The Toxic Wood: A Corrosive Hexcrawl Adventure written by the Lazy Litch and was published following a successful Kickstarter campaign as part of Zine Month 2022. As with the publisher’s other titles—The Haunted Hamlet & other hexes, Woodfall, and Willow—The Toxic Wood is written or use with Old School Essentials, Necrotic Gnome’s very accessible update of the Moldvey/Cook and Marsh version of Basic Dungeons & Dragons, which means that not only is it mechanically accessible, it is also easily adapted to the retroclone of the Game Master’s choice. However, it is not clearly stated what Level the adventure is designed for, but from the relative Hit Dice of the various monsters in The Toxic Wood, it feels roughly suitable for Player Characters of Third, Fourth, and Fifth Level. Beyond the introduction, there is a some advice as to the adventure's play style, which is standard to all of the scenarios published by the Lazy Litch. This limits Experience Point gain to finding treasure, making discoveries, and achieving objectives rather than kill monsters; monsters are intentionally unbalanced; game is deadly and Player Character death a possibility; and an emphasis is placed upon resource management. In addition, The Toxic Wood includes a number of optional backgrounds and objectives that be assigned to the Player Characters or rolled for, which set up conflicting agendas between them. The conflict between them exacerbated by the fact that the Player Characters are forced to travel together within the safety of the magical orb and the clean air it generates, forcing them more obviously to both work together and negotiate where they will go and what they will do. As well as the information provided by their background, each Player Character will also begin the scenario with a rumour about the area detailed in The Toxic Wood.
The toxicity of the scenario’s title is infused into every aspect of it, from the strange nature of the plants and inhabitants of the woods and the mutations that the Player Characters can suffer if exposed to it for too long to the vileness of the various factions to be found in the woods and the weirdness of their various aims. Although there are several monsters given, it is these plants which play a major role in the scenario and are the most obvious evidence of the transformation that the wood has undergone. There are Energy Consuming Flowers that absorb spells, which can be carried as a form of protection, but which ill implode if too many are absorbed; Fungi Outposts that act as the ears and eyes of one for the factions in the wood; and Rune Fruit, marked with dark arcane runes, which can be eaten, but have side effects that are deleterious upon the consumer’s mental health.
Although there are hints as to the true nature of the plots swirling and around the Toxic Wood in the various backgrounds and rumours, the Player Characters will only discover more details by visiting the various locations dotted throughout the woods. This starts with Mugwort, a village trapped in its own bubble, its inhabitants desperate and divided, on the edge of the collapse if the Player Characters do not intervene. The others include a dragon atop a plateau building his own cult as a defence against ongoing events in the wood; rival twin sisters, long since transformed into insectoid creatures spinning and feuding for control of a mycelial network that runs throughout the wood; and an abandoned tower from whose roof grows a pair of trees and whose lowest level is filled with a green gelatinous thing filled with eyeballs that refuse to look at anyone who enters the tower—though the orb supplying the Player Characters their life-preserving air will actually speak before they do and warn them not to enter! The Toxic Wood is full of little details and fantastic writing like this which brings its combination of weirdness and dark whimsy to life.
The lack of indication as to what Level it is designed for, is not the only issue with The Toxic Wood. The other is the hexcrawl map used in the scenario. It is an attractive piece that uses a lot of icon-like pieces of art to fill its hexes, The majority of the symbols or icons used are all very similar, which has two important consequences. The first is that the icons used for specific locations do not stand out, and the second is that it is difficult to track the progress of the Player Characters across the map.
Then there is the fact that hexcrawl are of The Toxic Wood is too large for ease of play. It has an area of fifteen by twenty hexes, but there is no scale to the map. The only hint the Game Master is given is that in a single day, the Player Characters can either explore a single hex or they can travel across a total of three. (That said, there are a lot of hexes where nothing much will happen except the occasional random encounter.) It will take a minimum of three days’ travel to get to Mugwort from the edge of the map and then the other locations on the map are a similar distance away from the village. So play is going consist of a lot of dice rolls for encounters in the poisoned forest and the Player Characters scavenging for fuel to power the air-generating orb they need to maintain in order to survive. This is only going to worse if the Player Characters get lost. Resource management is a part of the play of The Toxic Wood, but the size of its play area means that the scenario over emphasises it. Ultimately, v could have been smaller without any loss of play and a smaller size would have made it easier to slot into a Game Master’s own campaign.
Then there is the fact that hexcrawl are of The Toxic Wood is too large for ease of play. It has an area of fifteen by twenty hexes, but there is no scale to the map. The only hint the Game Master is given is that in a single day, the Player Characters can either explore a single hex or they can travel across a total of three. (That said, there are a lot of hexes where nothing much will happen except the occasional random encounter.) It will take a minimum of three days’ travel to get to Mugwort from the edge of the map and then the other locations on the map are a similar distance away from the village. So play is going consist of a lot of dice rolls for encounters in the poisoned forest and the Player Characters scavenging for fuel to power the air-generating orb they need to maintain in order to survive. This is only going to worse if the Player Characters get lost. Resource management is a part of the play of The Toxic Wood, but the size of its play area means that the scenario over emphasises it. Ultimately, v could have been smaller without any loss of play and a smaller size would have made it easier to slot into a Game Master’s own campaign.
Physically, The Toxic Wood is a fairly busy book, but everything is neatly organised and for the most part, easy to use when the Game Master needs it. The artwork is excellent and so is the writing. Although it does have an introduction, it does not explain what is fully going on until a fair way into the scenario.
The Toxic Wood is a fantastically noxious and nasty scenario, a combination of Stephen King’s Under the Dome meets Jeff Vandermeer’s Annihilation crossed with The Fantasic Voyage and Tron. Which reads like a thoroughly odd mixture, but there is a strand of Science Fiction which underpins the scenario, with the orb that the Player Characters must take with them to breathe being almost like a submersible and the Emergency Bubbles they are given which enable them to operate away from the orb, being like aqualungs, and the twin sisters’ mycelial network a cross between an information network and a surveillance network.
Ultimately, The Toxic Wood may be slightly too odd and slightly too large for some campaigns, with the Game Master needing to work a lot of its details into her own setting to effectively work. If the Game Master can do that, then The Toxic Wood is a poisonously fantastic scenario.
No comments:
Post a Comment