RPG Review – Dungeon Dressing: Wells

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123121[1]By Endzeitgeist

The latest installment of the Dungeon Dressing-series clocks in at 11 pages, 1 page front cover, 1 page advertisement, 1 page editorial/ToC, 1 page SRD and 1 page back cover, leaving us with 6 pages of content, so let’s take a look, shall we?

So this time we’re introduced to wells – whether dug or drilled, getting the water or water quality, basic ideas are covered first, before we get 4 wall conditions including climb DCs to scale them. Of course, adventurers are wont to “do the Timmy” and fall into wells – hence a handy table of damage incurred from falling into water (or on ground) is provided for the DM – excellent and handy to have around!

The basic set-up out of the way, we are introduced to the first table, which, unless I’ve miscounted, has 46 entries of characteristics to add to your wells – from interlocking stone blocks, wells that actually are long slopes, bore holes of purple worms and even wells with stairs in the walls, we get quite a cool array of wells, with some featuring things to glean/learn about them with skills.

The second table spans a whole 100 entries, covering e.g. giant centipede-droppings (including Knowledge DC to identify them), strange stalagmite structures, smeared goblin graffiti to finally walls that have been transformed into OOZING PUTRID FLESH. Yes. Delightfully twisted and versatile, from the common to the uncommon to the far-out, disturbing, this table runs the gamut – two thumbs up!

We also get 3 traps/hazards of Raging Swan Press’ trademark complexity, i.e. with multiple rounds of results and multiple skills/things happening: Methane-filled Wells at CR 4, a Gravity Well at CR 8 and finally a well that imparts maddening visions at CR 8 make for cool obstacles. Have I mentioned contaminated and tainted waters?

Conclusion:

Editing and formatting are top-notch, I didn’t notice any glitches. Layout adheres to RSP’s two-column b/w-standard and the pdf comes in two versions, one optimized for screen-use and one for the printer. Both versions come fully bookmarked for your convenience.

Author Brian Gregory offers us another glorious installment for Raging Swan’s Dungeon Dressing-series, with nifty crunch-tables, cool dressing and versatile hazards/traps – what to complain about? Well, if I were to complain on a very high level, then perhaps that there is no table or the like to cover falling into the wells – slippery floors, crumbling floors, something like that. Precipitation, moss, mold and their modification of how easy to scale a wall are all fall under a flat +5 DC, which is slightly less varied than I would have liked – a couple more entries to modify the base DC would have made this even better. I am complaining at a top-notch level, though – my final verdict will still clock in at 5 stars.

Endzeitgeist out.

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