Review: La Venganza del Escuerzo
BEWARE THE TOAD
La Venganza del Escuerzo is a a 6-page scenario for Mörk Borg by Kapithan. It is based on the short story El Escuerzo by Leopoldo Lugones. Although published in Spanish, if you, like me, took Spanish in high school and have access to Google Translate, you'll be able to read it just fine.
I love this scenario for a few reasons:
It's the kind of thing that can last over multiple sessions, pestering your players until they finally have to deal with it.
It's got that good folklore in it.
What's It About?
The idea is simple. One day, your scum are walking around the doomed lands when one of them accidentally steps on and kills a toad (determined by a PRESENCE check). They then either know already or, more likely, will quickly find out that a dead toad wants to take revenge on its killer. Over time the toad appears again and again, haunting them, getting worse each time. There's false lore that says you have to burn its body, but that won't work. The only cure is to take a silver knife that was dipped in troll blood and kill the vengeful toad again with it.
Let's Talk About The Ideas?
They're so good!
There's honestly not much more to say about this. It gives you just enough to go on to spin out this whole thing for your players, as they might first try to burn it, and then have to go on a quest to get a silver knife and troll blood. Even finding out how to fix the problem will be it's own thing.
This is just dripping with potential that a good referee would have no problem turning into multiple sessions of adventure.
What About the Execution?
I've got nothing bad to say here. It gives you everything you need. You get the setup. You get rumors about toads to spread around to anyone the players might talk to. You get a table of weird things that happens when the toad comes to haunt them. You get troll and toad stats, including the toad getting bigger and meaner each time it appears to them.
The only thing I might ask for is a weird NPC or two to use as conduits for the rumors about toads. But, even that is easy enough to work out on my own.
Everything you need is here.
Art?
The art is all public domain, but it's used well in conjunction with the layout. You kinda know what to expect from a Mörk Borg supplement at this point, and this adventure knows how to give it to you.
Summary!
No reason not to pick this up. Would be easy enough to run in some other game too.
I think we need more things like this. Little side-quest scenarios to pepper in around the bigger campaign. Something that can come up a few times before your players finally decide to do something about it.
Good stuff!
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!