Background
Two of my usual players in my Thursday night game were out of town this week, but I really wanted to run a playtest to try out some changes to Brighter Worlds. I was poking around for a small module I could run in a single night, and was pointed towards Lair of the Gobbler by Emiel Boven as my Sunday group is currently in the midst of another Emiel module the Rot King’s Sanctum (although heavily reskinned in that case).
It was a great suggestion! It’s immediately evocative, has good hooks, requires next to no prep, and has enough there to really feel substantial without so much that I thought I’d struggle to finish it in a night.
System
I’m running my own game, Brighter Worlds (SRD) which is a hack of Cairn, Electric Bastionland, and Macchiato Monsters.
It has lightweight core rules, “modular crunch” isolated within character classes (called Callings), and a whimsical storybook tone illustrated (literally) by the inimitable Evlyn Moreau.
The game is designed for tables that want low bookkeeping, options during character creation, some degree of mechanical advancement, and nothing that will clash with not taking it very seriously.
However if you just think “whimsical cairn with class abilities” you’re close enough for the purposes of this play report.
I’ve included my conversions at the bottom in case anyone has use for them.
Characters
Granny Hexwhistle
A returning, fan favorite from my Fangwitch’s Falls play reports, Granny is a Witch and also the worst person to exist. She flies around on a broom with her tiny frog familiar (which excretes hallucinogenic poison) while terrorizing whoever she can find.
Jierdan Havarian
The player of Mercutio from the Fangwitch’s Falls playthrough agreed to make a new character to help me test some things, and created Jierdan, a Grimblade. He has a giant, floating (and possibly sentient) Obsidian Zveihander named Lilicore with which he is able to cast spells by hitting people.
Jay/Dan Shades
Played by my wife, who plays in my usual Sunday game, Jay/Dan is a Sneaky Bastard and also apparently a tiktok zoomer. Jay/Dan can split a clone off of himself (Jay and Dan while doing so) and teleport (snap) one to the other, carrying anyone else in contact along for the ride.
Owner of a crystalline donkey used for transporting heavier items.
The Session
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| My post-it note "fog of war" read to go. |
We jumped in with the party having been hired by the owner of their favorite local restaurant to find her new Sous-chef Moira who was supposed to arrive recently with a caravan. Instead she reportedly went missing while passing through the Berrenmoot Swamps after she wandered off in search of the burial place of an ancient mage (the bit that Granny actually cared about).
After some searching, they find a large earthen mound sticking up from the boggy swamp, with evidence of both ruins and current habitation. Guarding the entrance is a borgle, a salamander person, with a spear. The group, lead by Granny and leaving Jay/Dan’s crystalline donkey tied up, approaches in an obviously hostile manner which causes the borgle to dash into the mound along a narrow hallway with a strange hop-skip gait. Granny rushes in after him while Jierdan casts Anti-Gravity on the borgle causing him to float into the air. Granny Hexwhistle, in her rush, triggers the pressure plates the borgle was avoiding which causes the (previously unnoticed) carved faces to breath fire into the area.
Granny hits the deck and manages to avoid most of the blast, but the floating borgle is less lucky. Jay/Dan scouts ahead, and the party opts to not pass through the flooded chamber on the lower level, instead heading up the stairs. They find a guard room with six borgles shooting the shit, drinking beer, and complaining about the Elder Mother and her recent obsession with her “Large Son”.
Granny sends her frog in to poison their beer jug with hallucinogens, and three of the six are dosed out of their minds before the rest realize what’s going on. At that point the party rushes in, beats the living daylights out of the rest, and threatens them into cooperation.
GM’s Note: The module specifically notes that the guards are distracted, and players should have an easy time sneaking past. I extended this to Granny’s poisoning attempt, deciding that they also wouldn’t notice a tiny frog crawling into the room.
I rolled a d6 to see how many of the 6 drank the poisoned beer before the rest realized something was going on. After one round of combat, each (non-poisoned) guard had been injured and failed a morale save to keep fighting.
One borgle agrees to lead them to where Elder Mother Elharr is, thinking this might be a good chance to displace her while maintaining plausible deniability.
They reach a large room containing the Elder Mother, her “large son”, a few borgle guards, and a harried looking Moira, the chef they were sent to rescue! Elharr’s large son turns out to be the Gobbler: a massive, rotund, and immobile toad. Moira has been gang pressed into chopping and cooking a massive earthworm to feed the Gobbler.
Granny immediately gets into a shouting match of insults with Elharr, with Jierdan being a tall imposing presence, while Jay sneaks around to Moira and Dan stays near the room entrance.
Jay snaps back to Dan with Moira in tow as the shouting match erupts into violence as Elharr shoots lightning at Granny and Jierdan. Jierdan uses his giant floating sword to attack one borgle guard while he attacks another with an axe.
Despite rescuing Moira, Jay’s teleport leaves him exposed as the Gobbler flicks out it’s massive tongue and gobbles the clone into his huge mouth. Dan snaps Jay back to him, but as the Gobbler is in contact the huge toad comes alone for the ride and gets jammed in the too-small hallway, where the rescued Moira takes her revenge using her meat clever. Sadly this fails to get Jay out of the Gobbler’s stomach, leading him to perish within.
Jierdan finishes the battle with Elharr with a flying leap that reunites him with his sword. He brings the zweihander smashing down on the Elder Mother while simultaneously casting Chain Lightning to electrocute all the nearby borgle enemies. Upon seeing Elharr defeated, the remaining borgle guards decide it would be in their best interest to flee.
Granny intends to interrogate Elharr for mystic secrets but the Elder Mother’s will is too strong, which ends with Granny simply finishing her off and looting her corpse. Jay gets resummoned, although at considerably lower stats (Jay/Dan’s Attributes are split between the original and the clone).
Granny, having seen Elharr heal one of the borgles during the fight, believes the staff may contain healing powers and attempts to activate it on the newly summoned but very weak clone. Instead she discovers that the Twinning Staff can be used to copy spells, and accidentally double casts Painful Truths on both Jay and Dan, nearly killing them on the spot.
GM’s Note: I specifically asked Granny’s player if he prefers to simply be told what magic items do, or if he wants to experiment with them. He firmly chose the latter.
Moira carves some roasts out of the Gobbler’s corpse as the party catches their breath. She tells the party she’d really like to rescue Willow, a root-kin who she says was also captured by the borgles.
As the way they entered is now blocked by a dead, giant toad the party heads down the other path (where the fleeing borgles went) and discovers a soggy library. Within they manage to find an unknown tonic as well as a spell scroll, and eventually a secret passage hidden behind a bookshelf. Through there is the mage’s tomb! Inside is a dark stone sarcophagus and four faceless statues holding unlit braziers.
Within the tomb the party lights three of the four braziers prior to opening the sarcophagus.
Jierdan: “Don’t light all four, it might be a trap!”"
They open the tomb and the statue holding the sole unlit brazier releases a shadowed figure which immediately moves to attack the party. They defeat it with magic, and magic swords, but not before Moira has her shadow consumed by the creature.
GM's Note: The tomb is what I like to call a “player trap”, as each unlit brazier releases a shadow when the sarcophagus is opened. It’s positioned perfectly to impact players who try to be clever (as mine did) by not lighting all of them in an attempt to avoid a trap.
The party loots the tomb of treasure, magic items, and spell scrolls. Then, with the help of Granny’s flying broom and Jay/Dans teleportation, they rescue Willow and escape the ruins without further conflict (in spite of my efforts to tempt them into tentacle-filled water with shiny treasures).
Me, “Yeah you can cast spells, you just don’t currently have a Grimoire to copy those scrolls into.”
Jay/Dan’s player, “Grimoire,” putting a guttural emphasis on the second syllable. “It’s only a Grimoire if it’s from the Grimoire region of France, otherwise it’s a sparkling spellbook.”
However once outside, they discover that Jay/Dan’s crystalline donkey is missing. Granny flies into the sky and (due to the high visibility of the donkey) spots it being lead away by a group of borgles fleeing the ruins. Granny flies Jay ahead on her broom, and Dan teleports the rest of the group together. They rest up (giving Jay and Dan specifically a chance to recover a bit) before they ambush the borgles in the dead of night. Granny sufficiently impresses her terrifying nature to them, cementing her as a thing that goes bump in the night for future generations of borgles, while the rest recover the donkey along with the looted treasure the borgles had taken on their way out.
Micro Review
Both my players and I had a fantastic time with Lair of the Gobbler. I was able to run it with just reading it through once, and writing up stats for the creatures and items and honestly I could have done that on the fly without issues.
The art is fairly minimal, but what’s there is extremely fun. The map was helpful and managed to portray stacked floors without turning into a huge mess.
This ended up being the perfect length, with the party exploring nearly everything, and still finishing at a reasonable time even with the bonus borgle hunt at the end.
I really appreciate the extra guidance for each location as to the disposition of the borgles or creatures within. The added “lever” of the borgles’ dissatisfaction with their leader was fun, and something my players immediately grabbed onto. A less bloodthirsty group could have certainly found a way to navigate the ruins and politics therein without violence, but as I wanted to test out some combat mechanics I’m not going to complain about this outcome.
Overall, fantastic module that I highly recommend. Especially for anyone looking for a single session adventure that doesn’t require much prep.
Brighter Worlds Stats for Lair of the Gobbler
Creatures
Borgle
3 Grit, d6/d6/d6, Spear (d8) or Blow-Pipe (d6, paralyze on Critical Damage)
- Lil’ salamander guys.
- Slippery little buggers, difficult to pin down or grapple.
- Wants: A relaxing swamp time.
- Often found: Kvetching about the Elder Mother.
Elharr, the Elder Mother
4 Grit, d8/d6/d10, Twinning Staff (d6)
- Borgle shaman, communes with bog spirits to cast spells (only loses 1 Grit to cast spells).
- Bolt - d8 damage, impair next attack or Save on Critical Damage.
- Bog Heal - Heal 1 Step of STR Damage and refresh Grit. Only works on bog creatures while in a bog.
- Wants: To love and protect her Large Son.
- Often Found: Neglecting the other Borgles in favor of cooing over the Gobbler.
The Gobbler
6 Grit, 2 Armor, d12/d4/d10, Tongue Lash (d8, eats target on Critical Damage)
- Overgrown toad, can’t move or speak.
- Vulnerable to ranged attacks.
- Wants: to eat and sleep.
- Often found: eating and sleeping.
Lurker
6 Grit, 1 Armor, d8/d8/d6, Tentacles (d6,d6,d6,d6, grapples on Critical Damage)
- Four tentacled swamp predator.
- Wants: Easy meals.
- Often found: Lurking in dark waters to ambush prey.
Shadow
3 Grit, d6/d6/d6, Shadow Touch (d6, consumes shadow on Critical Damage, step up this attack’s damage)
- Conjured shadow, only effected by spells or magical weapons.
- Victims are turned into more Shadows.
- Mindless, not effected by mental magic.
- Wants: To consume living creature’s shadows, and create more of its own kind.
- Often Found: Bound to protect tombs and burial places.
Rootkin
3 Grit, d6/d6/d6, Shovel (d6)
- Little living root guy with glowing eyes.
- Can see in the dark.
- Wants: to not be eaten.
- Often Found: distracting itself from its current troubles by reminiscing of its favorite pastries.
Moira
3 Grit, d6/d8/d8, Cleaver (d8)
- Trained chef, forced to cook for the Gobbler.
- Wants: To get free, and cook for someone who actually appreciates it.
- Often Found: Prepping huge worms for Gobbler chow.
Items
Ring of Protection
- +1 Armor
- Makes your voice sound funny while active (like speaking through a fan).
Staff of Night (d6)
- Wielder can see in the dark, and seems to melt into shadows if stationary.
Tonic of Health
- Drinking restores on step of attribute loss and refreshes Grit to Max.
Cloak of Starlight
- 1 Armor
- Discharge to release a flash of light, dazzling nearby creatures.
- Recharges by absorbing starlight for 6 hours.
Twinning Staff (d6)
- Step down WIL as you cast a spell to double-cast it.
Spells
Grasp of Yahzahar
- As “Black Tentacles”
Shadow Blade
- Condense shadow into a sword with damage equal to your WIL. You can immediately attack after casting this spell.
Bolt
- d8 damage bolt of electricity, impairs next Save or Attack on Critical Damage.
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