Module review: Down the Hole!

Post modernist minis

So much for a regular posting schedule. In honor of the new year, I got hammered by the flu despite getting the vaccine this season. Sometimes you just roll a nat 1, I guess. Anyway, I got asked to DM for a second group - and it had to be a short campaign since time was limited. I started shopping around for a likely module. (I'm still not comfortable enough to write my own.) I stumbled upon Down the Hole!, a downloadable module for characters from 1st - high 2nd level. I admit I was seduced by the cover - I own several modules from 1e that look exactly like that, and I appreciated the homage to the original game.

After having dealt with slow progression issues elsewhere, I was also intrigued by the idea of a fast-paced dungeon crawl. I was pretty confident this group would be all over the role play, so I didn't feel like I needed to push that agenda too much, and in a quick campaign it seemed like "action hero mode" would be more interesting than a mystery, intrigue or exploration based game, where you couldn't really delve into anything deep. So I bought the module.

The short review: it's a hoot.

In terms of combat, it delivers a great deal in a short space. I counted seven different combat encounters, all run within the space of a 4 hour in-game time period. It's action packed! It's also geared toward newer players and GMs - there's a lot of guidance, including entire monologues that are suggestions for how you could roleplay some of the NPCs. (You don't have to use it, of course, but it's great if you're a new GM and want that hand holding.) The dungeon is genuinely one-way only, and the time constraint means there are no opportunities for long rests and only one opportunity for a short rest. Even that short rest is not a given - it depends on how quickly players overcome other obstacles and figure things out. There's a nice variety of monsters to fight, and some very creative ways of deploying them. There are a number of situational puzzles to work out, and one overt puzzle. This happens to be a very bright and analytical group so they made short work of those - despite little experience with D&D per se. They didn't seem particularly tough to my eye - but the writer indicated that some people really don't do well with puzzles, and that's probably true. I liked them, but for this group, they needed to be tougher. In fact, the group's collective savvy defeated a couple of monsters by cunning in ways that I'm not sure the writer of the module anticipated. It was just as rewarding, though, to see them strategize and execute, as it would have been to see it just hacked through, so I think it was well scaled. It's not like it was easy to strategize. This group was just good at it, and tended toward caution (with the exception of the first room down the hole).

What was tough were the critters. Most of the characters spent most of the time at mid to low health, and I bumped up the healing potion stats quite a bit to avoid a TPK. All of the characters wound up down past 0 HP at some point or another, and most of them fell victim to spells or conditions. None of the critters rolled crits, and it was still hard. This is definitely a dungeon that favors larger numbers of characters over concentrated power. That said, I allowed a spell that I'm not sure was kosher in the final boss battle - I'm not sure Entangle ought to have been able to catch the antagonists. But I let it happen, and it made the final battle too easy, I'm afraid. Live and learn.

The module came with a few player handouts which I tea-stained and tore to get an aged and deckle-edged look. It also came with a high-res gridded dungeon map for gameplay, which I decided to use. Instead of printing it out at an office store, I just put it into Adobe Acrobat Reader and printed it out in "poster" mode, which allowed me to tile it. I did a staggered reveal using a bunch of papers and books to obscure the map. Even so, because there's only one layer to the dungeon it became very apparent when we were nearing the end because we were running out of real estate on the paper.

Awhile back, I had picked up a set of 5 lucite paper miniature stands to use for the characters. I had also picked up some cheaper stand up player pieces that used cardboard for monsters. Except, I have acrylic sheets lying around my studio, and I subbed small pieces of white acrylic for the cardboard. This meant that each piece was a mini white board, allowing me to mark it up and wipe it off as needed. The youngest player objected - he wanted "real minis, nicely painted," to which I replied, "You get the minis, or the DM. I don't have time to do both." After more grousing I called these "post modernist minis à la mode, the height of minimalist mini fashion", and that's what has stuck in my head. I have to say, these post modernist minis work great, take up minimal room and cost nearly nothing in terms of time and money. I'm sold.

There was a fair bit of humor built into this game, but it's balanced by the difficulty of the combat for level 1s. The author is not afraid to send up aspects of D&D tropes harkening back from ye olden days of 1e all the way up to the present. They say up front it's campy, and it is, but because you work hard for genuine rewards, it hangs together. The magic items were quirky and inventive. Personally, I appreciated the recipes and I am going to try one sometime in the near future when time permits. It's amusing that they included them for players to use, and incorporated the recipes directly into the tale. (Cocktails and one main course dish.) The module is unmistakably railroady in its construction, and yet, it manages to not be offensive because it's so short and fast paced, and it presents itself honestly. There are puzzles, but not a whole lot of intrigue or depth. But of course, that's exactly what's advertised. It's a great module to get people comfortable with the mechanics of combat (there are 7 of those) and also a good way to get people to learn how to use skill checks to explore and find things out about the world around them. It's not the best to teach role play because the pacing is rapid, and there's not a whole lot to role play with, other than the other members of the party. But that's okay - it's a true one-shot. There's a built in 4 hour in-game time limit which translates pretty accurately to a 4 hour real world game play time. In contrast, Lost Mines of Phandelver, has considerably more exploration, socialization, and choices for characters to make, even if you've got a bunch of players who want to careen to the end of the story as fast as possible. The one complaint my players shared with me, and that I agree with, is that experience is awarded at the end. Since this game takes players to high level 2 at minimum (level 3 is possible), it means that nobody gets the benefit of level 2 midway through the dungeon, when they've clearly done the work to earn it. I'd be alright with that, but many classes get interesting abilities at level 2 (paladin, fighter, etc.) that are nice to play with alone during that level, before other bells and whistles come on board. If you're teaching new players, it'd be nice if the mechanics of leveling up were more standard. That said, leveling up mid-way through might result in the players being overpowered for the dungeon as written.

Overall, if you wanted a one-shot to teach a bunch of new players how the game works on a mechanical level, you couldn't ask for a better module. It's well-crafted, details oriented and paced well. If you've got a bunch of experienced players - well, I have no idea what that's like. So I can't say whether or not they'd like it.