An extremely wierd and evocative adventure and a great prequell to Veins Of The Earth. When I ran it, it started my campaign and was fondly remembered as the best adventure we ran.

I feel cheated that I downloadded the original version which is vague at best and then a revised version was released which seems to be abetter version explanation of the game.

With this adventure now becoming pay-what-you-want with the remaster (and physical book pre-order open here http://falsemachine.blogspot.com/2020/05/dco-remastered-pre-orders-are-open.html), I feel like its worth it to finally review this adventure, sorry it took so long, I forgot to do so after buying and running it!

To start, I paid for the physical version to be sent to me (which had the PDF included, so I was able to read through it a few ((hundred)) times before it arrived), which came in the form of a nondescript book that looks very simplistic, but with the very ominous front cover art you can see here.

Which is a good place to follow up: the art. Holy wow, the art is magnificent. Scrap Princess has done a marvellous job of encapsulating the truly creepy and weird nature of the whole adventure. Every single piece of art that I saw kept me engaged with how the adventure was playing out while prepping, which is a HUGE deal for adventures. Art is so important to keep a GM interested, otherwise it's just a bunch of text! From machines, monstrous creatures, to the PEOPLE! The people depicted in the book are frightening people, which further reinforces the desperate and gloomy nature of the inciting incident for the adventure.

Speaking of the inciting incident: the text. The text is constructed in such a fantastic way that, combined with the art I described, gives any reader a feeling of omnipresent doom and pessimism. This is NOT a nice place, and VERY bad things have happened, are happening, and will happen. The entire adventure just has this aura of dread, which was translated to my players.

How it went the first time I ran the adventure: great! They were creeped out. Thoroughly. I will submit to a little bit of hubris that I run horror adventures quite well, because I greatly enjoy them, thus they are presented effectively. But I could not even HOPE to come up with the kind of creepy, malicious and sometimes outright WEIRD things that DCO portrays. Without spoiling much: It has toads the size of obese men, people who have turned to cannibalism at the drop of a hat, which my players reacted to with extreme disgust, and had them realising just how AWFUL the sudden destruction and mayhem was that it turned the villages to such barbaric natures.

The titular Carbon Observatory? They wanted to leave. Immediately. As soon as they descended into it, they wanted out. They hated it in the best way. The descriptions given, the strange and terrible things inside each of the rooms creeped them out so much that they HAULED. XXX. out of there as soon as they got a sizeable chunk of treasure.

Buy this adventure, pre-order the physical copy, get the PDF from the new Deep Carbon Observatory: Remastered. It's incredible, fantastic, creepy, weird and well worth your cash.

The opening is incredibly fun, the rest is awkward, the boss monster is scary, the maps are awful. This game is explicitly for the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons system. Don't let people church it up, we're all playing dungeons and dragons heres.

Deep Carbon Observatory is a creepy, well crafted, creative campaign that can be used for any rule system (with some work). The adventure is challenging although generally linear till the very end, where there is a vast dungeon where a terrifying and overpowering creature hunts you. The feel and the material created in this is just shockingly creative. The art from Scrap princess at first glance looks like rushed sketches, but if you look closer you find it is so much more. The intent behind the art is to convey emotion and dynamics, while leaving it ambigious enough for you to imagine what it really does look like. A total masterpiece and evidence that the true sould of roleplaying games can only really be found in the OSR material. I played it with pathfinder 2e rules and it was amazing. If you have seasoned pen and paper players in your group, this material will feel totally fresh to them.

The softcover print of the material is well done and also serves as a piece of art. You can't go wrong with this purchase.

An Endzeitgeist.com review

This adventure clocks in at 90 pages, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page blank, 1 page ToC, 1 page back cover, leaving us with 85 pages, laid out in 6’’ by 9’’ (or A5), meaning that you can fit up to 4 pages on a sheet of paper.

So, this adventure assumes LotFP (Lamentations of the Flame Princess) rules and statblocks are provided – minimal ones for monsters (armor noted as analogue for armors, HD, HP, move and damage noted), and detailed ones for the Crows. Who or what are the Crows? Well, for that, I need to get into SPOILERS so please indulge me and wait a second.

Really cool: The adventure sports a timeline that spans multiple pages from 10.000 years in the past, up to the future – accounting for the horrific, surprisingly cataclysmic consequences that await, should the PCs fail herein. The module is intended for a low or mid level party – however, I’d strongly suggest running this with a group of approximately 3 – 4th level at the very least; 5 would also work; level 7 would probably make the module too easy. Anything below 5th level will result in copious amounts of PC deaths. A well-rounded party is pretty much required – this is NOT an easy module.

There is one component about the book, which, much like the prose, will be truly polarizing. This component would be the artwork. See that cover? I stumbled over it, and it haunted me. It basically demanded I buy this, creating a strange resonance. Scrap Princess has a unique aesthetic, and what some may consider doodles, I consider to be frantic and somewhat genius, vibrant and alive. The same goes for the isometric and sideview maps provided…which may also constitute one of the few detriments here.

I adore the maps, I really do – but they are hard to use at the table. While there are really cool fan maps (link at the bottom of my review on my site) provided, I cannot take these into account for my final verdict. This is not a module that you can run spontaneously. It requires careful deliberation and some map-drawing from the referee – unfortunately, we also get no key-less, player-friendly versions of the maps. In light of the unique style of these, this is a pity – I’d have loved to hand out progressively these as my PCs explore. Anyhow, if you’d need an analogue – where most LotFP-books, in aesthetics, hearken to Metal subcultures, this book, to me, reminded me of avant-garde, dark music – Throbbing Gristle, Psychic TV, Thorofon and the like, before Industrial aesthetics were subsumed into mainstream; it’s a bit like one of Joel Lane’s (R.I.P.) more frantic slipstream weird fiction short stories turned to a module.

The artwork, btw., is so important here, for I have rarely seen an example where artworks and prose engage in such a suitable fusion; Scrap Princess’ artwork feels like a perfect externalized visualization of Patrick Stuart’s prose. One final note on the artwork: While suffused with color, the PoD print version, alas, is b/w – I did not consider this to be a detriment, as I focused on the print version.

The prose herein, for once, is worthy of the moniker. To give you an example: “Rainbow coloured weeds droop rotting from the littoral zone. They overhang rich bandings of many-shaded stone, making a psychedelic halo of the valley like a veil. Sunlight gleams oddly in the steep valley-sides. Snatches of bright reflection. The floor looks like blue-grey mud. The sight is without sound and stinks like an airless tomb burning in the light of an unwanted sun. But, in the silence, movement worms. The whole place has the feel of a terrible revealing. Like a black sheet pulled back from a naked corpse.” One can see why some readers consider this adventure to be “grimdark” – a palpable sense of finality, of decay and endings, suffuses this book; but at the same time, there is beauty, and even humor, to be found within. I have scarcely seen prose used this well in an adventure – even the brief, staccato-like interludes of sentences like those employed here in the example, are chosen deliberately.

The adventure indeed manages to generate utterly unique images, visuals and moods – it has been a long, long time since I was this engaged when reading anything regarding modules – in fact, I found myself compartmentalizing the reading experience, slowly digesting the visuals evoked. This is dark, but it is a resplendent, ephemeral darkness that stands, wholly, on its own.

All right, this much regarding formal categories. However, one should also note that this adventure is also pretty diverse regarding the challenges faced. We begin with a catastrophe of vast proportions….and to discuss it, we have to go into the SPOILERS.

Potential players should jump ahead to the conclusion – you do NOT want to SPOIL this one.

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All right, only referees around? We begin this module with a crash. Literally. The dam has burst. Carrowmere lies submerged, and a 1-page flow-chart of things that happen, that can happen…and they are a panopticon of the myriad tragedies that can accompany within the context of such a catastrophe. 18 diverse encounters set the stage for things that range from the tragic to the wondrous. Food and theft, covert cannibals – some of these come with read-aloud text, traumatized folks that can only speak in denial and third person…there is, indeed, darkness and despair here – but there is also a wealthy man, who offer a fortune for the one thing he doesn’t have – a narrative that provides closure for the catastrophe.

However, PCs can’t truly dawdle; they only ever get to see a slice of the true dimension of the catastrophe (which means that this module does have a replay value!) – unbeknown to the PCs, at least for a while, there are the Crows. The Crows are a truly wicked group of psychotic adventurers; these rivals come fully stated, with excessively discussed and unique background stories and magic items, make for fantastic foils and also can act as a kind of timer. Per default, their progress is swift and methodical, though referees can adjust this factor, somewhat akin to “Better than Any Man,” without much issues. Echo By Frosen, for example, believes she can smell distrust; a nasty dwarf who stole a bow from a soul of a traumatized thief, whose body he trapped in a box beneath a glacier…oh, and he has no less than 6 different signature poisons…including liquid dyslexia. Zolushika Von Der Linth, the groups magic-user, has a unique snakewood staff and a displacement doll…oh, and the group gets detailed notes on tactics and “principles,” with nasty tactics noted. One of the best rival adventuring groups I have ever read.

Beyond Carrowmere lie the Drowned Lands – a wilderness trek up the stream, where gigantic pikes, a cow-sized killer platypus, house-sized horseshoe crabs and worse loom – including the turbine golems, once in charge of the dam, with polyhedral dice-shaped heads. These guards are doomed to fall, though – sooner or later… Beyond the diverse encounters available and the small stories and surreal components that are introduced here, we move to the first dungeon – the damn. As the PCs make their way past the remnants of a culture long gone, they can meet things in jars, berserker library-golems and strange beings…and then, the PCs witness the glory of the profundal zone, the second wilderness area.

Once flooded by the watermasses kept in check by the dam, we enter a land of wonder, of sub-aqueous landscapes, wondrous and dying under the glare of the light and exposure to air, where semi-intelligent, child-sized newts roam and fiendish-black bogmen, carapace’d in crystallized gold await confrontation. Ultimately, a huge, manufactured wound in the earth looms – the eponymous Deep Carbon Observatory.

Now, I did note before that doom looms if the PCs dawdle – the item that will threaten to break asunder the nations is not the primary “treasure” – it’s but one item left here, which, in the wrong hands (read: Those of the Crows) can result in tremendous ills…but there is more to be found within: Shriveled, desiccated myconids, spells of use for slaves (not statted – but reduce scars, hide sorrow, ease grief…speak a specific language…), hydraulic ooze-prisons, weighting stations with impossible weights (souls, innocence years, minutes of fear…), ray-reflecting materials, chambers housing tox-men that can create toxins lethal to anything or everyone, salt dryads, a hall of shells…there is so much wonder within this dungeon, it exceeds the amount of unique rooms and ideas found in some series (!!) of adventures! There is so much creativity here, a simple description of a geological sample made me smile with glee…and come up with a whole campaign-angle. “Ultra-compressed and tectonically warped bones of billions of vampires. The space between vampires is actually more vampires.“ (Yes, these little flourishes, weird and humorous, are intentional. Told you that this has a sense of humor!)

How could they be sustained? How did they meet their doom? It’s just a throwaway line, but much like the majority of this book, it is inspired. But how does this observatory work? Azimoths (kudos for the pun!) – moths that use infinite fractal compressions that annihilate awareness of space around them, creating a blind spot – the direction in which the moth flaps, ceases to exist for the observer, as the mind simply edits out that slice of space. The observatory uses these moths to look through the infinity of rocks, focusing the perspective of the user on the space between the edited components. This concept is amazing. Strange structures that change your position in relation to reality, clocks of geological time and a 3-page “you see”-table for spontaneous weirdness, 10 odd books…and there is the Giant. Immortal, white, creepy – caked in dust, capable of compressing into smallest regions, this thing is horrid, extremely powerful, and adds a great survival-horror angle to the exploration of the observatory itself.

Conclusion:

Editing and formatting are pretty good on a formal level; on a rules-language level, it is a bit basic, but does unique and creative things with these components. Layout adheres to a smooth one-column b/w-standard. The artwork, as noted before, is amazing and just as polarizing as the prose. I love it. Do you like the cover? Then you’ll like the interior artwork. The pdf version comes fully bookmarked for your convenience. I do own the PoD-version, which, while more grey than black, is a nice softcover…and this one is definitely worth owning in print. The maps, while aesthetically pleasing, are pretty tough on the GM – the excellent fan-made maps are highly-recommended for the final dungeon; still, as noted, I can’t include them in my rating. We do not get a proper player-friendly version of the maps, which is a tragedy of sorts as far as I’m concerned.

So, here’s the thing. To my knowledge, this is Patrick Stuart’s first book. Seriously, for this book alone, I’ll be eternally grateful to Zzarchov Kowolski, who btw. commissioned this module.

Let me spell it out, with abundant clarity:

Deep Carbon Observatory is a masterpiece. It is raw; it is not easy to run. It’s not convenient. I wouldn’t recommend this for novice referees. It’s also no happy-go-lucky fantasy, so if that’s your cup of tea, you probably won’t like it. The map support is absolutely not up to the ideal, aesthetics notwithstanding. This, alone, should cost this adventure a star.

Deep Carbon Observatory is, however, one of the best and most inspiring instances of incredibly concise, filler-less adventure-writing I have ever seen. There is more inspiration in some of the non-sequitur lines within than in a lot of whole adventure-series, heck, in whole mega-adventures. It is raw, but its unbridled creativity, its vast ambition, its, at the same time, nightmarish and gorgeous, funny and sad vistas stuck with me. They remain with me beyond reading, beyond playing. It delivers, in spades, a sense of jamais-vu, a distinct authorial (meant in the truest and most well-intentioned sense of the word), uncompromising vision of something that is wondrous, weird…alien, even…that is strange and UNIQUE. Much like the eponymous observatory, one almost feels like this book is a lens, like its pages are suffused with Azimoths, blending out the surroundings while allowing us a glimpse at a world that had me craving more.

There is no adventure like this in my vast collection of roleplaying modules.

If you haven’t already, get it. This is ART, yes, but it is also a MODULE; and these components, for once, are not in conflict with one another. Yes, this can polarize; perhaps you’ll hate it for its clunky rawness…but you won’t be left shrugging your shoulders. This demands being engaged, it can’t not elicit a response.

Deep Carbon Observatory belongs into the library of every ardent fan of RPGs; if you even remotely enjoy the unconventional and weird, if you even remotely like dark material, then consider this to be a top priority indeed. This module was released 2014, and had I known about it back then, it would have made my personal Top Ten list. I consider this to be one of the best adventures I have read in the last 10 years. Even if you have no interest whatsoever in old-school gaming, this is well worth getting for the incredible density of truly creative ideas – which, ultimately, no reviewer would be able to replicate and convey. I, at least, can’t – I have merely scratched the surface of what makes this fantastic in the truest sense of the word.

So yeah, 5 stars + seal of approval, in spite of the map-issue. I’d give it 6 if I could.

Endzeitgeist out.

This is a review based on running DCO. DCO turns the modern adventure design paradigm on it's head- where telling rather than showing is the norm, and word count and bloat buries what the "core idea" or concept so deep that the running adventures is more like reading from a text book that helping the GM bring the concept to life. For an adventure of its size, DCO has now been run for about 4 months in my campaign with the PCs facing dilemmas, challenges and having to use good thinking to overcome obstacles. Not only is there a sense of wonder and creativity but the action is taunt with multiple factions in play and the adventure opening up a whole new world. Needless to say, DCO has become my players base of operations, and perhaps the beginings of a new power center. Running DCO is challenging because of the space it allows and expects the GM to flex. This is why everyone should run it because it will make you a better GM and the same for your players. For someone running games for 20+ years, this is one of the best adventures I have ever run. Also, study the maps- they are not linear like what most of us are used to. A+!

Deep Carbon Observatory is very rich on atmosphere. So much so that "the dungeon" of the adventure only sets up a slight portion of the adventure. Combat definitely takes a back seat in this adventure, but this isn't to say that it is non-existent or that there is very little threat to the PCs. In fact there is quite a lot of threat to the PCs.

The book is laid out rather organically. As GM you are introduced to things in much the same way and pace as the players are. As a result it is a rather "fun" read that had me asking questions and wanting to keep reading to find the answers until the very end where a handy timeline of events serves to tie things together as a sort of "big reveal" The downside of this is that it is not a quick and easy pick up and run adventure. Even getting to see "the big picture" as a GM, nothing is outright told to you, you have to figure out a lot of the connections of things on your own. This is definitely an adventure where as GM you are going to have to be taking notes before, during, and after the adventure. After? I hear you ask. Yes, the adventure has some definite world affecting consequences. On the bright side, most of these effects really only occur if the players choose to not be actively engaged in the adventure. There are several really clever ideas here, but the big take away is that the adventure does not exist in a vacuum frozen in time awaiting the adventurers to awaken it. The adventure is very organic and could very well resolve itself without any player involvement.

Art is some nice pencil work that conveys a lot of character, the maps have no scale which I feel is a failing. The authors stress that it is very important to know how many days of food the players have, but provide very little guidance on how long it should take to traverse the various terrain.

From here on out spoilers. You've been warned.

The adventure is broken into five parts.

The first bit throws the adventurers into the action, and keeps them occupied meeting several colorful characters. This is a fun different way of introducing the area, and providing one of three hooks to continue on to the rest of the adventure. Although not overtly stated, probably the most important part of this is to introduce the fact that the area is flooded, and everyone is in bad shape.

The next parts involve the travel up river, then the dam, and the drained lake. All these environments are probably very alien to the players. The flood has radically changed the "normal" of the path up river. Things from the lake now traverse the area. Everything is flooded necessitating travel by boat or a very wet walk for a very long time. The dam takes the normal dungeon crawl idea and throws it on its side because almost everything has been upturned by the water- traps are already sprung and locked doors are opened. The drained lake again presents an alien atmosphere of an ecology turned on its head.

and then into the observatory.

I would hope that the PCs would take note of the fact that someone built a dam to keep this place inaccessible under water. Of course that won't keep them out.

Here is a great opportunity to explore the remains of the observatory and the dark elves that once occupied it.

Finally the adventure ends with a timeline of what happened in the past and what will happen if the PCs don't get involved. So really you could throw this adventure hook at them and have them completely ignore it and then have it come back to bite them in the rear years later in your campaign. The timeline tracks the progress of another adventuring party interested in the observatory as well as a witch that is an encounter earlier. With the unfolding of these two parties without PC involvement is really becomes evident that the tracking of time is important in this adventure. The ration tracking is just as important as there isn't an easy way to re-stock these items and a party may end up quitting the adventure or starving to death if not prepared.

Not every answer is given in the adventure, some just don't get answered. What caused the dam to brake, and where did the dark elves go is kind of beyond the scope of the adventure, but may be something to address in your own running of the game.

http://wherearemydice.blogspot.de/2016/11/product-review-deep-carbon-observatory.html

I really like the morally tough decisions the party has to make. It also contains a lot of little really clever weird elements. The only negative pint are the maps, which are atmosspheric, but not user friendly.

I loved this. Its totally dark full of Weirdness and a little scary. It will be a little bit of a challenge to DM, but I am excited to try. It's pretty harsh though, so fair warning.

I will be toning down the opposition a little or it will be a near certain TPK, which I think is no fun. Or mb. just not as fun.

But totally recomended!

In the typical LotFP fashion, the "winning" scenario is damn near impossible, the adventure contains numerous devices which screw player characters royally, and is grimdark to a fault, replacing wit and imagination with tragedy and cruel jokes. Your characters might as well just stay in the tavern, tea house, inn, or drug den. Better yet, tell your referee to lighten up or replace your referee, and stop pulling these tasteless, depressing pranks on you and the rest of the players.

I felt like putrid river silt had covered my soul and somehow gotten lodged in my brain after reading it over (in a good way). :) I'm looking forward to running it at my local con this year.

I have the PDF and the physical book of this and it is a fine piece of OSR art. There are some good ideas here, but it is a jumbled mass of artistically written sentences and not an easy to run or even read module. I want something I can grab and use after a quick read and not mess around trying to figure things out. I've noticed the trend in stuff like Carcosa/Quelong and the like to not really describe the core adventure in the beginning and have the GM figure out what's going on from reading the encounters, but this took it too far. Even higher prep stuff like NSFW is fairly easy to understand what's going on and what the core adventure is. This, I'm still not so sure. That said, I think this feels like a good freshman effort that lacked a solid editor to challenge the writer to make their ideas more clear and realize that while this is a piece of art, it's also got to function for the DM to be playable. This leans far too much on the art side for me (as the GM). Lastly, my players are murderhobos through and through. They kill 'monsters' and take gold and valuables from wilderness areas to get XP, they're not going to save anybody in a river unless there is a lot of obvious loot. The system this is written for (LoTFP or B/X) completely encourages this style of play, so the initial hook is a tough one.

I think the art is good, the cover especially and I would like to see more from this author.

Reading through Deep Carbon Observatory, I find it very interesting-- it has an excellent set of concise encounter descriptions, a solid encounter progression, and tons of flavor without overwhelming the adventure. The aftermath of the flood alone is just fantastic. The layout and art are spartan, but do an excellent job of conveying the feel of the adventure. This feels like a labor of love, and I find those often have the most inspiration. :D

If you run any system that focuses on a D&D style of play (OSR to 3.5 to 2E to 4E to Pathfinder and heck, Next, with honorable mention to C&C and Savage Worlds, possibly Dungeon World) you can run this adventure with modest adjustment, and it looks like it's going to be a great time, broken across many sessions. You're definitely going to get your $10 worth out of this PDF.

I plan on picking up the treeware, once it's available. I recommend you do the same.

Let me start by saying that, while not without its flaws, Deep Carbon Observatory might just be my favorite "DIY," self-published adventure module. This is a unique creation that is superior than most from conception through execution. Nontheless, while my enthusiasm for the material tempts me to give it a perfect rating, I'm going to hold back in the hopes of providing a review that would be useful to any potential buyer that would actually intend to DM the adventure as written.

The compelling concept, the imaginative vision, and Stuart's comendable writing are what really set DCO apart from the crowd. DCO was clearly a labor of love for the author; the excellent work on his falsemachine blog is a testament to his obsession with fleshing out and even re-invisioning the Underdark. Though I have no doubt other, perhaps even more ambitious works in this vein will follow from Stuart, DCO might be seen as something of a culmination of his public work at this point in time. Many of the ideas first presented on his blog regarding Underdark denizens make appearances in DCO, and the wierd, gloomy atmosphere set by his evocative blog posts pervades the module as well.

In fact, the consistent mood of bleak dread and otherwordly mystery is perhaps the strongest feature of the product. The reader can't help but be caught up in wonder of the scenario; reading along, I felt as if I were the adventurer myself, eagerly uncovering one secret after another (though, of course, without the constant fear of a horrible, lonely death!). This is largely due to Stuart's superior writing ability; this is an author that truly has a way with words, infusing many of his descriptions with not just cleverness, but with a poetic language that I just do not find in most RPG adventure writing I've read. While this level of writing was not consistent throughout the entire module, the times where it did hit those high notes provided me with a great deal of inspiration and a real desire to incorporate this into my campaign (or even use as the basis for a new one). Equally rare is Stuart's ability to create of sense doom and awe without descending into pointless gore, overwrought "wierdness," or ham-handed attempts to shock the reader for sake of being "edgy." He also manages to creatre scenarios that put the PCs in serious danger, yet I never got the sense that he was going for some kind of PC body count or trying to unreasonably screw the players.

Without giving away much of the plot (in case you're the rare player that is module-shopping for a DM or you just enjoy an unspoiled readthrough), I'll say that the full adventure offers a great deal of variety. An interesting chart of possible events, based on PC decisions, provides hooks and lead to short- and long-term consequences. Following this jump-off point is an overland journey that provides several unique encounters with opportunities for treasure, confrontation, and the unveiling of mysteries. After this, a short dungeon and an exotic locale precede the final delve into the Observatory itself, a memorable location that I found excellently envisioned from Stuart's borrowing of the ominous name to his design of a complex that players will both dread but love to explore. And trust me, there is plently here to both dread and marvel at, and all I will say is that your players are not likely to forget their excursion into this strange and silent domain. During all this, the machinations of an NPC party, whether known to the PCs or not, provide a sense of urgency and even the potential for dire ramifications for a campaign setting.

The artwork accompanying will likely meet with a divided audience. I found Scrap Princesses' unique style very appropriate for the material. My reaction to individual pieces was mixed; some drawing were evocative and helped me envision the subject matter (including a few amazing, stand-out illustrations), while others fell flat and seemed to do little for the module other than fill space.

Moving beyond the more aesthetic qualities, the mechanical aspects of the module are also a mixed bag. I appreciate that this is a module that expects the DM to do some legwork on everything from maps to monsters to background. I write much of my own adventure material, hate stat blocks, and am fine with filling in the blanks as suits my campaign, but I understand that not all buyers will fill this way, especially given a $10 price tag. I mention this in the interest of fairness to such buyers; just be advised this is not a fully "ready-to-run" product, though it does come close depending on your specific needs. There are other incomplete aspects I'm less inclined to hand-wave away. The "rough sketch" nature of the maps worked well for a couple but left me hanging on others, trying to piece together rhyme-or-reason with the aid of the room descriptions. While I realize this too was likely intentional, I would say, for me, that it is often easier to create maps from scratch than it is to reconstruct one from an incomplete or unclear description.

Another source of occasional frustration as the scattered layout of the background details and explanatory material for various monsters, rooms, set-pieces, etc. This is a common complaint I have with many DIY adventure modules I've read; the module unfolds like a mystery to the reader, revealing a detail at a time, usually requiring re-reads and deciphering to finally achieve some kind of an understanding of the modules secrets. While this makes for an engaging and fun read on your first time through, it can make for a hassle if one actually DMs the adventure. I'm not sure if these techniques are employed to avoid the dreaded "front-loading" of background material or just serve to highlight the cleverness of the author by inspiring numerous "hmmmm.....AHA!" moments, but in terms of practical functionality, I find this style only makes the DMs task harder.

Ultimately, this is a module that many DMs will find an irresistable addition to their table, and many others will enjoy a great read and a source of inspiration. Those not used to the quirks of DIY modules may be turned off, but I think the concept and writing here are strong enough to make this a product that will appeal to many RPG camps, regardless of edition. CongratulatiThis is a job well done; Stuart's vision of the Underdark is the one I want in my campaign.