Review of Goodman Games Free RPG Day '14

Saturday, June 21st is Free RPG Day ‘14 and with it comes a slew of new and interesting little releases. They can usually be divided between tasters for new games that will be released at Gen Con this forthcoming August and support for existing RPGs or pieces of gaming ephemera. In general, the tasters for the new, ‘hot’ games are highly anticipated and on the day itself, in high demand, but come the day, it would be remiss of us to ignore the less-in-demand titles. Many of these it should be made clear, are worth your time and effort to make it to your friendly, local gaming store to get hold of a copy.

This year’s offering from Goodman Games is one such title. It offers not one, but two adventures, just the offering from the publisher for Free RPG Day ’13 did—and for the same games. The first is for the publisher’s Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game. The second is for the new version of Maximum Xcrawl, previously published for the d20 System, but now adapted for use with Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. A set of pre-generated characters is available for both scenarios from the publisher’s website.

At just seven pages long, ‘Elzemon and the Blood-Drinking Box’ is the shorter of the two adventures. It is written for use with Dungeon Crawl Classics, the d20 System RPG inspired by E. Gary Gygax’s famous ‘Appendix N’ from the Dungeon Master’s Guide, to give its adventures a strong sense of the arcane and the weird. Most characters in the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game start out as desperate peasants and wannabe adventurers, Level 0 and all hoping to survive long enough to reach First Level and get on with having adventures. ‘Elzemon and the Blood-Drinking Box’ is written for a group of between seven and nine characters who have made it and are First Level. The adventure requires at least one Cleric and at least one Lawful character.

The adventurers seek the favour of the wizard Rhalabhast of the Many Eyes. In order to gain this favour, he commands them to obtain a box from his rival, Nekros the Grotesque. This box he warns them requires that they feed it with the blood of a Lawful person lest the contents escape! In order to obtain the box, the adventurers will need to find a way into Nekros’ sanctum, descend deep—and I mean really deep—into the Earth, cross an acerbic lake, and find their way into mound of manure (fortunately, there is a door). All this whilst being harassed down the descent and back up again, the least of which is by vomiting cats!

The adventure is well presented, clearly written, and the cartography has plenty of character. Included are some playtest notes on making the descent through Nekros’ sanctum should the players start worrying about the physics of said descent… ‘Elzemon and the Blood-Drinking Box’ is a short adventure, but it is both a detailed one and an entertaining one. There is also much more going on than just a simple dungeon delve and it does end with each of the adventurers having make a choice as what they do with the box. Overall, this is a sophisticated affair given its seven pages that gets across the often arch-weirdness of the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game. The second half of Goodman Games’ Free RPG Day ’14 offering is ‘Dungeon Detonation’, an adventure for Maximum Xcrawl, the RPG that turns dungeon delving into a spectator sport much in the mode of glitzy American wrestling and gladiatorial combat. Essentially, it is a modern-set fantasy world in Imperial America in which the characters are superstar athletes, known as ‘crawlers’, who form teams and participate in Xtreme Dungeon Crawl events. In this live-on-pay-per-view death sport, they must overcome manufactured dungeons whilst playing to the crowd in the drive for fame and fortune. At sixteen pages, ‘Dungeon Detonation’ is much longer than ‘Elzemon and the Blood-Drinking Box’ and is designed for characters of between Sixth and Eighth Level.

‘Dungeon Detonation’ pitches the characters into a charity event that will see them face one testing encounter after another, all whilst being watched by a paying audience behind force walls and a paying audience viewing via television screens. The encounters are intentionally showy, and a series of challenges one after the other rather than a dungeon in the traditional sense. This is only highlighted by the end challenge in which the crawlers are expected to face wave after wave of creatures in an effort to boost the donations to be made to the charity. All of the encounters involve combat and physical challenge, if not both, which is intentional, since the crawlers are meant to be performing and putting on a show for the audience.

There is an undeniable superficiality and artificiality to ‘Dungeon Detonation’. After all, the fact that the adventurers are working their way through a pre-designed dungeon for an audience of millions and that is artifice pure and simple. Nevertheless, there are roleplaying opportunities to be had in the adventure, not in the actual encounters, but between them in interacting with the staff and audience who running and watching the event respectively. Of course, the ‘bread and circus’ aspect of the setting hints at the rotten horror at its heart. Physically, ‘Dungeon Detonation’ lacks the charm of ‘Elzemon and the Blood-Drinking Box’. The artwork is perhaps a little bland and the map, which uses forced perspective to give the dungeon a three dimensional feel, needs some effort to see that the perspective. Overall, ‘Dungeon Detonation’ captures the feel and flavour of Maximum Xcrawl.

Of the two, ‘Elzemon and the Blood-Drinking Box’ is more interesting and more enjoyable than ‘Dungeon Detonation’. That though, may come down to personal taste, but the artifice of ‘Dungeon Detonation’ does count against it. Together, ‘Elzemon and the Blood-Drinking Box’ and ‘Dungeon Detonation’ do good job of highlighting the best features of both games.