On the Island of Claudius’ Cove, nothing is bigger than Halloween.
Trick-or-treaters sail in from far and wide to experience the festival, eat the delicious sweets, and have a spook-tastic time. This year, tragedy has struck. Someone has stolen all the honey, all the eggs, all the flour and sugar in town! During the robbery, someone heard the beekeeper, Julius, scream and no one has seen him since.
A Special Treat for All Hallows’ Eve!
This 20-page adventure is a fun Halloween romp designed for kids, but it’s got plenty for players of all ages. The premise is whimsical, the monster design is a delight, and with a mini-dungeon spanning 13 rooms, it’s well-suited to a Halloween one-shot or, in my case, a Con module I can keep in my back pocket.
Worth noting: this is Possum Print Games’s sixth publication, and if you read the review of their very first adventure here, you can see Bryce Lynch pulled no punches in his critique. This caper demonstrates a lot of growth. The prose is tighter, and the author is more willing to dwell in a whimsy that can’t help but make you smile, rather than drier, less inspiring prose that Bryce critiques in their first work.
Review
The monsters are where this adventure truly shines. I love every single one. Honey-glazed skeletons will bash you upside the head with cast-iron skillets. The manic rats nibble at you, and if you fail your save, you’re infected by what they’re infected with – as is the tradition of OSR rats being pesky disease vectors – but what you’ll incur is a sugar rush! Fun. Custard crawlers are dopey slugs that can be bribed with paper snacks. Meringue Men want to, and will, headbutt you, but their delicate meringue-shell heads crack and they become brittle for it. It’s very quirky, with a strong sense of joyful absurdity throughout.
The map is Jacquaysed quite well, despite a low room count of 13 that you just can’t do all that much with.
Since the author also has to use environmental storytelling to convey that this is someone’s cellar, that they’ve been doing experiments down here, and that the place is a bit of a dump, they have little space to do more standard dungeoneering features such as factions, magic pools, complex traps, choke points, and the like. What can be done, the author has done. The end result is a flavorful location-based adventure. I do question the utility of the Random Occurrences procedure included in the book – with a 1-in-6 chance of something happening every turn and only 13 rooms, there’s a very real chance you’ll only get one or two Occurrences before you’re done. I’d recommend the referee to pick their two favorite entries rather than rolling, since there’s so little time before the adventure is over.
Without spoiling them, all the magic items are as delightful as the monsters and will make children and adults alike giggle. Magic items appear to be a long-time strength of Possum Print Games. Bryce captures it well in his review of their first publication:
“The Golden Eel Mouthpiece An exquisite, hollow golden eel. When held in the mouth, the wielder can breath underwater and swim twice as fast as usual. However, these effects only work in saltwater.” That feels real, yeah? The description, proper, is quite short but great, and while it mentions an effect it doesn’t belabour mechanics. Great magic item!
Conclusion
A charming, well-crafted Halloween module. Despite being very silly, it embraces silliness as strength – a decision that pays off in spades, I think. It’s a bit short to fully capture that dungeoneering feel, but it fills out a one-shot nicely and suits the holidays well. The items you loot from this adventure, should you keep them for future campaigns, will only make them more enjoyable.
Addendum: Bestiary Supplement!
I loved the monsters so much that I’ve included an Adversary Roster and Bestiary for them HERE. Feel free to use it as a supplement when you run the module; it should make running the adventure easier.
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