From a quick look at the company website, Olson is the main man for Cut to the Chase and he comes across as an enthusiast more than a businessman. However, Night of the Mad Kobold has a professional look and credits Kelly Christensen as editor. I can't stress the importance of an editor enough - even for "one man band" designers, it's probably more important to find someone to read the work over and give feedback than it is to secure the services of an artist. Olson seems to have similar feelings. The artwork in WK0 is of a decent quality but sparse - just the cover image and two portraits in a 20 page .pdf. Night of the Mad Kobold also includes an area map, in both a keyed version for the DM and an unkeyed version for the players. It's a nice touch, though I'm not sure the players will actually need their version.
I can't say the premise for the module really grabs me. Olson's write-up makes the eponymous Mad Kobold seem more angry than crazy, not at all what I expected from the title, and in general he leans on character types without using them to save column inches. (There's a full page under the adventure background heading, plus additional background notes through the adventure itself and character profiles in the appendices.) Further, without giving too much away, this is a module that draws its inspiration more from contemporary politics than pulp fiction, and this could cause it to fall flat for groups that don't share Olson's views on the world. I suppose there's no pleasing everyone, but it wasn't really necessary to court controversy in order to make an entertaining scenario.
The nuts and bolts of Night of the Mad Kobold are interesting but also not entirely to my tastes. The module is time-based, with a Time Track included in the appendices to help the DM keep a handle on things. This is an uncommon approach and one that I wouldn't mind seeing more often. However, I was a little alarmed to read that the time segments are "abstract" and "roughly 10 minutes". Given the importance of the time track, this seems akin to a scenario map in which each square is "abstract" and "roughly 10 feet across". Similarly, the instructions for the use of the time track during the party's actions about the town don't really appeal to my tastes, feeling more like a board game's mechanics than the concrete style of OSR. It might be possible to rework the scenario to run on real time, but this is a bit of work. I was also put off by Olson's advice on manipulating the difficulty of the scenario on the fly and bailing out the PCs if they make mistakes. If the idea is to put the players under pressure to solve the problem within a certain time, they should be allowed to succeed or fail on their own lights.
Another niggle is the prelude. Before starting the time track, the PCs have a chance to gain information (about a problem that has not revealed itself) and establish an important relationship (although its importance is not yet apparent). My advice to anyone running Night of the Mad Kobold is to make this section more or less automatic by having Errick Kelver seated with the party (by hook or by crook) or otherwise establish him as their contact in town before the action begins. This makes his appeal to the party for aid - the mainspring of the adventure - rather more believable.
Judging the risks involved in the scenario against the rewards offered is somewhat difficult. Some of the hazards can kill the party automatically (without even a saving throw to represent the fickle favours of the gods!) and there's just 100 gold pieces in direct compensation. The DM is instructed to award additional XP for dealing with certain objectives, and though I think some reward is appropriate it would hardly strain disbelief for the reward to be monetary and direct.
Overall, this is a playable scenario but I just don't like it. It doesn't feel like an OSR product and its success at entertaining a group is either highly contingent or relies on DM fiat. My rating is 2/5, and I really think that groups looking for a time-based scenario would do better with RC Pinnell's Ice Maidens of the Frozen Horn. (That said, Night of the Mad Kobold could make a fairly good boardgame provided that the antagonist's activities could be suitably randomised and revealed to the players.)
As a post-script, I should reference Cut to the Chase's purpose in releasing the module free. Olson is running a Kickstarter campaign until the 16th of September to fund a series of modules following on from WK0. It seems to be fairly successful and despite my feelings about Night of the Mad Kobold I do wish him luck. The intention is to create a series compatible with four different rules sets and the kickstarter promises that, "Each supported game system has its own version of the module with rules and statistic references appropriate to that game." While I'm always sceptical that the style of game can be preserved across different rules, this is a much better approach than attempting system-agnostic modules.
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