Spinetooth Oasis: Some highlights

A repost of my thread from Mastodon.

I'm very late to the party, but I just discovered Spinetooth Oasis, a pay-what-you-want B/X compatible adventure by @EvlynMoreau. And it's just fizzing with great, weird, gameable ideas. Here's a few in no particular order:

There's these creepy, armless rat/kangaroo scavengers all over the place and they have a perfect, horrible detail: "They only eat skin, and don't care if it's from the living or the dead."

Dwelling in the purple long grass are large violet slugs that emit bursts of lightning. At night blue lightning strobes amongst the lavender stalks as camouflaged purple weaver halflings crawl in pursuit of their prey.

"The purple weavers like to eat these slugs with lemon and rosemary and are eager to trade weaved goods or cactus flowers for these products."

There are two opposed bandit factions seeking to benefit from a caravan arriving soon, as well as a bunch of clueless pilgrims caught in the crossfire. Already great!

But again, there are details that elevate them:

The Sisters of Filth (bandits #1) maintain religious taboos against ever bathing. Foes in melee exposed to their stink must save vs being debilitated by wretching and watering eyes.

The other bandit faction is comprised of "Uncle Reebo", who is supernaturally charming and obsessed with couture, and his devoted (magically charmed) following of humanoids who dress in frock coats, powdered wigs, and fine stockings.

Each follower gets great details. I especially like "Kovok Brogan Bloodeye Hobgoblin butler (HD 1+2, armed with the good cutlery, as a pair of short swords, ML 8)".

The pilgrims are adorned with lots of colorful scarves and saris and such, they travel with big flightless birds, and they're innocent of the dangers around them - just here to worship the Waters of the Sun, get drunk, have sex, and party.

But those parties are charged with ritual magic: they can swap appearances and genders with each other, or gorge themselves and then subsist on sunlight for weeks, and more.

A few more nice ideas:

• giant cactus forest growing over the bones of those who sought their sacred flowers.
• cult of owl-faced people seeking transmutation into a new monstrous bodies.
• mama cactus, a 30 foot tall cactus with magical powers
• ancient succulent guardians adorned with candles (and their spider pets)

It's not perfect. I think I would need to prep countdown clocks or fronts or something for each faction before starting. I would also like to couple the factions a bit more tightly and do a bit more to bring the PCs into the conflict.

Also I'd need to do a bit of work to run the map as point crawl or something.

But well worth checking out! https:// evlyn.itch.io/spinetooth-oasis