This is probably some of the best formatting I’ve seen in a published product, reminiscent of Gavin Norman’s work in The Hole In the Oak and Winter’s Daughter. It first provides an overview of the situation with interactive bits highlighted in bold, then an explanation of the interactivity below. Relevant stats for creatures are also provided close-at-hand for ease of reference.
Admittedly, there are some instances where some relevant information is hidden in the bulleted text. For example:
In the example above, I think the animated hammer should definitely be referenced in the overview paragraph, as PCs would notice it immediately when entering the room (and perhaps even beforehand, due to the noise it makes). These instances are generally few and far between, however, and I would say the descriptions overall are exceptionally well-formatted. I wish every dungeon was formatted this way.
Furthermore, beyond the layout of the writing, the writing itself is genuinely good. There are many things for the players to investigate and interact with. It’s not all “bust down the door and kill things” (though players certainly could try that). The tone is a mix of fairy-tale fancy and grimdark macabre, which I think tends to work well. I often find myself rewriting parts of published modules to make them more dynamic and interactive when I can tell the authors got lazy. I had to do very little of that with CX, though – the rooms were generally fun and interesting to run as-written.
CX is also very well-constructed in terms of its blueprint. You could say Castle Xyntillan is significantly “Jacquayed.”There are plenty of directional options for the players, a variety of room shapes (it’s not all 30ft. square rooms), and loops & connections between sections. One thing I would have liked to see would be a sort of “theme” for each region to “clue players in” when they’re entering a new section (ex. a color theme for each wing of the castle or something), but overall the castle’s blueprint shows thoughtful and careful design as a dungeon.
Another strength about the maps is the different digital formats. The PDF version I downloaded came with labelled and unlabeled digital versions of the maps. It also provided a map optimized for use with virtual tabletops, as well as explicit instructions for how to upload it to your virtual tabletop of choice. This was my first time seeing that sort of support in a published module, and I thought it was stellar.
THINGS TO CHANGE OR ADD
My most significant criticism of CX is its lack of high-level support the referee. While it does a great job facilitating play at the table with its formatting, I found that CX offered very little support for the referee “out-of-session.” One significant thing I missed was some overall explanation of “what’s going on” or “how the castle got this way.” Admittedly, the author Gabor Lux responded to this omission in the very first paragraph of the adventure’s foreword:
"(Castle Xyntillan) makes no claim to either realism or narrative consistency: it is a storehouse of the macabre and the whimsical, founded on dream logic and loose association, and striving to be confounding and entertaining above all else. And yet, it is not formless. You may note places where its elements form apparent patterns, or at least seem to rhyme – but it will be up to you to make the connections, and interpret them according to your ideas, as well as the needs of your campaign."
So basically, what I interpreted the above statement to mean is that the adventure wants you to “make it up yourself,” when it comes to what happened or what’s going on now. Personally, I found that unsatisfying, and I think the inconsistency deprived my players of a sense of “discovery” in their explorations. They could not “figure out what was going on” through their explorations, as ultimately there was nothing larger going on – at least not as written. The dungeon just kind of is there, being weird. There's nothing to make sense of, because there is no sense behind the situations.
This issue with the lack of support extends beyond the “backstory” to the NPCs themselves. While CX provides a good appendix of NPCs at the back of the book, it provides little description of their wants and motivations, or what they think of one another. As a result, I found it difficult to run them – particularly when players would try to talk to them and ask them questions about the castle, as it’s hard to get a sense of what each NPC would know.
(Also, as a brief aside, the adventure made little distinction between intelligent and unintelligent undead, which made it a bit difficult to tell whether the PCs could talk to certain NPCs or not. I ultimately ruled that the PCs could talk to most undead family members, including skeletons, but some guidance here would have been helpful).
I am not the first person to experience this issue with the lack of support for running the NPCs; someone else noted it in a comment on Bryce’s review, and the author (Melan) responded:
I understand Melan’s point here that a web of ALL the NPCs would have been unwieldy. However, a relationship map of the half-dozen most significant NPCs (ex. The Count / Countess, the Beast), a list of the folks allied with them, and what each major NPC thinks of the others could have taken only something like a two-page spread. For an example of what I’m talking about, you can reference this relationship matrix from Woodfall:
While I do think the one from Woodfall is a bit too dense, having just a half-dozen factions or important NPCs would make it much more manageable.
More information about the NPCs would have encouraged faction-based play, facilitating a dynamic environment for the PCs to explore where the Castle’s denizens react to the actions of the PCs. It would give me a better idea of what each NPC wants, if the PCs offer to complete a quest for them. It would also give me direction on how the castle might change over time, as the different factions try to achieve their goals. As-written, the NPCs are basically all just standing around, waiting for the PCs to walk into their room. They have no plots, plans, or aspirations.
You may be thinking, “Well why not just that make that stuff yourself, like the adventure says?” However, I find two issues with that suggestion.
1. I buy published modules to do this work for me and save me time. If the author tells me to write this content myself, that defeats the purpose of me buying the module.
2. Castle Xyntillan is SO large that, having purchased it (rather than written it), creating a sense of “what happened here” or a write-up for each faction would require me to put in hours of work and study… which I think is exactly what the concise room & NPC descriptions were trying to prevent. Reading and annotating the entire module seems to negate the value of having short descriptions I can run with little prep, since I would have to closely study them anyway.
CONCLUSIONS
Overall, I would say Castle Xyntillan is an excellent dungeon on the micro-level. Its room entries are written perfectly for low-prep, session-level play and it provides great support for the referee to run the game at the table. It has fun and interesting encounters that are concisely written with little wasted text. I would like to see more adventures emulate its format.
However, I would like to have seen greater support for the referee at the “macro” level. This adventure does not have a consolidated description of what NPCs want or how they relate to each other. It has no high-level explanation of “what’s going on” or “what happened here” for the referee. The text tells you to come up with those parts yourself… which disappointed me and defeated the purpose of buying a published product (in my opinion).
Ultimately, I could compare Castle Xyntillan to a bag of M&Ms. Each M&M (room description) tastes good, on its own. However, the only thing that holds the M&Ms together is the fact that they’re in the same bag (i.e. in the same castle). With a “mega-dungeon” like Castle Xyntillan, where the PCs will explore the same location across many sessions, I found myself needing greater “cohesion” between its disparate parts to turn the Castle into something satisfying. That sort of nonsensical play got tired and unfulfilling after a few months. Turning the Castle into something more than a weird, inexplicable funhouse proved too difficult / time-consuming for me, considering the lack of support in the text.
Overall I would recommend this adventure if you’re interested in a well-formatted funhouse dungeon that’s easy to run with little prep. Understand that it really is a true funhouse dungeon, however, meaning that there is little sense to make of it or mysteries to uncover (beyond hidden objects to find). Players who enjoy that sense of discovery and “figuring things out” likely will feel unfulfilled unless you invest the time and effort to provide those things yourself. For me it was fun for a while, but lost its zest quicker than I expected.
4/5 Stars