Review: Fort Sanglot
Never Say No To Vampires
Fort-Sanglot is a tri-fold dungeon for OSE by Donjons and Darons. Like last week we're doing a non-English adventure again, but Google Translate does a fine job of conveying the meaning of it. Plus, if you, like me, briefly lived in France and struggled to say the number 72 when giving your address, it gives you a chance to relive the good old days.
What's It About?
Fort Sanglot is a small dungeon set in a manor house. A group of bandits recently set up shop here, but they didn't know about the vampire secretly living in the crypts below. Now enthralled to the vampire, they are bringing in victims from the countryside. That's where the adventurers come in. It provides four hooks, two of which involve rescuing individuals who went missing nearby, one of which is reclaiming the house after winning it gambling, and the third is chasing a legend of treasure and a mysterious beast.
Let's Talk About The Ideas?
I'm a sucker for vampires, so this one had already hooked me with that. I also like the twist on the bandits, tying them in with the vampire. I can see that unfolding in an interesting way if the party first is dealing with bandits but then learns there's more going on. That kind of surprise continues, as there's also two crypts, and it won't be so straightforward to deal with the vampire once you figure that part out. But, there's more going on that just that, like a merchant turned into a bird you can try to rescue. And, it introduces giant ticks as a new monster. So gross! But, in a good way.
What About the Execution?
Trifold adventures are difficult, but this one is done well, packing in enough to know how to run it along with maps of each floor of the house and below it. As with anything like this, the Referee will have to fill in some gaps, but that's to be expected, and I don't think it's missing anything. The maps look good too! My only quibble is that the numbers are bit small and hard to read. At first, I thought it was a problem that there's no random encounters, and it instead states where bandits and the vampire will be at different times of day. However, I realized as I thought more that this would be best run like a heist, scoping out the house first and figuring out how to get in and work around the bandits. So, giving them more or less fixed locations and letting the party plan around that actually works.
Art?
There's not much here, as it's focused on fitting in as much text as possible, but it's fine. As I noted above, the maps look good, and they're the main thing to look at.
Summary!
I would absolutely run this, and I think it's well worth checking out. Could easily be fit into anyone's ongoing campaign as a countryside house almost anywhere.
What's better, this is part of a series, so I'm looking forward to seeing what else comes out.
This is part of my new and improved series of reviews where I'll be focusing each week on something that was recently released for free on Itch.io. I'll be making a point to pay the creators for what I review (when they accept payments), and you can help support that by chipping in a few bucks on Ko-Fi. Thanks for reading!