Review 2: The Vermilion Throne
The last few years have seen a massive boom in fantastic adventures for a variety of systems, and one of the systems that I've seen some of my favorites for is Mörk Borg. "The Vermilion Throne" is a streamlined and blood-soaked dungeon crawl written by Chris Bissette, who also did the cartography and interior illustrations. Like many Mörk Borg adventures, this is a prime example of efficient presentation that was a breeze to prepare and run-- I ran this as a pick-up game on the Mörk Borg Discord server and I selected it about an hour before game time.
Getting it to the Table
This module wastes no time getting to the gameable content. There is a brief, two paragraph introduction establishing the situation, and then it immediately provides a great rumor table (each helpfully marked as true or false). Next is the random encounter table and the dungeon map. As a brief side note, the PDF version of this is all interlinked and indexed, so it was even easier to run online.
The layout was directly inspired by the design of "Rotblack Sludge", the introductory adventure included with the Mörk Borg core book, and I think that any aspiring adventure writer can learn a lot from this. Every page has a miniature version of the dungeon map, and the rooms that are detailed on that page are shaded on the map so that you instantly know what they are referring to. In addition to this, NPC and monster stat blocks are included where they are relevant, and rooms that call for random encounters are marked as well. The end result of all of this is that you rarely need to leave the page that you're currently looking at in order to run the dungeon, which allows you to focus on building up the tone and descriptions that make Mörk Borg adventures shine.
The concept of this dungeon is that of a gigantic living heart that the party is exploring, seeking out the last piece of a long-dead king who was dismembered and strewn about the land. Every room builds on this theme, and the deeper you get into the dungeon, the more heart-like and gross it gets. The players I ran this for had a great time interacting with the strange altars and ceremonial rooms, and there were several "oh shit" moments when they were separated by gushing torrents of blood that were pumped out of the central chambers, sweeping them into different areas.
What Worked?
- Clean, efficient layout minimized flipping through the booklet
- Simple, evocative room descriptions set the tone without blocks of "read aloud" text
- Great environmental effects changed it from a normal dungeon crawl to a Mörk Borg dungeon crawl
What Didn't Work?
- The Vault did not seem to match the theme of the dungeon compared to the other rooms. The rest of the rooms fit nicely with the idea of the entombed still-beating heart of of a dead king, but this just felt like it was thrown in as a way to potentially trick some PCs into spending time grabbing coins just to be attacked and then take damage.
- Nearly all of the encounters were combat focused
Final Thoughts
This is a great dungeon for a one-shot or for including into a longer campaign-- truly a "module" in the sense that it can be used in a variety of ways without having to do a significant amount of preparation. This style of layout is truly inspired, and it has honestly spoiled me a bit when I read other adventures that are not as efficient. Great fun, good gross-out moments, and creepy foes-- perhaps not ideal for a group that enjoys a RP-heavy session, but that is not an insurmountable problem if you want to do a little bit of revising before running.
You can get this adventure from Chris Bissette's web store. Thanks for reading!