Note Failure — Tavern of the lost
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 youWhen it comes to Sandbox games, I have stressed the importance of organization. You need to be able to jump back and forth between notes promptly. You don’t need to be gas, gas, gas all the time; however, as the Director, we have to manage the peaks and valleys of the game. What you don’t want is a flatline. Taking too long to find your notes will have your players slowly losing immersion, turning to their phones for the latest technology in shitposting and eventual disinterest. Sometimes you will fail, most of the time it will be on your notes. Here, with Note Failure, I will note the failure in my notes so you may avoid such a fate.
Deadly Tavern that isn’t a Mimic
With that in mind, I recently ran The Tavern of the Lost adventure. It is one of a few scenarios Ghostfire Gaming put forth to help sell the mood of Grim Hollow. If you do want dark fantasy in your game world, I highly recommend the Grim Hollow Campaign Guide which is where I found this adventure.
Looking at the Page-to-Prep count, the adventure is thirteen pages long and I managed to get it down to 3.
The Tavern of the Lost is a Puzzle and Social dungeon. Social dungeons have you navigating the people instead of rooms. Writing one line for each of the NPCs as a refresher quickly fills up space. One of the failures I noticed was that a group of characters are introduced in the first room. Dramatis Personae was listed on the 2nd page. Luckily, I bolded names and italicized desires to quickly identify what makes this NPC unique. In the moment, while I was looking for them in my notes, I saw the NPC list easily. That’s a win, but it could have been avoided with a front page placement.
Davy Jones’ Map for Ants
The map was too dark. Sure, it looks great in the Grim Hollow Campaign Guide page. When I copy and pasted the map from PDF into LibreOffice, I should have taken it in paint.net and made alterations. The green on dark green text didn’t help for identifying which rooms were which. I should have typed over with white text, thereby making it glaringly obvious what everything said.
With clean line work and fantastic ideas, there’s a reason why Dyson Logos’ brilliant maps are universally recommended. Of course, there is always the Pointcrawl Dungeon championed by Murkdice. I normally suggest Pointcrawls for Underdark exploration, because there’s nowhere to go but the next room. Which, now that I’ve said aloud, makes Pointcrawl Dungeons make a lot more sense. They can be easily made and without any artistic requirements.
The final issue from the too dark map was the lack of micro notations. The ‘this square is where the trap is’ or ‘this is where the dead body is’. There were a few of those that were left unlabeled on the map; I should have put a letter in white on the map. If I had done that, there were a few aspects I wouldn’t need to panic search my notes for.
The Great Escape
Double checking my notes of The Tavern of the Lost for writing this article, I realized I made an error. I don’t sweat this one too much because my players had fun during the escape attempt. I didn’t have the steps required to execute the puzzle, so when it failed to jump out at me in my notes, I just went with whatever felt appropriate. The party’s solution was a bit unconventional but I am fine with that, that’s the whole point of a puzzle dungeon. This one would’ve kept me up at night more if it weren’t for directsun’s permission in their Aberrant Reflections puzzle dungeon.
If you’re unfamiliar with my ranting and raving over how much I loved this one, I have previously written a review.
In Summary
Dramatis Personae on Page 1 for Social Dungeons
Forget the dark map’s mood, use bright maps to see
List the escape route key
