Wavestone Monolith - Play Review
When one of my friends wasn't able to run his normal game, I stepped in and offered to run a one shot for his table. I mulled over my options and decided on the Wavestone Monolith, a mini-dungeon for Shadowdark published by the Arcane Library with Kelsey Dione the only credited creator. It looked like it wouldn't take too long and Shadowdark is easy to roll up characters.
The adventure itself is a single half-letter sheet, front and back. Setup, map, a unique treasure and random encounter table on the front. The location key is on the back and details 9 locations. The writing is terse and pared down to the bone.
My prep was about an hour. Most of it focused on getting things setup in Foundry: adding walls to maps. I'm not sure how many people have players map when playing virtually, but I just let the players see the map on Foundry and explore it with their tokens. My players rolled up new level 3 characters between work ending and our game starting. All smooth sailing.
The introduction doesn't have much narrative, but the Wavestone Monolith's cave is the source of howling on moonless nights. Within players will find a brain eater (mindflayer) and his many nautiloid headed minions and the transformation pools from which they were born from the local peoples.
At the Table
We jumped in quickly with our crawlers at keyed location 1. Referencing the adventure, in PDF on a second screen, was easy. I could give the players the information they needed quickly and with confidence.
The first snag was the ziggurat's entrance. I deciphered this during prep but the staircase ascending the exterior of the ziggurat, before entering into the middle room was slightly unclear. It was a bit hard to map on a VTT as well. Ziggurat, you're asking? Best I can tell, this stepped stone pyramid is the titular monolith.
Location 3, the first within the ziggurat, starts with a trap: a trick staircase that turns into a slide with a pit trap at its end. A classic. I clearly communicated that the stairs were worn smooth, from the edge of the tread all the way to the back by people slipping on by. I did not communicate about the smoothed over trilobite fossils touched frequently by the inhabitants and functioning as the off switch. The crawlers triggered the trap and one of them fell into the pit. Communicating the trilobites may have given them enough information to figure out how to deactivate the slide. I could tell, to late unfortunately, that I did not give them enough to understand what was going on. A good case study for providing more information so players can solve a situation.
After dealing with the trap, crawlers have the opportunity to go two ways. One is an open passageway I described as being filled with wet eating noises and the other lies behind a door. The open way has nearly all the foes in this dungeon: nautiloid-headed berserkers and their brain eater master. My crawlers chose this route and despite an inquisitive response from the reaction chart things quickly descended into combat.
I'm a bit worried by this choice of weighting half the dungeon with so many dangerous foes. It makes this path seem like a bad choice, but it worked this time. The crawlers could be stealthy here, as the denizens are occupied, including the Brain Eater meditating behind his heavy curtain. It did thwart my plan to pull any randomly encounter berserkers from this crew.
Our one death was to the aforementioned Brain Eater. The crawlers found a room filled with hundreds of skulls, each of them broken open on the top. Ideas flew around: killed by pick axes? Some sort of trap? The Bard asked if he had any lore and I told him these were the signs of a brain eater and their insatiable desire for the minds of sentient beings. The crawlers expounded on this knowledge and continued their discussion. Sorry folks, but meditation will only keep a brain eater a few scant feet away occupied for so long. I hope you enjoy mind blasts!
The east half of the dungeon beyond that door from earlier was full of interesting interactions after the two large combats. Some highlights included
- The crawlers sacrificing the dungeon's unique treasure for a Wish.
- The crawlers repurposing berserker corpses as baits for giant leeches blocking an underwater tunnel.
- A random encounter with local soldiers filled with suspicion and tension.
The night ended with the crawlers finding the secret treasure room and escaping with a pile of filthy lucre while pursued by a black pudding. Thankfully, they left those giant leeches alive (and full of berserker blood!) so the black pudding left them for an easier meal.
Conclusion
This was an absolute blast to run. Easy to setup, easy to communicate to the party and with some fun interactivity. It took us about 4 hours from first meetup and social lubrication until their expeditious but lucrative retreat.