Bathtub Reviews are an excuse for me to read modules a little more closely. I’m doing them to critique well-regarded modules from the perspective of my own table and to learn for my own module design. They’re stream of consciousness and unedited harsh critiques. I’m writing them on my phone in the bath.

Secret of the Black Crag is a 97 page module for OSE by Chance Dudinack. It’s a pirate-themed island crawl with a multi-level dungeon at its center. I’m always here for pirate modules, and I am pretty excited to read this.

Right off the bat: Chance does writing and internal art, and Sam Sorensen does developmental editing, line editing and layout. This combination of roles results in a resoundingly consistent and usable structure and design. The bold tritone sans serif choices remind me of Hot Springs Island, and clean touches like the tabulated index on the page edge make it very easy to navigate. Almost without exception, subjects hold a single page or a spread. This book is one of the best designed in terms of usability and structure I’ve read in a long time. I really appreciate that it doesn’t overuse font changes to draw attention to recurring items in the text, but still manages to be very useable. Spot art is quirky and a little janky, which is the vibe that I like, and used to support the textual structure. Maps are consistently clear and pleasing to look out; there’s a lot of mapping in this book, and Glynn Seal absolutely nails it.

The book is split largely into three sections: The Port, the Islands that surround it, and the dungeon The Black Crag. The Introduction is brief and punchy: Three short paragraphs for the players, the rest of the page for the referee, and then a page of rumours to kick you off in Port Fortune. The neat, one item per column, page or spread layout has a negative here in terms of some people or places of interest are given a little too much space to breath.

Starting with Port Fortune: With a module of this size, I’m not pre-reading it with any meaningful recall, and so the three paragraphs on, for example Ulysses Mcloud, are a little too much for me to skim accurately at the table. A close read of these characters and factions reveals a dearth of interconnection between them, despite the many words spent describing them. Their relationships with the party are often described, but they feel like NPCs in a late 90s videogame: Characterful, but revolving around you. Everyone has something to tell or give the PCs, but rarely more. A similar lack plagues the briefer descriptions, such as the d6 pirates: “Mancomb Spotswood. Cocky, fresh-faced young man known for his biting wit and habit of insulting his opponents. His crew is a rowdy bunch who love drinking, throwing jabs, and singing sea shanties.” There’s a description here, but it doesn’t help me incorporate the pirate into the story or run them more capably, so what is the purpose? Port Fortune finishes with a random character generator, a peeve of mine, as with the double spread that this takes, we could have had a dozen specific and connected characters, but instead the load is transferred to the referee and we are left with less connection.

The Salamander Islands section opens with an encounter table I feel mixed on. We have about five good entries, that foreshadow or connect to the islands, but these are mainly big monsters. The aforementioned pirates are referred to, but if they have any goals or objectives aside from piracy they’re not mentioned. I’d add “if your hull is low in the water, you’re attacked” to halve the number of encounters with them, because all they are is combat and theft. It’s absolutely reasonable to have less exciting weather or whatnot on an encounter table, but why does weather occur here and on the weather table? I can roll doldrums and a thunderstorm at the same time, because of this oversight. It just needs to be more interesting, and not just a resource and time drain. What’s more, as an event occurs on average every three days, it’s likely that resources will regenerate between encounters. These are an irritant and a drag on travel, where they should be egging us on. Give those pirates lairs out in the isles so that we can start a rivalry. The doldrums a curse by the previously described sea witch on a member of the crew. It’s not hard to make this more interesting; but it’s not my job if I’m buying your module. The land encounters are worse in some ways, more interesting in others. The encounters read as if they were released in ‘74 (“1d6 zombies”) but they add interesting locations and activities which make these inherently more useful. The inconsistencies between these might be nonsensical (1d6 friendly sleeping zombies in a waterfall rushing off a cliff is a possible result) but may also be fun to reconcile as a referee.

In the location descriptions, there are a lot of redeeming features, largely sly humour and imagination. A deaf girl causing problems for the sirens. The lair of a pirate gorilla (his portrait is fantastic). The dungeons are well keyed, interesting and have a sense of narrative to them, and are pleasing if simple spaces, but it’s undercut but transparent intentions (The gorilla pirate doesn’t want to fight! He just wants help with a secret door!) that make relationship building less interesting and undercuts the reaction roll. Initially I was feeling some dread that the lack of interconnection and relationship showing in Port Fortune would be here, but over the whole section it comes through, with quest-givers sending you across the isles. Reasons to help, though, are still thin. Why do I want to help the High Engineer save her father, when all she offers is cure wounds? And there’s nothing interesting on the island she sends you, and no treasure or character or clue to send you further.

We’re halfway through the book, and the rest of the book is the Black Crag. Chance shines here. Brief and clear introductions to each level and it’s quirks. Factions with clear goals. Entries are usually one two paragraphs. Interactive environmental effects. There is humour and action. My major criticism is that it’s really not clear where the exits and routes down are; I even searched the pdf for “exit” and “down” with no luck, and I’ve examined the maps but here the beautiful map detail makes it feel like I’m playing Where’s Waldo. I can only assume the first two levels are to be accessed from the outside, and so help me I have no idea how to access the final two levels, I can only assume that somewhere leads to the main gate? Irregardless, this is something that again, could easily be fixed, and I’m disappointed it isn’t clearer.

What the Black Crag is clear on (once you get there) is that this is the lynchpin of the adventure. Everyone here has goals and intentions, they send you out to the isles and interfere with each other within the Black Crag. Everything revolves around this, and gives you levers about which the rest of the characters revolve. The name of the adventure should’ve clued me into this, so perhaps more the fool me, but it could have been clearer I think, and starting with the town and islands their relative paucity of detail and lack of things that make me lean forward in my seat made me misjudge the module at first. A lot of what the first two sections lacks the third has in spades. It’s clear that the authors heart was in writing the Black Crag, and the islands around it are window dressing.

I’ve complained a lot about the writing, but when Chance is on he is on. The sea dragon: “an intelligent serpentine dragon bedecked in silver and blue scales. Her flowing whiskers and magnificent red crest bestow a regal appearance. A giant pearl, just barely visible, flashes inside her mouth when she speaks. Vain and imperious.”, a seemingly uninhabited lair “stinks of reptilian musk”, “Open courtyard flooded with waistdeep water. Strange colors scintillate in the murk.”. There’s some great stuff here. I could recommend this book for inspiration just based on the descriptions, despite their size.

Coming back and skimming the book again, one thing that stands out is a lack of orientation in the text for the PCs. Rumours are vague, and there are a number of fetch quests in town if you comb every character for information, but there’s little reason for venturing into the islands, and little guidance regarding which islands to aim for. I’m not even sure what the point of a map and seafaring rules are, if you’re just sailing aimlessly. It appears you’re supposed to be driven to collect treasure, but in the absence of “there’s treasure here!” sensible PCs would instead just resort to piracy, like the rest of the place.

Gosh, what are my conclusions, with the about turn two thirds in? I think it’s clear to me that the first two thirds would have benefited from a more critical eye on the edit. Asking “what does this add?” would have brought most of my criticisms to light, I think. Even in a book so thick, it behooves the module to make sure that each part actually plays a part and doesn’t just fill space on a table or list. A few other small but not insignificant issues (the unclear spatial relationships in the Black Crag being foremost), plague a pretty exciting module.

For me personally, though, my expectation of this being a pirate adventure was undermined by the centrality of the Black Crag. This is my fault and not that of the module (although the cover didn’t help), and looking more closely the Black Crag never hid the fact that the dungeon was at its centre, but I was really hoping for equal emphasis on the indoor and outdoor sections.

If you’re looking for a seaside dungeon, Secret of the Black Crag contains a banger of one. I really like the dungeon itself (although if I were to run it I’d @ the author to find out where the entrances were), and I’d quite happily pull the threads outside the dungeon out and put them in another campaign. If you’re looking for a swashbuckling pirate themed adventure, I think it falls short on the weaknesses in Port Fortune and the Salamander Islands, although you could fix this with a little work if the setting sounds especially appealing.

Idle Cartulary