Shrieks in the Dark

By Martin CubasWeird Adventures by Martin A. CubasCastles & CrusadesLevels 2-3 They can’t see you. They don’t need to. A colony of blind, grotesque predators has infested an abandoned temple deep inside a canyon. They hunt by sound. They move in packs. And they’re starving. This thirty page adventure uses about fourteen pages to describe seven rooms. Obviously long-winded and padded out, you kill a few monsters. Also, it’s not dark. Oh lop-sided page count, where have you been? I’ve missed you. Look, I get it, PDF pages are “free”; you’re not paying to print them. Why not put in a bunch of appendices, and lead in, and backstory, and everything else? It’s free! Academically, I agree. But, in practice, what I see time and time again is a poor adventure with a low “core” page count with a whole lot of extra information. While a bit hyperbolic, one must ask oneself, is the designer interested in writing an adventure or ar they interested in world building and the adventure is just a…