bridge the party comes to when they arrive, though the shrine side is first in the key while the glyph end is last. It could make a big difference in how the party discovers the immediate threat here and/or deals with it.
The bridge is obviously of magical construction, as it "is flat and thin, 80’ long and 10' wide. It appears to have been molded from a single piece of stone, as if it was a natural extension of the cliffs." Impressive and butt-clenchingly dangerous. Hope the party didn't bring horses or wagons, because neither one is getting across. In fact, I'm not going across either.
Now, this is not an encounter area where you can just plop a party down in media res. I can't say to my players, "Okay, while crossing a 10' wide magical stone bridge over a huge gorge, a monster leaps out at you. Roll initiative!" There's just no way. The party has to first come to this bridge and I need to thoroughly describe it so that they can take appropriate actions. The jig is up, friends. The players already know an encounter is coming.
So, the idea is that a rhagodessa (a giant camel spider) lurks under the bridge and will ambush either a lone scout, or the last person in a party. How it will determine this is unclear to me, but if the party looks underneath the bridge (and smart ones will), they spot the creature. If they approach the bridge from the shrine side and see it, the creature may still have a chance to engage the party. If they spot it from the petroglyph end, they can just shoot it with arrows or area effect spells until it is dead or retreats.
But let's say for argument's sake that the party fails to look under the bridge and attempts a crossing. Since any sane group of characters is going to cross this bridge one person at a time with a rope attached to them, the creature will likely only have a single obvious target. If it manages to ambush and snatch somebody tied off with a rope, that could make for an exciting bit of fishing (except for the bait character).
If the rhagodessa seizes its prey (or gets badly wounded presumably), it retreats into a crack in the side of the cliff, the entrance to its "slimy" lair. There's some scattered treasure and a hole in the floor. When the party shines its light into the hole, a second (!) rhagodessa seems to leap out from the darkness, but it's a fake-out—just an empty carapace left over from a recent moulting (a neat but harmless trick). It's hard to pull off a good jump-scare at the table, but this one has potential under the right circumstances.
Down the hole is the monster's egg cave. No value is indicated for the dozen-and-a-half eggs, but most parties are probably just going to smush them anyway. Another hole in the floor of the lower cave descends 80' to a natural cavern where the cold waters of the lake beneath the bridge lap against a "pebbly beach." Splashing the water (or falling into the lake from the bridge or cliff) attracts the attention of a starving giant catfish with a bellyful of treasure.
Finally, there's a couple of monster stat blocks and we're out! That's it.
Treasure is a paltry 1,944 gp and more than half of it is inside the catfish, which probably won't come into play. There's also a Scroll of Confusion as the sole magic item found here. But it's a very limited encounter, likely with only one creature, so it's hard to complain too much.
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1) THEME
(How strong/consistent is the adventure's premise, flavor, and setting?)
There are three disparate elements to this site: 1) The bridge (including the shrine and glyphs); 2) the rhagodessa's lair (the ambush and two caves); and 3) the lake (including a giant catfish and a third cave).
The first element is simply an environment and none of the features have any greater meaning to the site. The other two elements are connected only by gravity. This is an encounter site not an adventure site. I can't say that the submission is in violation of any of the contest rules, but you have three pages; use them for something.
Regardless, there is an almost complete absence of any sort of theme or flavor here, even if the elements themselves are decently written. "Spider lair" comes closest to a description. Speaking of which...
I had a buddy in the Marines who told me all about Iraqi camel spiders. They sound absolutely terrifying. The main thing he said about them was that they came out at night. The description of the rhagodessa in the Cook Expert rulebook says the same thing, that they are "nocturnal (sleeping during the day and active at night or in the dark)." The party is probably not crossing this bridge at night, but maybe this is a daytime-rhagodessa.
Ambush logistics/verisimilitude aside, the actual lair itself is creepy. If the party takes the bait and descends to the lake, I'm sure they're not expecting a giant catfish encounter, so that's cool. Some of its numbers are off compared to the OSE version I found online: one worse AC and 1d6 bite damage instead of 2d6, but these may be typos.
I don't know, I just don't see the rhagodessa encounter playing out in a way that the writeup assumes it will. It certainly wouldn't work that way for either of my groups of players.
It would be better to skip the unlikely ambush and simply have the party spot the entrance to area 3 if they look under the bridge. They will probably go down to look (especially having seen the shrine and glyphs, and been given the notion that this bridge is a special, sacred area). Add a few caves, put some large solifugids in here to telegraph the "Big Mama;" throw in some clues or interaction regarding Ptelemegesser and his whole deal. Something, anything to make the site more interesting and effective.
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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 nice, clear scan with both a profile and top-down view to show the lair's almost total verticality. No scale is given, but textual clues indicate 10' squares. The added illustrations of the glyphs, shrine, and giant catfish are really fun, too. Well done.
SCORE (MAP/ART) = 5 / 5
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3) CLARITY
(How easy is the writeup to read/parse quickly? How well does the information flow?)
The text is written in single-column format, left-aligned.The margins are wide, with good line spacing between major sections but not between area descriptions, so the middle of the page is one dense chunk of copy.
It's well-written, but short. The whole thing isn't even 600 words, so there's an opening paragraph, 7 keyed areas (most of which are only 2–3 brief sentences), and then stat blocks for the two monsters. There are a couple of typos and grammar errors, but only a proofreading nerd like me will notice probably.
SCORE (CLARITY) = 4 / 5
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4) INTERACTIVITY/INNOVATION
(How well does the adventure use the rules to create interesting play?)
The only interactivity here, outside of combat, may be some light climbing. Both monsters have a rudimentary order of battle, and I like that the catfish can be "tricked into beaching itself for 1d6 rounds."
SCORE (INTERACTIVITY) = 1 / 5
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5) MODULARITY
(How easy would it be to drop/integrate the adventure into an existing campaign?)
It's fine as a slightly-expanded random wilderness encounter, but it requires a lake/river gorge to implement properly, so you can't just drop it in anywhere. Temperate or tropical hills or mountains will do.
SCORE (MODULARITY) = 2 / 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 encounter site is ready to go, but it probably won't take more than an hour, tops, to fully resolve (probably less). If you need to occupy your players for another 3–4 hours, better look elsewhere.
Also, no guidance on party size or level range? Hard to evaluate how difficult or rewarding this encounter will be without those pieces of data.
SCORE (USABILITY) = 2 / 5
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7) OVERALL THOUGHTS
The bites on this plate are the things I like to eat. More, please!
FINAL SCORE = 2.5 / 5
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