I already talked about Black Boar in in the first entry of this series. Since then I have gone through 10 or so adventures for DSA and it turns out my view on this module has evolved. Not evolved enough to properly change my evaluation of the scenario, but I did realize what Werner Fuchs was trying to do with it. And I think he put more thought into it than I gave him credit for.
The adventure is a beginner scenario in every sense of the word. People who have been playing longer sometimes forget that, especially when they come across this legendary adventure (it is after all the first for DSA) and then notice that it is kind of meh.
But that’s ok, because what the adventure tries to do is getting people with NO ROLEPLAYING EXPERIENCE WHATSOEVER into experiencing the hobby.
And that’s why this actually is better than I thought.
Yes, the dungeon is bad.
Yes, the heroes get railroaded into the dungeon.
Yes, there is a weird assortment of enemies to deal with.
But that’s not the point. The point is to teach both players and GMs how this whole game works.
You start with basically a read aloud story. Then you get to the Inn. Only here you actually make your characters. Don’t worry about equipment because you are going to lose it immediately. You just need the stats and DSA1 chargen was simple enough for elementary schoolers.
Imprisoned in the cellar you are given an escape route through a dungeon. The game properly starts in the first dungeon room. What is the situation like?
Dark.
There’s no lights. You don’t have equipment. You can only use what they can find in the dark. How are You finding it? You have to narratively interrogate the environment with only touch, smell, and audio cues.
I don’t think this is an easy situation for the DM to deal with, after all instead of just presenting the situation as usual they are now forced to strip out all the visual cues. But it also might be good training for them.
That’s actually quite an interesting approach to the game. It makes this whole dungeon into a puzzle from the get go and allows people to learn how to deal with such a situation (a situation that might have been inspired by ADnD module A4 In the Dungeons of the Slave Lords from 1981, which starts in a similar way).
Once You get some lights and weapons there are the usual dungeon encounters, and those introduce you to some of the fantastic core concepts of the game (what are orcs? what are lizardmen? etc.), but they present players with another decision: how do they want to escape? There are multiple paths that lead to the outside, and some are harder and more rewarding (e.g. through the tower on top of the hill), some are easier but don’t have other rewards (e.g. through a cave chimney with no opposition). Players are supposed to learn to strategize here based on the information they have.
Unfortunately this flew over my head the first few times I read and ran the module, and only came to me when trying to vocalize why exactly this module felt much better than B4 (which I loathe).
Does it make the module better? Marginally so. I have been thinking of that the last few months, so the tally I have been doing at the end of my retrospectives actually reflected that. It’s still not a good module, but it’s serviceable. I think I MIGHT use it if I was introducing kids into the hobby. But I still would have to put some more thought into it.