Image credit, Bloodmoon Crypt by Magnolia Keep
3/8/2025
There are a lot of one-off OSR adventures that can be found on itch. A LOT. Some of them are written by big name creators who just wanted to do something different for a change, others are written by smaller creators who want to branch out into the field.
Recently, I’ve been running a bunch of open-table games on my Discord for anyone interested in trying out Crowns 2e. The adventures we play are all pre-written, usually pulled from itch. This has given me an excellent opportunity to play some of the smaller name stuff out there and see if its any good.
So I tried out Bloodmoon Crypt by Magnolia Keep.
Plot: “So, you’re in the tomb of Van Helsing”
The plot of the module is really straight forward and actually very interesting at first glance. You are sent to delve what is essentially the tomb of Van Helsing’s, but if he and his whole family hunted werewolves instead of vampires. Since the last of the family (Raymond Bloodmoon) died, the werewolves have returned to harass the local town and defile the mausoleum with chaos necromancy! You were sent here specifically to retrieve the sword “Wolfsbane” in order to drive off werewolves harassing the town. It even gives you some names of two characters that “might be of use,” the local priest Zantum and the anchoress Fiona.
Here’s my problems with it:
There aren’t any werewolves in the adventure? I guess they all left, but all of the omens and “signs of enemies” are signs of werewolves (in the “Altar of Law” room there’s fur and droppings explicitly said to belong to werewolves). I feel like this actually hurts the narrative and the plot because its a complete red herring with no pay off? If a player took good notes leading up to the dungeon, and perhaps brought some anti-werewolf trinkets with them, they would essentially be punished for doing so because all of the monsters involved are undead and chaos beasts. Weird?
Those NPCs I mentioned, yeah they’re in here too, and they’re not happy. When I originally read the next I assumed those were NPCs who were like, in the local village and knew about the crypt and could give you info about it. No, they’re already in the crypt by the time you show up. Okay, that’s fine. But the anchoress is already dead, she’s a ghost now and “quite mad,” and the priest is a chaos zombie that is “continuing his work” in the embalming room. What is his work? Embalming? Who’s he embalming? They’re undead everywhere!
Exactly how many people are buried here and where? The only actually listed burial place is the Mausoleum (Room 9 of 10) and Raymond’s Tomb (Room 10 of 10). Everywhere else are just like, other places you might have in a temple? That’s okay, but it creates some narrative dissonance when there are potentially DOZENS of zombies running around, and 2d6 that just attack you if you don’t thank them before taking their money? Also, the titular surname Bloodmoon is changed to Burones when you do reach the Mausoleum. Very strange.
Content: “You enter the next room, there is *rolls dice* zombies, about as many as there was in the last room, what do you do?”
The adventure is clearly minimalist in style, and I have no problem with that. There are a lot of very well-written minimalist adventures, more words does not necessarily mean more content.
However, a lot of the content is either disconnected from the originally provided plot or very samey. In every room (except those with pre-written encounters) there is a 1-in-6 chance of d6 chaos zombies. A fairly boring enemy, but scary because if they bite you they can mutate you! Except most of the mutations are actually really beneficial. Only one is explicitly bad, and another is situationally bad but mostly a positive.
There are some cool room ideas, a chunk of the tomb has been converted into like, giant organs, like the inside of the mountain is alive! That’s cool (although it is interchangeably referred to as “hill” and “mountain”, I choose to believe it is a mountain). However, these rooms have no treasure, and are the B-Path of the dungeon.
In fact, the entire B-Path of the adventure, with some of the coolest ideas, provides no treasure at all. There are these labyrinthine paths that go through the crypt into these side rooms, but there’s no reason to go there. Actually, it really seems like players could get lost in there, which is cool, but for no reward. Just more zombies.
The Chaos Beasts are cool though. They have sub-tables so you can randomly generate them (which I did to great effect), but their moves in combat are actually less explained than the zombies, making them more boring combatants mechanically. It’s a shame.
There was a great riddle at the end though! Unfortunately, it was hidden behind a weird secret door that only worked if you tweaked the nose of the statue of Raymond Bloodmoon? Seems a little specific. The only hint is that the explicitly crazy, chaos-zombie priest is supposed to say, “boop Raymond’s nose for good luck!” Weird.
Art: “The OSR Special”
You don’t have to pay for art to get a good score, and you don’t have to make it yourself either, giving the OSR Special of public domain art, a few quick drawings, and a dungeon from Dungeon Scrawl is just fine. The art in adventure does its job. It doesn’t blow me away, but I’m not disappointed. Each monster is depicted, the dungeon is all laid out, it’s not bad by any means. That’s why it got the average score. No shame in that.
Usability: “*flip* in this room you encounter… *flip, rolls dice* 3 zombies and they… *flip* try to grab you and… *rolls dice* miss, what do you do?”
It’s not a usability nightmare, but because the monsters have special abilities and aren’t all on one page it can be difficult to flip around. The room descriptions are minimal, which again seems to be on purpose, no problem with that, so you’re going to have to do a lot of the heavy lifting as the GM.
Same goes for the Chaos Beasts. Because of the random die tables to create them they are going to appear really weird! The first one I rolled was a “viscous, amorphous” chaos beast that was currently “praying at a defiled altar.” I’m happy with what I came up with, and it wasn’t hard to visualize it, so I thought it was implemented pretty well.
Overall, fairly average usability, which is better than many non-minimalist zines have.
Conclusion: “A lot of good ideas, worth revision, but not worth playing yet”
Magnolia Keep, if you’re reading this, I highly recommend revising the text and clarifying some of the points I’ve discussed so far. According to itch, this is your first Zungeon. Nobody’s first try is their best try. I think there’s a lot of potential here! Here’s some stuff that stuck out to me as really cool:
- Van Helsing’s Tomb. Exploring the crypt of a legendary werewolf hunter? Awesome! Some of them have come back as zombies? Awesome! Why am I not interacting with the talkative undead versions of some of these legends?
- Less Zombies, More… Anything Else. Zombies are cool. I like zombies. The Walking Dead, one of the top shows of TV for a long time. All about zombies. However, we need more than just zombies. Highly recommend you read this article I wrote about dynamic traps in random encounter tables, I think it’ll be helpful.
- The Priest and the Anchoress Need Some Workshopping. Maybe give them short blurbs for the party encountering them outside the dungeon. They can give lore about what happened, and advice on what the party should have to prepare themselves. Maybe they even give advice on the current werewolf situation in town. Maybe one is secretly a werewolf! They’re current state is not helpful. If you want to keep them in the dungeon, explain what I can have them say because I had no idea what to tell them.
- More Mountain Organs! These were some of the coolest rooms! More of those please. This time with treasure too, maybe.
- WHERE THE WEREWOLVES AT. Maybe there’s one in the final room, trying to pry open the sarcophagus and can’t read the riddle because its written in Lawful, or warded by Lawful magic. Something with werewolves! That was a great idea left on the cutting room floor.
- Expand the World. Hey, maybe writing another adventure in Silvershaft could be fun! A “whodunnit” about hunting down werewolves and their co-conspirators? References to this dungeon in that adventure and vice versa? Could be fun!
Thank you for reading!
Until we meet again,
GOOD LUCK ON YOUR ADVENTURES
Ward Against Evil 
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