Pocket Sized Perils #5

For every Ptolus: City by the Spire or Zweihander: Grim & Perilous Roleplaying or World’s Largest Dungeon or Invisible Sun—the desire to make the biggest or most compressive roleplaying game, campaign, or adventure, there is the opposite desire—to make the smallest roleplaying game or adventure. Reindeer Games’ TWERPS (The World's Easiest Role-Playing System) is perhaps one of the earliest examples of this, but more recent examples might include the Micro Chapbook series or the Tiny D6 series. Yet even these are not small enough and there is the drive to make roleplaying games smaller, often in order to answer the question, “Can I fit a roleplaying game on a postcard?” or “Can I fit a roleplaying game on a business card?” And just as with roleplaying games, this ever-shrinking format has been used for scenarios as well, to see just how much adventure can be packed into as little space as possible. Recent examples of these include The Isle of Glaslyn, The God With No Name, and Bastard King of Thraxford Castle, all published by Leyline Press.

The Pocket Sized Perils series uses the same A4 sheet folded down to A6 as the titles from Leyline Press, or rather the titles from Leyline Press use the same A4 sheet folded down to A6 sheet as Pocket Sized Perils series. Funded via a Kickstarter campaign as part of the inaugural ZineQuest—although it debatable whether the one sheet of paper folded down counts as an actual fanzine—this is a series of six mini-scenarios designed for use with Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, but actually rules light enough to be used with any retroclone, whether that is the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game or Old School Essentials. Just because it says ‘5e’ on the cover, do not let that dissuade you from taking a look at this series and see whether individual entries can be added to your game. The mechanics are kept to a minimum, the emphasis is on the Player Characters and their decisions, and the actual adventures are fully drawn and sketched out rather than being all text and maps.

Echoes of Ebonthul is the fifth entry in the Pocket Sized Perils series following on from An Ambush in Avenwood, The Beast of Bleakmarsh, Call of the Catacombs, and Death in Dinglebrook. Designed for Fifth Level Player Characters, the scenario embraces the Science Fantasy and horror elements of the Swords & Sorcery genre combining a lost city with advanced technology and cosmic horror. In its scant few pages, it has the feel of I1 Dwellers of the Forbidden City, but of course, without the expansiveness of that classic module for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, First Edition.

The scenario begins en media res. The Player Characters are aboard a sea vessel approaching the alien and foreboding ruins of the city of Ebonthul, long abandoned and left to ruin. They have come to the ruined city in search of companions and fellow adventurers, of whom nothing has been heard since they departed for the city. This is only the broadest of reasons, the Dungeon Master expected to prompt her players each to who they have specifically come to Ebonthul to search and why. This provides a little more personal motivation before the action begins. A gargantuan being with a single, gem-like eye rises from the sea and lashes out with a beam of fiery energy from its eye. Suddenly, the ship is on fire and leaking! Can the Player Characters extinguish the flames and patch the hole before the ship sinks and actually puts the flames out?

Fortunately, the gargantuan being sinks beneath the waves, enabling the Player Characters to come ashore—either by weighing anchor if the ship is still afloat or swimming or in boats if not. The city skyline is dominated by a great statue reaching to the sky and a ziggurat with a locked metal door marked with a strange constellation missing a single gem. Investigating the island will eventually reveal the means to access the ziggurat and likely the bodies of one or more of the adventurers that the Player Characters have come to find.

The grand finale of the adventure takes place in the ziggurat, depicted on the inside of the folded-out sheet. Here, the Player Characters will encounter the gargantuan being that fired upon their ship for a second time, but this time, thankfully inert. Here it is revealed to be no monster, but a construct, one that appears to have docked inside the ziggurat and which the Player Characters can then enter. Inside the gargantuan being, they will find the last of the adventurers and treasure, as well as ‘things’ from another dimension, amorphous, slithering, and definitely wanting to replace the Player Characters. There are overtones of cosmic horror here, but not much in the way of explanation.

It is this lack of explanation which leaves the reader with an underwhelming sense of threat and any real story. With just three locations detailed, the gargantuan construct feels small and the threat inconsequential. The last surviving adventurer is terrified, believing the Player Characters to have been driven mad by the Voice emanating from a Stone that the ‘things’ have moved and are conducting a ritual on. Their motives are never clearly explained and nor is what would happen if the stone was restored to its rightful mounting.

If what is presented in Echoes of Ebonthul is underwhelming as written, it at least leaves plenty of scope for the Dungeon Master to develop and add to it as is her wont. One possibility is to develop the terror of the surviving adventurer and one of the ‘things’ already impersonating one of his companions, ready to instill a little paranoia into the adventure. For further ideas, the authors has some development notes here.

Physically, Echoes of Ebonthul is very nicely presented, being more drawn than actually written. It has a nice sense of scale, but lacks the humour of the previous releases in the Pocket Perils series. The combination of having been drawn and the cartoonish artwork with the high quality of the paper stock also gives Echoes of Ebonthul a physical feel which feels genuinely good in the hand. Its small size means that it is very easy to transport.

Ultimately, the plot of Echoes of Ebonthul is short, simple, and disappointing, though the whole thing can be run and played in a single session. It is not as sophisticated or as engaging as previous entries in the Pocket Perils series, and whilst it is very easy to set up and run, it needs more development upon the part of the Dungeon Master to make it memorable. Unfortunately, in scaling up the scenario, Echoes of Ebonthul scales down the story.