The Horror Beneath spends a lot of time shooting itself in the foot.
Review Originally Published May 21st, 2001
This adventure, to put it bluntly, is a mess:
1. You’ve got a bunch of maps. Tragically, three of them are completely illegible. Actually, I don’t know if “illegible” is the right word, because they’re also completely unkeyed. Let’s just say that — between the fact that they are unkeyed and reproduced in a muddy and indistinct greyscale — it’s nearly impossible to figure out what information they’re supposed to be conveying. The fourth map is of a dungeon. This one is keyed with numbers. For reasons beyond the scope of imagination, however, these numbers are not referenced in a standard D&D format. Instead, Metcalf has decided to describe his dungeon in, basically, a stream of consciousness format – dropping the numbers into the middle of the text between a couple of parentheses whenever he feels its convenient. Simply incredible. It takes true skill to deliberately go out of your way like this to make a product as unusable as possible.
2. Metcalf seems to have persistent problems with the English language. My favorite examples are his nebulous sentence structures, which result in treats like this: “He is unarmed and has no weapon proficiencies. He doesn’t think he needs them.” Needs weapons or needs weapon proficiencies? “Steorra’s temple is the oldest and largest in Ravendale.” Oldest and largest… what? Building? Temple in general? Steorra’s temple in general? You’d assume the second, but this passage is made particularly hilarious by the sentence which appears two paragraphs later: “Temple of Saint Tollan: Ravendale’s newest temple, as well as the largest.”
3. What’s truly bizarre is that the adventure spends a bunch of time discussing Ravendale… which serves absolutely no purpose except as a place for the PCs to pick up an undefined adventure seed which is going to take them to another town: Scarborough.
4. When the PCs reach Scarborough they find the entire town deserted… except for one family, the Tendermores. They discover this when they find the Tendermore’s fourteen-year-old daughter drawing water — by herself — from the well. First off, this staggers my suspension of disbelief: Everyone in town has been dragged off by zombies except your family, and your daughter is wandering around by herself? The daughter will take them back to her house, where the PCs will meet her father Jonathon. To add insult to injury, however, Metcalf closes this description with: “…he believes that he and his “boys” can hold their own.” Who are his “boys”? I dunno. Are they literally his sons, or do the quotation marks imply something else? I dunno. Is the wife of the house still alive and around? I dunno. Are there any other daughters? I dunno.
5. As if Metcalf’s lock-lipped descriptions are not bizarre enough, we then get the sequence of events that night when the zombies come: “The Tendermores are not very effective archers, the zombies should have no trouble advancing to the front of the house.” So, in other words, they’ve had no problems holding them off this long – but as soon as the PCs show up, the Tendermores are doomed? Apparently so, because no matter what the PCs do, they will “see two of the Tendermore women taken by the zombies.”
6. Actually, they’re not zombies. They’re grub hosts – which are just like zombies, except they can’t be turned. They are also the way that the Brood Queen (who’s hiding out in that dungeon, which is supposed to be part of an abandoned dwarven citadel, but doesn’t look it) creates her young (the Brood Warriors).
Basically, The Horror Beneath had a semi-decent idea (Aliens in a fantasy setting), but then simply fumbled the ball in executing it. Actually, let me rephrase that: They didn’t fumble the ball. They deliberately tossed it on the floor, tripped over it, broke their leg, stumbled over their target audience, and plunged off a cliff.
It would have been better if the maps had been legible. It would have been better if the presentation had been smoother. Heck, it would have been better if the plot had been comprehensible.
In short: Don’t buy The Horror Beneath.
Style: 2
Substance: 1
Title: The Horror Beneath
Authors: Eric Metcalf
Company: Nightshift Games
Line: D20
Price: $8.95
ISBN: 192933228-9
Production Code: CFE4001
Pages: 32
Style 2? I was apparently feeling generous that day.
I feel bad for Eric Metcalf. He was one of the very first adopters of the OGL and D20 System Trademark License, making the superhero RPG The Foundation and The Horror Beneath two of the earliest third-party 3rd Edition supplements, before the market became glutted with competitors. Unfortunately, this just meant that the entire hobby’s eyes fell upon what were extremely neophyte efforts. Sort of like grabbing someone who just took their first singing lessons and thrusting them onto a Broadway stage. Yeah, the result is terrible. But you can still empathize.
Re-reading this review, it was also interesting seeing my early reaction to someone forgetting how to key a dungeon. Notably, back in 2001, I don’t recall anyone trying to justify this.
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