Bathtub Review: No Time for the Wicked

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.

No Time for the Wicked is a 33 page Ravenloft module for 5th edition, by Grinning Portal. In it, you are trapped in a time loop aboard a train that is doomed to forever crash and explode every 24 hours. I received a complimentary copy from the author; as per my recent review policy update, it will be the last complimentary 5th edition module I’ll be reviewing on Playful Void.

The book opens with a lot of information before you get to the module proper — 2 summaries, a page of extra commentary on Ravenloft, 2 pages on time management, a page on train functioning, 1 on unnamed NPCs, 1 on mischief, and 4 on named NPCs, before actually getting to “starting the adventure”. This is absolutely too much for me to take in — 10 pages before we even get to any key, or any space. Contributing to the problem is the longhand 5th edition house style — there is just too much attention given to these NPCs in a way that I can engage with practically; the train car permissions section could be reduced to 1 or 2 sentences, rather than the quarter page it is given, and this is a consistent theme. I feel like I need to memorise this, because it’s not colocated, but it’s written longhand enough I can’t. Once in the key itself, it switches to a room to a page — leaving heaps of space. A lot of this preloading could sensibly be colocated with the key, to minimise this front-end overload of information, and maintain momentum while reading the module. As it is, I hit a huge roadblock at the beginning. It is difficult to write a module that balances equally the needs of ease to use at the table, but also ease of reading for the referee. One sign that a module is getting it right for me is that as you read it, you keep getting fed elements that make you increasingly more excited to run it, as you get deeper and deeper. Providing all of the elements at the front of the module, and then having the key following without really feeding back, really drains me of my excitement for the module.

There are a number of choices which undercut the core premise. The loop is too long, which results in advice to “just skip parts of the loop” once the characters know what’s going on. If 24 hours of play needs to be fast forwarded to be compelling, it needs to be shorter. If the characters make too much mischief, the loop is forcibly ended by the Dukard, which kind of defies the fun of a time loop — but this is hand in hand with an escalation system that isn’t that end. If Dukard can simply end the loop when he’s out of control, why would he bother with any other actions? The main compelling thing that Dukard should be trying to do is to manipulate the outsiders into ending the curse, but this isn’t on his agenda. A lot of other characters seem positioned to fix problems in the adventure, but in uninteresting ways: Valdak is there to explain the time loop if they doing figure it out for example.

The issue here is that it’s an investigation as well as a time loop, so I need to know exactly what was going on and when, in order to run it. The key character is D’orien, who is killed 10 minutes into the 24 hour loop. Most of the mystery in this adventure is figuring out that you need to save him, but to figure this out you need to collect specific clues: Dukard journal hints that he can be hurt by D’Orien, a document that proves Dukard is an imposter, and you can figure out who killed D’Orien by investigating his body. But I had to figure this out — it’s not summarised anywhere, despite half the word count being dedicated to prep. I stand by the fact that most puzzles in modules can afford to be straightforward, but as the core driving story of a module, what’s going on here isn’t complex enough to be compelling. The module manages to remain on rails despite the fact that it appears not to be, simply by providing only a few ways to progress. To make a time loop exciting it needs to be an OSR style challenge — the players need to be playing with time. It should feel like the montages in Groundhog Day or Edge of Tomorrow.

Part of the issue is the house layout for 5th edition — something like this needs creativity in its organisation and layout and it needs to be super user friendly. You can make far more complex modules than this work — Witchburner is all investigation, and it’s great. The Cross-stitch is an excellent time loop module, that is much easier to parse. Complexity is possible to overcome with creative layout and information design choices, but the choices here obfuscate the role of both players and referees.

A time loop is a pretty compelling concept for a module, and I was excited to see what approach No Time for the Wicked took to it. But, it doesn’t offer the joy I want from a time loop module. It took a very close read to understand what No Time for the Wicked was doing, and it shouldn’t have — when it comes down to it, it’s pretty straightforward mystery. If you’re really excited with the idea of a time loop on a doomed train, or you run a lot of 5th edition modules and you want to flex your wings and try something different than the typical structure, then check out No Time for the Wicked. I think it would make, in particular, a really fun one-shot for an event like Halloween. For me, it doesn’t provide enough support to bring to the table, or enough interest to put the effort into writing that support in myself.

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