Now in its sixteenth year, Free RPG Day for 2023 took place on Saturday, June 24th. As per usual, Free RPG Day consisted of an array of new and interesting little releases, which are traditionally tasters for forthcoming games to be released at GenCon the following August, but others are support for existing RPGs or pieces of gaming ephemera or a quick-start. Thanks to the generosity of David Salisbury of Fan Boy 3, Fil Baldowski at All Rolled Up, and others, Reviews from R’lyeh was able to get hold of many of the titles released for Free RPG Day, both in the USA and elsewhere.
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Piercing the Demon’s Eye is Goodman Games’ only contribution to Free RPG Day 2023. It is a scenario for use with the publisher’s highly popular Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game. Designed for a party of six to eight Second Level Player Characters, it is both designed and intended to be played in four hours and in-game explored in four hours. What this means is that once the four-hour playing time ends, the game is not only over for the players, but also for the Player Characters. Piercing the Demon’s Eye is set in the Demon’s Eye, the vault of the ancient wizard, Monath Ot. Said to contain great treasures and secrets, the entrance to the vault unseals and grants access for exactly four hours, once every ten years. Then the entrance will reseal itself again, only to open again in another ten years and again exactly for four hours. Whilst the game is over for the players, for their characters, trapped inside the Demon’s Eye, their fates are sealed just as much as the entrance is. Ideally, the Player Characters should at least be armed with one or two magical weapons. The scenario does not involve a great many fights, but those it does are challenging. Lastly, Piercing the Demon’s Eye does contain links to Tomb of the Savage Kings, the scenario published by Goodman Games for Free RPG Day 2021. However, the links are insubstantial and the Judge does not need to have run or have access to Tomb of the Savage Kings in order to run Piercing the Demon’s Eye.
As a tomb adventure, Piercing the Demon’s Eye contains more traps than fights. There is an interesting counterweight puzzle from the start, but others like a corridor with a pivoting floor and a room with spikes that extend out of the floors and walls and a room of skeletons that reanimate and self-replicate upon death a la the film Jason and the Argonauts, are all classics and clichés of the genre. This does not mean that they feel out of place. Similarly, neither does the inclusion of false vaults. With care though, the Player Characters should not only be able to find their way around the tomb, but also locate two major treasure vaults, one of scrolls and one of coin and magical items. What will hamper the Player Characters progress is a rival team also looking to loot the tomb complex. Consisting of three NPCs, these can be used to taunt the Player Characters, act as replacement Player Characters as necessary, or simply show the characters and their players how the scenario’s traps work.
As a tomb adventure, Piercing the Demon’s Eye contains more traps than fights. There is an interesting counterweight puzzle from the start, but others like a corridor with a pivoting floor and a room with spikes that extend out of the floors and walls and a room of skeletons that reanimate and self-replicate upon death a la the film Jason and the Argonauts, are all classics and clichés of the genre. This does not mean that they feel out of place. Similarly, neither does the inclusion of false vaults. With care though, the Player Characters should not only be able to find their way around the tomb, but also locate two major treasure vaults, one of scrolls and one of coin and magical items. What will hamper the Player Characters progress is a rival team also looking to loot the tomb complex. Consisting of three NPCs, these can be used to taunt the Player Characters, act as replacement Player Characters as necessary, or simply show the characters and their players how the scenario’s traps work.
There is also a hidden element to Piercing the Demon’s Eye. Use of Spell Burn can trigger an even bigger event. This is the release of the being trapped within the tomb. It is not the ancient wizard, Monath Ot, but something else. In true tomb in the Pulp genre, this triggers an immediate effect and a long-term effect. The long-term effect is left up to the Judge to determine and then only if the scenario is being run as part of a campaign. In the short term, the Player Characters will find they have very little time left before the tomb collapses…
If there is a problem with Piercing the Demon’s Eye, it is the connections to Tomb of the Savage Kings and the lack of connections to Tomb of the Savage Kings. To suggest that there are connections and not develop them is a missed opportunity. The lack of them makes it difficult to connect the scenarios and to build them into a setting, whether a published one or one devised by the Judge. So this scenario is more of standalone adventure than not.
Physically, Piercing the Demon’s Eye is very well presented. It is easy to read and the map is easy to use. The scenario is lightly illustrated, but the pieces of art are very good, capturing the mishaps and misadventures of a band of adventurers.
Piercing the Demon’s Eye is easy to set up and run, and works better as a convention scenario rather than an addition to a campaign, although with some effort upon the part of the Judge, this should not be an issue. Piercing the Demon’s Eye is a short, but fun one-shot that neatly fits a four-hour convention game slot too. All the Judge has to do is add Player Characters.
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