Bathtub Review: Bitterpeak

Bathtub Reviews are an excuse for me to read modules a little more closely. I’m doing them to critique a wide range of modules from the perspective of my own table and to learn for my own module design. They’re stream of consciousness and unedited critiques. I’m writing them on my phone in the bath.

Bitterpeak, written by Stuart Watkinson, with art is by Kiril Tchangov, is the second module in the Abbot Trilogy, a system neutral series of modules. After I reviewed the first module, Abbotsmoore, I expected to review Bitterpeak and the third module, Steelhollow, together, but Bitterpeak stands largely alone. In Bitterpeak, you’re tasked to deliver a single hair from the head of Demonsbane, which is hidden on Bitterpeak — but Demonsbane is a weapon, not a creature or a person. It’s a hexcrawl through a frozen tundra, culminating in a climb up a perilous mountain. I backed this on Kickstarter.

I realise now that I didn’t speak to the layout and art in Abbotsmoore much; to be frank, these three are of a piece and speaking to it thrice would probably be wasting your time. Each of the three has a unique colour palette, but otherwise the layout is the same. It’s spacious, single column, with strong use of size and decoration for smart navigation. It’s only 24 pages long, and I think the layout and organisation would fall apart if they’d packaged these 3 in a single book, because a larger organisational structure isn’t present. That’s not a problem here though. The crisp inks that feature here suit the simple choices in the layout. I’m not familiar with Kiril Tchangov, but his work, especially in the covers, absolutely slaps.

MacReady’s Hut is the base of operation and the “inn” of the module. I picture a kind of “Hateful Eight” situation here with 8 guests each with a secret. Honestly, I’m a little disappointed that these characters don’t play a bigger role in the module as a whole, although they could all act as henchmen or replacement characters. Some show up later, though. MacReady’s Hut is just such a strong location I want it to be more than it is; this honestly reminds me of the entire of Largshire, Stuart Watkinson’s previous town supplement, which left me with a similar feeling: I just want it to be expanded, because the premises are already great.

The Endless Tundra is a hexcrawl, with 3 regions to pass through before reaching Bitterpeak. I quite like these three locations, but each of these consist simply of a random encounter table and a description. The purpose of a hexcrawl is exploration, but there are no secrets in this hex crawl. You might as well as run it as a series of encounters, given 50% of the time it’s likely you’ll just encounter 2 of the first table, and 1 each of the second two. There’s no fun in wondering aimlessly lost through a wilderness, so the “getting lost” rules will get old fast for players, when there’s no chance of finding a pleasant surprise. And given the distribution, I’d run this as a point crawl, I think, or at else assign encounters to specific hexes and give them landmarks to make getting lost or navigating the waste more interesting.

The rules around climbing the Bitterpeak, are similarly a little weak. They’re essentially a skill challenge, but I think it would’ve been more interesting had there been a table of potential challenges here as well. I also don’t understand why the encounter here results in Rickard not caring for his sister’s death, which may or may not have occurred depending on how you rolled. The death itself is simply due to exposure to the elements, which also lacks drama. For me, the final encounter also lacks drama — particularly if Rickard comes and makes the dramatic choice for the player.

Watkinson remains an imaginative and evocative writer; one of the best. Scenes like “Courtship of the dragons. The two white dragons circle high above for quite some time before they descend. Their brilliant white scales glisten over their immense bodies.” just leap off the page. The characters, as I said earlier, are very well realised and briefly enough I can use their descriptions. I have no complaints at all about the writing.

But Bitterpeak fails to be more than the sum of its parts for me. When the two main sections feel underdeveloped, and the final feels anticlimactic, I can’t find myself eager to bring this one to the table. I think, basically, that this idea is more than a 24 page idea — we want to linger, trapped in MacReady’s Hut, and then have the politics between those characters develop and then feature in a journey in the wilderness where you’re searching to unlock the door to the Demonsbane, where finally you’re competing with whoever’s left for that lock of damned hair, whether by violence or by wit or by speed. There’s the seed of something great here, but it doesn’t get enough time to develop in the page count.

Overall, I can’t say that I’d recommend Bitterpeak over Abbotsmoore, which was pretty good, and its structure means it’s not awfully suitable to drop into an existing campaign. Watkinson’s writing is worth luxuriating in, it just doesn’t translate here into a module that I’d enjoy running; you could pillage it for some excellent ideas if your campaign is already in a frozen terrain, though. If you have time or inclination to expand this out, or you’re looking for a frozen tundra themed few sessions, and particularly if you have another source for some wilderness rules that will make it more meaningful, I’d suggest picking Bitterpeak up.

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