ASC Review: Temple Of The Blood Bat

Temple of the Blood Bat, AKA Lair of the Night Scourge (Jason Blasso)

OSE (B/X) adventure for four to six PCs of levels 1st-2nd

I am reviewing these in the order they were submitted. For my review criteria, please check out this post. All reviews will (probably) contain *SPOILERS*; you have been warned! Because these are short (two page) adventures, it is my intention to keep the reviews brief.

Last year, I dinged Blasso hard for misidentifying his adventure as OSE when he was using "OSE Advanced." This year, the cover page states up front that the thing is written for both "OSE Classic" OR "OSE Advanced."

Soooo...which is it?

I'm treating it as OSE Advanced which makes it hard to judge. I assume it's pretty close to Labyrinth Lord + the AEC ("Advanced Edition Companion"), or something close enough. 

This adventure is...

*sigh*

Mr. Blasso's previous adventure offered way too much treasure and was a little scant on challenge. This season, he goes the opposite way. Treasure is light...about 4,300 g.p. when it should be pushing 6K...and the danger is off the charts. 17 keyed areas include 15 hostile encounters; no rest, no respite. Encounters include large numbers of zombies (killers of low level characters), multiple save or die poison encounters, encounters with large numbers of creatures (again, at low levels multiple attacks are a killer and a fight against 10 giant rats or 30(!!) giant bats is no joke), and a carrion crawler.  

The main baddie, the "Night Scourge," seems to be some invention of Blasso's (it doesn't appear in any of my "Advanced" books): a swarm of "vampire bats" who drain blood and leave animated corpses (zombies) behind. This is not how zombies are created, like, ever. And why all the skeletons? Where are they coming from? Who's making those?

I don't like this one, sorry. For me, it only barely falls under the category of "playable" D&D. I'll give it a low ***, mainly because the bat theme is nice and fairly tight. The map is also interesting. But this one needs some work and polish.