two modules review- The Monolith Beyond Space and Time and CRYPTS OF INDORMANCY

THE MONOLITH BEYOND SPACE AND TIME

This book has just amazing layout and illustration. Weird to say bc it's a little paperback b/w digest but there's no part of it which gets in the way, everything is clearly labelled, the illustrations are effective... it's got a blocky, negotiable frame and there's very little excess.

You can throw this thing around your table and you'll be happy. Ok, as for the content: I was disappointed how long and ineffective the effects section was, like I remember skipping over it first time I read it and rereading it I wanted to skip it again, but the random encounters section is gold. I'm not impressed by "the owl's service" but everything else is exactly the kinda weird fiction shit that hits the spot like Raggi can do.

The monolith itself requires some appreciation. Despite the long and involuted "brain" section, it's pretty surprising how well the central mechanic of "long white corridor, anywhere you turn is the same corridor" works. As a gameable piece of extradimensionality it's hot topic.

The worm is okay, not very powerful, carter's head is good, the inhabitants are pretty nice, the brain thing is long and not well edited but I think it's funny and usable.

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CRYPTS OF INDORMANCY

ofc, if you have the bryce lynch ten-foot-pole criteria of: brevity is best, rpgtext needs to be instantly readable, I don't need pay-for-word stuff, you will give the review bryce gave where you wanna be soft on melsonia but you also see the punches laid out for you and you gotta take them.

For me, I have to appreciate: the solid prose, genuine lit kinda, the illustrations, the way the adventure takes shape in your mind on the third or fourth re-read. It is a negadungeon. But what can best be said I think is it's melsonia-comentary on the osr, maybe we can break it down:

1. the whole thing about super attention to detail

  Obv it's an osr value that you shouldn't pay prose to little details that can be made up or ignored completely. There's something to say about the value of detail as it themes the whole adventure, and potentially the dm's interpretation. I would say "interpretation" is key over "play". I don't hold a lot of stock in the idea that maybe-unnecessary detail themes the play at the table.

Crypts of Indormancy uses detail to explain all the dungeon-maker's choices. If the question becomes to the players, "why", then there is an answer. If the answer is somewhat mysterious like with Maun Hevich and the Thieving Cousin then so much the better.

Honestly, I think that players playing the adventure may learn to start asking about detail, and in this way form part of the theory of Thuuz's trap, and therefore maybe anticipate it? Or likely learn after the fact. But to be basically apart of the spinning precise cogs of someone else's world does the detail serve.

That's one answer! The other answer is that precise detail makes for a good read because it's funny and/or it builds a larger world as so many of the details here obviously do. But uhhh hold on to the fact that the players can ask for more detail here and get bigger answers and that's what separates this adventure from flat no-explanation eighties shit of which a parody is included conveniently in the module.

2. the weird intermissionary gygax-era parody in the center of the book

this I think is homage to those modules as well as a piss-take but of the british kind where maybe the whole point is to meanly make fun of something. All of the people confused and upset by the inclusion are part of the piss-take.

3. Post-colonialism

If the point of post-colonialism is examine both the colonists and those colonized by a bit of a distanced perspective, there is room here for irony, pretty-real horror, actual criticism and an acknowledgement, throwing up the hands, of the inability to criticise, in Crypts.

THE ISLANDERS:
  - Given dignity and representation, via the history (of successful revolution), representation of actual islanders (the dead bodies/ heads), cultural details

  - Horror of the colonizer's attitudes shown by the relentless insults of the islander's ethics present in Thuuz's dungeon. The obsession with insults here reflect on Thuuz but then again the rules encouraging islander characters to destroy these insults I find condescending. That being said maybe condescending to the islanders a bit is a part of what's going on here. Because we're all subject to maybe ultimately bad social pressures -ed

ELVES:
 -  I really like the idea of elves being so squeamish about death that they're rewarded xp for avoiding talking about it. Elves deserve to be squeamish and the opportunity to roleplay an elf should come with optional stuffiness.

THE ROLEPLAYING TABLE:
- deserves its own section in my analysis.

THUUZ:
- Thuuz is hilarious bc he's the center of the dungeon and yet the least-likely participant in the pc's raid. His instructions are to wait until they leave. So again the inner mystery here which is a true test of wills between the players and the text is to penetrate Thuuz's plan. Almost everyone will fail! He's a fucking genius elf man.

- Haliburton-level backup plans for a plot which is essentially cruel and perhaps pointless (or perhaps not? why make everything so convoluted?) is essentially the correct picture of apex-level colonizers, people who are tightly wrapped in their ambitions as well as protections who maybe miss the point a little because so tightly wrapped.

- The whole tomb is essentially strange and a little off because it refers to obsessions which have aged out of place and were over-focused and hate-filled.

4. THE ROLEPLAYING TABLE:

A pretty huge point that rpgs themselves are colonialist. This is obvious. The islander's miniatures are parodies of the tribal islanders just like our miniatures are thinly veiled caricatures of real-world tribal peoples.

This is no issue for melsonians, although maybe it's a bit of a point, but the examination of your rpg values as obviously coloniast in a situation which is a literal trap for the resurrection of the colonizer is uhhhhhh

5. THE BESTIARY:

Since I think Ezra is smarter than me, he has included many little jokes in the otherwise plain-weird bestiary. Unseen Servant but composed of the ghost of your ancestors? Must have something to say here about post-colonialism. The Magnetic Hypernaut which likely will never show up? Seems more just weird to me. Diremptive Evasculators also just weird.

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Something about the ghost of the colonizer acting out social scripts which makes your veins pop out to power the resurrection machine of the colonizer is like that Bush era thing... grad student stuff.


(The first review of this post is normal instadeath but the second review counts as instadeath: nights -ed.)