Preview: "Tukram's Tomb" by Davide Pignedoli

Davide Pignedoli recently released a "Beta version" of Tukram's Tomb with a call for feedback from anyone brave enough to venture within.  Tukram's Tomb is an adventure for the Crying Blades system (which I've never heard of, but understand to be in the same vein as Swords & Wizardry) or "any OSR system".  However, the rules used include ascending AC so some light conversion may be necessary.  There's a brief mention of first-level character but it's not clear how many adventurers are expected in the party.  The module is currently available as a Pay What You Want product.

For a beta product, Tukram has a fairly good look to it.  The module is in black and white with a few illustrations to break up the early going.  Once the description turns to the adventure site proper, Davide makes good use of map inserts.  The tomb is small enough that these aren't strictly necessary, but it's a considerate touch that will save the referee a little bit of time referencing back and forward.

The introductory section details two possible base site for adventuring parties intending to brave the Tomb.  The first is populated by civilised folk and is a safe site for obtaining rumours and supplies.  Unfortunately, the instructions for using the rumour table are a little unclear.  It's definitely a d10 roll modified "+coin".  This might be more clear under Crying Blades, but it didn't enlighten me.  Davide's tables for creating random NPCs are interesting and suggest some very strange things about the first village.  One in six people met there are slaves and the same proportion are unemployed.  I don't find this impossible but it does have me wondering, "what is going on?"  The inhabitants of the second village are more straightforward: the place has been abandoned and appears to be cursed.  The curse is bad enough to explain the lack of people but mild enough that it shouldn't eliminate a party of 1st level adventurers.

Davide has also included a page on the wilderness and a random encounter table.  In some ways, I like the table because it rolls the chance of an encounter into the determination of the creatures encountered.  (In other words, it has "no encounter" entries.)  On the other hand, it's introduced as something to use if the referee likes wilderness encounters.  I don't care for such permissions at the best of times, but they seemed particularly out of place in a Beta product.  Surely Davide doesn't want to get feedback like, "We rolled our characters, mucked around in the village a bit, then the party got killed by a random encounter in the wilderness."

Tukram's Tomb comes with a promise of "Zero percent prep and work, one hundred percent fun."  This couldn't be anything other than exaggeration, but a lot of effort has gone into making the module easy to use.  Davide's location descriptions read a little like concise "boxed text" and work from more general to more specific information.  However, the text is oriented towards the referee and it seems like the Tomb could be run with no preparation - and just a little work.  My biggest problem with the approach in this module is the worrying omission of scale on the map and the location descriptions.  My players always want to know the dimensions of rooms for their maps and other plans.  The lack of concreteness turns up in some of the details as well.  At one point, Davide guesses that a dried out skeleton weighs half what a living person does.  In fairness, he admits that it's a guess, but it's off by almost an order of magnitude.  (If you ever need to know - and in many RPGs, you might - a human adult male dry skeleton weighs between 6 and 7 percent of his living weight.  If the bones are fresh and still carry their living water weight, double that.)

Turning to the flow of the adventure site, the initial description of the Tomb proper has dangling mysteries about its ancient construction.  Good!  Most role-players enjoy poking around an ancient mystery, even if the secrets are never revealed.  The threats encountered feel organic to the site and the notes to the referee draw connections between various elements.  On the downside, the threats felt a little bit dangerous for neophyte adventurers, although prudent play will minimise the downside.  Whether these risks are justified by the rewards is hard to estimate, as the value of one of the site's treasures (perhaps its main treasure) is not given!  A real strength of the design is that it's possible to go through by brute force and plentiful hirelings, but savvy players will be able to loot the Tomb with a smaller expenditure of blood and treasure.

In its current state, Tukram's Tomb is interesting but incomplete.  However, that's what one would expect from a beta release, so I'm not going to give it a rating the way I would a finished module.  Instead, I recommend giving Tukram a play test (if you're inclined to send Davide some feedback) or keeping an eye out for the full release.