Zungeon Zunday: Mother Worm

In 2025 I’m reviewing zungeon zines. They’re stream of consciousness and unedited critiques, just like Bathtub Reviews, but they’ll be a little briefer. The goal here is a little different: I want to spotlight what a craft-based, just-do-it approach to module writing can do.

Mother Worm is an 8-page system agnostic zungeon by Robot_Face. In it, you travel into the Mother Worm’s lair, with another party, to assist them resurrecting the worm’s child.

This is slapped together with Microsoft paint and free fonts, and while that doesn’t make it easy to read, it’s short and it vibes, really leaning into the DIY aesthetic that we like to see in our zungeons. You might like to take to it with a few coloured highlighters to make things a little clearer.

This tiny 6-room dungeon is full of banger ideas, with tons of interesting interactions for something of its size. I love the quest giver who is also a rival party, that your goal is to overcome specific obstacles in the dungeon, and that there are many layers of misunderstanding — the quest giver is lying, but also the Mother Worm will not understand if you’re acting in its best interests. It has a few elements that aren’t fully explained, though — particularly the lock in room 2 deserves more description, as does the spell in 3 which from further text appears to affect the hall rather than the room.

Overall, Mother Worm is an excellent tiny dungeon filled with colour and clever ideas, that will easily slot into almost any fantasy campaign.

Idle Cartulary

Playful Void is a production of Idle Cartulary. If you liked this article, please consider liking, sharing, and subscribing to the Idle Digest Newsletter. If you want to support Idle Cartulary continuing to provide Bathtub Reviews, I Read Reviews, and Dungeon Regular, please consider a one-off donation or becoming a regular supporter of Idle Cartulary on Ko-fi.