Hey time to talk about another module I really like, and call it a review! Since I mentioned it already in my previous one, I figured I’d write up my thoughts on Prison of the Hated Pretender, also by Gus L.
I have run the module both as a stand-alone and as a location in a campaign, though I’ve not played in it myself, so that’s the perspective I’m coming from.Disclaimer: I do occasionally chat with Gus on various discords. Ain’t nobody paying me to write words on this blog, as if that wasn’t obvious. Also, spoilers for the module of course.
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| Cover by Gus L. |
Overview
Prison of the Hated Pretender (Which I’ll shorten to Prison because that name is long) is a Pay What You Want introductory module for teaching both Players and Referees about the peculiarities to OSR/Classic play (Gus I am sure has opinions on which one it is).It’s written by Gus L, I think illustrated by him too, and published by the Hydra Cooperative.
The dungeon itself is a small (10 room) and compact tower which houses a disgraced tyrant of undefined origin, along with the spirits that are set there to guard him. That tyrant is now the Pretender from the title, a miserable and pathetic undead wretch, regularly tormented by phantasms.
The dungeon has stats for Old-School Essentials (so, as usual, any version of B/X you like will do just fine) as well as having stats in the back of it for 5E, along with notes on how to adjust things to make it still work as intended.
What works for me
Quite a lot, actually!Again, let’s start with the most obvious stuff, the look of the module. I really like the cover art, as well as the illustration of the tower within the module itself. The sketchy and rough artwork I think works well enough for the kind of dark, gloomy and grotty atmosphere that the Pretender is stuck in. The color palette is not as bold and striking as in Tomb Robbers. The layout I have some issues with which I’ll get to in the next section, however overall I think this is a good looking pdf!
After running Prison a few times I tend to default to it as my answer to the question “Hey what do I run as a teaching module for people new to the OSR?”. It helps that the module itself literally opens by stating that it is a pedagogical adventure. This was designed to be an introduction, and I think that Gus has done a good job at reaching that goal.
How it achieves that goal is by offering copious notes and commentary from the author on how to run specific elements (the “safe haven” of the Hamlet of Scabrous Yokels, the dungeon having various entrances, how to utilize factions etc.) along with keeping the scope of the adventure tight and small - only 10 rooms, not much in the way of empty winding hallways and generally at least something to do in each of those 10 rooms. The location is dense.
And I do consider the denseness a good thing in this case. While there have been plenty of blog posts old and new regarding the utility of empty rooms and empty, long hallways, I feel like those would hinder something which is meant to introduce people to the concepts of the dungeon exploration playstyle.
In both cases of me running this players did not actually ever “complete” the dungeon, always choosing to retreat after a certain point. This is a good thing. In general a dungeon shouldn’t easily be “completed” as if we were playing a video game and you want to check off another box before you move on. They are still there, and they might change and evolve (sometimes into non-hostile locations, sure) but should never simply be checked out and then left forever.
The fact that the phantasms keep spawning again and again until they are permanently destroyed helps keep the dungeon always a threat, although I would say even if they were destroyed it would be good to have someone else start making use of the tower, if the PC’s don’t want to.
Another thing I like is the loot on offer in the dungeon. There’s not too much of it, a reasonably sized OSR party of 1st level characters will likely not get enough to actually level up after going through this small dungeon, but it makes up for that in interesting magical items. And note I say interesting, not necessarily powerful. I love having weird magical items in games, as they tend to make any future situations that more complex both in terms of options and ways of approaching them. Plus, I just like it when a dungeon actually acknowledges that Magic-Users are always actively looking for more spells to add to their repertoires and actually offers you a spellbook to plunder! (Tomb Robbers does that too, and it is also good.)
Lastly, a note on its usability. As a standalone one-shot the adventure works about as well as any OSR dungeon, that is to say “pretty good, but one-shots don’t quite fit the way you should be playing these”. The Author’s Note attached to the Crypt room specifically covers this very well, acknowledging that 10 rooms is hardly a full classic “dungeon”, but Prison still offers a nice and condensed version of the kind of gameplay. If you’re going to use any OSR module to run as a one-shot, Prison I feel is particularly well suited for it because of its content-dense nature.
As a location in an existing campaign it does require some tweaking and concessions by the GM regarding their own setting - after all the Pretender and the people who trapped him are kind of big implications for the world, honestly bigger than Tomb Robbers has, because in that one it is a lot easier to simply chuck the crystal tomb somewhere in your world and not care about anything else about the Crystal Frontier.
As a location to start a campaign at, I think it works pretty good. As long as you are going for something suitably grim and grotty (Throw it in your Warhammer Fantasy-like campaign!) the tower will fit right in without too much issues, and the Armillary Sphere on top of the tower offers nearly infinite potential for the Referee to set up a follow up to the adventure!
Special note also for the writing - The stone throne with awful, unpleasant knobs on the seat and the pumpkin growing in a bathtub were really strong and evocative images for me when I read it and definitely stuck with players when playing. The Throne just actively makes you feel unpleasant as you imagine having to sit on that thing, and the pumpkin adds a bit of levity and absurdity to the whole situation.
What doesn’t work for me
Now then, onto the negatives. There are a few, most of them minor, but still worth acknowledging and addressing.First off, the layout. The pdf is laid out in this rather odd landscape format which as someone who likes to print out documents when I run them I honestly did not appreciate. It makes it awkward to keep the dungeon in a standard binder without having to flip the binder over, and just makes it feel kind of off. I recall Gus has mentioned that he might eventually rejig it into a more standard layout so that Print-on-Demand versions can be bought from DTRPG, and I would gladly get one when and if that happens.
Furthermore, while I appreciate the denseness of the content, the denseness of the layout I am less thrilled about.
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| Here's an example of what I mean. |
For me this starts bordering on a bit too much, especially when running this at the table. While the boxed advice notes are, in many ways, the main show of the book, I do feel like the way they are arranged ends up breaking up the actual body text in weird ways. Things feel slightly too much for me to easily reference during actual play, and I have had that happen in both cases when I ran the module (and this was after reading it beforehand both times). I do really feel like this stems from the previous point of layout. The odd landscape format makes text just flow in kind of an awkward way. I am not a layout artist, I don’t really have the proper vocabulary to express why it doesn’t work for me, but it just kind of doesn’t.
The layout does utilize bolding, underlining and other such methods to try and keep things in check, and it definitely helps, but I feel some rearrangement of the text would have done that better. Overall though I do not actually consider the layout to be that big of a deterrent to me recommending this, as it’s quite possible that I am simply the one having issues with parsing the text, which means that if someone else reads it and runs it they might be fine!
From a design perspective, I once again do have an issue with the factions in the dungeon. This is probably the one real place where the small size of it really hurts the dungeon crawling experience it is trying to convey. The only two real factions are the Pretender himself and the Phantasms that are his tormentors and guardians. In a similar way a with Tomb Robbers though, the Pretender is only even coherent on occasion, and the Phantasms are dumb, mute and aggressive as they are more or less single-purpose machines. Which makes it kind of difficult to get too involved with either faction if you are a player.
Whenever I’ve run it I simply always have the Pretender willing to talk initially, just as a way to give the players something to do besides wacking Phantasms as they move from room to room. Perhaps a ghostly commander, sacrificed by the prison-makers to oversee the phantasms might have been a good addition, providing the players with a direct counterpoint to the Pretender and being able to actually make the argument that, no, this guy deserves what is being done to him.
Conclusion
In conclusion - you really should pick up and read Prison of the Hated Pretender, even more so than Tomb Robbers of the Crystal Frontier, I think. Its Referee advice I feel is quite valuable, and with way too many people not really being connected to the old blogs or able to really get this kind of advice or information easily, having it all be in this 21 page document helps immensely.That advice is what makes this my go-to recommend, and I suspect it will stay that way until I find something that manages to do its job even better somehow!
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