“SlaughterGrid” seems to be the work of a man (Rafael Chandler) going through a bad break-up or divorce. It is not a pleasant piece of art to consume, unlike Shoot Out the Lights or Rumours, but I guess those had both sides contributing and are a different medium, besides. The adventure is ugly through and through, with constant gross-outs and a misogynist’s scene-setting, although the reader is perhaps tipped to this by a full-page list of inspirational thrash metal songs right after the table of contents and credits. Why review a twelve-year-old problematic module that already has a funny and informative review by Retired Adventurer? At the heart of the adventure is a bit of TTRPG genius that makes it worth running if certain nonsense is removed, especially for players transitioning to the lethality of OSR play from the nigh-invincibility of PCs in, say, fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons. Secondarily, there are also interesting puzzles for perceptive players, and a highly interactive if a bit overly combat-oriented dungeon.
The cover does not lie, and I bought it on the strength of the title and the TenFootPole review. I did not use the hexcrawl that surrounds the dungeon the two times I ran the module, so there is no commentary here on that portion of the adventure. For system, I deployed Lamentations of the Flame Princess with a couple tweaks to run “SlaughterGrid” online, and used another appropriate system, Dungeon Crawl Classics, to play the game in person. The module is written “in OSRIC.” The layout is fairly close to contemporary OSR models (though a little less compact, and without map close-ups) with bullet points, flavor tables, and tidy spreads, though the most important table stretches awkwardly over a few pages. I reduced this mutations roll to a single page with truncated descriptions, so that it might hang on my GM screen. There are several nifty new risk-reward magic items, too, and unusual treasure formats, even very unusual. A few fiddly rules subsystems are included for letting thieves roll all their own dice, lifting very heavy objects, and tricking monsters. Almost every room includes a description of the smells (or rather, stenches), not just sounds and sights.
The backstory is nonsensical, at least as an explanation for the dungeon’s structure. The dungeon itself is supposed to be a buried portion of a huge war construct, the three levels corresponding more-or-less to the womb, and lower digestive and excretory systems. We will not detain ourselves with arguing whether ancient magicians would design such a machine with (semi-)functioning organs, or why most of that which should be vertical is horizontal; the disbelief can be suspended here. We will be irritated by the lore that the machine was piloted by genocidal halflings, even though nothing inside is scaled to hobbits, and that this history has no impact on the exploration whatsoever.
The first level map has an excellent layout, and its mirroring yet partial destruction provides clues to hidden benefits (one at the GM’s option). The second level, which is a bit confusing in illustration (some walls, underpasses, and shores are not clearly distinguished) is a small loop inside a larger loop, with a few dead-end spurs, with two connections to the floor above and a single one descending. The final layer won’t produce many different paths, but it is fairly small. There are fifty-six rooms, plus the nineteen hexes for the surrounding crawl. The whole is a bit of a monster zoo, with several creatures just waiting for the party to show up and “complete their scenes.” The space is a rather crowded locale, with few empty rooms, and “random” encounter tables (one of these references a level 4 table when no table or level 4 exists) are explicitly for empty rooms, rather than wandering monsters. Gygaxian naturalism is rare. There are a few “gotcha” traps with no real local signposting of their danger (slightly more forgivable considering the conceit of the dungeon, see below). There’s a talky monster or two and graffiti that reveal some of what the party is in store for.
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| The Re-Birthers about to find a whole mess of eggs |
The central, fantastic gimmick of the dungeon is that anyone killed will be rebirthed–with a mutation from a d100 table–in the hall that corresponds to the ovary and fallopian tube. The PC’s body and equipment will remain where it fell, the character emerging nude and different. Most of the mutations are disgusting (e.g., “When injured, you exude thick bluish oil that reeks of rotting fish”) and some debilitating (e.g., sunshine now sets the PC’s skin on fire). Several add something to the explorer’s repertoire (e.g., removable eyes that still see up to 100’ away). Some are very irritating to adjudicate (e.g., “you can inhale spirits, such as ghosts and ghasts; however, you must murder an innocent person in order to release the spirit once you've inhaled it. After you kill your innocent victim, the ghost leaves your body and is exiled to another plane. If you don't kill an innocent person, the undead spirit that you've inhaled takes over your body after 24 hours.”). Suffice to say, a PC that dies more than a few times will likely be unrecognizable and even unplayable after the adventure. Still, this works as a not-quite-as-harsh-as-death learning tool to be cautious while dungeon-crawling, and avoids the problem of how to quickly replace a killed PC inside the dungeon.
The secondary innovations that make the dungeon worthwhile are the (monster) aurumeretrix and the (treasure) flatworm eggs. The latter have a lot of discoverable properties and can function as exploration tools and weapons for players who are willing to experiment. There’s also a scene that provides a clue to the eggs’ utility. The former are the reason why every gold treasure in the dungeon is wrapped in some kind of container. These dangerous monsters appear whenever enough exposed gold is accumulated, and then try to slaughter the party. This is an interesting challenge to add to gp-as-xp dungeon-crawling. Unfortunately, they are repeatedly called “gold whores” in the text, even while they have no resemblance to women. (I used “aurumeretrix” to refer to the creatures in play once they had become familiar, which mostly hides the misogyny behind the Latin.)
The monster zoo, absurd history, implausible ecology, and over-the-top gross-outs (who am I kidding, I play D&D partly for the gross-outs) are all forgivable sins, but there is one blunder that necessitates at least a partial re-write: the ignoring of the reincarnation rules for everybody but the PCs. Throughout the dungeon there are dying and dead who are not brought back by the “ovum.” There are a couple who do follow the rules, like a grotesquely deformed magic-user who has perished multiple times within the dungeon, and in a nice bit of anthropology, has come to be worshipped as a god’s avatar by some of the denizens. There is another inhabitant who survived for a while by committing suicide and cannibalizing his former bodies. But there are many that have no mutations and have not been rebirthed: the skeleton in room 4 and corpse in room 6; maybe the orc being tortured in room 8; the victims of the slave pit in room 24; the dead magic-user in room 25; the members of the “Brazen Bulls,” which may be the three very recently dead adventurers in room 35; the corpses in room 38; the remains of the gnome thief in room 39; the dead and dying elfs in room 42; the butchered cleric in room 51. The bite of the undead draugur–an uncommon monster inside which prevents reincarnation–could explain a few, but not all of these cases. It is unclear whether humanoids are affected, but there are no corpses from the otyugh-humanoid war.
The full ramifications of the mutation-rebirth device are fascinating and horrifying, but not explored by most of the module. The magic can function as a perpetual-calorie machine to feed the creatures trapped underground (in room 20, but not really considered in other situations). An entire underground economy could be constructed out of the renewable resource remains, sinew and bone and certain mutations (explored a little in room 23’s armory), a sicko recycling scheme. It would seem that warfare, slavery (slightly part of the set up), and religious belief would be deeply altered by the main premise. From a player’s perspective, this makes humanoid enemies–if they come back–a complex challenge. It also makes for a heavy workload for refereeing, keeping track of bodies and equipment and mutations for all casualties, as well as the location and movements of the reborn. It also makes pre-prepping the module a long process, if the logic of the “ovum” is pursued to the end, the resulting SlaughterGrid societies fully worked out inside the dungeon. But a cool exercise.
To reduce the sexist elements, I excised the vagina-breast-penis boss monster among other things, and replaced it with retired PCs formerly run by the players in the current adventure. These replacement villains, of course, had been mutated to almost unrecognizability in their conquest of the dungeon, and some of their (sometimes partly-eaten) corpses lay as signposts to various traps, their old unusual magic items as hints to the coming climax, easter eggs for the retentive. The madness inspired by the dungeon’s mental costs explained the former heroes’ heel turns. I rewrote several rooms’ spoor to foreshadow and account for the new social structure determined by the powers of the “ovum.” I reduced the number of humanoids, because they would be recycled by any successful party attacks. Almost any dead body had a “clone” alive and unwell in the dungeon.
Is it worth it? Should you purchase the module, as a training ground for OC-to-OSR play? Or is the misogyny too steep to reward the writer, and should you just borrow the central premise and make your own dungeon? The pdf is apparently PWYW now at DriveThru, $6.66 suggested price, nyuk nyuk (what I paid). The adventuring parties spent seven or eight sessions within, and that’s with some of the module abridged. If my calculations are correct, that works out to at least 150 human-hours of entertainment (and this is not including the lonely “fun” of prep, or writing this review), so in a utilitarian sense it cost less than 5 cents per hour of amusement.
The gameplay produced many genuine moments of scatalogical hilarity and unusual problem-solving. Does the following fit your gaming crew’s preferences? A disliked NPC was “impregnated” with gold and dispatched that way. The humor of someone killing themselves on a trap less than a minute after their first re-birth. “Shit for the Shit God.” “These mushrooms are wicked!” “Now it is your time, slime–I tell you because I gotta rhyme.” Musical ladders. “It’s a – floor mimic!” Slipping in a shit trench moments after delivering an impassioned speech in the worst Irish accent you’ve ever heard. The not-quite-effectual guano bomb. Hiro the slug hero. “Now he’s got scabs everywhere!” “What’s with your belly–are there eggs in it?” “Could you try to poo out the eggs inside you?” The long scrotal tether. “Maybe you’ll come back with three boobs.” “I hope your mouth and asshole get swapped.” “As the resident expert on the fairer sex … in a ‘womb’ I would not screw with that pink stuff.” “You’re naked, and inside-out.” … “You know, the small intestine can be pretty fuckin’ long,” Grayfield said, his organs on the outside illustrating just what he was saying. There seemed to be a sphincter in the wall, and the Father pointed this out. “So you’re a sphincter expert, too?” “As a priest, I need to know these things.” … Daerman had big grey wings. “You will now address me as ‘The Dark Knight’,” he demanded, as he flew very slowly. … Volunteering for sphincter-duty. “I’m gonna become a militant feminist.” “On the plus side, a baby without a mouth is quiet.” “I’ve never referenced an onion bank.” “I would have a lot of respect for this monster if he looted us.” “Meet me at the sac!” “This is actually a shithole.” “Can we get pooped out the asshole to escape?”
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| Live. Shit. Die. Repeat. |
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