ASC3 Review - Wavecrash Maze

Adventure Site Contest 3 review

This adventure was submitted for consideration in Adventure Site Contest 3 being run by Ben Gibson at Coldlight Press. It has been or will be reviewed by the official judges, who will be selecting the eight winning adventures. This is an unofficial review, which was written prior to reading (or watching) any of the official judges’ reviews. I will do my best to link to the official reviews at the bottom of the review.

I will use a five-star scale, based on both playability and interest:
*          Failing grade. The adventure doesn’t meet minimum standards of playability.
**         I could see running this, but it fails to inspire me or has significant playability issues.
***       I would consider running this.
****     I am considering running this.
*****   I want to run this. Now.

Wavecrash Maze
By Louis-Joseph Benoit
For OSRIC
Levels 4-6 (5-7 characters)

Time to grok the adventure: 30 minutes

Set-up:

The followers of an arch-devil built a maze at a nexus of elemental planes in the hopes that it could be turned into a portal to Hell. In doing so, they summoned and bound a horned devil to the maze. 

The horned devil controls the maze. He had the followers decimate a nearby community of brownies, but then sacrificed the followers to summon a minotaur to his maze. He wishes to attract more sacrifice victims to summon more minotaurs.

Things I liked:

A strange-shaped island, rising to an impossibly tall cliff, topped with a minotaur’s maze: it is a bizarre site, but the backstory could make it work.

Things to note:

I found the adventure unplayable in its current form. More thought is needed on how all the different parts makes sense, both in themselves and as part of a whole. Build this out to a 12-15 page adventure which answers some questions:

• How did this island come to be?
• What is the connection to the elemental planes (other than the occasional elemental creature emerging as a wandering monster)?
• Who are these brownies (typically a woodland creature) and how did them come to be here?
• Why does the devil desire to summon more minotaurs rather than freeing itself?
• How exactly are the minotaurs attracted to the island and the maze? The devil doesn't seem to be doing anything in this regard.
• What is with this Wave? 

More specifics:

The horned devil can’t leave the maze perimeter, but it can teleport some distance over it. How far?

The horned devil is described as half-free. What does that mean? 

The maze, though 1000 ft up, is periodically hit by a giant wave. Somehow these waves only push characters 30 ft and do no damage. They also don’t seem to affect the ship that is anchored at the island.

There is a rival party of 40 or so corsairs. If your players decide to fight the corsairs on their ship, the GM will need to do quite a bit of work, including mapping a three-dimensional space.

The writing in general employs complex phrasing with many dangling modifiers, all of which makes it a slog to read. There are also a few words that I needed to look up in the dictionary: sabatons, spadone, balinger.

What is an “airchanter” or “air-focused enchanter”? Perhaps it is just a description, but that is not a thing in OSRIC (or AD&D).

Emotion (the 4th level illusionist spell) will last as long as the illusionist concentrates. How long does it last when effected by an altar? The minotaur seems to be under the influence of two permanent emotion spells.

The encounter with the ghost can only be resolved if the character tell him that they killed some snakes, which may not have happened and which is difficult to intuit from the encounter description.

Minor quibble, but in my mind, a glyph of warding is either triggered or not. A wave wouldn’t conduct electricity from it because the electricity isn’t present until the glyph is triggered.

Cross-references could be added in area 6 to specify that the door opens to area 10 and in area 3 to indicate that the trapdoor in the ceiling (area 8) is actually ajar.

Rating: 

*1/2  Germs of several adventure ideas packed too tightly together

Links to official judges' review:

• B/X Blackrazor