ASC Review: Sausages of the Devil Swine

Sausages of the Devil Swine (John Nash)

B/X for four PCs of 5th level

A banger (no pun intended) right out of the gate; nevertheless, this adventure suffers from a number of flaws.

For my review criteria, you may check out this post. All reviews will (probably) contain *SPOILERS*; you have been warned! Because these are short (three page) adventures, it is my intention to keep the reviews short.

Strong theming in this one, though it's hard to tell if it's meant to be humorous/satirical. I'd err on the side that it's more serious than jokey, despite pig themes bordering close to ridiculous ("Porcs" instead of orcs, "Porcus, the Demon Lord of Swine," etc.), without ever actually taking it too far. Overall, I'd say the concept is well-conceived, the adventure is easy to read/parse, and the map is good. High points here.

Nuts-and-bolts, however, require a little work.

I like devil swine a lot...they are a classic, if often underutilized, staple of B/X-BECMI play. They are also an EXPERT level creature: a shape-changing, 9 hit die hammer with a powerful charming ability (equivalent to a vampire), and a gore attack that does 2d6 damage. It's a pig demon of the first order; they don't show up on the B/X encounter tables till level 8. Are they appropriate critters for a party of four 5th level characters? Especially when encountered in groups of three, five, and two, throughout the dungeon? Not really, no.

But Nash doesn't use the devil swine entry from the rulebooks, instead making up his own creature: 3 hit dicers with an AC 7, 2d4 damage, no charm...um, what? You want to rename your pig-faced variety of orcs...okay. But nerfing the devil swine for your low-level theme? No. Use were-boars instead or else up the level. "Porcus," the Demon Prince of Swine is only 8 hit dice (less than a B/X devil swine) so here again we see an adventure designer wanting to nerf gods and entities so that their 5th level characters can duke it out with Great Powers. Man, I hate that kind of 'small ball.'

Treasure is light for my taste: an adventure this size, I'm thinking something in the range of 20K+ for ta party of the listed levels. The author states in the introduction that there is 14,404 g.p. worth of treasure (and since he bothered to do the math, I didn't bother to add it up). So, yeah...a bit light.  But the variety and distribution is good; it wouldn't be too hard to fatten things up. A minor knock.

Stocking in general is pretty good...very standard Moldvay (one-third monster, one-sixth trap, one-sixth 'special,' one-third empty). And treasure distribution (as stated) is good: 10 of the 17+ encounter areas have something worth discovering which, while high for Moldvay, is great to keep players poking along. Danger level appears a little weak for 5th level characters, unless one uses ACTUAL devil swine, in which case it is far, far too hard. Nash's swine are just half-strength trolls: three hit dice with a minor regen ability? Yeah, it just doesn't have the same teeth (tusks?). 

The Wand of Porcus is also anti-climactic, being a +2 mace with an effect that only triggers upon killing someone. Porcus himself is a bit of a pushover demon prince, having no special abilities besides a handful of (defensive) immunities. While he's nicely described, the fact that he's content to sit around doing the bidding of a mortal is lame. I don't like it.

The competing butchers are nifty. So are the strangling sausages.

This is a strong first entry to read, but it has (for me) some glaring problems. Love the concept and theming, but the execution needs work. I'll give this one a bit more than two stars (out of five).  For B/X, it's neither "B" nor "X" but something that tries to split the difference...and doesn't really succeed. Nash shows excellent potential...but it is potential yet un-realized.

**+