Review: Do Not Accept This Quest by J.E. Evans II (w/ bonus Horrific Bodily Mutilations table!)
This quest is bad.
There are many reasons.
Prepare yourself.
Do Not Accept This Quest by JE Evans II is a short location-based adventure. It’s supposed to be a skin-crawling horrorfest, but shows itself to be anything but. Do Not Accept This Quest, because there’s nothing of interest or value within, whether for silver pieces or dollars.
“If anyone attempts to search the ____, they are instantly attacked by a rat swarm. There is a cooper [sic] ring worth 2 sp inside.”
If you are the type of person who doesn’t like things like this, Do Not Accept This Quest. Simply by reading it as the Referee, despite its miniscule length, you are wasting your time. The food is so bad, and in such small portions!
Early warning signs:
- A table of contents that lists “Room 1, Room 2,” etc. No evocative names for a “house of horror”?
- Encouraging the Ref to scare players by asking for mysterious d20 rolls and pretending to write them down ominously
- Using 2.5 foot squares on already small maps to make them look larger
- Bandit and/or wolf attacks as a way to introduce the adventure
A solid warning Not To Accept This Quest, but it’s inside the book so it’s too late. It’s not too late for you, dear reader, however, to get Potatoes and Rats, a shitty adventure that knows it’s shitty, is intentionally shitty, and has the good grace to be free.
The book: Saddle-stitched 12 page black and white booklet. Nothing on the interior flaps. The art is, according to Raggi, the most expensive he’s ever commissioned. This is perplexing, because LotFP is known for its art, and a huge amount of it is done by Yannick Bouchard, a fantastic artist. The art in this module is of pedestrian quality at best, and sparse at that.
The adventure itself: There once was a sick bastard French nobleman. He made children disappear and summoned demons. Neither of these things is conveyed in an interesting fashion. When traveling to the house, get this, you’re attacked by bandits and wolves. I am doing you a favor by bolding the creatures so that you can count how many times the same ones pop up. Then you find a house. It isn’t described in any type of interesting fashion, but it’s super creepy, take J.E. Evans II’s word for it. There is not anything to explore outside, any indication of what’s going on inside, special entry points, or anything interactive. So you go in. There are some animal teeth on a mantle. If you check it out, you’re attacked by your first rat swarm. Go into some other rooms. Piles of shredded furniture. Go ahead, investigate them. Get attacked by a rat swarm. Find a demon summoning book that seems like it should be cool but just reduces your Charisma. Open a door to some stairs that go down. Find some broken furniture and bones. Get attacked by a wolf. Search a pile. Get attacked by a rat swarm. Find some pickle jars with fingers inside, ok, now we’re getting somewhere (but, ultimately, nowhere). Find some torture implements, long abandoned. Set dressing, sure, but de rigeur. Some bodies, disemboweled, missing “random fingers”, in case players ask, so you can tell them “random”, not that it would ever matter. Some more bodies. Finally, some summoning stuff! Aaaaand, Lesser Imp. GOD DAMN IT! What happened to unique monsters? Raggi was adamant that it should never be “a vampire” but “The Vampire”. But he’s going to publish this. If you think LotFP’s quality has suffered since, say, 2019, this is the poster child (aside, of course, from fucking Asterion). Moving on: get attacked by a rat swarm. Then some more wolves. Now some bodies hanging, butchered and rotting, and some barrels and buckets of gore, but not, like, evocatively presented, so… booooring. Next, some torture stuff. Steps going down. A Greater Imp and her 3 Baby Imps, with shredded rags with, for once, no rat swarms. In the next room, a wolf. After, a spring which flows down a hole used to dispose (poorly) of waste. A few more rooms: imps, zombie children. A ritual room, with an altar and not much in the way of treasure.
Fin
Amusingly, a capital C Conclusion follows, in which J.E. Evans II tells us that the players can now return to town to sell stuff for xp (Thanks, J.E.!), tells us he omits xp values for encounters because reasons, and thanks us for playing his adventure, reminiscent of the conclusion of a million grade-school essays.
So. What happened here? Well, it’s been evident since forever that Raggi can’t resist a pitch that tickles him, and a bunch of dead zombie children in a charnel house probably sounded real good. To be fair, it kind of did to me too. But he’s stated that he stayed out of the editorial role for this round of adventures, and so his refined horror palate didn’t spot the missed potential in this one, if there was any. The editor on duty, Matthew Pook, seems to have mostly been on spell check duty, which has still failed in places. Now, giving the benefit of the doubt, this could have been a good adventure. Death Love Doom and Tales of the Scarecrow are both short, contained horror adventures that are VERY memorable and disturbing, and this could have been as well with a lot of work. As is, this is an adventure that is hard to read (no naming of rooms), bland and repetitive, and lacking in logic. How does the sequencing of these rooms make sense? How are these wolves getting in here? WHY are they in here? All the food is rotten! What are the imps doing here? Ok, there are baby imps, but what is the point? And these things are locked in the basement anyway, how have they been surviving this long? A pure failure of cartography caused all these issues- if there were more than one entrance and all the doors weren’t locking things in, then maybe a Ref could fill in the gaps in some way (though they shouldn’t have to), but as is it is boggling. As is, all we can do is infer: perhaps the mad bastard was JUST captured and tortured to confession? Maybe the wolves are his pets? Is he breeding imps on purpose, or, more horrifically, breeding with them? Who the fuck knows.
Generously, some feedback and revision could have made this a memorable adventure. As is, it’s a boring mess. Sorry you wasted your money, James, and sorry I wasted mine.
I Do Not Accept This Quest.
333/666 (generously)
Bonus Gameable Content:
D12 Horrific Bodily Mutilations
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