Psychedelic Fantasties #1: Beneath the Ruins Play Report

 I ran Beneath the Ruins for my players and here's how it went.

We have a little hex-crawl sandbox going. I needed some science-fantasy dungeon for the ruins they were going to explore--reports of mutants raiding caravans. Needed something good. After stagnating on my own dungeon for two weeks I just bought this off DriveThru for $1.77, which is about as much as I feel I can spend on a dungeon without feeling buyer's remorse if it sucks.

I needed a main entrance with mutants and a secret entrance the players could find by investigating. This dungeon has neither. Instead it's an entrance to a 'mythical underworld' type mega-dungeon complete with stygian boatman demanding single GPs in payment.

What it does have, though, is science-fantasy stuff, laser guns, mystery cults, and mutants, which is what I wanted.

At the start of session 2 players knew there was a secret entrance, but they hadn't found it yet. On the way back to the ruins they met a bunch of goblins holding a meeting in an abandoned building and after some tense negotiations discovered the goblins had a plan to raid the ruins themselves. Decided on the plan that the goblins would lead a frontal assault as a distraction, allowing the party to sneak in and try to nab some of that sweet-sweet high tech loot everybody wants (in this world magical items are technology of a past high culture a la Mutant Future). That's the set-up.

 Now, the secret entrance led to the underground lake with the boatman. If the players had gone in the main entrance I would've contrived a staircase down into the Luminite's base.

Players were pretty sketched out by the boatman and considered going back. But eventually let him take them across.

They get into party formation and start exploring. They get to the rubble trap room and at first just the thief is going to check it out (yesss) but last minute the whole party decides to pile in (fuuuucck). They set off the trap and half the team is killed even though I telegraphed it with loose rubble and timbers holding up a wall, and they had seen a cave-in earlier in the dungeon.

Note here that the module describes the trap as 'camouflaged'. This isn't the last time I had to refuse to take the module's advice.

They dig their 10' pole out of the rubble and decide to make judicious use of it from here. They manage to find the secret door and go down the stairs and we have fun roleplaying medieval fantasy characters figuring out sci-fi doors with hand scanners. They fumble around for a while and open a door on Luminites lifting weights, then they run awaaaay. Luminites think that's suspicious as hell and give chase. Players surrender and beg for their lives, Luminites give em a bomb and tell em to blow up the mutants to prove they're really just there for mutant treasure and not, in fact, with the goblins that attacked them on the surface.

Players get lost in the spooky area with the slithering devil after coming thiissss close to incurring its wrath which would've ended in a TPK because the thing is described as super fast and super evil. They find the spooky door bulging with evil energies, argue about using the bomb on it, and turn back missing out on the only area of the dungeon that has any treasure worth getting killed over. Headed north into the caverns they spend a fat portion of the game going from room to room, lost in caverns, with nothing to interact with. Random encounter happens with a slow moving enemy, they run away. Investigate a bit more, another surprise enemy, they run away. Oh look this room makes loud noise better leave. Oh look this room has yellow grass that doesn't like light better swim in a hole then leave.

 The players are having fun through all this because they don't know any better. They just dumb players. It's me who is trying to figure out what I can do to make any of this interesting and cohesive for myself. The module is constantly getting in the way of this. I could've done more if the rooms were keyed less because I'm an imaginative human. There is seriously not much to work with here. The enemies are either 3' worms or 3' crickets or friendly. Friendly people like to have conversations and conversations are only interesting if one side can help the other, but what can a 3' carnivorous cricket do? The crickets are described as 'monstrosities' and murderous, but also they won't attack right away? and can understand language? Why is everything friendly? Why are there no treasures?

 And the yeast-grass place where the mutants grow their food. The designer offers for you to use sanity checks when the players see it. Why? undulating smelly yellow grass isn't that weird. It's not even the weirdest thing in the dungeon.

I've seen other reviewers praise this module for its clean design and usability at the table. I disagree. I read the thing twice and went through with a highlighter and took notes for three days before the game and none of that really helped me. I ran the thing mostly from memory because I kept flipping pages trying to figure out what the enemies did, where there were sights and smells to be had, if there was something interesting buried under the lines of text and harmless encounters, and if one room had some connection to another. I was grasping at straws and could've done more stuff if I had thrown the module away and just made up everything.

There is a ton of rooms dedicated to the factions, which are the center of this module. The Luminites have the largest holding and are almost guaranteed to be the first ones the players run into. There's no clear reason in the module as to why these groups hate each other, as they're both described as being friendly and welcoming to outsiders. I decided that their mutual-hatred was over ideological differences, the Luminites are miniature Elon Musks that worship Science! and the mutants are superstitious. 

That's fine, factions are fun, but there's not much dungeon in between the factions. Most of the wandering monster encounters take place in zones controlled by factions, which doesn't make sense, even if it's a 'mythical underworld'. 

Another portion of the dungeon is super dangerous and has spooky ghosts and no random encounters. This is where the bulk of the treasure is but the dangers were too much for my players and they noped out of here.

In the end they were captured by the mutants and were being taken to their lair when they arrived at the sinkhole which is described as being easy to climb for the mutants but a death trap for the players. Now we're at an impasse. The mutants want to take the players to see the Shaman, who the players are charged with blowing up, but if I make the players climb down this hole they'll probably slip and die. The players start taking off their platemail and to my surprise the one carrying the bomb (a gift for your shaman!) pulls the pin and kicks it into the pit "Oh no! Oops! Dang! I'm sorry about that!"

The mutants are confused. I'm confused. Even the players are themselves confused. I have the mutants decide these idiots aren't worth their time and tell them to leave or else. The players flee from the caverns, getting lost and chased by crickets on the way, and eventually back to the Luminites.

The Luminites give them a laser pistol and the players decide they've had enough of this place. They leave.

On the way out they're attacked by wandering face huggers and we have the only fun combat of the game that ends with the players running away and waiting for the face huggers to leave. I reason that since the face huggers are ambush predators (like most the enemies here) they don't bother chasing enemies once they're gone.

To delineate, my problems with this module are thus:

• Factions don't make sense, don't have interesting motives.
• Enemies are boring and don't have interesting moves. 
• Rooms try to be weird but mostly end up being boring.
• No breadcrumb treasures to encourage exploration.
• No fun things to experiment with or utilize
• No fun scenery to roll, throw, tip over, set on fire, or jump off of.
• Too many choke points with nothing going on. "Okay guys, left or right? Uhh"
• Text dense, needs some judicious usage of bold italics line spaces, text boxes, and bullet points. Any kind of formatting.

Things the module did right:

• Trying to do something different
• Loops?
• Being excited about itself.
• Not wasting too much of my time with backstory.
  

You can't just not bother to have cohesion, ignore verisimilitude, and call it 'mythical underworld'. Especially if you make a dungeon that is ostensibly about faction play and area control. The Luminites worship technology and collect it, but where are they getting the technology from? The module doesn't say. The Luminites are described as 'not believing the world outside exists', so where the fuck does the technology come from? This isn't an interesting question that's answered in play, it's a roadblock to coming up with a reason for the Luminites to exist at all. You could just take them out and replace their entire area with random monster encounters and pit traps and probably have a great time.

Final comment: Aside from all this bitching, my players did in fact have a good time. They were mostly unaware of my struggles as a DM. I have an inkling that a more experienced DM could probably have pulled something more cohesive out of this.