Review: Curse of the Maggot God

Curse of the Maggot God

By Glynn Seal; art by Peter Pagano
OSE, levels 2−3
Ten pages; 19-room dungeon

Curse of the Maggot God is included in the Old School Essentials Adventure Anthology 1, available in print for $20 (PDF included) and as a PDF for $10. The entire anthology consists of four adventures across 63 pages. This review contains spoilers. I have played through this adventure but not refereed it.

The text begins with an overview of the situation: Hal, a sewerman has gone missing, and his guild has posted a reward for his recovery (dead or alive). These paragraphs also explain what befell Hal and what’s really going on down in the sewers. Next, there’s a map, two d6 random encounter tables, and writeups on the denizens of the sewers.

Curse of the Maggot God boasts the level of user-friendliness I’ve come to expect from official OSE adventures, with a clear map, terse descriptions, and solid information design. I would be fully comfortable running this adventure straight from the book sight unseen.

This adventure checks off most of what you’d hope to see in a dungeon: monsters weak and strong, treasures both obvious and hidden, a secret door, and so on. While an opportunity does exist to pit one faction against another, it’s light on people to talk to, as encountering any of the denizens of the dungeon seems likely to lead to combat. There’s also a distinct lack of stuff to mess with: levers, potions, gadgets, and the like. The dungeon consists almost solely of rooms, monsters, and treasure.

Curse of the Maggot God excels in its layout, its hostility, and its risk/reward balance. For a 19-room dungeon, this one is exceptionally well-Jaquaysed, with multiple intersections and interconnected loops. In fact, the layout of the dungeon itself drove the action of my first delve into this dungeon. After discovering a secret exit, my companions and I fought to secure a four-way intersection—and by extension, our escape route—while skirmishing with troglodytes, a carcass crawler, and a putrid priest.

Curse of the Maggot God is a deadly dungeon, replete with genuinely gross and frightening foes. However, designer Glynn Seal has stocked it with enough treasure to keep players coming back for more, even as the threat of the maggot cult feels almost insurmountable. Seal also does an exceptional job of telegraphing danger through foul smells, drag marks, and more.

The writing is functional, the descriptions brief, with enough detail to support embellishment but perhaps lacking in vibrancy: “Two alabaster statues of a man and women dressed like warriors of old,” “Mosaics of nobles, bathing and eating in luxuriating poses.” Fans of the OSE house style will likely be satisfied, though the room descriptions left me a bit underwhelmed.

Although Curse of the Maggot God exhibits strong fundamental design, it lacks two key elements: a clock and a sense of wonder. Because the dungeon lies beneath a city, and because adventurers will earn the same reward for returning Hal dead or alive, players are only likely to feel time pressure if they both believe Hal is still alive and want to rescue him out of the goodness of their hearts. As it turns out, Hal died before the adventure even began, so nothing is stopping the players from retreating from the dungeon to rest as often as they’d like.

The Curse of the Maggot God also lacks the weirdness and sense of wonder that distinguishes my very favorite adventures. The dungeon’s sewer environs will be familiar to anyone with gaming experience, and its monsters—the troglodytes, the carrion crawler, the giant spider—aren’t novel either. The cult, with its maggot-infested troglodytes, is certainly gross and horrifying, but it didn’t inspire the feeling of discovering something wholly wondrous and original.

All that said, I had an absolute blast playing through this adventure, and it’s doubtless a breeze to run. I plan to review more adventures from both OSE anthologies, and while I haven’t read every adventure included, I already feel confident in declaring that both anthologies are well worth the price!