What distinguishes a starting adventure from a level 1 adventure is an interesting question, because most games will start at level 1, but not every level 1 adventure is a starting adventure. For many OSR systems, campaigns may start at level 1 and spend some considerable time at that level. I have no data to back this up, but it seems likely to me that if you checked, you’d find there are more adventures for level 1, than any other level.

So it’s important to distinguish introductory or starting adventures from just normal level 1 adventures. For instance, and if you’ll pardon the self-indulgence, Abandon Hope is for level 1 characters, but I wouldn’t consider it a starting adventure, because it doesn’t serve as an introduction to Shadowdark. A good starting adventure should be a taste of the system without introducing a myriad of new mechanics or monsters. It should be a short taste, one session or so. It should highlight the strengths of the system. It should be simple & straightforward because new players are going to be focusing on learning rules so you do not want to weigh them down with a bunch of extraneous considerations. Etc. I did not do any of that. I presumed a level of familiarity. Tomb of the Dusk Queen is a proper starting adventure. There are a few hiccups, but it gives you the adventure & gets out of your way so you can enjoy it.

Why does it matter?

Tomb of the Dusk Queen hails itself as ‘a simple introductory dungeon for those new to Shadowdark RPG.’ In fact, I wager, this may possibly be the second most popular introductory dungeon after Lost Citadel of the Scarlet Minotaur (if we exclude gauntlets because I think Trial of the Slime Lord may actually be the most popular 3rd Party adventure out there).

This is a Shadowdark (SD) adventure for 1st level characters. This is a dungeon crawl with a simple premise: there is treasure in the catacombs of the Dusk Queen.

• Treasure: CHECK
• Dungeon: CHECK
• Sounds Cool: CHECK

Unique Features?

Not really. When it says it’s a simple, introductory adventure, it isn’t lying. This adventure even treads that super close line to trade dress violations with how SDarky it is, but we’ll address that later.

What’s the story?

There is a tree with golden leaves and the Dusk Queen built a catacomb in its roots. Now, legend spreads of her entombment & royal treasure buried there if you can survive the guardians & tricks meant to inter you as well. Simple, straightforward. It gets out of the way of you playing the game.

What about the adventure?

It’s fairly solid. It follows a similar structure to Lost Citadel in that you have the background, guidance on character level, danger level, random encounters, and room keys. You can safely presume all of the elements of a good dungeon are here. The one thing missing is probably faction play, but given this is essentially a 16-page adventure meant to be played in 3-4 hours with several pages dedicated to monsters & treasure indexes, that may be one of those things that you can forego. Although, I do prefer adventures that have factions to create more dynamism in a dungeon. I understand why you might skip it in favor of a few NPCs for an introductory or shorter adventure. It simplifies the adventure.

While the danger level is set at unsafe (check for random encounters every 3 rounds), that does not mean this adventure is not deadly. You face low-difficulty monsters like skeletons & animated armor, but also more difficult ones like cave creepers and ghosts (which require silver weapons or magic to kill while they try to possess you). Each monster seems like it was chosen specifically to provide the GM with the opportunity to familiarize themselves with the different types of adjudications necessary to run SD from DC checks to contested checks, morale immunity, and a variety of abilities. It also seems like these monsters were chosen to highlight each of the core 4 classes since you have low-level undead for Turn Undead, ghosts for magic users, and others for the melee to strike effectively.

There is another thing that is interesting – you are introduced to rumors in the first room key. I can’t figure out why it is placed here. I suspect it is because it uses half a page and allows the use of the large banner header for dungeon key, but I still think I would have put the rumors before the first room key. It’s the slightest of nitpicks & only because I found it odd.

The first room key also presents a common issue we see discussed all the time about how to award XP for treasure finds. Here, there are trinkets, a sword, 2 scrolls, and a magic stone. No where does the text relate the XP value of each item which I’m increasingly in favor of seeing since SD uses 4 categories of quality to determine XP rewards – poor (0XP), normal (1XP), fabulous (3XP), & legendary (10XP). I have the same complaint in Arcane Library adventures, so this isn’t an issue unique to Dusk Queen, but it seems like an easy way to teach GMs how to award XP, especially since many new SD players are coming from other XP systems like milestone leveling shudders. It also has the issue of what constitutes a treasure find to contend with. In general, each of these items is likely worth 1XP on their own, and there are 9 treasure items (at least in the treasure section at least, if you count the scepter and others, there’s more and you may want to consider using treasure find rules) so that may be the intention, but if you use the treasure find classification to award, that’s 1 XP total. See the confusion? I like when a module just notes it for the GM.

Then, there’s the map. Just move it forward one page so your GM can see it before the room keys. It sets the tone. More on that later. Again, super minor nitpick.

The rest of the room keys are spare with descriptions like “Walls: sagging and covered in roots” and “Ceiling: Dark, high.” It’s terse. But it also doesn’t skimp on explaining how traps work with clear language like “marked with ‘T’ on the map” so a GM can easily follow how it should work. It gives the GM enough to understand the space & workings, but leaves room for creative interpretation. I am almost certain, how I have run this adventure will differ with how anyone else runs it because of this.

Remember how I said this was deadly despite the unsafe danger classification. You’ll find DCs of 15, 18, 21, & 24 in this adventure. Yes, it uses the standard DCs (YAY!) & some non-standard (21 & 24), but with so many of them at the hard (15) and impossible (18) levels or higher, characters will die. A GM can mitigate that by rewarding creative thinking to lower checks one step (15 -> 12) and with liberal awarding of luck tokens or advantage. Or you can ensure everyone has a stable of characters to work from like this was a gauntlet. Either way, it’s best you know that going in so you can plan accordingly because it is otherwise deadly & may surprise you if you aren’t prepared for it. Also, you can prepare your players for it.

That all said, every choice made in each of these keys reinforces the central core of this adventure – you are risking life and limb to explore a deadly tomb in hopes of finding great treasure.

Art?

Most of it is stock art & credited in the beginning. There isn’t much. The adventure is spare & there to speak for itself. It doesn’t rely on the artwork to make you think it’s good or not. I do really enjoy the cover design though. It’s a theme running across many of Sersa Victory’s adventures and it makes them instantly recognizable. Plus, it has a little color nod & isn’t the standard SD black cover with white illustration that many people do. It’s simple & clean.

Who is it for?

This is an adventure to introduce new people to SD through a simple dungeon-crawl that poses great challenges that the players will need to get creative with to figure out how to get the loot & abscond. Especially if you only have 1 session to convince them this is the system for them.

If your group is a little precious with their characters, this will disabuse them of that notion or traumatize them over it. Personally, I think dying can be fun too, because if you TPK, the campaign can shift to… we’re retrieving our souls from hell.

This is the bar I think most starting adventures need to strive for if they are looking to create a single session level 1 adventure. It has some weaknesses that you need to prepare for that I outlined above, but otherwise, it doesn’t get much better that Tomb of the Dusk Queen.

If you made it this far, thank you. Now, I’m going to nitpick & nerd out on design. This will be blasphemy to some. You have been warned.

Some flaws in SD’s layout

In general, I cannot be upset with how closely this hews to SD’s trade dress, because it was written the same year as the Core Book and Sersa Victory created the adventure template for Affinity that almost everybody uses. It’s faithful to the original for all of its brilliance and its flaws.

Kelsey has said on the server & in interviews that people should develop their own style:

1. to protect her trade dress; and,
2. because she isn’t a designer & admits to flaws in the layout since she made choices for space rather than usability.

I frequently point out her minimalist style emphasizes the quality of her writing and the quality compensates for the lack of design. Most adventure writers aren’t as meticulous when they write as she is, so the weaknesses are more obvious. It’s also noticeable when she makes changes to her approach because it is such a departure from the original. Go look at the Hideous Halls of Mugdulblub and its room descriptions. They’re mostly bold words with a collection of descriptions similar to what is seen in Tomb of the Dusk Queen, but if you look at the Ghoulish Library of Leng (forthcoming in Cursed Scroll 5), the dungeon keys have shifted to a more writerly, prose style.

As such, my criticism of the layout of Tomb of the Dusk Queen is also a criticism of the SD-style by necessity. I’m aware of my blasphemy in that regards.

First, put the map before the Room Keys. The map is the context for the entire adventure. It gives the GM an idea of the space so they can start visualizing it before they even read the room keys. As I discussed with one-page dungeons, the map contextualizes much of what the GM is running and since a picture is worth a 1000 words, take advantage of that by putting it before you need anything written.

This is an example from Crypt of the Child, but you can see from the the map layout that there’s a lot of information that is given context before you get to the area descriptions simply by seeing their spatial relationship. Other adventures do this as well, such as Jeweler’s Sanctum for OSE and Gradient Descent for Mothership. It is such a simple enhancement to usability, I groan when someone doesn’t do it. Even the inside cover suffices.

Second, the full-width column dungeon keys are fine, but when the page has tighter line-heights, limited line-spacing, no images for separation, or negative space, the eye gets no rest. It’s a lot like a novel, where they break it up a lot with dialogue to give the eye visual breaks so it can rest and not get overwhelmed by the wall of text. It is less overwhelming. It also, makes it easier to read onto the next line because it seems like there is less to read. (I believe Jim Butcher talked about this is why modern fantasy novels are written in this style, but I can’t remember if it was one of his old Tumblr posts or an interview.) The Tomb of the Dusk Queen does a better job of this than SD by having more line-spacing, but there is still no significant place to stop & rest the eyes. Similarly, with such compact writing, the margins for note-taking as a GM are minimal at best.

This method of writing also neglects putting monsters inline so you have to flip back and forth between books (if they are in the core book & not the adventure) or between pages (from the room key to the bestiary at the back). I previously showed how OSE did it when discussing Lost Citadel and it remains the case now. This also applies to unique spells or magic items/treasure. These aren’t big issues. At best, they are minor inconveniences, but they still exist when they don’t need to. As a lesson of how to approach design going forward, we can learn from this.

Third, color-code. It’s great that X marks the spot on the map, but you know what would work better? A bright big pink X. And then you could use that same bright pink X in the room key and now you have association & visual attention drawn to it. Because the color theme is predominantly black & white, the minimal use of color will have an over-sized impact just like it did in the comic & movie, Sin City.

Fourth, too terse of writing. To SD’s detriment, I maintain that the early style of “BOLD ITEM: descriptor, descriptor phrase” writing was mistaken for something doable by everyone because it resembles note-taking so a lot of bad adventures were written where the writer didn’t understand that these were full sentences edited down to their barest essentials to communicate the most about the environment. Sersa falls into that trap a time or two in this module, but in general, lands on the proper side of the equation simply because he understands it. That’s not the same for everyone else and it should be learnt from.

We can do better than “Sarcophagus: atop tier, polished.” Yes, it relates an elevated status & that this has been tended to or cared for to prevent dust settlement on the sarcophagus with a single word, but can we at least explain this is heavy-looking? Or simple? Or ornate? Or gilded? Or explain how tall that tier is?

These two descriptors are not the same and they provide very different evocation & details to a GM. The first description is nigh useless, the second is brilliant simplification to convey a lot of detail. This is a hard skill to master & it’s why many people should consider not emulating it until they have mastered this skillset.

There’s more, but I’ll save it for the future. Mostly, failure to do your own thing means you can’t emphasize the flavor you want for your adventure. To me, that’s a wasted opportunity. But I don’t think that’s Kelsey’s or Sersa’s goal.