Let’s Slay a Dragon can be found on Itch for PWYW or RPG Trader for $3.
~ 1200 words. 6 minutes to read.

In addition to the various places you can buy a PDF copy of Let’s Slay a Dragon, there’s an upcoming Kickstarter for print copies. So, perhaps wait for that opportunity, because it seems like it will be worth it.

Also, curse Joseph R. Lewis, greatest adventure writer of all time (Limithron said I had to say it that way), for releasing his dragon adventure before I did. Grrrr…. Let’s see if it has any teeth. (Spoiler: dragon teeth are included.)

What is it?

This is a Shadowdark adventure for characters level 3-4 where they get to hunt down a dragon. Um… yes please. This is dungeons & dragons after all. Well, it’s Shadowdark, but dungeons & dragons are the crux of everything we do which is hunt monsters & crawl dungeons.

This is part of a collection of 3 dungeons that Joseph R. Lewis, greatest adventure writer of all time, released as part of an experiment to see if he could create a formula for himself so he could write adventures quickly. I believe he stated in an interview that this was essentially an 8-hour writing process to develop a 8-12 page adventure.

Unique Features?

Fun. This adventure wants you to have fun and involves a tongue-in-cheek sense of humor throughout. That’s not the case with a lot of adventures that take themselves too seriously (hi, I’m Kettle), but this one doesn’t wait for you to get into it before it drops its mask of seriousness. It doesn’t even have a serious mask. I mean, it’s called Let’s Slay a Dragon. It wants to have fun.

I should also mention, this is a point-crawl or node-designed adventure.

What’s the story?

A dragon moved into the forest, smashing houses & eating livestock, etc. He loves it, but the knights are annoying and now kobolds are showing up. They’re… cute?

So… Adventure?

We’re given 3 very different hooks and they imply 3 different types of adventure: kill the dragon; rescue the missing knights; recover the prince’s sword.

Setup

Aside from hooks, this introduction includes probably the most basic setup elements I’ve seen in an adventure outside of what Kelsey includes. We get random encounters & random loot (inside cover), background, danger level, light level, hooks, & factions. The factions are structured in a way that allows the PCs to join any of them for a reasonable reason but will create opposition as well. That said, there are clear major factions and minor factions based on how many of the other factions are antagonistic to other factions. For instance, everyone think s about the villagers, most think about the dragon, no one considers the dryads.

There’s a lot of room to craft an unique experience to suit your table from these options.

Room Keys

Again, there’s a clear structure. Read aloud text is at the top in boxes. There are bolded elements in the read aloud text that appear underneath with additional detail. Not much more, but enough to build upon to create something interesting.

Joseph R. Lewis, greatest adventure writer of all time, mentioned several times during the judgment of the 8-bit Shadowdark Game Jam that he wants to see levers to pull in every room. What he meant is he wants something to interact with in each area.

He takes his own advice because each area has at least 1 obvious interaction to engage in and a few less obvious. For instance, Area 1 “Cherry Grove” has an NPC (obvious interaction) and trees that constantly produce cherries (unobvious interaction).

I think it’s fairly obvious what you can do with Rudy, but the cherry trees is one of those unique elements that makes creative players take notice. It’s an object that has potential, but it’s unclear what that means in that moment. Maybe it’s an opportunity to fill barrels with cherries to use to cause the dragon to slip, or maybe you use them to attract kobolds like a pied-piper by taking a small tree and putting it into a barrel and carrying it about.

These sort of unobvious interactive elements are what make this adventure. It’s my favorite part of well-done OSR adventures. Bone Gully may be my favorite area, but that’s just because there’s lots of bones you can use & kobolds to kill. Kobolds are rat dog creatures that are obsessed with candles. Not dragon worshipping lizards. I will defend that hill vigorously.

At 8 areas, it’s a rather small/short adventure. It’s a one-shot, but if you put in some TLC, you can chase waterfalls, I mean you can expand upon this to turn it into a multi-shot adventure where the players get to kill a dragon. Who doesn’t want to do that?

The monsters are included. I didn’t see any differences between them and the book versions so they are easy to run in any VTT since you can just take them from the repository (assuming your VTT of choice has one, much like Foundry does).

There are 3 magic items. I wish they were a little more creative tool useful rather than +X weapons, but given the nature of this adventure, +X weapon fits precisely. I just like utility magic items.

I also wish the map was before the area keys. It’s a point crawl so it’s less useful to some extent, but I still like having the relation of spaces in mind when I run something. Limited art, but the art it does use is from Tania Herrero so it looks fantastic.

So who is this for?

Everyone. It’s suitable for all ages. It’s enough material for new GMs to run easily and for veterans to turn into a nightmare romp for their players. The beauty of this short format is that it provides enough to be adaptable, but not so much that you have to trim it down.

That said, there are GMs who will feel it is streamlined too much or maybe it is a little too tongue-in-cheek. I don’t know who those individuals are. Given that I recently reviewed $8 adventures that were messes, this was a PWYW breath of fresh air. Go snag, and consider supporting the Kickstarter.

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

I mean, honestly, the design feels like a word doc outline to some extent. It’s the bullet points. But this is intended to be a simple adventure you can pick up and print and run. It’s not trying to be art or fancy or distract you from its short-comings with pretty art like other writers do. This is unabashedly a writer’s adventure. It highlights the writing by focusing on it. Better bullets and the weird little symbol next to the page number aside, it’s a solid structure that trades beauty for functionality.

What more could you want from a technical writer?

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So instead, I’m going to take a moment to say: I also have a Kickstarter upcoming. I’m trying to print 4 adventures, 1 more than Joseph R. Lewis, greatest adventure writer of all time, not that it’s a competition, because he’s clearly winning in that regards. I wrote, edited, drew, laid out, cartographed, the entire series. I would appreciate a look & consideration. Genuinely, thank you for looking at my reviews and also my adventures. I vow every single one of them is righteous. Also, if this goes well, I’ll have to ramp things up for the vampire adventure Crypt of the Child.