An adventure to "provide comic relief in an otherwise serious campaign" it is a nice little swamp sandbox. As an experiment, I had a go at running it straight from the book but the players went off track fairly rapidly leading to some reshuffling on the fly. I think best used as a source of good ideas and then rewire what happens when into some manner that fits with how your table likes to do things.
Art by Terry Dykstra
We get 13 pages, some very nice art and the text in triple columns. These are blocked out by 'encounter' organised around the ramp in to getting the players exploring the swamp essentially with a pair of big boxes that are then 'Glitchegumee Swamp Encounters' (ten of them) and 'Exploring the Glitchegumee Swamp' which is five locations. All the components of a neat little hexcrawl are here, just a bit scrambled.
The intro as written is you come upon a recluse, Old Man Katan, being pestered by tiny mushroom folk and decide to investigate what has gone wrong in the swamp around them. There are quite a few 'off ramps' where players could just not pick up the thread of the adventure without a very heavy hand on the steering wheel if you just leave it as is. The 'something is wrong in the swamp' set up is perfectly adequate as a hook to have brought them there to stumble over Old Man Katan - and if you take the time to set that up then people are already somewhat motivated to go onward by the time they meet Old Man Katan and you can just lean into him being him with his troubles and concerns and it will emphasise your existing hook.
There are a fair few parts in here - a good lot of useable things - but worth you working through how you use them - either retune their sequence or make them encounters, as you think most coherent to you. There are a couple of the encounters that are overpowered for the envisaged low level adventurers but I like that 'not everything is here to be fought' ethos.
I ran this for a table of strangers recently, running 1st level 5e characters. We had:
Elf Fighter
Dragonborn Ranger
Elf Rogue
Triton Paladin
Goliath Cleric
It went pretty well, a good time was had, with a bit of a lull at a point where they were unclear on how to progress but on balance I think it was better to have the freedom to act and some brief confusion than be railroaded all the way.
Session Report - beyond here, spoilers abound.
Since it was a one shot on an open table I did some traditional lead in - meet in a tavern, get asked to investigate the swamp by one of the locals and off they went.
They arrived at the swamp, I got a nice neat lead-in to Old Man Katan because one of the players was riding anothers shoulders which gave a good hook for 'seeing what is normally not visible'. The bath scene with the old man being given the run-around by tiny mischievous mushrooms and then 'hit men' scenes played out relatively well - they did not decide to stay the night just set off straight into the swamp with the mysterious boat. They liked the campestri and the goliath cleric, with their flute proficiency, was tootling along doing a pied-piper bit that the tiny mushroomlings.
They travelled a bit and I worked in the crocodile attack - they fought it off then abandoned the boat and proceeded on foot. There were a couple of near misses with giant mosquitos because they heeded the campestri going bananas and lit up a cigar each time. They slogged through the swamp, ran into some yellow musk zombies, we did the 'critter in the bushes' bit, the 'haunted tree' and they drifted around on a big hummock foro a night, smoking off another mosquito incursion. They slogged around being confused why all the animals were gone but the plants were fine, not putting the pieces together that the giant mosquitos were doing it until I gave some strong hints. I figured the ranger would have twigged.
After that they figured they needed to find where the mosquitos spawned and decided to track the next swarm that attacked them - they smoked it off and then pursued. This was the next day so I ran the Bog Monster encounter. They defeated the mosquito swarm - spotted the Bog Monster... and decided to not slog into the swamp after whatever the hell that was.
At this point they called it good and decided to hike out and report the place was plagued by giant mosquitos and someone ought to do something about it. Slightly hampered by quicksand, they ran into Hlaupa on the way out, got them to come along back to old man Katan and cadged a few more cigars to bring back for examination of their mosquito repelling properties.
DMing thoughts
In no particular order:
* People love the Campestri mushroom folk
* Timing is a bit odd as an exploration piece - not obvious you are on the right track which is disquieting to more recent players
* Some encounters can come across as red herrings - yellow mold zombies - as they are a plausible menace that might have depopulated the swamp
* End 'baddie' is a menacing figure who likely appears very far away - my guys decided to not poke this unknown menace when they finally ran into them and hiked back out of the swamp
* Numerous behaviour triggers never went off
- Looked for cat - never called them as required to trigger it coming to them
- Took the boat, abandoned it within the day, never gave it a chance to reveal its full mysteriousness
- Did not interrogate old man Katan after gaining trust - asked him once what was going on during initial armed stand-off when he was still cagey then just moved on
- Did not stay overnight on arriving at the cottage to trigger crocodile encounter as written the next morning
* They figured out the cigars banish mosquitos trick by accident; they were just trying to make the panicking Campestri happy
* They figured out that they were looking for the mosquito spawning pool... but had no way to find it (as written) without talking to the Bog Monster and they decided to hike out and report back instead.
All the above got done in a five hour slot with a table of strangers so not bad. My main advice for running this would be:
1. Create your own sequence sheet tailored to the time you have
2. Remove the yellow musk zombies/creepers - too much of a red-herring/false lead for people trying to figure out what is wrong in the swamp
3. Either provide a path for the mosquito spawning pools to be found independently or make the Bog Monster more proactive if they try to avoid it - they are the most interesting thing in the swamp after all. You could run with the vibe of those wild creatures caught in plastic that come up to humans to get cut free - cautious and twitchy but needing their help because it does not understand what is wrong.
You can read another view on this one on Ten Foot Pole's review of this issue of Dungeon - broadly similar in that there are good parts here that need a bit of rewiring.
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