Aberrant Reflections Review
This article contains affiliate links, meaning that if you decide to purchase a product through my link, I get a Commission at no additional cost to youOne of the big advantages for 5th Edition Dungeons and Dragons is that it is much more of a loosey-goosey system. 3.5, 4th and Pathfinder have pretty tight math that keeps updating itself, making adaptations difficult. When I see a good adventure module for B/X, OSR or DCC, I know that I can easily convert it for my West Marches Hexcrawl game. How good is Aberrant Reflections? Near the bottom of this article is an affiliate link where I receive proceeds of any sales. That’s how much Aberrant Reflections impressed me. Why include this module in your game?
Art by Jacob Fleming
In my eyes, a successful Hex Feature is one that the players will be incentivized to revisit and there is a stalemate that the players’ presence will disrupt. Interesting NPCs that might get woven into the tapestry of your game is a large bonus. I am very fond of ‘nifty’ magical items; yet another +X Killing Sword of Slaying is par the course, interesting utility always leads to a player with clever thinking and gumption creating a story they’ll remember. Unique monsters that mark that Hex as their territory so that even if the party gets lost, they’ll get a rough idea from what they’ve randomly encountered. Aberrant Reflections gets full marks for me and then it has the audacity of being extremely readable.
Education in Dungeon Design
I am trying to break into the TTRPG space as three months banging my head against Unity taught me to stick to my strengths. I have released one module to date, The Mad House which reads painfully amateurish after perusing directsun’s module.
The dungeon’s map is just on the inside of the cover, meaning a paper copy can be easily referenced. When you go to a particular room’s page, the map is repeated. The dungeon’s timeline is outlined, meaning that any oddball queries can be answered. A glossary of terms that will smooth over your understanding of the dungeon follow, making new concepts and how to run this dungeon a breeze. A page is then dedicated to stating the goal of the dungeon and the “vibes” that you should be going with. This lets you get into the designer’s head, understanding that this dungeon and a previous module are inspired by Legend of Zelda. He then lists a bunch of special magical items that are important to the dungeon. Finally, we get to the bestiary which includes creatures and NPCs that are certainly unique to Aberrant Reflections.
Laying the groundwork at the beginning means that if a room needs to found, it can do so at the end of the book. The literal final pages are random encounter tables, which is another genius move if you’re taking a peek inside the cover pages. From there, going in reverse is the rest of the dungeon. There’s no need to flip back-and-forth, trying to find it if you’re using a real module or just running this from a PDF.
Incredible Execution
As this is largely a puzzle dungeon, it lends itself for players to be highly creative with their solutions. There are a few magic items that are needed to solve puzzles. Then in true Legend of Zelda fashion, your players are then loosed onto your sandbox with nifty magical items that an incredibly cunning player will be able to truly cook up some nonsense.
An example of a room is this portion of the map for the Tomb room. The two pathways leading out are listed alongside their page number. This wasn’t even the part that embarassed my previous publishing attempt. Each room is given a short, two to three sentence description. In the description, items of import are bolded. Below, each of the items are listed with bullet points of further things you need to know. In the case of more important items or those with secrets, there are nested bullet points. I am so used to the mediocre adventures which have big blocks of text that take agency away from your players. With this presentation, I have quick and punchy points for players to immediately sieze back control to push their adventurers into action. The nested bullet points make for an easy read that then protects you from accidentally revealing information.
I also applaud directsun for the bravery of treasure that is stocked in the dungeon. Your players will immediately be teased with a hoard of gold but any adventure worth their salt will overlook that in favour of the bubbling lamp. Yes, an adventure for level 1 to 4 is ready and willing to give players access to Wish when they free the djinn. With such a big reward on the line, the players are going to be stoked to try each of the puzzles and each success brings them one step closer. This is ingenious, as the characters are incentivized to do the dungeon because that’s their job but by showing players incredible rewards, just out of reach, the adventure hooks the players. Also, the ‘Final True Ending’ treasure is one of the most ambitious and cool toys I’ve ever seen being handed to players.
And Dapper Chap as well
The final part I have to sell this to you is I have e-mailed the creator. With reading his module, the development of my next one stalled. It was pretty hard to realize that despite feeling like I was close to finishing, I realized I was going to have to re-write the whole thing. I was looking for advice and directsun was nice enough to answer a few questions I had; such as, how to get started on Zines which seems to be the path for independant TTRPG designers. One of the things that bears on my mind is ethical creation and pointing the way to Zines may be what I’ll do to for the module I’m still developing.
One way to support my efforts if you decide to purchase Aberrant Reflections is by using my Affiliate Link. I receive a portion of the sale.
Another way is to sign up to my Patreon, in which I have re-created the stat blocks for 5th Edition Dungeons and Dragons. Creative details of the stat blocks have been scrubbed to not infringe on directsun’s module.
