Tree Maze of the Twisted Druid: a Subjective Review

The adventure is available here for free!

Since I have now covered it in my Hill Cantons session recaps I thought it wise to make a short review of the adventure we have played through thus far; the Tree Maze of the Twisted Druid. 

I'll start off with a very brief summary of the adventure: This is a dungeon adventure in which the PCs are delving into a maze dungeon inhabited by a variety of forest and animal themed monsters. At some point the titular Druid was corrupted by an evil tree demon - which is the reason this is a place to adventure in and not a pagan holy site. The dungeon clocks in at 22 briefly described rooms, with the druid and tree demon to be found at the centre of the maze. 

This adventure is a really great introduction to the wider Hill Cantons setting. It sets the tone really quite nicely, being quite silly yet still a potentially very deadly adventure (especially for 1st level PCs). These aspects would work for any other similarly not-too-serious D&D setting also. It should be mentioned that the monsters found in the module are generally classic D&D monsters (gnomes, treants, rocs, etc.) with a sprinkling of weirder stuff as well. This I think helps to onboard those already familiar with some of the tropes of D&D by both providing something familiar and something new. 

My main gripe with the adventure is that though being described as a maze the dungeon itself is pretty linear and does not feel much like a maze. I have run this dungeon twice; once essentially as written, and once as a more linear series of encounters without actually mapping out the dungeon (heresy I know). 

The reason for my approach the second time is that the dungeon is very much littered with dead ends. Spending 30 minutes or more of a game session mapping empty dungeon corridors that eventually lead to nothing is not my idea of fun. Since most of the actual rooms in the dungeon follow each other in a very linear progression it doesn't actually make a large impact on the gameplay to simply take the room descriptions you want to include and string them along in a more linear fashion. If I ever run this adventure again, I would run it more traditionally but changing up the map to be more "Jaquaysed" by connecting those dead ends into the wider dungeon as alternate passageways. 

Overall I quite like this adventure, it has many fun ideas and is inspiring in it's simplicity. Any critiques herein should therefore I think simply be taken as the musings of one young man upon the imagination of an at the time even younger man. 

The Heart of Evil

Hill Cantons - Session 02

This session concludes the adventures in the tree maze of the twisted druid. I will make a separate post discussing the adventure itself as I have a couple thoughts about it, but this post is quite long already. Anyways - enjoy this writeup!

Characters

• Asim "Ace" Bakir - Level 1 Mountebank
• Lasryn Thunderhammer - Level 1 Cleric
• Roald Holzhausen (New) - Level 1 Magic-User 

Followers

• Fido (New) - Blink Dog

Graveyard

• Oliwia Wisz (New) - Level 1 Fighter

Action Report

As the characters make a wild flight from the gelatinous cube from the last session, Ace and Lasryn find themselves isolated from their companions. The two amigos discover and rescue Oliwia; a mercenary and wannabe playwright who had fallen down into a pit trap and had been stuck there for several days. The party manage to bypass the pit by swinging over it using a chain. 

Finding a fork in the path the party first go down the more well-trodden part and find a large room full of the green morphsuit people as well as several campfires and tents. In addition the green-men seemed to have enslaved several gnomes. Counting the number of green-men to be at least more than a dozen the party promptly turn around and investigate the other path in the fork in the road. This time they find a couple of very large javelinas, seemingly having built their lair in this part of the maze. Not wanting to deal with either the green-men or the javelinas, the party instead devise a plan to lure the boars into the large chamber with the green-men where the two groups can fight each other whist the party sneaks past them both. 

Oliwia is chosen as the one to lure forth the javelinas, doing so by tossing a rock into the lair. As Oliwia wears plate armour she finds herself half as fast as the boars pursuing her. The GM rules that the foremost javelina will be able to make a single attack before Oliwia can throw herself behind a barricade the party had previously constructed. The attack hits the fighter thereby goring and killing her. All the commotion caused by the attack does however attract the attention of the green-men who quickly find themselves trying to mount a defense against the javelinas. The remaining party members quickly sneak past through the javelina lair, snatching a silver comb on the way. 

As they pass through a seldom walked passage the characters suddenly come across an overbearingly terrible smell. The source soon becomes evident as the next room the party arrive at is filled with the corpses of various animals. Crawling out from the pile comes a new party member! Roald the magic-user, a servant of mysterious hooded benefactors who sent him the the maze to spy on the twisted druid, and if he can, destroy him. 

After introductions are made, Roald leads the party deeper into the maze as they come across a small pack of tied up wolfhounds fighting over a bone. The party retrieves some of the animal corpses from the previous room and feed the dogs with them. The hounds promptly teleport out of their collars - being blink dogs - and begin happily devouring the offering. As the party begin leaving the area, one of the hounds approaches Roald who decide to name this new companion Fido, taking the dog with him. 

Finding a small overgrown shrine in the next room, the party retrieve a silver sickle and a piece of parchment from a hidden compartment inside the shrine. The text on the parchment goes as follows:

"The song of power was used

To conquer magic evil

Sung it low

Sung it high

Sung it with a weasel"

Concluding that it must be some sort of poem or song lyric, the party tries singing the text using a few different tunes unsuccessfully. Lasryn checks the two strange tree-doors leading from the room with the shrine to find that one leads to a small cottage and the other to a strange tree with several people hung dead from its branches. Being immediately scared off by the display the party head towards the cottage instead. 

Finding singing coming from the cottage, the party spy through the windows only to find the singer to be none other than the twisted druid himself! Roald knocks on the door of the cottage and proceeds to make conversation with the surprised druid. Roald convinces the druid to take him to what the druid calls his "tenant". As the two leave the cottage the rest of the party spring upon the druid and beat him to near death. Before the druid is able to react, the ambushers flee into the cottage closing the door behind them. Roald volunteers to deal with the interlopers and runs into the cottage. The rest of the party make noises as if they were killed which successfully tricks the druid. 

Roald and the druid proceeds into the next room, coming face to face with the force which has been corrupting the druid and his tree-maze. Before them is a large black and leaf-less walking tree, Tumbo the tree demon is his name and he immediately begins hurling abuse at the twisted druid. Roald chats up the demon as the druid goes to fetch some tea from his cabin and is again attacked by the other party members. 

As the sounds of fighting from the cottage attracts the tree demon, all hell breaks loose and many double crosses are made with spells and attacks being slung around wildly. The party breaks out the parchment and attempts to sing the text. Roald manages to convince the druid to join in the song which proves critical as the druid knows the actual tune - that of yankee doodle. This paralyzes the tree demon and the party manage to kill the creature through extensive use of fire (as well as a well placed and very effective bomb). 

The party flee from the tree-maze as the fire spreads onto the walls and grassy floor, making it out as the whole place begins to go up in a blaze. The session ends as the party watches the slow torching of the maze as the sun sets behind it. 

Imagine a bigger fire and less people around

Hill Cantons - Session 01

After having recently become burnt out running our somewhat weekly Night Below campaign I decided to take a break with a smaller campaign set in the world of the Hill Cantons - a personal favorite of mine. Since I myself LOVE reading play-reports from other peoples campaigns I figured I would do a series of these myself. 

The system used is OSE, using the character creation method outlined in the Hill Cantons Compendium alongside a couple of additional equipment rolls made per the rules in Mörk Borg. The classes available are all those which are included in Advanced Labyrinth Lord as well as those appearing in the various Hill Cantons supplements. 

Characters

• Asim "Ace" Bakir (New) - Level 1 Mountebank
• Luka Winograd (New) - Level 1 White Wizard
• Frankopan Vladislav (New) - Level 1 Psychonaut
• Lasryn Thunderhammer (New) - Level 1 Cleric

Followers

• Nosewise (New) - Old but loyal dog
• Mojo & Mavi (New) - Baboons
• Sir Duke (New) - Squirrel Monkey

Action Report

In a previous one-shot run by yours truly, another party of characters had managed to rescue a guild official from the vicious clutches of the Cult of the Blood Jesus, gaining much notoriety in the city of Marlinko. Our party of ne'er-do-wells; Luka Winograd, a monkey-wrangling magician; Asim "Ace" Bakir, a sailors son from Himyar; Frankopan Vladislav, a psychic courtier from the corelands; Lasryn Thunderhammer, a holy-woman raised by dwarves; all decided to try and one-up these upstarts and so investigate rumours of the so called Tree Maze of the Twisted Druid deep in the weird wilderness. 

Arriving at the entrance to the maze, the part spent a little time speaking to Stumpy the entrance gnome, warning them of the great dangers within, and taunting them with cries of "Who dares brave the PERILS of the TREE MAZE of the TWISTED druid?". 

Having successfully overcome their first obstacle of a snare trap the party managed to lure some of the mazes morphsuit-like guardians into that very same snare, triggering it with a sling stone and killing those who avoided it. Most of the party was much dismayed seeing that instead of bleeding, the wounds of the green men spilled fourth peas - Lasryn however, simply proceeded to feast upon the peas in front of the eyes of the now snared and throughly traumatised survivors. 

After having looted the guard room of the pea-men, the party proceeded to a room wherein they found a giant wingless bird tied up to the wall with a great chain. The party proceeded to run rings around the creature slinging stones at its eyes even as it was so enraged as to break free of its bonds. Some clever use of the partys own chain used to trip the beast alongside a high backstab roll by Ace eventually slew the creature, leaving its sizable horde of gold for the party to loot. 

As the party was investigating the next room which contained a strange pillar with treasure atop it, they were ambushed from behind by an arboreal gelatinous cube rolled as per a random encounter. The party managed to save Lasryn from the clutches of the creature and fled further into the maze as the session ended.