​A dungeon by Nate Treme, level non
Written for Knave
   This month is "pamphlet dungeons by Nate Treme and Shadowdark jam results" if the theme wasn't otherwise obvious. Yeah, I don't know either. Look, itch.io giveth, itch.io giveth more of the same. You know the deal, two pages designed to be printed out and folded. As usual, the fold pattern is different with every single pamphlet product. This one is a seven-room dungeon, for what its worth.
   I don't know what a bat-serpent is, but the locals are being troubled by one lately. A temple previously devoted to some type of goddess is now taken over by a eye-takey-outy cult who worship the bat serpent. Hate it when that happens to my mountain temples. The front part of the little zone is a temple area, the back part is a hidden cave lair zone, all good. I don't know WHY there's a pond in one of the caves with a mermaid, but hey, one more encounter for the pile. Fight eyeless things and defeat the demon bat-serpent then cheer for your victory over the forces of somewhat less metaphorical than usual darkness. 
   I'm a simple man. What I liked were the temple themes and how the mess-with-it pool of water interacted with this cult's peculiar form of worship (moonshine and the pool is filled with severed eyes). Some very good mess-with-the-thing content in here, like the secret door being revealed by turning bat idols 180 and grave markers that do absolutely nothing unless messed with pointlessly (then it's skele-time). Treasure is flavorful, I'm always a fan of silver dentures as loot. Interaction is light but present in the form of the mermaid.
   ...which, hey, let's go with that as the first of what can be improved...THE MERMAID DROWNS PEOPLE IN HER POOL, THERE SHOULD BE LOOT DOWN THERE. Feels like kind of a big miss. Actually, upon reflection, it's more than a little weird how all the loot in the caves is found in handy-dandy chests. That's more videogame than it should be. The random encounters are, uh...definitely random. Bit too high on the "signs and portents" like shadows moving weird and lights going out, need more gnarly fights in this otherwise pretty sparse fighty place. The linear map isn't a problem, really, but more complexity would definitely not go amiss. We can always do better. Like writing it for a real system instead of for Knave.
   Let's be real though, the best use case here is using it as it is, a cute little lair suitable for 29-82minutes of exploration. One doesn't have a lot to extract without extracting the whole dang lair, but that's fine, this is a scale needed too.
   Final Rating? ***/***** with an added half star if the vibe suits your style and you use a real TTRPG system. Don't hate this at all, I might even use it for a lair in certain random exploration results. Good job, this one is usable, which is the highest praise I can give to any adventure.

​A dungeon by Matt Barninger, level 1
Written for Shadowdark
   Writing tip. The string "of the" is usually a sign of prose that can be cut. "The BLANK of the BLANKETY BLANK" in particular, while working in dialog or a title, should probably be something like "Savage Sorcerer's Caverns" in prose. Just a random thought.
   Oh, the adventure format? You know the Shadowdark Standard (or The Standard of the Shadowdark)...eight double-column pages for technically seventeen keyed locations (13-17 are "dead ends"). Rumors, hooks, random encounters, keys, bestiary, map, and finally a credits page that includes font for some dang reason. It's fine, writing is clear, layout is generous. I don't talk about it a lot for Shadowdarkian adventures because it is a pretty usable standard.
   Story is the usual "band-of-kobolds-allied-with-giant-spiders-sacrifices-magical-forest-guardian-unicorns". A slightly different twist is that the giant spiders' leader is a merchant's daughter wearing a cursed helm that turns the wearer into a spider, that's a fun and horrifying little thing. Rewards on offer are the merchant's $100 (yeah, players are definitely going to kill that lady accidentally) and a ranger with Bracers of Being a Gooder Archer. As is kind of normal for unicorn adventures, the best reward is probably the alliance of a magical horse that comes to a point. In this case, unicorns heal using horns. Cool.
   I'm not mad at a first level adventure having somewhat pitiful threats, what I liked here is that the random encounter table doesn't pull too many punches. Giant spider, 1d4 spiders, or 1d6 kobolds can lead to some interest. That there's also the Shadowdark Official Blow-Out-Your-Torch result won't raise too much ire. Ginger the Spider (transformed daughter) is pretty nasty, 2x bites with high damage and poison, whew. Always love to see rickety bridges over a chasm, the map has two of those:

   ...that said, what can be improved otherwise with the map (beyond "more verticality") is actually a bit more intelligent design with regards to flow. The final confrontation with the titular Savage Sorcerer? Room 7. That's...kind of fast. Also, outside of the random encounters, those chasm bridges are very likely to be fought atop, disappointing. Then, on to poor ol' Ginger, the text itself is unclear about how anyone is supposed to figure out that she's the merchant's daughter. A little telegraphing would be nice, else we just murder the lass and say "oops" afterward. Finally, treasure lacks a certain pizazz. It's just piles of 100gp or 2gp bits on the kobolds. I know, not a gold-for-XP system really, but still...
   I kind of wind down on the best use case for "play as a level 1 Shadowdark adventure". Sadly, there's not a lot either memorable or special to this one, like with the unicorns being given no personality, the transforming helmet being unclear, the situations being generic...there's an auto typing feel there that might indicate LLM but I'm going to be charitable and call it lack of playtesting. Not a lot of individual encounters or treasure bits to extract, either. 
   Final Rating? */***** without rancor or even annoyance. It's just all a bit generic. You can have fun with it because TTRPGs are fun, but it's not like the warrens of itch.io aren't rife with a thousand other low-level Shadowdark adventures. 

​A dungeon by Nate Treme, level obscura
Written for "old school"
   Pamphlet dungeon, ho...this time with vaguely 8-bit art and a silly theme. Okay, fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me thrice...nah, I won't be fooled. I like the old graphic style, but it's been too many times with a crummy adventure behind the look. This one is pretty standard, nine rooms described in two of the "folds", which is a lot of real estate left over for the two-page map, cover fold, and encounter stuff. I see you, Treme. I see you.
   Our story is appropriately weird, with the titular pescamancer a mad wizard all about making fish-mixed-with-other-creature hybrid monsters. The local fishing village doesn't particularly appreciate getting monsters instead of mackerels in their nets, so the local headman offers a hundred bucks and a magic fishing net to the party that kills "whatever is causing this". Simple enough. Go fight fish-monsters. 
   Silly as it is, what I liked was how this adventure conveyed its story simply and effectively, we get the story in and out with no muss, no fuss. Not everything has to be Shakespeare, sometimes its enough to have a delving excuse in some dank caves. Fishling monsters are fine beasts to fight. I like how there's a majestic mystic turtle to rescue, that makes sense. Having potions of water breathing, mermaid statues, and a sharkskin-bound tome on fish anatomy as loot is all good. Map iconography is good and communicative. 
   Once we get to the execution, though, we're deep in what can be improved territory though. Map is "loopy-doopy'd" but there's not a lot of exploratory gameplay despite the water features. Fish themeing is strong here but there's not a lot of mechanical stuff making the fish stuff matter...because, again, no specific system is designed for (drink). Basically, we have an initial idea, but there's not a lot of follow-through. Pity.
   Best use case here is to use as a handy-dandy little lair when you need an hour of gameplay at most. It's got a few cute ideas but it's rather insubstantial.
   Final Rating? **/***** because I'm feeling generous and my youngest child loves turtles. It's not very much muchness, but hey, sometimes you need a lair in your back pocket. It'll serve. 

 A regional adventure for levels 3-6, by Brynjar Mar Palsson
Written for Shadowdark
   Note, this one came in as a review copy, along with a very touching heartfelt message from the author…Mr. Palsson, as you may recall, wrote one of the first itch.io adventures I actually liked, Brigands of Bristleback Burrow. Apparently, my review was the first such he’d received, and he found it encouraging. He’s done a few other dungeons over time, which I’ve bumped into from time to time. Now he’s graduated from “a dungeon” to “full-up regional sandbox campaign” with the hefty tome before us. Legacy of Iskald is a hundred-page (‘zine-size) epic of genuinely impressive scope, written for Shadowdark of all things. I’m impressed by the ambition.
   As always, I don’t review adventures based on artistic merit, but there is a lot of effort represented here. Most of the art is black-and-white, with the occasional full-page or even double-page color spread setting mood. Every monster and most NPCs have portrait sketches, and I like…most of them, slightly uneven quality/style is to be expected when you have multiple artists and illustrators. Some of the stuff is really quite gripping, and several illustrations made me laugh. This isn’t a no-value-added thing or something just to break up text blocks, when we run something like this at the table, having example illustrations to flash to the players is really nice. Otherwise, formatting is competent and Shadowdark-standard, with generous margins, well-delineated tables, and the usual custom slightly-annoying but nevertheless readable Arcane Library font. Writing is casual, almost conversational in places, but very easy to parse.
   I had an experience that I believe most of us have had, where I mainlined the Sagas of the Icelanders and immediately started building a campaign based on them. In my own case it was set in an alternate Greenland, icy and bleak and cold at the edge of the world. This is another one of those, although it is not set in a real-world version of the earth, it’s still obviously built by someone raised on the sagas. It’s a good setting for D&D-style adventure, if you told me that actual historical Vikings believed in a gold=XP system I’d believe you. Couple that with the myths of the Norse being fully populated in D&D monster manuals and in all cases optimized for “hit it with sword” solutions, then you’re in the zone anytime you’re D&Ding the Viking Era. Even if it is in Shadowdark.
   A word on the Shadowdark system…it isn’t ideal for all that a regional campaign requires, notably lacking any kind of overland travel system (pre-Western Reaches Kickstarter), and also not overly focused on character death rules during a long-term play. As is tradition, the author improvises via hacking. First we have importing from other systems, in this case using Cairn’s watch system for overland travel and ACKS II’s heroic death rules for giving XP to new replacement characters. There’s also new stuff, like calendar and weather systems, travel and seasonal mods, and of course a ritual
tracking chart…
   …because, hey, there’s a ticking clock in this regional sandbox adventure. Actually several, but the biggest is a bunch of fishmen (the cultfish) trying to figure out a control ritual to enslave a local dragon who’s been chained for centuries beneath the mountain by the region’s long-departed warlord. There’s also a troll-wife desperately trying to keep the peace between a fighting pair of greater elementals, a centipede-using shapeshifting hag trying to poison everyone in the area and imprison them in nightmares for decades, some harpies raiding around, a mercenary company of were-creatures looking for lost members, a massive ice floe with dozens of wrecked ships haunted by cursed undead, and the usual petty set of side quests too. It’s a packed adventure, with a lot of various sites that all funnel into a central dungeon.
   Which is unfortunately going to be the source of my biggest complaint in this whole affair, Hrimskegg’s Tomb. I love the idea of the dungeon…it’s a central area accessed from four different locations throughout the region, rife with multiple factions, designed to be visited multiple times to complete multiple objectives throughout the region. Everything happening centers around this dungeon, and its themes are strong, complete with a final area containing an abused dragon who’s been chained here all his life. Brilliant stuff, compelling, interesting, and perfect as an anchor for a regional sandbox…but it’s all stuffed into twenty-four room tiny (5ft square) dungeon:

   It hurts to see. The dungeon itself isn’t even bad, I like the flow, I like the rooms, I like the traps and monsters and interactive bits, they’re all great. If this was one of the itch.io standard eight-page dungeons, I’d be giving it five stars. It’s written with that use case in mind, even, and for that it’s great. But this is a tiny little area that an efficient group can knock out in a single session. Since its Shadowdark, you don’t even have the 5E excuse that combat takes forever, fights are actually pretty fast here. This thing just needed 3x or 4x more rooms and a lot more space occupied to properly fit its role in the adventure. And maybe a couple more levels.
   It’s even more of a pity because there are other dungeons here in this region that show bigger scope. I love them, an overrun barrow filled with angry revenants and the Norns, an ice-crevasse filled with unique light-avoidant undead and a faithful ghost retainer seeking the heir of his master, the hag’s lair, a heist-ready inn/merchant shop, and a tower in the cliff…all of these take advantage of the third dimension, all of them are a good size for what’s being asked of them, and all of them have good design. The author can make a good adventure site. I just wish the main one had been a full-up proper dungeon.
   Regional adventures live or die based on the personalities, goals, and resources of the various factions and people within the area and this one is really excellent with that. Most of the people and monsters here have distinct personalities and are working some kind of angle, usually something that’ll lead to utter disaster for the region. This whole zone is a mass of a dozen different ticking time bombs, which is perfect for a sandbox. Freedom is infinite, but there should also be NPCs freely bumping around to destroy things if the PCs screw up. There’s also the Requisite Rival Adventuring Party around, complete and utter dirtbags. Love it.
   The other things I look for in an adventure like this are cool and interesting sites and magic and we’re solid here, too. Menhirs, swamps, giant primordial trees, a volcano (and YES IT MIGHT ERRUPT)…everything here is fun and interesting and conveyed on the map pretty darn well. This is a region filled with adventure and intrigue, just asking to be explored. There are a ton of new/custom monsters that work well, and although I might could wish for more new magic items, those that do get made are all useful and interesting.
   If you can’t tell from my tone, I really like this adventure. The central dungeon’s whiff at scale is mostly disappointing because the region does do such an excellent job at making everything else so big and epic. Level 3-6 is the “X” in B/X and it’s right and proper to step out of the dungeon and into the sagas. Legacy of Iskald does this for Shadowdark better than anything else I’ve seen and it looks like something I’d have a blast playing with even as someone who is not the biggest adherent of the system. It's here if you wanted to take a look.
****

By Jeff Simpson, for Seven Voyages of Zylarthen (or anything, really)
This is not really an adventure, or a site. This is a situation, something possible to find on a random encounter table perhaps, with the focus here on a frozen tableau with a warrior and a wizard standing in front of a dead thief, watched over by an angel. Angel has frozen them in time to wait for a rando party to wander in and render judgement.   
   It’s a quirky idea, entertaining enough, but certainly not what we’re looking for in ASC. That being said, if you like the idea for your random encounter table, it’s got some interest. All three mortals (warrior, wizard, thief) are brothers, with the wizard getting tricked by a devil, tricking the warrior in turn, and the thief for once in the whole history of the hobby NOT responsible for causing issues. Said devil can be summoned to also weigh in, but condemning him just gets an attaboy from the angel and doesn’t do much else. Rewards are an ancient sword of chaos (if you condemn the warrior), a spellbook (if you condemn the wizard), or the angel’s gavel (as war hammer, if you condemn the devil). Refusing judgement keeps everyone stuck.
   Some parties would hate this, some parties will love this, ymmv. I don’t have much else to say about it, other than being continually charmed by Jeffe’s impressive art:

​A gauntlet adventure for 0th-levels by Dimme van der Hout
Written for Shadowdark
   Okay, back in the saddle. Always a bit of a letdown after the end of Adventure Site Contest judging...we haven't announced winners yet, but now it's back to the Monday grind. Let's start with a sure winner, then, a top finalist in the Shadowdark RPG Independent Game Jam. It's a 0-level gauntlet. With a ten-room dungeon as the content. Over 11 pages, formatted in spreads of all things. Ah. Back to the ol' reliables I see.
   Story is that you're all a bunch of nobody scrubs from a sad village hunting after a giant boar in a nice traditional hunt and you bump into a sunken keep formerly owned by a Mr. Tusken, who wandered away and left his half-elf wife sad and her being sad made the keep sink into the ground and the keep needs to be traveled through because...reasons. 'kay. All the boar/village stuff is kind of handwaved anyway, it's just Gauntlet In the Most Literal of Senses.
   Okay, okay, I've been spoiled by ASC III, let's be fair. What I liked here was the look of the little map. The riddle-handout is nice, that's a nice little puzzle offered by a fairy who gifts a magic +1 dagger if the answer is given. I like the d100 treasure table, I'll use it for a decent mudcore list. I like that there's a hook for future quest in a riddle where Lord Tusken (yeah, that's his name) met his final rest. Good idea.
   Honestly, that means the first of what can be improved is just "expand stuff more". The hook is abstracted, the village has no ingame content, the boar itself is kind of forgotten...c'mon, help a brother out here. Improving the map for anything that gives exploratory potential would be good too, this is just a linear run with a couple little spokes. Despite having a vertical element, none of the height is taken advantage of...just kind of miss on the map overall. It's not nearly deadly enough to be a proper funnel experience. AND MORE BOAR HUNTING IN THE GIANT BOAR HUNT PLEASE.
   Alas, best use case is probably just "strip for parts". If you want a Shadowdark gauntlet, that's fine, I don't hate you, but there's better out there like Trial of the Slime Lord. Unfortunately, outside of the aforementioned little d100 treasure table and some genuinely nice little evocative pieces of art, there aren't really even a lot of parts I'd want to strip here.
   Final Rating? */***** Sigh. We're back alright. 

​For a mystery system, Levels ?
By J. Coffery
Local ranchers find livestock brutally slain and consumed. They offer the party up to 200 gp worth of leather goods (including armor) and other mundane equipment to investigate and stop. One clue: tracks from a large humanoid point to the Ghostlight Mesa.
The local priest warns the party about Ghostlight Mesa. On full moon nights, the spectral lights dance along the mesa edge, believed to be spirits of . Rumors of a vast silver horde have attracted adventurers, but few have returned with riches. He offers blessings if they chose to explore..
   Hey. Hello everyone. We’re done with Adventure Site Contest reviews. Check back here soon for all judges’ finished rankings synthesized into the top-8. That being said, I do enjoy reviewing all adventures, big or small, and some noble soul sent in something to the Adventure Site Contest that broke the size restriction (3 pages) but otherwise has some really fascinating ideas, so worth looking at it.
   First off, I do want to note this is a very odd-looking design. Landscape not portrait, three or even four column, AI-generated village “map”, little Grok-made skinny sasquatch illustration. Strange stuff. Workable, just oddly arranged.
   Okay, so, story is Wyrd West. Ghost lights up on a mesa, ruined cliffside village, sasquatch-wendigo Old People hunting rancher livestock, it’s got a nice western coat of paint. Now the cliffside village is occupied by a goblin tribe who’ve lost half their members to a Shaggy Man, so there’s a lot a negotiation stuff there potentially too. It’s a western coat of paint, but you can also do it in D&D, no worries.
   Maps are a wonky little Grok-illustration isometric village and a linear little Shaggy Man Lair, neither particularly interesting but both perfectly serviceable for what’s needed with this scale. Villages getting broken out via key can be a little awkward for running but hey, I could fight a pitched battle against a tribe here. I like the rubble-cave in branch that later links to a buried treasure room. Not everything has to be hyper-exploratory, but no bonus points for interest here either.

​   So in above you see one obvious hazard in a rickety rope-bridge, classic. Most of the rest of the threats are desert animals, hazardous predatory tumbleweeds, and said goblins plus the sasquatch-wendigo (pretty much just a skinny desert bigfoot aka the Mogollon Monster). The goblins are Chaotic Evil but willing to negotiate, with goals and purpose, while the sasquatch-wendigo is Chaotic Evil and just a fight-monster that eats victims mid-fight. Nice and scary fight mechanic, but missed opportunity to not have two houses alike in dignity here. I do like an order of battle with the goblins.
   Treasure is mostly obsidian weaponry, silver ingots, and turquoise jewelry, low value vs threat level if this is B/X or AD&D. The magic items are an obsidian (thus breakable) javelin of lightning or a turquoise bead Thunderbird Necklace that acts as either feather-fall or a tossed stunning item. It can be recharged by putting it out in a thunderstorm, which is very cool, good design.
   In the end, despite this being above the ASC text page limit, this is an adequate if rather small and insubstantial site. Love the flavor, western but it can go anywhere in a standard game world that has a mix of mesa and desert somewhere in its hinterland. 

For Seven Voyages of Zylarthen, Levels 5-6
By Matthew Lake
Patracleo, a Late Kingdom princess of Old Ægypt, lived a short and tragic life. Her whirlwind romance with a Novo-Atlantean prince ended in civil war and suicide by snake bite.
Determined to enjoy her afterlife by indulging her passions for sight-seeing and blood sports, she now roams the world in a flying pyramid luring adventurers into a perilous gauntlet.
   Matthew Lake’s Tower in the Lake was ASC II’s winner, a brilliant module with tight design, clever construction, and a great story. Now we’re leaving the simplicity of lake-based wizard tower adventures behind to the surprisingly common trope of “flying pyramid”. Results are…confusing. But also wild. It’s a gauntlet/trick/funhouse dungeon that is technically within the page limit with only 2 pages of text but also has a nutty 5 pages of maps detailing the whole thing.
   Story is pretty standard. !notCleopatra, princess of !notEgypt, dies via snakebite in the traditional Anthony and Cleopatra manner, hopefully after a hilarious stream of snake jokes. She’s wandering around picking up poor innocent adventurers and “testing” them to retrieve nice magic items in return for some rather chintzy victory laurels (1k at best). There’s a nice little set of reskinned goblinoids in the form of “scarabites” to fight. C’mon, kids, let’s get to puzzling.
   The map. Oh the map. This map, you guys. I guess first I should say the things I appreciate…the side-view thing is appreciated, and should be done more often. Zooming the more complicated puzzle rooms in tighter is a must. The subliminal ankhs are cute. Overall, there is certainly a lot of complexity to explore. This leads to my fundamental issue, though, which is that this whole place is far too busy.

​   It’s a nutty madcap zone with extremely complex counters, often, that are relying on the map to get around word-count restrictions (#17 only the most egregious). I like the dice-puzzle room, that’s cool, but the full-up multi-stage area fight with multiple fighter factions…yeah, this is going to be hard to run in 4 hours. 7VoZ is a simple system, but, well, let’s just quote the map key: “10′ grid. Status fields are rainbow shaded areas. Anti-gravity field is purple shaded area. Red dots are enemies, circled dots are leaders. Portals are marked with ’P’.”

   That’s the grumbling out the way, now let’s be a little more cheerful. Individual encounters and puzzles are great, once you take a long careful look at each one to figure it out. Gravity puzzles, reflecting pools spawning doppelgangers, pivoting stairs, stasis fields with monsters in bubbles, a mummy room with a sprinkler system that can be loaded with holy water, conductive glass/copper wire lightning rod room, dice-pip-counting riddle/puzzle…each individual room is fun and zany and high-energy. Great. Just relentless and madcap, as well. Pretty punishing random encounter table. Altitude sickness and chilling cold environmental effects further nerf characters, normal enough.
   Similarly, as expected with Lake, there are interesting interactions with the people here. The area factions are all-vs-all so there’s a fun fight to have on that. A crew of berserkers are here hanging out just tired of all this crap and wanting to go home. The !notCleopatra mummy in the middle will be playful and cajoling and isn’t automatically hostile, although the second the party sees that she’s offering just a single 1k payout for a Staff of Lightning, a Mask of Illusion, and an intelligence scimitar, boy you know they’re going to start a fighting. Well and good.
   I’m a light under-impressed by the loot outside of aforementioned special (awesome) game-show-reward items. Jewels, gold statues, lapis lazuli tiles…a thorough looting of the pyramids will have nice rewards but that kind of flies in the face of the whole game show thing. Not sure how many metal victory laurels she has sitting around, that should be extra loot, not hand-waved. Of course REAL loot is the flying magic pyramid. My players, if they did not managed to crash this thing and kill a million innocent civilians with it, would first and foremost be obsessed with capturing the magic flying pyramid. There’s nothing to stop this in the module, either. Which, okay, wow, admirable. But whew. No XP for stealing the magic flying pyramid.
   How do you put this in your game? On the one hand, it’s awesome, I love the puzzles and tricks. On the other hand, it’s also a logistical nightmare to place in any ongoing campaign with the gonzo-levels set below “Anomalous Subsurface Environment”. Honestly, I’d be most likely to either trip rooms for one-off puzzle use or run it at a convention as a competitive module. It’d be great as a competition module. Very tough to site as an adventure site, though. 

​For ACKS II, Level ? (highish)
By Olle Skogren
Wrath’s Pass is a wind-carved, dust-filled, and bone-choked gap in the Dark Wall, a ridge of sheer basalt cliffs bounding the west side of the Zaharan Plateau. A wide trench anchored on each side by huge towers cuts across the pass. A narrow bridge spans the trench. The ever watchful sorcerer-wraith Atu-Gallu and his garrison of orcs, hill giants, and even fouler beings guard the pass against intrusion. Beyond the pass, terraced farms worked by the slaves of the sorcerer-wraith support the fortress.
   Olle Skogren, of the great Temple of Hypnos as well as other fine modules, made a fantastic entry for the Adventure Site Contest this time around, inspired by the “Isle of the Dead” paintings, built for exploration at a truly high level. Unfortunately, that site was four pages of text, not two. Fortunately, Olle is a publisher in his own right, so Isle of the Sorceress is now out on DriveThru, no muss, no fuss…and we get a second entry, this time at the right page count. Win/win.
   The story of the site is extremely ACKS. Evil isn’t just lurking in a bitty tomb in the middle of nowhere. This “sorcerer-wraith” is a commander in an Evil State, commanding an army of evil beastmen and giants and hellhounds. If the fortress is infiltrated by a high-level hit squad it can be overcome, but if a big army approaches then thousands of evil troops get summoned and it’s a brutal siege exercise. High-level as all get-out, with all the ACKS setup for a mass battle and domain scale action, but also a plausible reason for kings and high priests and crime lords that are the PCs to take action individually and dungeon-crawl. It’s smart design.

​    …looking at the map, maybe too smart by half. This is not an easily interpreted map for a gap fortification. 60-foot hexes make for an enormous scale, which is cool, but even with some side cutaways I’m a little confused on how the trench vs. the wall is supposed to interact. The usual problem with realistic fortresses (castles, towers, etc) is that they’re typically rather boring because they’re designed to be used by defenders in a practical way, this one only departs from “boring layout” when it goes for “confusing”. There’s nothing strictly wrong with the site, but it’s not a map that reaches out and grabs you. 

   So, who we gonna fight? Well, assuming it’s not a full army muster (and those are very nasty numbers, Do Not Do This), you’ve got a decent little pile of cleave or AoE, mostly orc and hellhound fodder. The hill giants (4) and gargoyles (6) aren’t quite as casually brushed aside, and there’s a squad of death chargers (15) that’ll hit pretty hard (death chargers are zombie riders sewn to zombie horses, four hit dice). I’m a little unclear on how these garrison troops are distributed between the two sides of the pass. I like the note that orc and giant troopers are undisciplined and prone to shoot first, ask questions later if infiltrators are spotted. The orc chief second-in-command is cringing and disloyal because he expects to get killed any day now by his boss, that’s usable. There’s also a secret tomb, walled-over, with seven mummies within who will challenge the sorcerer-wraith for control if released.
   Said sorcerer-wraith is very much the central figure here, and he’s been described in loving detail. I love that he’s incorporeal and just animating his wizard robes…his spell list is powerful, but he’s turned as just a wraith and is sensitive about that. He’s got a list of spells he uses intelligently and carefully, some for individual fights, some for the mass battle(s) or assaults. At high level like this, getting his full personality and plans is vital to running well, and he’s a rough fight if he gets the drop.
   Treasure in this setup is almost incidental to the site’s purpose, but you have to PAY YOUR PLAYERS, so the little lair of the sorcerer-wraith has the garrison pay-box and a magical workshop value, and of course he’s got some nice magic loot on his person (somehow being incorporeal), but the real treasure is the friends we made…wait a minute, no, the real treasure is the gigantic pile of grave goods in the secret chamber full of mummies. Of particular note in there are obsolete (?) property deeds for properties all over the region. That’s a fun little easter egg/quest challenge.
   In the end, Wraith’s Pass is an extremely solid hyper-dedicated chaotic fortress guarding the sole pass in a vast cliff wall, if you need one of those. Thanks to Tolkien’s Black Gate, that’s a use case that comes up a lot more than you’d think, but it’s still pretty dang bespoke. 

​For S&W, Level 5
By Jakub McFarland
Every full moon, seven wights rise from their icy slumber, ride down from the Black Mountain, in dark cloaks, on giant wolves, and reave the valleys for young woman to sacrifice to their evil goddess. Their leader wields a glowing red-silver sword and wears a brilliant diamond-studded crown.
A mad Sherpa raves: the black riders dwell in a dark fortress that looms on the cliff face of the Black Mountain. He has seen it. He can guide you there for a hundred gold coins.
   Confession time, last contest my #1 pick didn’t get first or second prize, although I did love the ones that did medal. But for me, my heart belonged first and foremost with the wild and energetic DRAGON LAIR Pit of the Red Wyrm, by one Mr. Jakub McFarland. So when I saw he’d once again blessed us with a submission this year, I was stoked. Then I read the overview (copied above)…
   …and I was even more excited. This thing’s story is mythic, all about seven undead riders from a snowy mountain fortress ravaging the lands once every full moon. What more do you need? Add in that their king appears to be in possession of a sentient greatsword named Bloodrime and they serve a mysterious dark goddess, apparently the consort of Ymir…heck yes, let’s do this thing.
   I had a few issues with this map at first, but upon a bit more reflection, I like it. There seems like only one path through on first glance, but having two rooms with upper galleries gives us nice climb options, plus there’s a secret room (5) with a hole going upward. Couple with the fact that the one way up visible from the outside on approach (12) has a concealed door leading out…there’s some good exploration here. Otherwise, it’s a nice scale for a site, just big enough for exploration and atmosphere (17->18 just screams “portentous encounter ahead”). Love the cliffside setting, not sure if the side-view was needed but it is classy.

​   I want to highlight that one map oddity, the pair of X’s along with the weird-looking cage square below them. That’s a floor-trap, leading to a chute, which in turn dumps the victim(s) into a tight cage hanging off the side of the cliff holding a ghoul, who takes two rounds to wake up from hibernation. That’s a great trap right there, slightly Rube Goldberg, but not entirely without reason (sacrifices being exposed on the mountainside seems to be a theme). Most of the other environmental hazards are slips and slides on ice, but hey, that’s fine for a site this size. Witchfire, another environmental effect, is neat…it can set mundane swords alight with ghostly green fire that also lets them deal damage to the more resistant monsters present.
   Our main bad guys are undead (not just the seven wights, but also draugr underlings) along with worgs and a giant spider, so despite being given a ton of flavor, there’s not a lot of interaction with most of the random encounter table or the room occupants consisting of “fight” or “march ominously then fight”. A welcome change of pace is a rival adventuring party…a pair of werewolves looking for the evil sentient sword. That’s a great NPC pair, particularly with them being “friendly, slow to trust, duplicitous, covetous”. Treacherous, obviously evil, but the kind of rivals that could join in on the boss fight is needed. And the tactical situations are nice and complex in multiple rooms, that’s neat.
   The aforementioned captured maidens are unfortunately less “NPCs” but more treasure, 100gp per rescue. They’re otherwise demoralized and not going to help, poor gals. Seven wights as the endboss means you’re going to lose some levels, so there’d better be some treasure in compensation, right? Well, there’s 1.2k in maidens, 2.1k in necklaces and worg-collars, 3k in lanterns-held-by-wights, and a 4k diamond crown on the boss-wight. Otherwise your see a nice silver dagger, ivory pens, and the werewolves’ gear. Feels slightly light for the threat level. I like the magic items that are here (wire spectacles acting as wand of clairvoyance, plus evil sword), but they feel slightly light here as well. None of this is terrible for level 5, but my gut is “treasure on the light side for 5” while it’s “threat on the heavy side for 5”. GM beware.
   This is a site that’s easy to place in any high mountain filled with undead-riddled ruins, and can be modded a fair bit too. I know I’m putting it in my campaign map. Just probably want to run the numbers on your XP hauls.