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What's That Smell?, by John Wick, is a fun little adventure that I would recommended to any GM of a fantasy setting.

Style

What's That Smell? is a 32 page perfect bound (not stapled), soft-cover adventure. The illustrations and maps, by Thomas Denmark, are crisp and clean. They are all relevant to the accompanying text and help to clearly convey the relevant points of the adventure. I have no criticisms about the amount of material in the book; the text is of a decent size, making it easy to refer to during a game session, but the margins are quite small so there's a goodly amount of text on the page.

My one complaint about the presentation of the adventure is the back cover: It has almost no information about the actual content of the module. It is, of course, difficult to write a summary of this adventure without giving away any important details, but I feel that more could have been done to try to woo prospective buyers into picking up this adventure. While this does not affect the quality of the adventure itself, it could prevent GMs from picking up this module.

Since its a location based adventure, most of What's That Smell? is spent describing the various areas where the adventure takes place. The descriptions are broken down into four sections: "Run-Down," "Set-Up," "Action," and "Follow-Up". "Run-Down" gives a basic list of bullet points of what happens in that area. "Set-Up" is the flavor text that the GM is supposed to read the players upon entering a new area. "Action" describes what actually is going on in the area, while "Follow-Up" describes the various options that the players might choose to take and how the GM can handle them. This division makes it very easy to identify what is going on in each section, although there is some unnecessary duplication of information between the "Run-Down" and "Action" sections.

Content

So, what's What's That Smell? about? At its core, the adventure presents a scenario where the players stumble across a deserted halfling village and then must investigate to find out what happened to the villagers.

Warning! Spoilers follow:

Upon exploration, the players discover a series of subterranean tunnels that contain strange creatures, the skitzee, who communicate solely by smell. These creatures are, in fact, extra-dimensional, summoned here through a giant dimensional portal. The ultimate goal of the adventure is to close this dimensional portal and deal with these creatures.

The adventure is broken down into two sections: The halfling village and the catacombs. In the halfling village, the adventure attempts to build a sense of dread and foreboding. There's a nice table of random descriptions for when the players search various homes that helps lend an air of authenticity, and a sense that the village was rapidly abandoned. There are also a few tiny hints here on how to fight the skitzee, which alert players may notice and use later to their advantage.

The bulk of the adventure takes place in the catacombs. This is where What's That Smell? truly comes into its own. The catacombs consist of a total 11 areas which are not necessarily on a fixed map. The recommended option is that the dimensional portal causes the catacombs to continually shift and rearrange themselves. To accommodate this, the adventure includes a two-page spread with half size maps of the areas. You can simply photocopy each map, enlarging by 200 percent, to get miniature ready maps, complete with one-inch squares marked on them. You then turn these maps upside down, shuffle them up, and each time the players enter a new area, you randomly select one. It's best to do this in secret so the players don't catch on too soon to what's really going on.

At the players travel deeper into the catacombs, they will discover the fate of the halflings and are likely to discover the true nature of the skitzee. What's That Smell? does a very good job of providing the GM with information on how to play the skitzee, who have no senses other than smell. The players are likely to be baffled initially when the skitzee are not fooled by their invisibility spells or their most stealthy approach. They will likely figure out something is up when the skitzee release a yellow slime that smells of rotten eggs every time before they attack, one of the eight sample communication smells included in the adventure. The adventure includes suggestions for possible responses that the skitzee might take to the new smells that the players produce. For example, the smell of smoke from torches could in fact provide nourishment for the skitzee, making them flock around the torchbearer.

The dimensional portal that brought the skitzee onto this plane also brought a group of adventures from yet another dimension. Of course, these aren't just any adventures, they bear a striking resemblance to the party, yet with one crucial difference: They are all evil. Ideas are included for having the evil party surreptitiously track the players' party and even replace one member with their evil twin if they happen to wander off alone. This provides an excellent role-playing opportunity for all involved but requires very close cooperation between the chosen player and the GM. It's also made clear that if the characters have taken too much damage from their encounters with the skitzee, the GM can simply leave off the evil party of adventurers for another day. Perhaps they came through the portal but have already left the halfling village and are causing mayhem nearby.

Multi-Module

One big claim of What's That Smell? is that it is a Multi-Module: "Never the same game twice." What does this mean exactly? It means that the module is designed so the GM can alter some of the assumptions behind the plot and change how the module works. For example, the layout of the catacombs is random (and there is even a sample map of all the elements of the catacombs put together in case the GM doesn't like the idea of a random map). The question of how the dimensional portal opened in the first place is also available for GM customization. While several options are provided, the GM is free to decide who summoned the skitzee and why.

Finally, the skitzee themselves are part of the Multi-Module concept; the GM has the choice of making them good, neutral, or evil. Good skitzee try to repair the dimensional portal and return themselves home; evil skitzee wish to take over this newfound world and attack the players on site; neutral skitzee are perhaps the least interesting, simply wanting to survive and not caring much about the players unless they try to attack. The alignment of the skitzee will affect the entire tone of the adventure. If the skitzee are evil then the adventure turns into a relatively standard dungeon crawl. If, on the other hand, the skitzee are good, then the adventure takes on a far more nuanced character. What happens when the players discover that they've been slaughtering good creatures in the mistaken impression that they are evil monsters?

The good

So, whats actually good about this adventure? The basic premise is certainly interesting and will keep the players on their toes. The simple act of trying to communicate with creatures that only respond to smell is a challenge in and of itself.

The idea of the Multi-Module is also good since it keeps the adventure fresh if the GM wants to run it multiple times. While I'm not advocating running the same adventure for the same group several times, a GM may wish to run a new group of players through this adventure, since it is quite good. By changing how the skitzee react and what the players need to do to close the portal, the GM can elicit a completely new set of responses from a new group of players. This also allows the GM to customize the adventure to his particular group's tastes. Need a quick and dirty adventure similar to Aliens? Then choose to make the skitzee evil and intelligent. You think the players want the challenges of role-playing with the skitzee and facing a traitor within their midst? Then make the skitzee either neutral or good and play up the role of the evil party of adventurers.

The GM advice sprinkled throughout the module is also top-notch. The players have the opportunity to run into a retired halfling adventurer and the role-playing tips for this character are quite evocative, giving the GM a real feel for how to have this character put on a complete air of superiority to the "wet behind the ears" adventurers.

The bad

Although I liked this adventure overall, I did have a few problems with certain aspects of it. While I like the idea of the random map for the catacombs, I fear that making it truly random could lead to large problems. What if the first room that the players came to after entering was in fact the portal, which they should likely encounter last? While this problem is easily rectified by selecting the areas in secret and keeping certain key areas out of the draw until later in the adventure, I would have liked this option to be explicitly stated in the module.

While I also like the idea of the evil mirror adventure party, I have a couple problems with it. First off, it seems rather overpowered. If a straight out fight between the two parties occured, this encounter would be a CR equal to the party's level plus four. Assuming that the opposing party was played just as effectively as the players own characters, one would assume that they would have a 50-50 of winning or losing the battle. Additionally, the opposing party may have replaced one of the players with one of its own members. In this situation, the players could be subjected to an ambush where they are outnumbered, with little chance of success. While this is not necessarily how this section of the adventure needs to happen, it's certainly a possibility if the GM doesn't pay particular attention. Secondly, the whole idea of a twin, evil party seems slightly out of place here. The focus of the adventure is clearly the skitzee and attempting to close the portal. I fear that the idea of this mirror party will seem to come out of nowhere and that the players will see it simply as a cheap trick, an allusion to the Star Trek episode "Mirror, Mirror."

There also seems to be severe lack of open gaining content in this module. The only actual open content is the stat blocks of the creatures and NPCs in the adventure. None of the traps or special areas in the catacombs are released as open gaming content. While I don't usually care about what is or is not released as open content, the severe lack of open content struck me as odd, at least in comparison to the other d20 modules that I've seen.

My main objection to the adventure, however, is its tone. John Wick has admitted that he wrote this module to show how a d20 adventure should be written. There's nothing wrong with this in and of itself, but it seems like he included a certain disdain for what he considered the stereotypical D&D player. Examples: He sees fit to include an expensive gold ring on the body of a dead halfling but then points out that the GM should remind anyone who take set that "stealing from a corpse is a sin in most religions... except those the adventurers adhere to, of course." He also includes a full floor plan and description of the house of the retired adventurer mentioned above. While he does include one interesting, tension-building scene of a noisy cat, John Wick seems to assume that the players will search the house top to bottom for treasure. One whole page, in fact, is devoted to the devious traps that protect the adventurer's treasure. Finally, the GM is encouraged to tell the players before they enter the catacombs that since they have already looted the house (he doesn't even seem to consider the option that they won't have fully looted the house), there is no more loot to be had and that they could simply turn back now and not have to deal with the what happened to the halfling village. It seems as if he felt that he could not sell a d20 adventure without including a certain amount of treasure in it, a concept he personally objected to. This objection led him to sprinkle snide comments throughout the adventure. While these jabs don't detract from the material in the adventure, they did spoil my mood while I was reading it, decreasing my overall enjoyment of the module.

Finally, there are the (unfortunately expected) typos and errors. One of the NPCs, a second level rogue, only has one out of her three saving throws calculated correctly. I also find it a bit odd that the description of the commoner halflings that are trapped in the catacombs states that they are in very bad shape and are down to only five hit points. If they are down to "only five" hit points from being in such bad shape, I hate to ask how many points they had to begin with.

End Spoilers

Conclusion

I don't want to give the impression that I'm disappointed with this module, far from it. It has a very interesting premise and, overall, is quite well executed. Yes, I do have some problems with a few sections of the module, but they don't affect the overall viability or usability of this adventure. If youre a GM looking for something new to throw at your players, you won't go wrong in choosing What's That Smell? You just have to be prepared to wade through some rather condescending remarks, which, unfortunately, reduced its style rating down to three.

What's That Smell?
What's That Smell? Capsule Review by Matt Clay on 05/08/02 Style: 3 (Average) Substance: 4 (Meaty) A fun d20 fantasy mystery/horror adventure that will keep your players guessing and their characters holding their noses. Product: What's That Smell? Author: John Wick, Morgan Gray, & Thomas Denmark Category: RPG Company/Publisher: Wicked Press Line: Multi-Module Cost: $10 Page count: 32 Year published: 2001 ISBN: 0970301316 SKU: WDP 2001 Comp copy?: no Capsule Review by Matt Clay on 05/08/02 Genre tags: Fantasy	What's That Smell?, by John Wick, is a fun little adventure that I would recommended to any GM of a fantasy setting. Style What's That Smell? is a 32 page perfect bound (not stapled), soft-cover adventure. The illustrations and maps, by Thomas Denmark, are crisp and clean. They are all relevant to the accompanying text and help to clearly convey the relevant points of the adventure. I have no criticisms about the amount of material in the book; the text is of a decent size, making it easy to refer to during a game session, but the margins are quite small so there's a goodly amount of text on the page. My one complaint about the presentation of the adventure is the back cover: It has almost no information about the actual content of the module. It is, of course, difficult to write a summary of this adventure without giving away any important details, but I feel that more could have been done to try to woo prospective buyers into picking up this adventure. While this does not affect the quality of the adventure itself, it could prevent GMs from picking up this module. Since its a location based adventure, most of What's That Smell? is spent describing the various areas where the adventure takes place. The descriptions are broken down into four sections: "Run-Down," "Set-Up," "Action," and "Follow-Up". "Run-Down" gives a basic list of bullet points of what happens in that area. "Set-Up" is the flavor text that the GM is supposed to read the players upon entering a new area. "Action" describes what actually is going on in the area, while "Follow-Up" describes the various options that the players might choose to take and how the GM can handle them. This division makes it very easy to identify what is going on in each section, although there is some unnecessary duplication of information between the "Run-Down" and "Action" sections. Content So, what's What's That Smell? about? At its core, the adventure presents a scenario where the players stumble across a deserted halfling village and then must investigate to find out what happened to the villagers. Warning! Spoilers follow: Upon exploration, the players discover a series of subterranean tunnels that contain strange creatures, the skitzee, who communicate solely by smell. These creatures are, in fact, extra-dimensional, summoned here through a giant dimensional portal. The ultimate goal of the adventure is to close this dimensional portal and deal with these creatures. The adventure is broken down into two sections: The halfling village and the catacombs. In the halfling village, the adventure attempts to build a sense of dread and foreboding. There's a nice table of random descriptions for when the players search various homes that helps lend an air of authenticity, and a sense that the village was rapidly abandoned. There are also a few tiny hints here on how to fight the skitzee, which alert players may notice and use later to their advantage. The bulk of the adventure takes place in the catacombs. This is where What's That Smell? truly comes into its own. The catacombs consist of a total 11 areas which are not necessarily on a fixed map. The recommended option is that the dimensional portal causes the catacombs to continually shift and rearrange themselves. To accommodate this, the adventure includes a two-page spread with half size maps of the areas. You can simply photocopy each map, enlarging by 200 percent, to get miniature ready maps, complete with one-inch squares marked on them. You then turn these maps upside down, shuffle them up, and each time the players enter a new area, you randomly select one. It's best to do this in secret so the players don't catch on too soon to what's really going on. At the players travel deeper into the catacombs, they will discover the fate of the halflings and are likely to discover the true nature of the skitzee. What's That Smell? does a very good job of providing the GM with information on how to play the skitzee, who have no senses other than smell. The players are likely to be baffled initially when the skitzee are not fooled by their invisibility spells or their most stealthy approach. They will likely figure out something is up when the skitzee release a yellow slime that smells of rotten eggs every time before they attack, one of the eight sample communication smells included in the adventure. The adventure includes suggestions for possible responses that the skitzee might take to the new smells that the players produce. For example, the smell of smoke from torches could in fact provide nourishment for the skitzee, making them flock around the torchbearer. The dimensional portal that brought the skitzee onto this plane also brought a group of adventures from yet another dimension. Of course, these aren't just any adventures, they bear a striking resemblance to the party, yet with one crucial difference: They are all evil. Ideas are included for having the evil party surreptitiously track the players' party and even replace one member with their evil twin if they happen to wander off alone. This provides an excellent role-playing opportunity for all involved but requires very close cooperation between the chosen player and the GM. It's also made clear that if the characters have taken too much damage from their encounters with the skitzee, the GM can simply leave off the evil party of adventurers for another day. Perhaps they came through the portal but have already left the halfling village and are causing mayhem nearby. Multi-Module One big claim of What's That Smell? is that it is a Multi-Module: "Never the same game twice." What does this mean exactly? It means that the module is designed so the GM can alter some of the assumptions behind the plot and change how the module works. For example, the layout of the catacombs is random (and there is even a sample map of all the elements of the catacombs put together in case the GM doesn't like the idea of a random map). The question of how the dimensional portal opened in the first place is also available for GM customization. While several options are provided, the GM is free to decide who summoned the skitzee and why. Finally, the skitzee themselves are part of the Multi-Module concept; the GM has the choice of making them good, neutral, or evil. Good skitzee try to repair the dimensional portal and return themselves home; evil skitzee wish to take over this newfound world and attack the players on site; neutral skitzee are perhaps the least interesting, simply wanting to survive and not caring much about the players unless they try to attack. The alignment of the skitzee will affect the entire tone of the adventure. If the skitzee are evil then the adventure turns into a relatively standard dungeon crawl. If, on the other hand, the skitzee are good, then the adventure takes on a far more nuanced character. What happens when the players discover that they've been slaughtering good creatures in the mistaken impression that they are evil monsters? The good So, whats actually good about this adventure? The basic premise is certainly interesting and will keep the players on their toes. The simple act of trying to communicate with creatures that only respond to smell is a challenge in and of itself. The idea of the Multi-Module is also good since it keeps the adventure fresh if the GM wants to run it multiple times. While I'm not advocating running the same adventure for the same group several times, a GM may wish to run a new group of players through this adventure, since it is quite good. By changing how the skitzee react and what the players need to do to close the portal, the GM can elicit a completely new set of responses from a new group of players. This also allows the GM to customize the adventure to his particular group's tastes. Need a quick and dirty adventure similar to Aliens? Then choose to make the skitzee evil and intelligent. You think the players want the challenges of role-playing with the skitzee and facing a traitor within their midst? Then make the skitzee either neutral or good and play up the role of the evil party of adventurers. The GM advice sprinkled throughout the module is also top-notch. The players have the opportunity to run into a retired halfling adventurer and the role-playing tips for this character are quite evocative, giving the GM a real feel for how to have this character put on a complete air of superiority to the "wet behind the ears" adventurers. The bad Although I liked this adventure overall, I did have a few problems with certain aspects of it. While I like the idea of the random map for the catacombs, I fear that making it truly random could lead to large problems. What if the first room that the players came to after entering was in fact the portal, which they should likely encounter last? While this problem is easily rectified by selecting the areas in secret and keeping certain key areas out of the draw until later in the adventure, I would have liked this option to be explicitly stated in the module. While I also like the idea of the evil mirror adventure party, I have a couple problems with it. First off, it seems rather overpowered. If a straight out fight between the two parties occured, this encounter would be a CR equal to the party's level plus four. Assuming that the opposing party was played just as effectively as the players own characters, one would assume that they would have a 50-50 of winning or losing the battle. Additionally, the opposing party may have replaced one of the players with one of its own members. In this situation, the players could be subjected to an ambush where they are outnumbered, with little chance of success. While this is not necessarily how this section of the adventure needs to happen, it's certainly a possibility if the GM doesn't pay particular attention. Secondly, the whole idea of a twin, evil party seems slightly out of place here. The focus of the adventure is clearly the skitzee and attempting to close the portal. I fear that the idea of this mirror party will seem to come out of nowhere and that the players will see it simply as a cheap trick, an allusion to the Star Trek episode "Mirror, Mirror." There also seems to be severe lack of open gaining content in this module. The only actual open content is the stat blocks of the creatures and NPCs in the adventure. None of the traps or special areas in the catacombs are released as open gaming content. While I don't usually care about what is or is not released as open content, the severe lack of open content struck me as odd, at least in comparison to the other d20 modules that I've seen. My main objection to the adventure, however, is its tone. John Wick has admitted that he wrote this module to show how a d20 adventure should be written. There's nothing wrong with this in and of itself, but it seems like he included a certain disdain for what he considered the stereotypical D&D player. Examples: He sees fit to include an expensive gold ring on the body of a dead halfling but then points out that the GM should remind anyone who take set that "stealing from a corpse is a sin in most religions... except those the adventurers adhere to, of course." He also includes a full floor plan and description of the house of the retired adventurer mentioned above. While he does include one interesting, tension-building scene of a noisy cat, John Wick seems to assume that the players will search the house top to bottom for treasure. One whole page, in fact, is devoted to the devious traps that protect the adventurer's treasure. Finally, the GM is encouraged to tell the players before they enter the catacombs that since they have already looted the house (he doesn't even seem to consider the option that they won't have fully looted the house), there is no more loot to be had and that they could simply turn back now and not have to deal with the what happened to the halfling village. It seems as if he felt that he could not sell a d20 adventure without including a certain amount of treasure in it, a concept he personally objected to. This objection led him to sprinkle snide comments throughout the adventure. While these jabs don't detract from the material in the adventure, they did spoil my mood while I was reading it, decreasing my overall enjoyment of the module. Finally, there are the (unfortunately expected) typos and errors. One of the NPCs, a second level rogue, only has one out of her three saving throws calculated correctly. I also find it a bit odd that the description of the commoner halflings that are trapped in the catacombs states that they are in very bad shape and are down to only five hit points. If they are down to "only five" hit points from being in such bad shape, I hate to ask how many points they had to begin with. End Spoilers Conclusion I don't want to give the impression that I'm disappointed with this module, far from it. It has a very interesting premise and, overall, is quite well executed. Yes, I do have some problems with a few sections of the module, but they don't affect the overall viability or usability of this adventure. If youre a GM looking for something new to throw at your players, you won't go wrong in choosing What's That Smell? You just have to be prepared to wade through some rather condescending remarks, which, unfortunately, reduced its style rating down to three.