Nightmare Over Ragged Hollow by Joseph R. Lewis
It took me a long time to review this short module because for a most of that time I didn't know what to think of it. And then I had an epiphany of sorts. See, I'm addicted to stories. And Nightmare Over Ragged Hollow does not tell a story, it's a sandbox, a toolkit to generate stories at the table. And a damn good one at that. But that makes reading it not very entertaining. The epiphany was realising that while the lack of in-built story did not particularly make me excited about running it, if I was to pick something up to run over a week-end or so, a self-contained adventure I'd like to run, Nightmare Over Ragged Hollow would be my first choice. In other words, while reading it didn't excite me, I do want to run it. You could say that's true of a lot of adventures, but actually there are very few adventures that I want to run after reading them. There are sandboxes where the potential is more immediately apparent to me, like the wonderful Times that Fry Men's Souls by Seann McAnally, but I think it was the somewhat dry rendering of Ragged Hollow that made me miss that potential initially. Now I should be a bit clearer and say that there is a central thread (I hesitate to call it plot) in Ragged Hollow, gravitating around the town's Temple that has become inaccessible, bathed in a golden glowing barrier that lets no one in and no one out. And while PCs will naturally be intrigued and likely want to investigate it, there are dozens of other threads and locations in the town of Ragged Hollow and its surroundings than can generate adventure potential as well. It just doesn't read as a story, because it's designed for maximum use live at the gaming table. Long story short, this is actually an excellent module, ready to play and full of potential for a ton of adventuring. It's probably good for a few sessions of gameplay with any OSR game (although it's statted for OSE).
Comments
Post a Comment