I ran all the pamphlet triptych adventures and all I got was a fantastic time
The Pamphlet Adventure Triptych is a set of three pamphlet adventures by Brad Kerr and Skullfungus. The very same pair who won an Ennie for best short form adventure with Dream Shrine. I read each of the pamphlet adventures once and then ran my group through them. We did this spaced out over the course of a few months, not in a row. We play a lot of one shots. These could easily be used together as an episodic short campaign or scattered about a sandbox in your existing campaign world. The adventures are stated for BX/OSE levels 1 to 3 but it's easy to adapt to any dnd-like system. Most creature and item descriptions don't bother with system-specific effects. Like the rest of the work it's easy to mold them how you need.
Review Disclaimer: I'm friends with Brad Kerr and he already knows how I feel about these adventures. I purchased this Triptych adventure bundle from drivethrurpg.
The super short review
These adventures are all great and you should play them.
The slightly longer review
Each adventure has the juice needed for fun at the table. There are toys to play with, memorable NPCs that are a breeze to run, and interesting challenges that are effortlessly conveyed through maps and the briefest of text. Most of what I wanted to see more of is stuff that was mercilessly cut to save space. If you can connect a few dots on the fly, you should be fine. These are low-prep, roll-with-the-punches adventures.
3&3 review format
I'll be going through each of the three adventures and talking about three things I liked and three things I didn't like. I'll talk about how things went down at my table and what I plan to do differently when I run the adventures again. I stole this review format from Joe's Dekahedron RPG podcast. The reason I like this format is that even though you know I like this body of work, you don't really know me. You don't know what else I like or dislike or why. By forcing myself to come up with three specific likes and dislikes you can at least get a brief window into the why and have a bit more confidence in if my why matters to you.
Spoilers
This whole thing is a deep dive. If you want the genuine experience of exploration as a player in these adventures before running them, send your GM this way instead.
DREAD SONG OF THE CRAB
A human vampire is transformed into a giant vampire crab and now haunts a sea cave along with other unique crabs.
I didn't expect this to be my favorite of the bunch, it quickly did soon after I started running it. That's when I saw all the choices which gave this adventure hidden reserves of inspiration.
Likes
1. The map accentuates the adventure
With all of these adventures, you'll notice the themes and art pair well. Skullfungus has an oozey grimey style and the adventures lean into that. The map for this adventure is the only vertical one of the three and this winds up being exactly the thing the referee needs to come up with environmental challenges on the fly. The text doesn't need to describe the stalagmites at the bottom of the precipice by the cliff edge because the map clearly shows it. You can see exactly how the party is going to slip and slide from the goopy muck at the top of the map all the way to the jagged cavern.
Here's everything you need to know about the timer mechanic which is part of the random encounters table:
Roll tide! Water level increases (if this happens 3x, the cave floods).
The text doesn't need to tell you exactly how far the water level rises when the timer ticks up. There's logical spots for those. Places that were easy to access before are now new challenges because of the timer without any needed explanation. It's all there on the map.
2. The NPCs are fun to run
Talking crabs are fun to roleplay as. Hypnotic-gravity crabs, doubly so. There was just enough detail for me and my group to riff on almost all of them. The hermit crab who sells you stuff has no interest in gold, but one of the things he will accept is you showing his crab child a "world of adventure!"
There's not much written on the NPCs, but what's there is can easily spark more. One random encounter which wound up being a major consideration with my group was the ghost sailors. Here's all the info on them:
Ghosts of sailors killed by the vampire crab moan for vengeance.
In my game they asked the PCs to enact vengeance for them. After days went by without retribution, I rolled the same encounter with a poor reaction. They slimed a player. They are now doomed to be forever slimy at half speed or risk slipping. That is until they fulfill their "oath" to the ghost sailors. The party opted to leave without slaying the vampire crab and to find another way to lift the curse. Now they have a new quest and some diegetic advancement.
3. Opportunities for diegetic advancement
The example with the ghost sailors curse was my invention, but I felt inspired to incorporate it because of the other opportunities for diegetic advancement that are implicit in the adventure. You can get turned into a crab or a vampire or a CRAB VAMPIRE. You could make a deal with the crab god for power and become a cleric of crabdom (water breathing + always wet). This is memorable stuff that makes for an interesting character and fuels further adventure. Arnold K's Lair of the Lamb is another module I can think of that has tons of opportunity for this kind of stuff. I want more adventures to do this.
Dislikes
1. Crab vampire motivation
I needed more from the crab vampire description in order to make them an interesting encounter. The PCs investigated the vampire's lair briefly—following the eerie sound of shanties—but it was unclear to me the extent to which the crab vampire was "trapped" in the caves. They can turn into a bat gull and sea foam (which is very atmospheric) but I couldn't decide if that also meant that they would pursue the PCs throughout the dungeon. The only implicit motivation that came to me during the game was "wants blood." Because I didn't really know what to do with them, and because my players didn't want to explore a death nook if they didn't have to, that was pretty much it for the vampire.
Of course thinking on it now, the crab vamp might like to be a human vamp again but requires a humanoid to fetch the carcinomicon from the treasure room (area 12) in order to do it. Since the crab god (area 13) tells us that all life converges to crabdom, it makes sense that the carcinomicon only lets non-crabs read it (so they can be turned into crabs). This gives the PCs something to offer the vampire beyond blood.
2. Barter blunder
Unfortunately, there wasn't a super compelling reason to be civil with the hermit crab shop owner. My players had just had a not-so-great experience with the aforementioned gravity-crab, and they opted to take out the hermit and steal their stuff. We faded to black when they discovered son-of-crab with the rest of the treasure.
When I run this again, I will hide the crab goods under a boulder in the cave with an opening that only the crab can fit into. I'll make them work for it at least.
3. Time as "push your luck" didn't land
The caves flood at high tide in three hours. I gave this knowledge to my players freely since I think it's something their characters would be aware of. This, along with the random encounter "tide roll" are trying to invoke a "push your luck" situation. How far should the PCs go before they cut their losses and get out of there? There are things the PCs can use to help ease this pressure a bit, like potions of water breathing—but any party that's been in an underwater random encounter probably wouldn't recommend hanging around too long. This timer worked a little too well at my table. The group correctly assumed that they could go in, explore a little and then leave the dungeon to come back the next day. This is normal and encouraged behavior in campaign play and my go-to response was "Sure, you can leave but now the word is out to other explorers and the dungeon will change while you are gone."
The pamphlet though really feels like it should be played at one continuous delve and it's not super obvious what should change and how competition might affect the party's experience. Where the snippets of information in the pamphlet up until this point gently take you by the hand and whisper evocative suggestions in your ear, leaving and coming back felt like almost a blank page. I say "almost" since things worked out fine at my table. The party met a group of rival adventurers and they had their posturing social and combat encounters and the game was stronger for it. They even decided to bring their boat into the dungeon with them (as far as they could) to prevent sabotage. This was the only time I felt almost entirely on my own, on the fly, without the net of the pamphlet to catch me. Again, I say almost because as soon as the PCs started treading familiar ground, it was clear from the encounter table that the super strong pack crabs were totally going to make off with the PCs boat they stashed in the deep dark cave. And just like that, we're back to holding hands on the beach.
YEAST GHOULS
A literal explosive plague of infectious undead have been unleashed on a brewery located in a crypt.
This is a great example of sticking to a theme to create a new gimmick for players to learn, master, and exploit.
Likes
1. Don't explode!
Ghouls-as-nitro is a great concept that immediately got me thinking about Left 4 Dead. It's a fun challenge to keep the party and fragile valuables out of blasting range. There's no speed stat for the ghouls, so I ruled they were slow. This resulted in a lot of "bait and wait" tactics. This was strategy was challenged in the barrel maze, however where the ghouls could get up close and personal due to limited visibility and tight spacing.
2. Zombie movie dilemmas
I knew how to run this pamphlet because of every zombie movie ever made. The tropes are fertile. There's one NPC offering a nice fat reward to help them escape. Oh wait, they've been bit! Well maybe they're special. They haven't turned yet. Maybe there's a chance they'll be alri—BANG!
3. Encourages experimentation
Questions that shall be asked: How explosive are they? How else can we explode them? Can we do chain reactions? What else can we blow up with them?
The pamphlet answers none of these questions because THIS IS THE GAME. You're gonna know the answers. Trust me.
Shout out to the magic dart glove. The wearer needs to pinch their fingers together to activate it. A magic dart materializes between them. Amazing! This is the type of magic item identification that is fun!
Dislikes
1. Tiger beast needs a motivation
I just wrote an adventure where a cat is a major antagonist but I didn't know how to run this encounter when we played. The cat is written as a stray which is what through me off, I think. I just rolled reaction in my game (which was poor) and the players mostly ignored ceiling cat. They kept moving through the room so she eventually dropped down and asserted herself through combat.
Next time, I will make the cat a vicious pet of the brewery, spoiled to hell and back. This is the type of tiger beast that doesn't immediately go for the jugular. They demand respect and groveling first. Basically a dragon.
2. I want more opportunities to use the gimmick
I get stars in my eyes when I see a cool theme and gimmick. I want there to be more intentional variety of challenges and opportunities to use this cool, volatile resource. I'm talking one or more reasons to intentionally blow up the ghouls. A collapsed tunnel? Make your own tunnel! Blow up the big bad! Put a ghoul in a box and send them as a care package to a faction leader. The adventure is just too small (in pamphlet form) to facilitate these opportunities on their own. You could probably drop this in as a sub level in your existing dungeon with some tweaks to the premise.
Me? I yearn for a 40-page YEAST GHOULS booklet. New best adventure (short form) candidate?
3. No, I REALLY want more
I wanted my encounters to be more frequent for such a small space. I rolled every turn instead of every other turn for wandering ghouls to keep the pressure up on the players. I also ruled that ghouls kept pouring into the big central room from the lower level on a 3-in-6 chance every turn after it was initially cleared. This way, the PCs couldn't "clear" the whole dungeon. That particular tweak isn't specified in the pamphlet, but I'd say it's implied by the map and the description of the vast crypts below. I wanna GO to those crypts. Given room to breath, you could capture the tense, slowly-rising-action and sudden climaxes of the zombie movie. YEAST GHOULS 2 when, Brad?
SWAMP WORLD
Escape from the swamp pocket dimension sandbox.
Bommyknocker press has a really great breakdown of the design and makeup of this adventure you should take a look at. And here's a review from Cats Have No Lord who talks about what they like and might change (that I agree with a lot of).
Likes
1. Explicit and implicit NPC motivations
From the swamp environmentalists, to the big thirsty vampire that wants a backrub—the NPC desires are to-the-point and actionable. I knew how everyone in this adventure would act. Nailed it.
My players wound up drugging the bathing vampire while he was drinking mosquito blood. Then the party was recruited by the one remaining Swamp Ranger after the brutally murdering his buddies—because the faction had new openings. Plus, the PCs actually helped save the swamp by allowing the rangers' bodies to be being reclaimed by the environment.
2. Faction play
There's a bunch of conflicting motivations packed into this pamphlet with possible escape venues. Do you destroy the swamp world to escape, or find another way? Might the vampire like to explore more "luxurious" pastures "outside" of swamp world? Can you convince the world itself that reality is subjective? You can try.
3. Swamp vibes
Like CRAB SONG's flooded salty sea cave and YEAST GHOULS aromatic graveyard brewery, SWAMP WORLD drips vibes that make it feel like a rich environment to explore.
I'm just going to quote Zak H here since they sum up my feelings better than I can.
Adjectives - look at them all! Because the rest of the work is so spare, the intro loads us up on adjectives and images to pull from. Obviously this is way too many adjectives to put in a single sentence - but that's because these adjectives are gonna go a long way. And because the description is so superfluous, the mind goes into thesaurus mode, immediately supplying more - on top of what the intro gives us we can intuit that this place is steaming, bubbling, reeking, slopping, sliming, sloshing, dripping, grasping, fizzing, glooping, churning, and 1000 other swamp-like things. The reader is going to get their butter knife and scrape these descriptions over the entire adventure.
Dislikes
1. I kept getting the locations wrong
Grid based navigation is my Achilles' heel apparently. I had some serious issues determining what keys matched with which squares in this adventure and wound up reading completely different keys to my players more than once. Something about how the text font blended with the map details in combination with the fact that not all keys are detailed (some are skipped over) kept me getting lost. Next time I will use a red pen to relabel the squares of the map.
2. More swamp, please
I probably sound like a broken record, but I think it's inevitable when trying to find separate things to dislike about three similarly-designed adventures. There are 18 map locations and 11 descriptions. Seven more one-sentence keys or a small table of swampy things to mix and match on the fly would be a super useful resource. Definitely no more room for that on this piece of paper but there's nothing stopping you from adding your own.
Though now that I think about it, there are 6 wandering encounters which are super flavorful (and more than enough to fill game time). Next time I'm reaching for something, I will just roll or choose one of those to fill the space (regardless of if the dice say there's an encounter).
3. Hard to fit escape rooms into a campaign
I'm really trying hard to find something else to dislike. I'm going to say this module is slightly less portable than the other pamphlet adventure in the triptych since it's an escape room that comes with some strings attached. Depending on your group that may or may not be an issue.
Conclusion
If you're comfortable reading between the words and illustrations and taking inspiration from adventures as you run them, then you'll have a great time with this. You can grab the Triptych adventure bundle from drivethrurpg. As of the time of writing this, you can also snag one of the three adventures as Pay What You Want on itch: Swamp World.