SlaughterGrid (OSR adventure - Mini Review)

SlaughterGrid (affiliate link*) is "a strange and gruesome" OSR dungeon by Rafael Chandler. It also contains a small hexcrawl and 32 new monsters... all in 48 pages. It's written for OSRIC (but would work for any OSR game etc.).

Rafael is one of my favorite OSR writers, and this module is indeed "strange and gruesome" like the rest of his writings. 

The cover says "a meat grinder for level 2 characters" which is... kinda true, I guess. I don't see how a 2nd level PC could have any hope of surviving this (although you can get resurrected inside the dungeon), but if they survive it wouldn't be a meat grinder.

The book starts with a (semi-random) explanation for the SlaughterGrids, titanic automatons created ages ago for war. The automatons have fallen and the dungeon is their insides - the levels are called uterus, bowels, and belly, and have the format of internal organs (but walls of stone, etc.).

There are also some house rules and some notes about the dungeon - all interesting stuff (a "resurrection machine" of sorts, gold-smelling monsters, etc.). This resurrection machine is perhaps the strangest and most curious part of the module, but it creates some unanswered questions (if everyone resurrects, why are there so many corpses, etc.).

The hexcrawl is well done, full of interesting encounters. A page on the Golden Citadel would enhance the module immensely, but it is already packed with stuff so I can't complain.

The dungeon itself is good, although it has too many monsters (goblins, kobold, gnolls, oozes) and traps and too few empty spaces. Overall, it feels a lot more "underground nightmare" than "Gygaxian naturalism". 

You might occasionally roll your eyes at a monster made of genitals or piles of dung (or other gory, violent, maybe puerile details), but boredom is rarer here than in most modules (even "official" ones).

One last note: the structure of the writing is nearly perfect for this kind of module. The descriptions are terse and inspiring, showing exactly what you need to know and nothing else. It wastes no time on boring details, but it sometimes leaves things vague. This is a good example:

Everything you need to know in a few lines... unfortunately, there are no other references to "carcass creeper" in the book (it is an OSRIC version of the carrion crawler, it seems; had to look it up). But you get the idea.

If you're writing an adventure module, you should at least learn how to write like this. Start with the bare minimum and ONLY add words where it's awesome or necessary.

Anyway, an interesting module, worth checking out.

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