Review 42 - The Exalted Order of the Mystic Moose
This next review is for an adventure that from the A Town, A Forest, A Dungeon game jam that happened last year and resulted in a lot of great adventures. One of the inspirations from the jam was Black Wyrm of Brandonsford which I also reviewed recently. So read on to hear my thoughts on Exalted Order of the Mystic Moose, written and illustrated by Jacob Marks.
This one is described as "a Cairn forestcrawl", so naturally I ran it using Cairn 2e.
Getting it to the Table
Right off the bat, this one had some interesting layout and information design choices, both useful and not. The first page provides some recommendations for how the GM should run the game (starting in the town of Granklin, introducing rumors and goals through conversation, encouraging sandbox play, etc), but then immediately follows with a sentence that filled me with mild dread:
"Creatures and locations are scattered throughout the pages of this zine."
This proved to be accurate-- it is definitely not organized in a helpful way, and really the only thing that saves it for me is that the hyperlinking is very robust in the PDF version, both in the sidebar table of contents and the in-text links.
After that introductory page, we get some description of the region-- the mauvewood trees in particular, which are a major feature of the adventure. Then we get descriptions of one of the main factions, the Wood Exorcists, and a general overview of ghosts as a concept as well as the jacky lanterns, a benevolent spirit of the woods.
Next, we start to see what was meant by "scattered throughout the pages". We're shown the map of the area (which is helpfully hyperlinked in the PDF), along with some recommendations for using the Cairn 2e wilderness exploration rules for travel, followed by an encounter table that is helpfully combined with a reaction table as well as a "what are they doing" table.
After this we get detail on the starting location (actually quite well fleshed out for just being a two page spread, full of hooks and detail) and the various points of interest in the mauvewood, along with pages that detail the major NPCs and creatures in the adventure just sort of mixed in. It makes sense in that you're getting the detail of the Long Owls, for instance, right after they are mentioned as an encounter, but it's a sort of layout that only really works if you're reading it front to back. For game purposes it's a bit confusing and not intuitive.
The last bit I want to talk about this section is the dungeon-- an old manor house that is partially sunken into a marsh. This was the bit that I struggled with the most when running the game, because there simply was not enough information. For most of the rooms in the manor, we are given absolutely zero description of what the room is-- we don't even have a name to help because most of the rooms are labeled with what the encounter is rather than something that would indicate its role in a house. It is not helpful to look at a room key and see that the PCs have entered the room labeled "Bog Slime Carpet", especially when the only description of the room is basically the same thing over again ("The floor is slick with bog slime"). This resulted in a rather unsatisfying dungeon, because unless the GM did a lot of unguided prep work essentially imagining and re-mapping out the manor, every room felt bland and disconnected from the whole. Considering that this ended up being the climax of the adventure for my group, it was a little bit of a letdown and they decided to leave after finding a few trinkets and being nearly killed by the ghost of Annis Starblehad.
What Worked?
- Great setting! I love the lore of the mauvewoods and their relationship to the ghosts and the Wood Exorcists, and my players had a fun time uncovering what details they could. At least the ones that were there-- more on this later.
- Fun NPC sandbox. There was plenty of interesting little distractions that created quite a bit of session time-- from trading songs for truffles at the Trow Tower to helping the Syrup Sorceress to making deals with Rot-Tooth Rowan, there was a lot to have fun with!
What Didn't Work?
- Not enough under the surface. There were so many instances where I would be silently praying that my players wouldn't get too interested in a given situation, because the adventure itself did not provide any answers or further development. Along with that, there were encounters and locations that did not seem to have much interaction that the players could do. The Church of the Coiled Bat, for instance, can certainly create an evocative image... provided that the party happens to be there at night. If they are there, then the ghostly white serpent bat flees if they approach. There really isn't much for the players to do with this.
- The Dungeon. I detailed this above, but it's worth reiterating that I felt this was the weakest part of the adventure. The GM would need to do a lot of heavy lifting to make the manor a good dungeon crawl.
Final Thoughts
Overall, I really enjoyed this adventure and had fun running it, and my players enjoyed it too. The issue was that it took a lot of work to connect the pieces and have the factions' goals and activities feel as though the players' actions had an impact. I would like to see an expanded version with a bit more detail below the surface filled in to allow for some true sandbox play.
You can get Exalted Order of the Mystic Moose on Jacob Marks' itch page. Thanks for reading!