Adventure Site Contest 2 REVIEW: The Warm Caves of the Ts'ai Dragons

I can't quite believe it, but here we are at the last Adventure Site Contest 2 review. This has been an interesting ride, and I plan to post some follow-up thoughts on the experience after taking a step back and considering what I've learned. It's been eye-opening, frankly, and has made me reconsider how I go about my own dungeon designs. I'll expound further, but congratulations to everyone who submitted something this year. It was a distinct honor to be chosen as a worthy judge, so I hope I've lived up to expectations.

On with the review!

The Warm Caves of the Ts'ai Dragons

Author: Sneedler Chuckworth
System: OD&D
Party Size: ?
Level Range: 5-7

There is no introductory text. The writeup simply plops the reader into a list of adventure hooks. In the first one, an evil wizard offers to train the party's magic-users for free if they retrieve an important document. The second hook is a treasure map to the location of powerful magic arrows. The third and last hook is a report about a dragon running amok in the hinterlands.

So, the first hook sets the tone for the text. The "dread wizard Zothblimzo" desires an arcane treatise written by his hated rival Forxximon, another magic-user. The names are goofy and tricky to pronounce, but I don't mind that so much. It does suggest that Sneedler Chuckworth's adventure isn't taking itself seriously, which can work if handled properly. The unseriousness is reinforced with the subject of the desired treatise regarding "the mating habits of Fire Elementals." Hm. 

In OD&D, a titled wizard is at least 11th level. Zothblimzo has cast a Contact Other Plane spell to determine that:

Forxximon has “died in a ditch” – the wording exactly! - and said treatise was on the very person of Forxximon at the time of his death.

The OD&D version of COP is a 5th-level spell for which "[o]nly questions which can be answered "yes" or "no" are permitted." This is lazy adventure design to not look up the basic information about a spell critical to the party's motivations. Forxximon's magic-user title isn't indicated, but located on his body in the caves is a scroll "written by a 15th level Magic-User." Did Forxximon write the scroll? Maybe.

The second adventure hook deals with a specific magical treasure found within the caves: "Arrows of Fighter-Slaying." The baseline item, an Arrow of Slaying, first appears in the OD&D Greyhawk supplement, where it is described as being "specifically enchanted to slay Monsters with a single hit." Such weapons have been known throughout mythology and literature, with Bard's dragon-slaying Black Arrow being the likely model for this particular magical weapon. I'm not crazy about an item targeting a character class, but there is a magic sword in OD&D that is more effective against magic-users, so I guess I can't really object.

The third hook informs the party that the "Earth Dragon[,] Shusheng Ts'ai has been terrorizing the countryside." The party is commanded to "[put] a stop to him immediately." Who so commands the player-characters is left up to the DM. The option of substituting the dragon for a tribe of humanoids is also provided for some reason. Stranger still, the humanoids suggested for this are qullan, which come from the AD&D Fiend Folio.

A short set of four random encounters is next (roll once per turn, 1-in-6 chance). Statistically, we can expect one encounter per hour in a fairly dense map design on a 22x22 grid, plus a cavernous side route below. Since two of these encounters deduct their number from a fixed dungeon population and a third is harmless, the DM will soon be farting dust in terms of encounters after a few hours of party exploration. In addition, the populations of certain rooms will be reduced or even emptied after awhile. Not great wandering encounter design.

The encounters themselves also conflict with the OD&D system. All three of the hostile encounters are with Fiend Folio monsters: more qullan, firetoads, and a flail snail. I don't know OD&D, but I know about it. I know that it is different from AD&D in fundamental ways. Let's take the 4 HD fire toads. The stat block in the writeup matches the monster's AD&D stat block in the FF. Monster hit dice in AD&D are d8s; monster (and character) hit dice in OD&D are d6s. This is a doubly important distinction because the fire toad's damage output matches its current hit points. But wait, if the OD&D default is d6s for hit dice, wouldn't the creatures presented here also use d6s? They should, which would mitigate some of the error, but it's clear from the listed hp ranges that the author is using d8s (for example, the 6 HD flail snail is listed as having a hit point range of 6–48). 

Simply jamming AD&D monsters into an OD&D framework means those creatures are suddenly punching above their weight. The 4+1 HD fire toad with an average of 19 hp is roughly equivalent to a 5+2 HD monster in OD&D, and there are a lot of them. This problem becomes even more pronounced later when the party fights not one, but two Oriental dragons (from the FF) with a combined 17 HD! It all escalates even further when you realize the author has included AD&D xp values for the monsters, which are substantially higher than typical OD&D xp values.

The non-combat random encounter involves moles that "scamper off" as the party approaches. If the party can communicate with them as the writeup puts it, by "magical or gnomic means," they can provide some info about the caves, including the location of Forxximon's body. That's a nice touch, and even if this encounter is rolled multiple times, the DM can employ it like a naturalistic Locate Object spell, allowing the party to hone in on the body. I like it, though I'm confused by the "gnomic" reference. Sure, gnomes in AD&D can communicate with small burrowing animals, but gnomes are not a playable race in OD&D and they can't speak with animals (they're basically hill dwarves).

Then we dive right into the dungeon key. There is no description of the exterior areas or any entrance(s). All we know from the map is that a staircase descends to area 1. Here the party finds a pair of corpses crushed beneath a giant snail shell: One is the body of a gnome, the other of a qullan. If a Speak with Dead spell (from the OD&D Greyhawk supplement) is employed, the gnome can impart details about the dungeon (including the concealed route below the caves) but the insane qullan just screams. (Very good.) But whoops, here's another basic conflict with the rules.

The writeup establishes that the corpses are "2 weeks old," but 7th-level clerics (the maximum of the stated character level range) can only speak with the recently-dead—those who have died within the last 1–4 days. A cleric of 8th level or more is required to speak to these two. General advice to all designers: When you insert a standard rule mechanic into a situation for the players to overcome, do yourself a favor and review the rule mechanic in question first. It just takes a few seconds in most cases, and it prevents you from setting up something that either contradicts the rules or is impossible for the party to achieve under the established conditions. Like this.

In an adjacent hall, the party finds a foreboding sacrificial pit that leads down into a secret route running below the dungeon level. At the bottom of the 80' deep pit is the body of a halfling adventurer and a broken magical bow. The text states that a Mending spell will fix that broken bow right up, but since Mending isn't an OD&D spell, I guess that won't work. (It wouldn't work in AD&D either.)

Across the pit, an alcove curtain turns out to be a sheet phantom (Fiend Folio again). A chest concealed behind it holds treasure, including a cursed sword called a "sharecurse." In addition to inflicting a –2 penalty on its unwilling bearer, the sword also inflicts the same curse (temporarily) on any creature struck by it. That's kind of kickass and would lead some players to strategize a way to leverage it—keeping the curse and mitigating the penalty with other items, while maintaining an always-on effect that weakens opponents just by fighting them. Phew...that might be too nasty now that I consider it.

The party passes through two areas with firetoads, who don't mess with them as long as they aren't hostile to the toads or mess with their "egg sack (sic)." Within the egg sac, a piece of jewelry gleams tantalizingly. This area is nicely done, setting up a perennial adventurer conundrum: Those non-hostile monsters are sitting on some treasure. What do we do? That's all great. 

Two odd things to note here: One, these fire toads can talk, lightly taunting the PCs as they pass by. (Talking fire toads? The Fiend Folio says they have "Low" intelligence so, okay... nothing says they can't.) Two, there are "deep tracks" found within one room which, "if identified by a ranger ... resemble that of a basilisk." Rangers are not an OD&D class, but also there is no basilisk in these caves. The tracks are also never mentioned again and we are never told where they lead. I'm assuming the author meant these to be from the earth dragons, but those creatures are leonine not reptilian. I don't get what this is supposed to be.

Beyond the fire toads to the east, a band of ten qullan "nest" in a chamber and cavort around two campfires (in an enclosed room, underground). They're making quite a racket so the party should be able to sneak by or get the jump on them. They have a couple of really nice, unique magic items, both of which are given xp values. 

Since characters don't receive xp for items in OD&D, I'm now going to regard the submission's stated system of OD&D as a typo (though the 'A' and 'O' keys are nowhere close). The submission's title card is the only place OD&D is mentioned or referenced, rules-wise, and the rest of the write-up is straight AD&D. I'm not forgiving the author for the glaring mistake; I am simply accepting it as a realized fact and will cease commenting on further occurrences. Let's just say they remain frequent and I don't want to keep repeating myself.

A nearby sinkhole descends into the sub-caves. Here, a glaring map error is made evident, but I will go into that further below. This branch of the dungeon culminates in a fire shrine. There's some decent description here until we get to the shrine's prominent feature: A giant statue described only as "the guy on the cover of the DMG." Sigh...

When approached, the statue commands the party to kneel before him (which of course they won't do), and even if they do, the statue then declares it is not enough and commands them to give him a minimum 8 hp in blood sacrifice (which of course they won't do), but if they do, the character becomes possessed by the fire spirit and permanently disfigures themselves by 1–6 hit points (recoverable only by a Wish). In return, the character can now cast Produce Flame and Pyrotechnics spells twice per day, takes reduced damage from fire and increased damage from cold, and is considered to have 18 CHA when dealing with fire creatures. If the ritual is stopped or interrupted, the shrine pillars animate as caryatid columns and attack. There is no treasure here.

Returning to the junction point of the fire toad room, the party can head south into the dragon's cave. I mean, like, 10' south and you're in the dragon's cave. Sure, the qullan barbarians are making a lot of noise, but wouldn't the dragons hear the fire toads taunting the party? It's only a 10' long stairway from their chamber into the dragon cave. Surely they would hear the subsequent combat as the party decides to teach the fire toads a lesson and get that sweet treasure, right? If so, the writeup gives no indication.

Oriental dragons are Neutral in alignment, but this pair is mated and they have some unusual behaviors. First, the male demands "complete and utter devotion from anyone who dares to violate his sacred realm" (i.e., enters this cave). That's not a very "neutral" attitude for the creature to take, and it demonstrates a complete lack of understanding of how player-characters think and act. The dragon will also use his innate ESP ability...

...to make sure none of the party members have ever brought harm to their own family members – if so he will demand them to be stripped naked and force them to march out the north exit of his den.

This is simply setting the party up for a very difficult fight with two earth dragons. Parlay here is pointless. That's fine if killing the dragons is the adventure hook the DM is using, but if not, there is no way for the party to avoid the combat unless they flee.

Additionally, earth dragons can use the Earthquake spell once per day. A handy order-of-battle for using this ability is provided, but its effect is given as "save-or-die." The Earthquake spell has no saving throw, however. What the spell would do in this context is collapse the roof of the cavern and, depending on the judgment of the DM, either kill anyone caught beneath it (no save), or do huge amounts of damage (no save). This will happen twice in the combat, with one area of effect being 45' diameter and the other 40' diameter. Characters will be dying here for sure. Oh, according to the FF, earth dragons "are never harmed by any earthquake (though they may be inconvenienced by having to dig out of the rubble)." Sweet! Anyone still alive will have to finish off both dragons. 

A sinkhole in the cave floor leads down into the secret route, while a chimney hole in the ceiling exits to the outside. No mention of this entrance is made prior to the party entering the dungeon, but since it's a 20' wide hole in the ground, a mere 140' to the south of the main entrance, it doesn't seem hard to spot. The dragons' hoard is kept in a chest in a nearby secret closet.

The lair is not the ultimate room, however, as a door in the cave leads into another branching area with more encounters. In one room, a Magic Mouth appears and conducts a lengthy discussion/interaction with the party, likely resulting in the mouth issuing forth a swarm of fire rats (No! None of this is what Magic Mouth does, dammit!!) Now we're not only not playing OD&D, we're not even playing AD&D. The author appears to just be making stuff up at this point. 

A well in this room holds the princely sum of 40 cp (seriously?) and the three Arrows of Fighter-Slaying, along with some other, more appropriate treasure and another unique magic item, a Ring of Pests that allows the wearer to speak with insects and rats and cast Giant Animal or Insect three times per day (I assume the author means the druid spell, Animal Growth. He also places no restrictions on the Giant Animal spell meaning the wearer can technically use it on any animal and not just rats as suggested by the item's theme.)

There is also a bizarrely-designed trap room at the end of this dungeon section. A door opens into a 10x10 chamber, where the party can see scorch marks on the walls and heretofore-unseen bear tracks on the floor leading through a door on the opposite wall. Opening that door triggers a Fire Trap spell, which appears to have already gone off given the scorch marks on the wall. It goes off again despite the spell having a duration of "Permanent until discharged." Also, the room then laughs at the party. Whatevs.

The last few rooms occur in the tunnel route below the dungeon level. There are four giant spiders to contend with down here, along with a flail snail pining for its dead mate (snails being famously emotional and known for forming tight pair-bonds). A dead orc has a second treasure map indicating the magical arrows found down here.

Finally, at the very bottom of an elbow bend in the vertical tunnel, the rubble of a cave-in has buried the hapless wizard (?), Forxximon, who has been dead for two months. Finding him requires gaseous form or talking to the moles. The writeup doesn't say how long it will take to dig him out, but it's exactly what the party will have to do—excavate a 10' pile from the bottom of a 20' deep shaft. Won't be easy or quick without the right magic, that's for sure (if the party is even lucky enough to find him at all). He has some valuable magic items on him, though no coins, jewelry, or other mundane treasures. The party will also find the treatise desired by the dread wizard; it's mission statement is to "sire a race of half-efreeti to serve as wish-slaves." Oof.

Total treasure amounts to a whopping 153,465 gp, most of it contained in the dragon's hidden hoard. If the players miss that, they may only be looking at around 9,000 gp in takings. That's pretty swingy in terms of xp rewards. The good news is that none of the magic items are part of that hoard. 

In addition to the items named above, the party can find a +3 Shortbow of Blue Dragon Slaying, a Lyre of [Spell] Interruption, Boots of Varied Tracks (cool item for a ranger or thief), a Ring of Fire Resistance, a Ring of Jumping, and an adamantium scroll case which gives +5 item saves to any scrolls inside. Those last three items come off Foxximon's body, so the party may not find them, either.
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1) THEME
(How strong/consistent is the adventure's premise, flavor, and setting?) 

There isn't much of a theme going on here. There's Oriental dragons, but nothing else about this dungeon has that flavor. There's a barbarian lair, but they're squatters. The temple of fire seems thematic, but has no bearing on anything else in the dungeon. It's all pieces of unrelated things sort of jammed together in a not-unpleasant way. Dare I say this adventure site could be fun if it decides which system it wants to use and the players don't mind the ridiculous combination of encounters. (In that respect, it does resemble OD&D's freewheelin' attitude about dungeon stocking.)

Tonally, the text is full of wink-and-a-nod language. Room titles are often intended to be humorous (e.g., "3. Literally a Single Firetoad"). Or, in the description of a recently-slain qullan, a superfluous sentence that reads: "Sucks to suck." Your tolerance and appreciation for this style of writing will be a matter of personal taste, and for certain kinds of adventures, this sort of cheeky wordplay can enhance the vibe of the place for the DM. But by and large, an adventure writeup is a technical document meant to instruct the DM on how to run the particular site. 

Your first duty as a game designer is to present clear and cogent instructions. Your second duty is to provide the DM with good descriptive language to properly convey the site's intended mood, flavor, vibe, theme, etc. Third is to make sure the risk:reward ratios are accurate and desirable for the intended player group. Way down the list of designer duties is amusing the prospective DM. Having a fun and interesting document to read isn't a bad thing, but it ranks pretty low on the DM's hierarchy of needs. 

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 very first sentence of the writeup gives the map scale of 10' squares. It looks like the base map may have been drawn in a program like Dungeonscrawl, with other, almost-hand drawn details added in Paint or Photoshop. Clean lines in classic non-repro blue, with black dungeon elements really popping out on the page. The main map is fairly linear with a couple of dead-end branches. Exploration will be pretty straightforward.

The secret, vertical route below the dungeon level is represented by a side-profile map with the same scale grid but containing major errors between the three connecting points—a series of three sinkhole or chasm-like pits on the dungeon level. Part of the problem is that it is unclear from which direction the viewer is facing the side profile map. I'm assuming the perspective is from the southeast (which is also where the profile map is located on the main map).

On the main map, the hole marked A is 170' distant from hole B going north to south, and 165' from hole C going west to east. B and C are 170' from each other diagonally. On the profile map, however, hole A is merely 40' from hole B and 60' from hole C, and holes B and C are only 120' apart. It's good as a general vertical guide, but not accurate horizontally. 

SCORE (MAP/ART) = 3 / 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 two-column format, left-aligned with wide margins. Sections and key descriptions have good line spacing between each section, but each section is in single paragraph form which creates areas of dense text in a few places. 

Monster stat blocks are mercifully separated from the dense paragraph, titles and creature names are bolded, and magic items are italicized so those items are easier to find with a quick scan. Font sizes are the same, though main section titles are in all-caps. Certain creatures and the wizards' proper names are also in all-caps for some reason. The formatting can be a bit all over the place sometimes.

Information flow is mostly in a logical progression, but the adventure drops the party right into the dungeon, with virtually no background information provided as to what this place once was (only part of it is cavernous), why the various occupants have come to reside here, and who built the complex and left all these magical traps. It's all as random as everything else, so I suppose its consistent?

Oddly, the text occasionally shifts from third-person objective tense to second-person tense, where suddenly the author begins addressing the reader as though they were the party (like boxed text, basically, with no indication the DM is supposed to be reading this to the players). It's super-weird and jarring. Sometimes the writeup mixes read-aloud text with information the party wouldn't know at first glance and DM-only details. For example:

13. Webs! Yeah it’s giant spiders. They’re waiting on the ceiling for you to wander into their web, which already has a body in it. Lighting the webs on fire should certain (sic) cause an item saving throw for the scrollcase containing a scroll of protection from magic (1500xp).

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

Most of the keyed locations are going to be combats, but areas can be avoided in many cases, allowing the players to strike at the moment of their choosing. Since the Oriental dragons are neutral, the DM could choose to ignore the writeup's original description of their actions and create a more nuanced encounter instead.

There's a secret door, and a few traps and puzzles (though the efreet trick is a bit dickish). The vertical element of the secret route gives the players options for movement and forces them to think about the spatial relationships between the areas they've mapped. There are quite a few secret clues to be had if clever players pay attention or their characters can speak with dead or communicate with animals, which is always super cool. 

It doesn't have a lot of interactivity, but it has enough. 

SCORE (INTERACTIVITY) = 3 / 5
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5) MODULARITY
(How easy would it be to drop/integrate the adventure into an existing campaign?)

The site is just a series of encounter nodes below ground. There's nothing tying it to anything specific or grounding it in any sort of specific theme, terrain, or locale. I suppose the inclusion of Oriental dragons suggests a flavor, but there is NOTHING about them (other than their names) that connects the site with such a setting.

The site's very basic-ness and lack of narrative backbone kind of works against it, in fact. But if you need someplace for your party to delve without much warning, they can probably play this and have a reasonably good time (be prepared for some pushback on some of the douchier traps, though).

I'm also docking a point in this category for the mislabeling of the adventure site as OD&D. If I was running that system and grabbed this accidentally based on the label, I'm going to have to make a lot of adjustments on the fly, and I will be making a lot of incorrect calls because I don't have time to look it all up and am trusting the designer. That would definitely piss me off.

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?)

As stated above, if I decided to use this, thinking it was for OD&D, I would have to do a lot of conversion work to bring it into sync with OD&D's ruleset. Everything here is in AD&D terms, and since many of the writeup's assumptions are wrong in BOTH editions, I would have to parse through it carefully, pick out the errors, and figure out some other rationale for why it exists. 

I'll also have to figure out where this site is located in my world, work out some exterior details or notes about the area around it, and incorporate some of the "off-brand" monsters like qullan and Oriental dragons into the setting. (Hey, these things matter.)

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

While this dungeon is a bit too random and flavorless for my tastes, I have respect for its effectiveness. It's not realistic in any way, but its unrealism is structured logically. The creatures that live here all exist in a state of neutral peace. Each group can go do their own thing without bothering the others, and the really dangerous rooms are just places they don't go. 

By accident or design, this site totally works in an absurd way. If nothing else, take it apart and borrow the individual pieces for your own megadungeon design. It's perfect fodder for that.

FINAL SCORE = 2.8 / 5