 |
| Xanadu, complete with 8-bit art vibe. |
Written by Vasili Kaliman, Xanadu is a 38-page weird-fantasy adventure for Old-School Essentials (so B/X D&D) published in zine format at high-quality levels. The artwork has a distinctive 8-bit flavour and in some ways, it reminds me of older text adventures like the Temple of Aphsai, which I used to play on my TRS-80 clone (a Video Genie). Cartography is by Dyson Logos. It is aimed at characters of Levels 2 to 3.
TL;DR: This is a great adventure; it is dangerous, clever and has some excellent challenges. It's also likely to be very lethal if the players take straight-line solutions and ignore environmental clues. Its layout and construction are excellent. Xanadu is definitely on my list of scenarios to run as a one-shot. Recommended.
It is an exemplar of good design, with brevity to the text that remains evocative, and bold text used to highlight important elements to the Dungeon Master. There is no 'read-aloud' text but the information presented is enough for a succinct summary to be produced on the spot. Stat blocks are pulled out distinctively (shades of D&D 5e). It is rightfully held up within OSR circles as a good example of how to write an adventure. Even if you don't write D&D material, it's definitely worth looking at books like this and the core OSE adventures and how they present information succinctly and helpfully.
The adventure has the characters exploring a temple, which has suffered from a terrible event. The setting is deliberately vague and here are a variety of suggested adventure hooks, and random tables to generate some background about why the cult had its temple there. The adventure doesn't have random encounters (it's suggested that the DM adds their own if they feel they're needed, for example, if the players are starting to go really slowly). It also doesn't have random gold and valuables, just suggesting that they are added on the fly in response to the actions of the players. This I'm less sure of as character progression is built around the acquisition of treasure in B/X and OSE.
spoiler break
The temple has suffered from a summoning going wrong. Or perhaps the summoning went right, but the resultant actions of the being that was summoned went horribly differently from the way that the participants expected. The temple's worship was focused around teeth and the creature summoned was the tooth fairy. However, this is not the cheery creature that adults tell their children of which leaves coins under pillows in return for unwanted teeth. This is a terrifying ambivalent and cruel extra-planar
entity that will rip the teeth from your head and transform you in other ways. Fortunately for the characters, the tooth fairy has retreated back to its home dimension, leaving transformed minions behind. Unfortunately for the characters, their actions could end up summoning it back.
The main encounters are with minor minions of the tooth fairy, and several of the cultists who were spared (although that term is questionable here, perhaps better to say that they weren't killed) but transformed. The adventure has a lot of interactivity, traps and puzzles. Escape can only be achieved by solving a particular puzzle (although that in itself begs the question about what will happen if the tooth fairy can go out into the world). There is a helpful list of unanswered questions at the end, should the DM wish to take things further.
This is a great adventure; it is dangerous, clever and has some excellent challenges. It's also likely to be very lethal if the players take straight-line solutions and ignore environmental clues. Its layout and construction are excellent. Xanadu is definitely on my list of scenarios to run as a one-shot. Recommended.
3 January 2022
No comments:
Post a Comment