Actual play review: Sleeping Place of the Feathered Swine
tldr; Fun module, easy to run, lots of atmosphere. Might get samey, but that could just be me.
Time: 3 hours Players: 3 PCs: 3 level 1
Sleeping Place of the Feathered Swine is a 34 page module by Logan Knight. It has 14 keyed locations (the text is pretty big or the pages are pretty small or both).
It a reputation as a good alternative to some of the lamentably and notoriously gross modules out there, for a few different reasons: It’s short enough to run as a one-shot, it doesn’t engage in “negadungeon” shenanigans, and I haven’t heard anything about the author doing anything problematic. It also seemed like a great fit for Mork Borg, which it definitely was. I only mentioned midway through the module that it was actually not originally a Mork Borg adventure, everyone totally thought it was.
The PCs are hired by a wizard named Felix who had been party of an adventuring party on a mission to extract pus-filled sacs (worth 100 GP each) from a giant hibernating feathered pig. Unfortunately, Felix’s party ran into trouble and had to abandon their mission. Felix accidentally left his spellbook behind. He wants the PCs to help him retrieve his spellbook and complete the mission. The trouble is another party had already tried to remove some of the sacs, but spilled the contents, releasing the hideous and dangerous “worm tumour” monsters that now roam the cave.
It’s a fairly small dungeon, with only 14 keyed locations and the worm tumours and the swine are the only monsters. It plays fast, at least with the Mork Borg rules, which makes it the perfect one shot… so long as your players aren’t too squeamish.
Module conversion notes:
- I kept creature and NPC HP and damage the same as printed in the module.
- Generally used Toughness DR 14 checks for the Poison Saves.
- I don’t think there was anything else that needed conversion, the module is pretty barebones.
- The PCs didn’t get to use any of the new spells, but they look cool.
Good:
- It’s very easy to run, even though the layout might look difficult at first.
- The big text that explains the smells and feels of a room is great, a perfect alternative to long box-text passages, but more evocative than a list of bullet points.
- There’s not much art, but it’s good and evocative.
The Ugly:
- Wow, this was even grosser than I thought it would be. It’s one thing to read it, it’s another thing to say aloud, to other humans, things like “There are two more of those monsters, and they’re holding a guy down and vomiting bile into his mouth. Oh, and his torso is bloated and his arms and hands are all shriveled up.”
- I had a hard time visualizing the armor on the read through, so I copied the full description into my notes and read it… we were able to kind of work through what it looked like together, which was fun (And of course a PC immediately, without hesitation put it on).
- I couldn’t find stats for Felix. I just had him stay behind. His offer is an introduction to the Alchemist who will pay for the cysts in exchange for his spellbook back.
- I couldn’t find any reference as to how big the swine is supposed to be. I described it as the size of a small elephant.
Areas for improvement:
- I found the map a little hard to read/understand.
- I felt like there needed to be a bit more variety. Maybe different sizes/ages of the worm tumours with different abilities or vulnerabilities.
Ideas:
- Add some stuff from Veins in the Earth (Maybe an Alkalion?) or Deep Carbon Observatory (The salt dryads?) to provide a bit more variety.
But I might be overthinking it a bit, though. I don’t think the players were bored running into the tumours multiple times.
