A Post-mortem of My Hot Springs Island Campaign

My group recently gave up on Dark of Hot Springs Island. Given the campaign’s reputation, I think it’s worth trying to figure out why. How much of it is the published campaign has problems? How much of it is a skill issue on my part? How much of it is that the published campaign leads to a play style that just isn’t a great fit with me and my group?

For context, I should say I run Shadowdark. Since the rest of the Swordfish Islands archipelago is not yet published, I rearranged the map for Secret of the Black Crag to put Hot Springs Island in that archipelago. Our group played Black Crag (with assorted OSE and Hyperborea modules plopped in) for about 20 sessions and had a lot of fun doing it. Then they landed on Hot Springs Island and we focused on that for around 30 sessions. Eventually, we took a break to run Against the Cult of the Hippie Commune as a one-shot and had so much fun it threw into contrast that Hot Springs Island had turned into a slog.

What’s great about Hot Springs Island

I subscribe to the maxim that D&D is usually post-apocalyptic, if for no other reason than to explain why there are ruins worth exploring but also because fantasy is quasi-medieval and you can’t make sense of the medieval world without the shadow of Rome. For instance, Greyhawk is what was rebuilt after the Rain of Colorless Fire destroyed the Suloise Empire, the decline of Cormanthyr gave us the ruins of Myth Drannor and the Forgotten Realms that surround them, and Krynn is what’s left after the Cataclysm destroyed Ergoth. Hot Springs Island has an awesome NSFW version of this in that the lost civilization whose ruins you are exploring was the most depraved civilization imaginable until it was shattered in a coomerpocalypse.

The characters are brilliantly drawn. Chief among them is Svarku. He is the leader of the most powerful faction and also the fantasy version of the film trope that peaked c 1990 of an ambitious middle manager who uses a lot of coke, is in way over his head, and is trying to paper things over before his creditors or bosses destroy him. He has elements of Nicky in Casino and Carl in Ghost, but there’s also a deep neediness to the character like the guy effusing about “Jessie’s Girl” in Boogie Nights (or really any of the characters in Boogie Nights).

The campaign can be very funny. One of the NPC races are a bunch of gambling addicts and one of the adventure hooks is they bet the PCs that they can’t descend into a labyrinth inhabited by an invincible giant centipede to … watch a 15 minute documentary about penguin mating.

The diegetic player-facing book is a great option (which my players took advantage of). It tells the players basically everything that’s on the surface of the island but none of the back story or how the factions relate. And it’s simply nice to see a player-facing book that isn’t just subclasses and furry races.

Finally, the art is fantastic. Gabriel Hernandez is a great illustrator who gives the monsters menace, the NPCs personality, and the setting a sense of place.

What sucks about Hot Springs Island

There are a few issues I am confident are not me but are flaws on the page.

The smaller one is that most of the dungeons are not Jacquaysed and have a terminal case of cut-scene-itis. The dungeons are much less puzzles to be solved or tactical scenarios to be overcome than environmental storytelling of the “you got a audio diary, press triangle to play” variety familiar from video games. The gameplay for Lapis Observatory is to follow a linear path with optional side rooms and learn back story as you go. The baths are an extreme case of cut-scene-itis as the players get stuck in a time loop witnessing the nereid abduction. Svarku’s new moon party is also functionally a cut scene, at least assuming the players are prudent enough to just enjoy Svarku’s hospitality and not try to mess with his stuff or pick fights with his minions. A lot of this stuff is great to read but gets a bit old in play.

The really big problem with Hot Springs Island though is that it is system neutral. I understand that this broadens the audience to crosscut 5e and OSR, but it does create a lot of work for the DM and I wasn’t comfortable running it until I created bestiary stats for OSE and Shadowdark. Moreover, the location keys only describe the environment and you’re supposed to stock the inhabitants from a table like it’s 1978 and we are playing B1. Into the Unknown. This has zero upside and is just a gratuitous fuck you to the DM. Fortunately, Technical Grimoire created a generator that does the dice rolling for you, but it still sucks to have to print out a sheet and stick it in the gorgeous book.

Alas, the module being system neutral is not just a matter of it being high prep but also of making it hard to balance. One of the things that being stat’d for a system gives you is not just “for OSE” but “for level 5-7 adventurers.” I told my players not to head to Hot Springs Island until they were about level three but this proved to be too squishy and I ended up nerfing the encounters, mostly by letting them easily back out of encounters. This had the effect of making the island feel like more of a “check out my diorama” type deal.

This relates to the intended playstyle of faction play. If you go back and watch Yojimbo, the thing is that Toshiro Mifune is one of the baddest motherfuckers who ever lived. He is tough enough to take on anyone in town, emphasis on one. He is not tough enough to take on everyone in town all at once, which is why he has to play the silk merchants off against the sake merchants until there are few enough of them left that he can kill the survivors. And the way he plays them off is that the silk merchants and sake merchants both recognize that he’s a real bad ass who they can use against each other. So the archetype of faction play suggests that the protagonist/PCs should be less powerful than any faction but more powerful than a well chosen encounter with almost any person or small group from a faction.

Because Dark of Hot Springs Island is system neutral, the GM has to figure out the stats and the appropriate PC level. I created what I thought were plausible stats, but when I tried running it, I found that the factions were all so much more powerful than the PCs that it was kind of farcical that the factions would need them for anything. It’s like a remake of Yojimbo where the ronin protagonist has a rusty sword and one leg.

What might be good for someone else but is a bad fit with me and my group

I have a hunch that Dark of Hot Springs Island would be the greatest ever hexcrawl for mid-level PCs in 5e. Fortunately, there’s a bestiary with 5e stats. The power level feels about right and it would be a good fit with 5e milestone leveling. In contrast, I really don’t see why it’s often held up as a good module for OSR. The GP=XP mechanic of most OSR games lends itself to a grinding for XP approach of harvesting natural resources, selling them in town, repeat. (I should note that my PCs didn’t really do this).

One of my players noted that the faction play never really took off for us because faction play requires you to travel back and forth, but it took my group like 8 sessions to cross the island. I pointed out that they could have gotten back on their boat and sailed around the island for just a random encounter roll or two but they took forever because they wanted to fully explore all three features of every hex they crossed. Combined with cut-scene-itis, this meant that in effect a lot of play was gazeteer bedtime stories. This suggests that each hex being so detailed was something of an attractive nuisance as it tempts the players to lose the forest for the trees.

Verdict and lessons learned

I am confident recommending Hot Springs Island as a great read. I am not sure to whom I recommend running it. It didn’t work for my group, but maybe it would work better with a better DM, or a group running 5e, or higher level PCs. I hope so, but caveat emptor.

What I honestly care more about is what this experience tells me about how to DM going forward. The obvious one is just say no to system neutral modules and probably also to modules written for very different systems (eg, OSRIC yes, Pathfinder no), but what about beyond that? One possibility is that my group just doesn’t like hexcrawls, but I don’t think so as we enjoyed Secret of Black Crag. Perhaps the lesson is that my group doesn’t like hexcrawls that have a ton of detail for every hex, which suggests not running Dolmenwood but we should be OK with True Relation of the Great Virginia Disastrum. Another possibility is that I just suck at DMing faction play, but I don’t think so as I have  successfully included faction play in small dungeons as well as (with a different group) Night’s Black Agents. Or it could be my group just prefers a beer and pretzels play style that works better with scenarios that can be completed in a few sessions.