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SHADOW OF THE SUN (Justice Raman Arman): Fifty years ago the city-state of Akharin Sangar came under the despotic rule of an archangel named Atash. He enforces an intolerant code of absolutist religious laws (which are every bit as bad as you might imagine them to be). Various rebel groups are working to free the city from Atash’s tyrannical rule, but their efforts are ruthlessly quashed by a secret police of religious zealots known as the Brightguard which the despot angel has empowered to replace the former legal apparatus.

Reading that introduction you might be thinking, “Oh! Sweet! Let’s bring down the tyrant!”

But that’s not what “Shadow of the Sun” is about.

“Shadow of the Sun” is about how Blue Lives Matter.

Ostensibly, the adventure is framed so that the PCs can choose between working with the Brightguard or working with the rebels. But that’s not entirely accurate: There are two different rebel groups. The first is the Ashen Heirs, who do things like stage protests and disrupt capitalism. The other is the Silent Roar, who are very concerned that the uppity Ashen Heirs will ruin their big plans of doing nothing. And then the Silent Roar’s worst nightmare happens! Their leader is mistakenly associated with the uppity Ashen Heirs and is arrested! Oh no!

So the Silent Roar wants the PCs to crush the Ashen Heirs so that their leader can be freed from being wrongfully imprisoned by the religious zealots. And the religious zealots want the PCs to crush the Ashen Heirs because otherwise Atash will be “forced” to “cancel the celebrations and impose martial law.”

If the PCs are maybe a little hesitant about all this, they’re told to go check out the Ruz Bazaar, where members of the Ashen Heirs are once again disrupting capitalism and proving that they’re really bad people because they’re (checks notes)… breaking into a smuggler’s shop to free a slave?

Once the PCs have crushed the Ashen Heirs, the Brightguard naturally says, “Good work! Now, let’s move on to crushing the Silent Roar.” It’s at this point that the PCs have a choice to either continue working with the gestapo or not.

The adventure has an EXTREMELY linear plot to follow, though, so the choice has little impact on what happens next. You can tell which option Arman assumes the PCs will take, though, because it’s the only one that makes any logical sense.

The conclusion of the adventure has a quote that neatly sums up its structural issues:

Regardless of the characters’ allegiance, their actions and the fallout of Afsoun’s detainment or escape have broad implications for Akharin Sangar. The Silent Roar’s resistance efforts increase in either case, causing the organization to become the Brightguard’s greatest rival.

There’s a cool flying carpet chase in the middle of all this, but everything else is a mess, and the, “Let’s all join and/or collaborate with the gestapo!” framing is beyond tasteless. I find it hard to believe it’s what Arman intended, but it’s what’s on the page. As someone who lived just three blocks away from where George Floyd was murdered, I may be biased, but I cannot imagine any version of reality where I would want to see this scenario brought to the table as written.

Grade: F

THE NIGHTSEA’S SUCCOR (D. Fox Harrell): “The Nightsea’s Succor” is another adventure that positions the PCs between Authority/Tradition and Rebellion/Reinvention, and it’s somewhat stunning how much more effective it is.

Long ago the nation of Djaynai was plagued by reavers known as the Vultures. My personal touchstones for this are Viking raiders and the Bronze Age deprecations of the Sea Peoples: Cities were looted and burned. Thousands of Djaynaians were taken as captives and loaded onto ships to become slaves.

A couple key things happened during this time. First, some of the Djaynaian captives staged a revolt and leapt off the reaver ships rather than remain slaves. As they plunged into the ocean, powerful sorcerers among them used the sorcerous secrets of their civilization to weave a powerful rite which transformed some of them into merpeople known as the chil-liren. The descendents of the chil-liren formed the underwater city-state of Jayna.

Second, in order to protect those same sorcerous secrets – known as the Blackmist Way and the Blackthrone Arts – they were loaded into a ship and sent away to a place of safety. Unfortunately, the ship was attacked and sank. The legacy of the Djaynaian people was lost.

Cue the beginning of the adventure, when some ghosts from the shipwreck cast detect player characters and give them the information they need to find the shipwreck and the lost arts that lie within it.

This immediately puts the PCs in the crosshairs: They’re contacted by Atiba-Pa, the regent of Djaynai, who wants to use the recovered lore to restore Djaynai to its lost Golden Age. But they’re also contacted by the Night Revelers, a group of counter-culture revolutionaries who would prefer to use the lore to reinvent the Djaynai and forge something new and unshackled from the legacy of the past.

Following the clues given to them by the ghosts, the PCs eventually end up in Jayna. And here, too, they’re torn between different political ideologies: On the one hand, those who want to stay separate from Djaynai and would keep the lore secret. On the other hand, those who believe the Janyans need to forge their own future. Once again, the legacy of the lost lore of ancient Djaynai is crucial.

Things wrap up with a short dungeon crawl through the ancient shipwreck (which is also an underwater library? the lore gets a little confused here) and then the PC have some tough choices to make.

What elevates “The Nightsea’s Succor” is that Harrell crafts a meaningful and nuanced dilemma. There are a few things that make this work.

First, it feels like a legitimate choice. There’s enough nuance depicted in all of the political and cultural factions that the PCs should be able to see both the potential good and the potential bad in each one.

Second, having two different rivalries on separate axes that are nevertheless connected to each other is, frankly, inspired. Introducing them at different times is also crucial here: Even if, due to their own opinions and predilections, the PCs find it easy to choose between A or B, the introduction of C or D as an intersecting issue and choice will force them to re-analyze the “easy” choice they made earlier. Even if they ultimately don’t change their minds, it’s kept the core philosophical debate an active part of the adventure.

Third, the choice feels truly meaningful. It doesn’t seem as if the world will radically change overnight as a result of what the PCs choose, but there will be definite consequences that affect both the PCs personally and society as a whole.

In short, “The Nightsea’s Succor” is really nice. In structure it is quite simple, but the cultural crux adds considerable depth and every scene is studded with lush detail.

Grade: B+

Prep Notes: The problem with using a ghost as your scenario hook is that it just takes one impetuous PC to say, “Ah! Ghosts!” and use turn undead to leave you without a scenario. Not necessarily a problem, but a good idea to be aware of the possibilitiy.

BURIED DYNASTY (Felice Tzehuei Kuan): This adventure has a really cool premise. The White Jade Emperor of Great Xing has lived for centuries due to a customized potion of longevity created using a secret recipe. Unfortunately, the rare ingredients used for the Emperor’s potion have run out. Without the potion, the Emperor will die and the effect on Grand Xing is likely to be cataclysmic. Grand Secretary Wei Feng Ying, therefore, is desperately trying to locate a new source, and she hires the PCs to help her.

Unfortunately, everything else in the adventure is utter nonsense.

Wei doesn’t want the PCs to know what she’s actually looking for, fearing chaos if the imminent death of the Emperor were to leak out. So they’re actually just assigned to guard Wei’s personal agent, a scholar named Lu Zhong Yin. Zhong Yin is under strict orders not to tell the PCs anything and his character description explicitly says, “I’ll follow any order from my commanders.” But he just tells the PCs anyway.

They don’t find the missing ingredient, but they DO find three unused doses of the potion of longevity itself.

But now the PCs know too much! So Wei, who is observing them through a crystal ball, decides this is the perfect moment to betray them and orders a court mage to collapse the entrance to the ruin. (You might think it would make more sense to have them bring back the potions of longevity and then betray them. But no.) The author has also cleverly established that teleportation and planar travel are both blocked in the ruins.

OH MY GOD! THERE’S NO WAY OUT!

… is what the PCs would say if they weren’t 13^th-level characters with probably a dozen different ways of trivially escaping.

Left with “no other option,” the PCs then make telepathic contact with Wei who says, “Oh no! Let me help!” She then opens a one-way magical portal that the PCs can use to escape!

(…wait, wasn’t teleportation magic blocked down here? Yes, but it’s okay because there’s a loophole! But can’t the PCs just use the same loophole and avoid all this nonsense? Yes, but they presumably won’t because by this time the rails should be obvious!)

But this is a trick! Wei has actually teleported them into a trap! A hologram of Wei appears and she says, “I’m sorry to inform you that I’m betraying you because there’s a vague possibility you might know some of my secrets. My only choice is to teleport you into a room directly next to my uber-secret alchemy laboratory filled with all the secrets you shouldn’t know. Your deaths are assured, for in this room I have arranged for you to fight a level-appropriate Easy encounter.”

So the PCs trivially escape the “death trap” and then proceed through an entire linear dungeon. In the last room of the dungeon, they find a gold dragon who has been captured and shackled by Wei’s secret cabal of imperial alchemists. If they free the dragon, he thanks them, and then goes scurrying up the Exit Tunnel.

The PCs, of course, can follow the dragon along a perfectly straight tunnel with no turn-offs before arriving at a hatch. If they open the hatch and crawl through it, they emerge directly in the center of the stage at the Pear Garden Imperial Opera in the middle of a performance being attended by the Emperor himself!

…

The layers of stupidity here are truly staggering.

First: Where the fuck did the dragon go?

The adventure actually goes out of its way to confirm that the dragon definitely went through this very same hatch in the center of the stage, but apparently without any member of the cast or audience noticing.

Second: Let me get this straight. Wei built her secret alchemy laboratory directly below the Imperial Opera? And the only way into or out of this laboratory is through a trapdoor in the center of the stage?

…

Anyway.

We have now reached the conclusion of the adventure, in which the Emperor demands to know, “What is the meaning of all this?!”

The PCs can now tell the Emperor their story, but he will only believe them if they have three out of four pieces of “evidence.” At this point, the adventure copy-pastes from the worst school of Sierra adventure game design. Did you randomly decide to pick up a gold dragon scale from Area S4? You didn’t? You lose!

(If only the Emperor had seen the Huge gold dragon who came through here not thirty seconds ago! Too bad. Sucks to be you!)

If the PCs did collect the three random items, then the Emperor believes them and Wei ends up confessing everything — the missing ingredient, the lack of longevity potions, the Emperor’s eminent death — in front of the entire audience of the Imperial Opera.

The Emperor will then invite the PCs to a private audience where he pays them hush money in exchange for promising “not to speak of what they have learned about Dragon’s Blessing and his eventual death.” Because if they were to, for example, tell an entire opera house full of people about that, it would be bad.

And on that final note of abject stupidity, this adventure mercifully comes to an end.

Grade: F

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TRAIL OF DESTRUCTION (Alastor Guzman): Powerful fire elementals known as tlexolotls slumber deep beneath the surface of Tletepec. Above them rise volcanoes, their smoke and eruptions reflecting the uneasy dreams of the fiery gods below. Now Izel, one of the tlexolotls, has awoken and seeks to similarly awake his brethren, leading to massive volcanic eruptions and earthquakes which are racking the region.

This is a cool concept. Unfortunately, I find the adventure to be fairly baffling.

First, the adventure obviously revolves around erupting volcanoes. The PCs travel along ash-choked roads, crisscrossing the region alternately trying to figure out what’s happening and delivering offerings to the volcano gods. Given this concept, there are two things that would be super useful to include on the map: The roads and the names of the volcanoes.

On the actual map, unfortunately, there are no roads. (Oof.) Most of the volcanoes are also not labeled, although what appears to be a single volcano is labeled the “Onyx Volcanoes” (sic) and another set of volcanoes is labeled the “Twin Gods Volcanoes.” There are actually four volcanoes near this latter label, but I’m pretty sure I know which two were meant to be the Twin Gods. Also the “Twin Gods” are, as far as I can tell, never identified. It’s possible they’re supposed to be the “two lovers” mentioned in the Legends of Tletepec? But the lovers aren’t given names, either.

This ties into a general cosmological confusion which is the other major liability of the scenario: The tlexolotls are the volcanoes, but no one in the area believes that the tlexolotls actually exist. Instead, they believe that there are unnamed(?) gods inside each volcano. The local religion (or possibly multiple religions?) offers sacrifices to keep the gods placated, but the sacrifices are actually going to the tlexolotl and placating them instead.

This is a needless layer of confusion that doesn’t have any real impact on the scenario. There’s something potentially interesting about the PCs revealing that “your gods are actually not gods,” they’re just semi-mindless beasts who, if not kept fed, periodically “emerge in a rage, rampaging forth” to “gorge themselves on massive amounts of animal and plant life … until its belly is full,” except:

• The consequences of this metaphysical nuclear bomb being dropped on the local culture is entirely ignored;
• the PCs figure out the truth by studying the prominently displayed carvings in all the shrines of the local religion (which is hilarious — “Yo! Your religion is wrong! The proof is all the bas reliefs you keep making!”); and
• even the “gorging beast” thing isn’t consistent, since Izel the main villain of the piece, is an awakened tlexolotl who explicitly doesn’t do that.

So it’s all kind of a big ol’ mess. This is also reflected in the central thru-line of the adventure, which is all over the place, but mostly revolves around the idea that Ameyali, a local religious(?) leader, is trying to deliver a shipment of offerings to the Gate of Illumination so that they can be given up to the gods and placate their fury. This is a problem, though, because Izel has dispatched his salamander minions to intercept the offerings and bring them to… the Gate of Illumination.

It feels like the adventure is missing a location (possibly due to word count?): Structurally it really needs the offerings to be going to Location X and then being redirected to the Gate of Illumination (where Izel is). There’s even a fire giant wandering around the area who will helpfully tell the PCs that:

Salamanders and fire snakes serve this tlexolotl. They have been stealing offerings meant for the gods and carrying them back to [the Gate of Illumination].

But instead the whole logical backbone of the adventure is broken.

There are some potentially big, interesting ideas here, but as written these are not coherently developed. Furthermore, it’s very hard for me to imagine running the adventure as written without it being a painful experience at the table.

Grade: D-

Prep Notes: The key to sorting this adventure out would be to clearly add the concept that every volcano in the region has its own shrine. (This concept is present in the adventure as written, it’s just completely obfuscated from the players.) The local cities are trying to send offerings to the shrines, but the salamanders and other servants of Izel keep intercepting them and taking them to the Gate of Illumination (the shrine at Jademount, which is the volcano formed around Izel).

(You could probably run with the idea that each shrine is referred to as a “Gate,” and create unique philosophical identities for each Gate.)

Having done this, there will still be some pretty drastic rehab required to beat the rest of the scenario into a coherent structure that will make sense to the players in any way other than “the NPCs told us to go there, so we went there.” But it would, I think, ultimately be salvageable.

IN THE MISTS OF MANIVARSHA (Mimi Mondal): Okay, good news! The festivals are back!

This time it’s the Shankha Trials, a vaguely defined athletics-and-art competition that dates back to the dawn of Shankhabhumi’s history. When the first human settlers arrived in Dishahara Bay, they discovered a land dominated by countless water spirits known as riverines. Each riverine is a guardian of a waterway, and the constant struggle for dominance among the riverines had turned this place into a hopeless maze of marshland.

The elven leader of the settlers, Kubjhatika, killed a giant mollusk and carved its shell into a beautiful work of art. She “offered it in tribute to the riverines, appealing to them for refuge amid the unforgiving lands,” and the “four greatest riverines — Adirohit, Iravati, Mehul, and Joltara – each wished to claim the Riverine’s Shankha.” Kubjhatika proposed the creation of the Shankha Trials to determine how the Riverine’s Shankha would circulate between the riverines. The riverines, in return, each raised up a large area of dry land where the people of Shankhabhumi could build their cities. These four cities became the major centers of civilization here, each supported by their patron riverine.

Five hundred years ago, however, catastrophe struck. At the conclusion of the Shankha Trials that year, a huge tidal wave swept down the Adirohit River and wiped out the city of Manivarsha. The riverine Adhirohit then vanished and its river dried up. The few surviving members of the Manivarshan people were scattered as refugees among the other three cities, but (apparently at least) remain a distinct cultural group in their diaspora and continue competing in the Shankha Trials.

The PCs are in attendance this year when an artist-athlete named Amanisha becomes the first Manivarshan to win the Shankha Trials since the catastrophe. The moment that happens, another tidal wave — considerably smaller — comes sweeping down the Iravati River. It simultaneously wreaks vast destruction, but also very specifically seeks out Amanisha and the Riverine’s Shankha and sweeps them upriver.

This whole concept, however, will naturally lead you to peruse the map of Shankhabhumi with a particular focus on the riverways. Then you’ll rub your eyes and look again. And then eventually you’ll give up because these rivers do not make sense. And that’s even before you get to the weird mismatches between map and text, like the Tinjhorna riverine who hopes to “one day be a mighty river,” but which, according to the map, is already the second longest river in the region.

(If you want a head canon, I recommend leaning into the fact that all these rivers are semi-sentient elemental gods and assume that they can just arbitrarily flow however they want to.)

The fact that the rivers don’t seem to make any sense is particularly unfortunate because the entire structure of the adventure is: Sail a boat upriver looking for where the tidal wave took Amanisha and the Riverine’s Shankha.

(Isn’t the Riverine’s Shankha like the most important political and religious artifact in their entire civilization? Yes. Does it seem likely that local leaders would mount an expedition to retrieve it? Yes. Are they going to do that? Absolutely not. They will send the PCs and nobody else. They will not pay for the PCs to rent a boat.)

Because the rivers don’t make any sense, the PCs can’t just sail upriver. Instead, they have to be supplied with a chain of NPCs who sequentially tell them where to go. That’s unfortunate, but ultimately this boils down to a sequence of river encounters, and these are mostly well done culminating in a conclusion that mostly makes sense if you don’t look at it too closely.

Grade: C

BETWEEN TANGLED ROOTS (Pam Punzalan): The shining star of “Between Tangled Roots” is the setting of Dayawlongon, a vast archipelago of islands linked by the awe-inspiring skybridges built in ages lost by the bakunawa dragons. That single, grand image captures the imagination.

The adventure begins with the PCs approaching the city of Kalapang when it’s attacked by a bakunawa which has been corrupted by evil spirits. The adventure confidently declares that “no matter what methods the characters use to reach Kalapang, the bakunawa has already departed by the time they reach town”… apparently forgetting that these are 10^th level characters and it’s more than plausible that they could just dimension door straight into the attack.

Either way, the PCs are coming to Kalapang to meet with a binukot storyteller named Nimuel. In fact, they’ve been summoned by Nimuel so that she can introduce them to Lungtian, a dryad who was once friends with the bakunawa and believes its actions are due to its lair on the island of Lambakluha being corrupted.

This, of course, cues a road trip across the skybridges and then a journey across the haunted isle of Lambakluha. Along the way they’ll meet fellow travelers and, naturally, face uncanny dangers. When they reach the baknuawa’s lair, they’ll have the opportunity to either cleanse the corruption eating at the dragon’s heart or slay the dragon. Either way, the threat is ended.

“Between Tangled Roots” is just a rock solid adventure. The concept is simple, but has some nice thematic twists. The characters are varied and interesting to roleplay. The haunted isle is creepy.

Grade: B

Prep Notes: One thing to note is that the journey across Lambakluha requires rolling at least eight times on a random encounter table that only has five entries on it (and one of those including rolling again for another encounter). You should probably flesh that out a bit.

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WAGES OF VICE (T.K. Johnson) struggles quite a bit with continuity problems and fragility, with the former also contributing quite a bit to the latter.

There are two major continuity glitches. First, it’s fairly clear that the original premise of the adventure was changed at the eleventh hour. As published, the premise of the adventure is that five years ago the Kings of Coin — who rule the city-state of Zinda — made a deal with a witch named Proud Edun. The witch would use her magic to create the jeli flower, a crop with fantastic commercial value which would make Zinda (and, more importantly, the Kings of Coin) fabulously rich.

In return, the Kings of Coin agreed that their firstborn children would all serve as Proud Edun’s apprentices, learning her magical arts. But Myx Nargis Ruba, one of the Kings of Coin, said, “Hey. What if, instead of doing that, we just murder her?”

And the other Kings of Coin agreed and Proud Edun was murdered.

But there’s enough references scattered around the adventure, that it’s clear the original version of this backstory was that Proud Edun was promised the souls of the children. (If I had to make a wild guess, I would guess this was changed because it was too similar to the premise for “The Fiend of Hollow Mine.”) The problems this creates, however, are mostly ignorable.

The other major continuity glitch, though, is more fundamental. The premise of the adventure is that Proud Edun’s daughter, Kala Mabarin, has shown up to claim revenge by killing the kids who were supposed to be apprenticed to her mother. After the first murder, though, reality in the adventure just kind of bifurcates.

In one half of the adventure, Madame Samira Arah — the newest member of the Kings of Coin who (a) doesn’t know about the original double-cross of Proud Edun and (b) is the commanding officer of the Silent Verse, which is the Kings of Coin’s police force — has warned the Kings of Coin of the danger posed by Kala Mabarin and ordered all of their kids into protective custody.

In the other half of the adventure, however, nobody has warned the Kings of Coin and their kids are just wandering around, attending official functions, and getting openly targeted by Kala Mabarin.

This state of affairs just kind of randomly switches back and forth, depending on whichever scene the PCs happen to be in at the moment. It’s incredibly disorienting and fairly fundamental to the scenario, making it one of those crux points where I find players start checking out because the game world stops feeling real to them.

This is compounded because the core structure of the scenario is simultaneously arbitrary, unintuitive, and deprotagonizing.

The basic hook is that the PCs arrive in Zinda to attend — and I know this is going to shock you — a festival. As soon as they arrive at the festival, which is called the March of Vice, they stumble upon the corpse of Jacopo, Kala’s second target and first victim. They get sucked up into the investigation when Madame Samira arrives on the scene and says, “Outsiders? Sounds useful for a case that reeks of powerful conspiracies.”

I love Madame Samira. She’s a fantastic character. I think she’s the major saving grace of the entire adventure. She is simultaneously outsider and insider, and the more she learns about what really happened, the more she’s like, “Blackmail over all my political rivals? How fascinating. Tell me more.”

Samira’s own conflict between what’s right and what’s useful adds a delightfully independent vector of ethical haze to a scenario that’s already dripping with moral gray.

From this point, the “investigation” (which can only be loosely described as such) follows a linear path:

• Samira hires the PCs and tells them to go to Thornapple tavern, where they can question Zenia, one of the Coin heirs. Zenia was targeted for assassination yesterday, but escaped, triggering the lockdown.
• On the way to the Thornapple, the PCs coincidentally walk straight into another assassination attempt.
• At the Thornapple, the PCs walk straight into another assassination attempt. (A redo on Zenia.)
• Zenia’s father then confesses that this is all his fault and tells the PCs the whole back story with Proud Edun…

… and this is weird, because he doesn’t actually know that. He has no information identifying the killer as Kala or linking Kala to Proud Edun. (That doesn’t happen until later in the scene and only if (a) the PCs took prisoners and (b) they succeed on a skill check.)

In any case…

• The PCs have absolutely no leads. However, if they’ve learned what Kala looks like (which they easily may not), they can just ask around randomly to see if anyone on the street has seen her. If they do, a random person will tell them, “Yes. She was heading towards the conclusion of the adventure.”
• The PCs can then head to the conclusion of the adventure and walk straight into another assassination attempt, where they can either capture, kill, or negotiate with Kala.

Ultimately, “Wages of Vice” is juggling some really interesting ideas, but doesn’t really manage to pull it off, in my opinion.

Grade: D

Prep Notes: If you’re running this adventure, I recommend prepping a list of the Kings of Coin and their kids. “Okay, so who are the kids being threatened?” is a question the players are very likely to ask. The adventure has this information, but it’s scattered across the text in a very unuseful way.

SINS OF OUR ELDERS (Stephanie Yoon) sees the PCs leave the wine festival in Zinda so that they can head over to the springtime festival of Dan-Nal in Yeonido.

The core cool of Yeonido are the gwishin. Derived from Korean mythology, the dead in Yeonido often rise as undead spirits with unfinished business. This often includes fulfilling unfulfilled duty or correcting imbalance or injustice.

I really love Yoon’s decision to make the gwishin a central pillar of Yeonido as a setting — a haunted city that seeks to draw a veil over their unquiet spirits while discretely making right what they can and appeasing what they cannot. You can frame up an entire campaign with this concept: ghost-hunters settling sins-made-manifest. Virtually any adventure you can imagine can be hung from gwishin hooks with a uniquely supernatural flair: one part Perry Mason, one part Cold Case, one part The Ring.

“Sins of Our Elders” is, of course, itself based around a gwishin mystery. Long ago, the magistrate Dae Won-Ha spent decades doing ??? that resulted in prosperity for Yeonido, but her work was constantly being undermined by Young-Gi, the younger brother of Queen Young-Soo. Young-Gi’s efforts failed, and Won-Ha became a hero of the common people, but also Young-Gi succeeded and Won-Ha became a figure of infamy. Also Young-Gi arranged it so that the credit for whatever it was Won-Ha had done was given to Queen Young-soo. This all happened so long ago that the infamous(?) Won-Ha has passed from living memory, and also so recently that Young-Gi and other people who knew her personally are still alive.

Ten years ago, Queen Young-Soo died and Won-Ha’s gwishin appeared. The PCs need to figure out who the gwishin is, why she’s pissed off, and how she can be appeased.

The core problems of “Sins of Our Elders” mostly have their root in this backstory. It’s vague at best and seemingly contradictory more often than not. The problem is that it’s incredibly difficult to design a coherent mystery when the solution to the mystery hasn’t been defined. It’s like a murder mystery where the solution is “somebody was killed somewhere with some sort of weapon.” You can’t really build clues to reveal the truth if there’s no truth to be revealed, and so “Sins of Our Elders” continually struggles to provide clear clues for Won-Ha’s true legacy because “she did good stuff” doesn’t give you any sort of concrete revelation.

You can see another example of this vague backstory infecting the adventure in the hook. Dae Won-Ha has been taking her revenge on Yeonido in the form of a magical fog. The fog descends on an area, robbing the people there of their memory while Won-Ha wreaks havoc and destruction and terror. Then the people sort of “wake up” in the aftermath, ignorant of everything they did (and that happened in the fog).

This curse is beautifully thematic: The Yeonidons don’t even realize what’s happening to them. It’s a curse of forgetfulness as vengeance for being forgotten.

So, as I mentioned before, this has been going on for ten years when the PCs arrive in Yeonido. The fog doesn’t affect outsiders, so the PCs immediately realize that something weird is—

Hold up.

It’s been ten years and no outsiders have come to Yeonido and noticed the fog in all that time?

At the other end of the adventure, the conclusion is also fatally flawed by the lack of a clear foundation.

Logically, “Sins” is an adventure that would end with the PCs discovering the true story of Dae Won-Ha and then taking action to make sure the truth is known. But there isn’t a true story to discover, so there’s nothing for the PCs to reveal. This forces a conclusion which can be roughly summarized as, “Jeez, Won-Ha. You’re really overreacting. Yes, the Queen and her brother conspired to rewrite the history books and make you look like a villain, but we found a teacup you signed that was gathering dust on a shelf and a couple other trinkets, so it’s not like you’re completely forgotten.”

And then Won-Ha is like, “Yes. You’re right. As long as that teacup is gathering dust, I can rest easy in my grave.”

I really want to like “Sins of Our Elders” because there’s some really cool potential in it, but it just doesn’t quite hold together for me.

I would give the adventure itself a D, but the raw potential of the Yeonido setting gazetteer pulls the whole package up into the C-range.

Grade: C-

Prep Notes: What “Sins of Our Elders” desperately craves is a specificity. A specific truth that happened. A specific lie that was told. One way to achieve that is to make Won-Ha a martyr. This gives you a specific event — the martyrdom — that can be clearly stolen from her.

For a full dose of irony, what if she perished trying to get rid of a powerful gwishin that threatened Yeonida?

Perhaps this could be the gwishin of a dragon, whose grievance with the city was connected to the environmental damage wrought by Yeonido’s expansion. Dae Won-Ha had done much to right those wrongs and bring balance back to the community, but only by offering herself could she quiet this final threat.

This adds a thematic level to the adventure:  Dae Won-Ha offered herself to restore balance.

Queen Young-Soo’s version was that she went out into the forest and slew the spirit, setting a tone of violence and conquest which still informs the Tiger District’s expansion into the forest land.

The Truth and Reconciliation at the conclusion of the adventure isn’t just about who gets credit; it’s about understanding the true moral of the story.

If you’re revising the adventure in this way, it shouldn’t be too difficult to bake your new revelation lists into many of the scenes framed in the published adventure. You might also want to change the central structure from “an NPC tells the PCs where they should go to investigate” to a district-based urbancrawl with a handful of sub-revelations (e.g., “Who’s this Young-Gi guy we keep hearing about?”)

GOLD FOR FOOLS AND PRINCES (Dominique Dickey) features the most adorable of the Gygaxian “I think the PCs have too much treasure” metal-eaters — aurumvoraxii.

The adventure is set in the Sensa Empire, where generations ago the aurumvoraxii were hunted to extinction. This has allowed the gold mines of the empire to prosper.

Enter two princes: Prince Kirina and Prince Simbon, both of whom are vying to be named the heir to the imperial throne. Prince Kirina has hatched a scheme which involves triggering a cave-in in the mines while simultaneously summoning aurumvoraxii. After secretly creating the crisis, he’ll head down into the mines and heroically solve it, improving his reputation generally and, most specifically, with the powerful Aurum Guild who oversees the mines. Kirina is, of course, quite unhappy when both Prince Simbon and the PCs stick their noses into the situation.

This is a strong premise for an adventure. The problem, unfortunately, is that it’s executed as a nonsense railroad:

• After some giant scorpions attack, the PCs need to track them back to an alley and make a skill check to find conjuration runes. (Prince Kirina also summoned these scorpions for no reason other than to provide clues revealing his involvement. Which I think is super polite of him.)
• Even though people are dying in the mines, everyone will insist that the PCs go talk to some random scholar about the runes they found. Good news! The scholar is the bad guy working with Kirina. (How lucky!)
• While talking to the scholar, the PCs need to randomly decide to steal some papers off his desk for no reason. If they succeed on a skill check, they do.
• Then they need to make a skill check to analyze the notes, revealing that the scholar is the one who designed the spell that was used to summon the giant scorpions. The PCs will not be allowed to do anything about this.
• The PCs now go down into the mines with Prince Kirina and Prince Simbon. While there, they have to make a Perception check to notice that Kirina has a piece of paper.
• If they succeed on the check and notice the piece of paper, they must now decide to randomly steal it for no reason, requiring a Sleight of Hand check to do so.
• The paper proves that Kirina has a copy of the spell that was used to summon the giant scorpions. The adventure assumes that the PCs won’t do anything about this until they return to the surface, which… uh… have you ever met any PCs?

If I were to write an essay on how to design a mystery scenario (and I have), this would be pretty much exactly how I would tell you to NOT do it.

“Gold” requires:

• Questionable investigation decisions by the players. (For example, just randomly stealing papers from people for no reason.)
• A sequence of 6+ skill checks, missing any one of which completely derails the investigation.

All of which ultimately unlocks a semi-hilarious interaction with Prince Kirina where the PCs make a DC 14 Charisma check to convince him to confess to high treason in front of a huge crowd of people.

There are some ideas here which are potentially interesting, but they’re inchoate to the point where there’s nothing really worth salvaging, in my opinion.

Grade: F

Prep Notes: “Gold for Fools and Princes” is the first adventure in Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel to not feature a festival. But you should totally add one.

The premise of the adventure requires the essential bit of exposition that the aurumvoraxes were wiped out by Emperor Kassa, allowing the gold mines of the Sensa Empire to prosper. But, as written, there’s no way for the PCs to know that until after they’ve identified the aurumvoraxes. So the core revelation of, “Oh no! They’re back!” is handed off to an NPC.

But if you add a Festival of Gold, staged by the Aurum Guild to celebrate the anniversary of Emperor Kassa eradicating the aurumvoraxes, you can slip that bit of exposition in (along with a bunch of other stuff about the importance of the Guild and the mines).

Beyond that, if I were running “Gold,” I would probably strip it down to its core:

• Get rid of the Machiavellian stuff.
• Cave-in opened up a cave that had hibernating aurumvoraxii.
• The two princes are competing for glory, providing a cool roleplaying crux against the challenge of the dungeon.

But to really make it sing, you’ll probably also want to redesign the dungeon to feature encounters that could play strongly into this dynamic. (At a minimum, I’d want the princes to be able to meaningfully split up instead of being stuck on a linear path.)

Go to Part 5

Go to Part 1

SALTED LEGACY (Surena Marie) is set in the Dyn Singh Night Market, an “endlessly changing maze of stalls filled with incredible wares, enticing smells, and magical lights” that I mentioned earlier in the review. It’s an adventure for 1^st-level characters, and is designed for the PCs to level up twice (so that the next adventure in the book is for 3^rd-level characters).

There are two core concepts in “Salted Legacy.” First, the PCs will compete in a series of market games as part of a festival. Second, they’ll be asked to investigate a series of attacks aimed to sabotage local businesses. The scenario’s primary problem is that it’s structurally swapped the primacy of these two concepts.

Let’s start with the sabotage plot: Kasem Aroon and his twin borther Vi Aroon operate the Spice Brothers stall in the Night Market. Vi, however, is getting married and moving away. Kasem realizes he can’t run the stall by himself, so he concocts a “brilliant” plan! He’ll sabotage the other businesses in the Night Market so that one of them will sell their stall to him. That way he’ll own TWO businesses he can’t run by himself!

So, obviously, this entire premise doesn’t make any sense. (I’d suggest setting things up so that Vi getting married means that Kasem, as the younger son, will be pushed out of the Spice Brothers. Kasem’s plan to acquire another a business, therefore, would make sense. There’s even some evidence this may have been the original ending of the adventure, as the published conclusion includes the option for a happy ending in which Kasem gets adopted into another vendor’s family… which obviously only makes sense as a “solution” if Kasem was not, in fact, going to own the Spice Brothers stall.) But that’s not actually the primary problem.

Structurally, the PCs witness a feud between two of the oldest and most respected families in Night Market, which Kasem has enflamed by using wynlings, winged feys he’s bribing with persimmons, to frame each owner for sabotaging the others’ stall. Both stall owners hire the PCs to get proof that the other family is responsible for all the sabotage!

The double-hire is a clever twist on the hook, but then the PCs start investigating and the adventure says (paraphrasing): “Literally nothing they do works. Your job as the DM is to make sure they cannot solve this mystery. Investigation checks? Nothing. Questioning? Nope. Stake out? Absolutely not!”

The stonewalling is necessary because the ultimate goal is to force the PCs to participate in the Market Games: No one trusts outsiders (er… except the two highly respected families who hired the PCs), so the PCs need to earn their respect by competing in the games. The more respect they earn, the more information they can get.

The “need” to block all lines of investigation leads to all kinds of silliness. For example, the PCs may find persimmon peels at the sabotage sites (from the wynlings). Logically, they should be able to find out who’s selling persimmons and maybe learn that Kasem has suddenly started buying a lot more than usual.

But that’s not allowed, so: “A character who further investigates these fruit peels learns no stalls in the night market currently sell persimmons.”

Ironically, this will likely lead players to hyper-obsess on these persimmons: If they aren’t sold here and nobody eats them, where are they coming from?! (This is never actually answered.)

Anyway, the point here is that the adventure is framed to make the mystery the players’ primary goal, but the mystery is not actually the focus of the adventure: It’s the Market Games. The mystery is just the mechanism used to force the PCs to play the games.

It would make a lot more sense to just have an adventure premise that says “play in the Market Games,” rather than “do this other thing, but I’m going to arbitrarily stop you from doing it until you play in the Market Games.”

Partly because I hate mysteries designed to prevent eh PCs from solving them.

Mostly because it turns the Market Games into a chore that the PCs have to complete. And chores are not fun.

Which is a pity, because once we actually focus on the Market Games, they’re a lot of fun! My personal favorite is the cooking competition:

MC: Welcome to Iron Chef Dyn Singh!
PCs: Awesome!
MC: Your secret ingredient is… SHRIMP!
PCs: Cool, cool…
MC: Giant shrimp.
PCs: Hol’ up.
MC: You will need to kill it first.
PCs: oh shit

“Salted Legacy” is a delicious treat that has been wrapped in unnecessary frustration. But what I want to emphasize is that there’s a pretty solid core here that can make for a fun evening with your group: The Market Games are fun. The cast of characters in the mystery story is memorable and well-drawn.

All you really need to do to tease out these flavors is (a) refocus the hook on the Market Games, (b) have the investigation pop up as a B-plot, and (c) default to yes whenever the players investigate something.

For the scenario hook, you might do something like:

• The PCs have been selected as competition ambassadors, and have been sent to the Night Market specifically to compete; or
• There’s a prize for this year’s competition which [thing they want/need].

But since this is also likely the first adventure in your campaign, you could also just tell your players as part of character creation to explain why they’ve all decided to compete in the Market Games this year and use it as the This How You Met framing story for the group.

If you wanted to prepare a revelation list ahead of time, the two key revelations I’d focus on would be:

• Persimmons are associated with the mischief sites. (And you can then trace the persimmons to Kasem.)
• There’s some sort of invisible, flying blue monkeys. (And then you can catch and interrogate them or follow them to Kasem.)

Ironically, you can do this pretty easily by just reading through the adventure and, everywhere it says “if the PCs do X, they don’t find anything,” simply replace it with “if the PCs do X, they find [useful information].”

Run as written, I would give this adventure a C grade. Since such minimal effort would probably polish it up into a B or B+ at the actual table, I think I’ll reflect its true value with a C+.

Grade: C+

WRITTEN IN BLOOD (Erin Roberts) is an adventure so good I’d give my left arm to run it.

A local curse/haunting in the land of Godsbreath causes the hands of those who drown in the lake to come back as undead crawling claws. When enough of these horrors gather in one place, they form an amalgam entity called a soul shaker.

Like a rat-king, but much, much worse.

“Written in Blood” begins with the PCs heading to Godsbreath for a festival.

… wasn’t there a festival in the last adventure, too?

There was. And there will be in the next adventure and the adventure after that and several more. Honestly, your PCs are going to look back at Tier 1 and remember absolutely nothing, because they spent the whole time stoned out of their minds.

This particular festival is the Festival of Awakening. Its unique calling card is the Awakening Song, a huge oral tradition which records the entire history of Godsbreath. Proclaimers circle through the festival singing sections of the Song, with the crowd intermittently picking up favorite verses and singing along. Later, a Proclaimer will ask to accompany the PCs, believing they are caught up in important events and that their deeds should be woven into the Song’s ever-evolving form.

This is a great example of the rich texture Roberts weaves into the Godsbreath setting, and the quiet brilliance she displays in weaving that detail into the action of the adventure.

In fact, the only real drawback of “Written in Blood” is that it’s a prime example of limited word count hamstringing development. For example, “characters who spend an hour exploring the festival [listening to the Song] learn much about the history of the land.” But you can’t actually share that with the players.

If you really want to make this adventure sing (pun intended), then you’ll want to bear a wary eye for stuff that’s often literally begging you to flesh it out and seize the opportunity to do so before running this one.

And you’ll definitely want to run this one, because it’s a goddamn creepfest that will put your players on the edge of their seats and then rip their hearts out.

We begin with the land of Godsbreath itself, which is presented in a gazetteer which is simply exceptional (and probably the best one in the book).

The fertile lands of the region are deteriorating, forcing more and more farmers to migrate from the rich lands of the Ribbon into the Rattle, a fertile, but extremely dangerous region.

That, all by itself, is a brilliant premise for endless adventure.

And then Roberts drops this bomb:

Most people in Godsbreath worship one or more of the Covenant gods, who worked together to bring the first folk to this new land. Over long generations since, these deities have stood united as the guardians of Godsbreath. But of late, they have begun to work independently to recruit and reward their own followers.

Through recent prophecies known only to themselves, the members of the Covenant have learned the blood of a deity is needed to revitalize the soil of the Ribbon and stave off potential famine across Godsbreath. In response, the gods are becoming more active, shoring up their power to avoid becoming this necessary sacrifice.

The tension between the Ribbon and Rattle was already incredibly well done.

But to add this to it?

Competing plots of deicide. A religion dedicated to transmitting truth fracturing on its own secrets. A covenant of gods forced to betray one of their own.

It’s simply inspired. Adventure just boils out of it.

All right, so we have the cursed and dying Ribbon that’s forcing people into the strange and dangerous frontier of the Rattle. This is the essence of gothic horror, infused into both the darkest and most hopeful aspects of the modern Africa diaspora, then draped with the most disturbing visions of West African magical realism. It’s redolent with possibility.

And Roberts delivers. The adventure drips with the dry dust of the Ribbon and the eery edge of the Rattle.

Atmosphere is good, but the real meat of “Written in Blood” is the human story at its heart: Of a young girl who lost her friend to the crawling claws and the dark waters of the lake… and now her friend has come back.

When the PCs discover this truth — and the girl — crouching in the dark, everything comes together: The place. The imagery. The characters.

I don’t know what your players’ (or their characters’) reaction will be to this truth.

And that’s the beauty of it.

The terrible beauty.

Grade: A

THE FIEND OF HOLLOW MINE (Mario Ortegón) continues the transplanar pub crawl, with the PCs heading to the city of San Citlán to “enjoy the food, parades, and celebrations of the Night of the Remembered” festival.

I’ve seen some reactions and reviews to Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel express frustration that the specific cultural inspirations aren’t listed for each civilization/adventure. I understand this impulse, but I think it misses the point.

There are certainly cases where it might make it easier for me to, for example, do additional research on fashion so that I can make my NPC descriptions richer. But one of the things I really enjoy about Radiant Citadel is that it’s NOT “here’s fantasy Ethiopia with new labels that we can trademark,” which is a trap I’ve frequently seen projects like this fall into. Radiant Citadel’s authors are being truly inspired by their source material, using it to create something new and unique to their vision, and then blending it with the vast mythos of D&D.

So “Fiend of Hollow Mine,” for example, has clear Mexican inspirations. But there’s also a Mesopotamian-by-way-of-D&D demon lord. And Ortegón takes the Day of the Dead and interprets it through the metaphysics of D&D to create the Night of the Remembered, where the souls of the dead literally manifest.

And then he takes it one step further and asks, “But what would happen if a soul doesn’t cross over at its appointed time?”

The answer is: Simply persist.

And so San Citlán is studded with friendly undead. People who just… kept on “living” when death should have come instead. The olvidados are literally those “forgotten by death.” The result is such a cool and unique place that my only quibble is that, once again, I would have loved to see it fleshed out more.

(Pun intended.)

Okay, so the PCs are heading to San Citlán. They discover that there’s a deadly plague called sereno afflicting the region.

There are a couple of things I really love about sereno. First, it literally spreads via a “cursed wind” that blows at night. Germ theory is great, but in a fantastical land, I love diseases that are fantastical in nature.

Second, sunlight alleviates the illness. And, indeed, it can only be magically cured and only if the spell is cast in sunlight. This is mechanically simple, but gives a distinct and evocative flavor. It also makes the disease relevant to the PCs in a clever way: Although it doesn’t really factor into the adventure, you can imagine PCs contracting this disease deep in a dark dungeon or the Underdark and being unable to cure it (only triage it) until they can return to the surface.

The basic concept of the adventure is that, a generation ago, a warlock named Orencio was caught and executed. Before he died, however, he’d made a deal with the demon lord Pazuzu, trading the soul of his son for great power.

Orencio thought he’d pulled a fast one, but what he didn’t know is that his girlfriend (who was also the one who turned him into the authorities) was pregnant. Their son, Serapio, is approaching his twentieth birthday and, under Pazuzu’s influence, is turning into a tlacatecolo — an owl-demon which spreads pestilence. (In this case, sereno.)

The PCs are pointed in Serapio’s direction by a freedom fighter. Following his trail, they hopefully learn the truth of what’s happening to him and, eventually, bring him to bay.

The biggest problem with “The Fiend of Hollow Mine” is that it’s incredibly fragile. There is a very long sequence of hoops that the PCs need to jump through. Some of these hoops are surprisingly difficult to get through (although Ortegón usually provides some mechanism for the PCs to just keep making skill checks until they finally roll high enough). Other hoops are hidden, which is… fun.

There are a couple of saving graces, however.

First, the middle chunk of the adventure takes place in the small dungeon of Hollow Mine. The map design here is excellent:

For a small dungeon, this is deliciously xandered. And the key is equally good, with vivid imagery and meaty detail.

The second saving grace is the conclusion of the adventure. Ortegón does a great job framing it so that the PCs will have to decide whether to try to bring Serapio in quietly so that his curse can be removed, or simply kill the corrupted soul.

Grade: C+

Go to Part 4

Go to Part 1

ADVENTURE OVERVIEW

Each adventure in Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel is built on a common template:

• Background
• Setting the Adventure
• Character Hooks
• Starting the Adventure

Followed by, of course, the adventure itself and then the accompanying setting gazetteer.

Setting the Adventure suggests three options where each adventure could be set. One is “Through the Radiant Citadel,” which, as noted, indicates where the Concord Jewel is located. Another suggests where this civilization could be slipped into the Forgotten Realms. And the third does the same for some other official D&D campaign setting, either Eberron, Greyhawk, or, in one case, Mystara.

Character Hooks are interesting. Each scenario ostensibly includes multiple hooks (usually three, sometimes only two). There’s some variation here, of course, across the many adventures, but these “hooks” are generally just reasons the characters might be visiting the region. For example:

• The characters are going to a local festival.
• The characters are visiting a friend.
• The characters are hired as guards by someone visiting the area.

In a few cases the “you’re in the area to do X’ can at least loosely qualify as a surprising scenario hook (because it has at least some proximity to the scenario premise), but mostly it’s just, “You’re traveling through Y, and then…”

So the “hooks” are then followed by Starting the Adventure, which is almost always a random encounter that informs the PCs of the scenario’s existence. This random encounter is what I, personally, would consider the actual scenario hook.

The intention of having multiple scenario hooks is great: It would theoretically make it easier for DMs to incorporate these adventures into their campaigns and/or make hooking the PCs into the scenario far more robust (because if one hook failed, there would be additional opportunities). But because the actual hook is the random encounter, this can, unfortunately, lead to very fragile hooks in actual practice. For example, in “The Fiend of Hollow Mine” the PCs need to:

• Not detect and decide to skip the bounty hunter ambush.
• Not chase the bounty hunters who are scripted to flee.
• Accept a random barkeep’s invitation to have a drink, rather than continuing on to their actual goal.
• Get approached by Paloma the Outlaw and decide NOT to capture her for the bounty they’ve just been informed she has on her head.
• Finally, accept the job offer from Paloma.

That sequence of events probably happens more often than not when running “Fiend,” but it’s A LOT of potential points of failure to navigate through before the adventure has technically even started.

One more decision I really don’t like in this book is that no clear credit is given to the writer of each adventure. This was done in both Tales from the Yawning Portal and Candlekeep Mysteries, and its absence from Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel feels particularly grody given how much of the marketing campaign for the book was, rightfully, focused on the phenomenal writing talent that made it possible. I should not have to use Google to figure out which author wrote which adventure, which is why I’ll be indicating authorship for each adventure below.

GAZETTEERS

Before we do that, however, let’s take a moment to consider the setting gazetteers that accompany each adventure. These include the usual list of locations (usually labeled on a map) and cultural information, but there are a few notable features I’d like to call special attention to.

Legends of X. This section presents a lovely blend of history and myth, while also typically grounding the setting into a unique fantasy metaphysic. It’s a nice way to neatly encapsulate the unique spin each setting gives to D&D.

Adventures in X, which gives four adventure seeds. These are pretty excellent throughout the entire book: They’re not generic ideas, instead being spiked with specific details that add value. Nor are they vague ideas. Too often I see seeds like this say stuff like, “There’s a weird glowing light, I wonder what it is?” In Radiant Citadel, the seeds reliably tell you exactly what that weird light is. Finally, the details provided generally give a clear direction for development.

Characters from X. If a player chooses to create a character from this civilization, this section includes three questions the DM can ask them to help ground the character into the specific context of the setting. For example, in Yeonido, these are:

• What is your social class and clan?
• Do you have a special role in the city’s hierarchy?
• How have gwishin [the ubiquitous ancestor spirits of the setting] affected you?

Each question is accompanied with a short guide and list of suggestions, perfect for guiding the conversation.

Names. Each gazetteer includes a list of sample names you can use for NPCs. I love having an NPC name list as a resource, and it’s particularly valuable here because the range of cultural inspiration drawn from for Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel is so diverse that literally everyone using this book will almost certainly find that some majority of the cultures detailed are exotic to them (and, therefore, more difficult to improvise appropriate names off-the-cuff).

The only shortcoming here is that it would be great if the sample name list was longer. (Which is why I actually expanded the lists in Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel: A List of Names.)

But this is actually the biggest shortcoming of the gazetteers in general: The practical realities of the book means that the really cool settings can only be sketched in with broad brush strokes. Sometimes this just means that you’re left hungry for more (a great problem to have), but in some cases the lack of detail can really cripple the settings and, in some cases, the adventures connected to them (a much less great problem to have).

For example, in the land of Godsbreath, the Proclaimers of the Covenant are charged by the gods to record the history of the Covenant’s chosen people.

Who are the Covenant?

They’re a pantheon which is “for you to define” (because I’ve hit my word count) “and might include gods appropriate to your campaign’s setting or deities unique to Godsbreath.”

… well, this is probably fine, because the gods are only <checks notes> the primary focus of the entire setting?

Oof.

The lack of detail also spills over and creates a lack of scale. For example, consider this excerpt of text describing Siabsungkoh:

Traders from Siabsungkoh’s scattered communities flock nightly to the Dyn Singh Night Market, an ever-changing, town-sized market…

The [Outer Edges] that border the wilderness … are overgrown with lush greenery and lau-pop flowers. Many of the scattered communities here and across the valley reject the bureaucracy and crowds of the market district, braving the dangers of the nearby wilderness to stay self-sufficient.

And now compare it to this map of the region:

There are no “scattered communities” and the “Outer Edges” are, in fact, only a half mile from the Night Market itself, so (a) you can probably see one from the other and (b) there’s no room for multiple communities, let alone communities in separate “districts.”

Plus, the whole “civilization” is just a half dozen miles wide. A pattern which repeats throughout the book: “empires” that consist of a couple of towns; bustling “metropolises” with only a couple dozen buildings; and so forth.

So what happened here?

Well, based on my experience, I think it’s almost certain that the cartographer accurately (and evocatively) presented everything that was likely on the design sketch they were given to work from. But because there’s only room to present the setting in the broadest strokes, there just wasn’t enough detail on the design sketch.

Even without the scale that locks it in on the final version, barrenness on a map is interpreted as tininess.

What I do love about the Siabsungkoh map is the inclusion of locations NOT described in the limited text, including Monkey Mask Farm, Silver Carp Farm, and so forth. I’m a big believer in RPG maps inviting the user — including the DM — to explore the world. To ask, “What’s this?”

Is Monkey Mask Farm run by awakened monkeys?

Does it literally grow monkey masks on magically enhanced teak trees?

Do the farms of Siabsungkoh hang masks above their gate, representing the patron animal who protects their crops? (Are some of these masks possessed/enchanted?)

Tabula rasa is the scraped tablet. The empty spaces on the map. Those spaces can be fun to fill. But rasa is the fundamental flavor or essence of creation, and offering just a hint of it can often by even more powerful than the blank spaces.

So my bottom line on the setting gazetteers is this: What’s here seems consistently good-to-great. But issues with limited word count seem to consistently choke out their potential.

As a final note, I will suggest that the book could have done itself a lot of favors by presenting the setting gazetteers before each adventure, instead of after.

First, because the adventure comes first, the writers feel obligated to include a whole bunch of explanatory detail in the adventure that more logically belongs in the gazetteer (i.e., cultural information).

And then, second, many of the writers fall prey to the trap of using the limited space in their gazetteer to repeat descriptions of locations that are already amply detailed in the adventure itself. Yes, it’s easy to think, “This list of ‘Noteworthy Sites’ is supposed to include all the locations in the setting, so it logically must include all the places we visited in the adventure.” But, particularly when you’re fighting word count, this can really hurt the utility of your work.

If the gazetteers came first, both the temptation and necessity of repeating information would’ve been drastically reduced, freeing and encouraging the writers to pack more value into the book.

Go to Part 3