Review: Lair of the Grim Gasher Orcs

While the last entry tried its hand at redeeming the orcs, this time the mission is to kill them all.
Ladies and Gentlemen… we’ve got some orcs in a hole…

Author: Daniel Herz
System: B/X
Size and Range: Low Levels
No playtesters credited.

First impression
Clean layout, clean writing, looks professional and well made.

Structure and Layout
Two pages in clean two column layout. Good use of headings and bolding in specific areas. Page three is the map (a separate file in this case). After the title we get the background of the place, then the monster roster for tonight’s fun evening of D&D. After that we go into detail about the orc’s habits and their tactics in case of an attack. A short paragraph about the general features of the dungeon, then we’re off into the room keys. While there is a lot of text in a smaller font size, good headings, bolded parts, and a good use paragraph breaks make it quite easy to parse and understand.

The Map

An abandoned dwarven structure inhabited by orcs. The map is clean and looks great. Your printer might hate you for all the black, but them’s the breaks. Scale of the map is noted in the adventure text, alas, no cardinal directions noted anywhere. From the text we can infer that it’s the bog-standard up = north direction and it doesn’t really impair the DM in doing their job. Still… I like it when maps note down cardinal directions.
The whole place is basically symmetrical. This kind of map design gets a lot of flak as being boring and predictable for the party, but all in all it works very well here.
First: The map may err on the side of “realism”, meaning that this is a reasonable way dwarves would’ve built their outpost into the rock, but “realism” like that also has its place in D&D, especially at lower levels where not everything needs to be batshit crazy Gonzo stuff.
Second: the whole site is designed to be an “Infiltrate-and-Exterminate” – affair with the possibility of it turning either into a siege-situation or a “Rush in and kill everything” -situation”. In this case the symmetry of the map allows players that have only explored a portion of the place to make educated guesses about the general size and layout of the place. Very nifty if you have to camp outside and plan the extermination of those pesky orcs.
Third: it’s an eleven room “orcs-in-a-hole”- site… not goddamn Stonehell or Rappan Athuk.
Fourth: The symmetry gets broken up by blocked doors, a caved-in passage and rooms 3 and 5. Room 5 can also possibly lead to a second entrance (or whatever the DM feels the passage there should lead to.).
The map also does very well with regards to small details making the DMs life a lot easier. The direction doors open is noted, locked and blocked doors are marked and specific, important parts of rooms (cage and well in room 1) are marked ion there. It also marks stationary orc guards with an x.
I really, really like this map. It’s simple sure, but it’s very well done and perfect for the kind of play the site presents.

The Story so far
Dwarves built an outpost into the rock, dwarves left. Orcs found the outpost, made it their lair and have been terrorizing the region ever since. We’ve got a classic “orcs in a hole” – situation here. There are some nice little bits in the adventure that help paint a picture of the orc tribe’s characteristics. They are named the “Grim Gasher Orcs”, which is a fucking rad name, and they take captives for food and as slaves. We’re also informed, that they attempted to ransom a wealthy merchant once which just ended in a bloodbath and left everyone kinda confused and angry… so it was never attempted again. They also stick the heads of defeated enemies on sticks at the front gate, hoping their fearsome reputation and show of gruesome force will keep enemies away. With these few words we instantly know what kind of orcs we’re dealing with here. Very nicely done.

Theme and Atmosphere
The theme is “Go fuck up some orcs” and it is well done. The atmosphere of the place is also nicely transported to the DM. There’s lots of little bits setting up the atmosphere, mainly through descriptions of the orc tribes’ character and their behavior. The Sections on Orc Habits and Tactics do a lot of heavy lifting here… especially lifting the Tribe up from the “run-of-the-mill”-orc into something a bit more unique, while still retaining the core savagery and brutishness we all love about orcs so dearly.
A little nitpick, that will come up again later in the treasure section, has to be, that the past as a dwarven outpost gets kind of ignored here. Dwarves built an outpost, left it, then orcs moved in… all fine with that. But there’s not much done with the dwarven past of the site as is.

Language and Writing
Clear, on point, a bit long at times perhaps, but ultimately very readable and in service of the use at the table. Clear headings, good use of paragraphs and equally good use of bolded parts make it quick to read and parse. I suspect you could trim this entry by half a page without loosing any of the excellent content, then use that free space to add some more stuff… but I’m somewhat on the extreme end of the “content in a given space” debate.

Artwork
There’s no Artwork in this adventure.

The Situation
No hooks or rumors are presented in the classic “Here’s a table”-style. There are some things a DM can use for hooks/rumors in the text proper, like the fact, that the orcs are “known to harass any who travel the nearby roads” and such tidbits. There is enough here to get a DM going, yet it is standard enough to neatly fit into any game world.
The situation is also exactly as described above in the “story so far” section… there are some orcs in hole, whatcha gonna do about it?
While not exactly spelled out, I get the feeling that the core setup for a party is the classic quest structure… meaning that they get send here by some sort of local authority or angry merchants to finally end the orc threat. You could possibly play this as a surprise find in the wilderness… though you would have your players then trek back to the next town for supplies and to talk tactics.
Still the situation is easy enough to get a quick grasp on, plan accordingly and then storm the orc lair… or try to sneak in.
Once per week the big orc boss takes about half the tribe (30 orcs) out to raid a little, at which time the lair is severely weakened. This is pure gold for a party taking their time, stalking out the surroundings and planning carefully. They could conceivably storm and clear the weakened lair while the boss is our, then set up a trap when for when he comes back. Perfect!

Usability and Complexity
This entry is high on the usability side and rather low on the complexity. You can read this and quickly get a grasp about what’s going on and what’s about to happen. The very user-friendly map helps a lot here. There’s also little stuff that helps a DM to quickly get into the lair so to speak. Stuff like a small paragraph about general features, telling you all sorts of interesting information like the makeup of doors, how high the ceilings are, what the light situation is in there and other stuff. Great. The biggest part in helping a DM run this place though are the excellent sections on habits and tactics of the orc tribe. Read these, understand them and you’ll do no wrong in presenting this specific tribe and how they will react.
From a complexity viewpoint there’s some stuff going on here, but most of it is rather tame. You’ve got the orcs either sleeping, reveling or standing guard. Stationary guards are marked on the map, the general stuff is in the habits and tactics section and anything specific is in the room key. Nicely done.
When the orcs are reveling they’re so loud and drunk, that combat in adjacent rooms will go unnoticed, they’re not very good at seeing through disguises and their own wardogs have a good chance of attacking them instead of the intruders. All of this is great stuff, that’ll allow a party a good chance against the tribe, while simultaneously giving a DM some wiggle room to do their own thing and cover up possible oversights.
I also love they fact, that the orcs have a good plan to defend against an attack at the main gate, but their order of battle for enemies encountered in the lair is basically “Oh shit, everyone for themselves.”.
All of this is to say, that there is enough here for a DM to run this place to great effect, while the description of the orcs gives a DM some leeway.

Random Encounters
There’s one possible wandering encounter which is… surprise, more orcs. This is thematically very nice, but I kinda get the feeling that more could’ve been done here. Maybe an escaped slave hiding behind some barrels (a classic) or something. An encounter table here could’ve also been used not so much to get new enemies into the game, but to flesh out the orc tribe some more by including events that happen or something. Maybe the party encounters three drunk-ass orcs in a corridor or a fight between two smaller group of orcs breaks out, allowing the party to move unobserved for a while or something.
To be clear: the one random encounter fits and my above tangent is nothing more than me rambling about what could elevate this some more.

NPCs and Monsters
The absolute high point of this site is the tribe itself. They’re described in great detail and basically jump at you from the page.
As mentioned, the excellent habits and tactics section lays a strong foundation, which the specific room keys then build into even more really great details. The tribes torture technician is really just some fat bastard getting his high killing prisoners… which also means the orcs usually don’t get much information out of them. The orcs smith is old and constantly wheezing, helped by two runts who’re everything but effective at their tasks. There’s goblins among the tribe who’ll take the first chance to betray the cursed orcs. The tribes own wardogs are half starved and mistreated, leading to them attacking the orcs and anyone else indiscriminately when freed. All of this is great stuff and paints a vivid picture of a cruel, somewhat dumb, but by no means harmless tribe.
There’s a spectrum of difficulty on which an author has to place enemies in their module. On one end you’ve got Tucker’s Kobolds, nasty little metagaming fuckers that know everything you’ll do and have planned accordingly. They’re basically evil fantasy batman if he had God (or the DM) on his side. On the other end you’ve got enemies as dumb as rocks, who wouldn’t be able successfully pee a hole into snow if you held their weenies.
The Grim Gasher Orcs then sit comfortably in the Goldilocks zone of enemy design, where players and DMs alike will happily thrive with fun and engaging gameplay. TLDR: They rock!
There also one possible NPC in the site, a human slave boy who was kind of adopted by the tribe because of his aggressive nature. Maybe he’ll escape with a party, maybe he’ll fight them with his orc friends… who knows, but whatever happens will be great. There’s also some prisoners, but these have no stats and are to wounded and malnourished to be of any aid.
One last little nitpick is the number of orcs in the tribe. There are 60 orcs, though that is never explicitly spelled out. Instead there’s mention of 12 orcs being 60% of the tribe and such. This is no big deal but be clear here. The number of orcs is hugely important for this situation, so don’t hide it in the text.

Treasure
This is sadly the low point of the adventure. While there is treasure, it’s basically all in one room (the chief’s chamber)… This makes sense but is simply boring.
While matters of “internal consistency” and “realism” have to be noted in everything but the most gonzo of modules, you’ll also have to remember: We’re playing a game here and we want it to be fun according to the basic tenets of the game.
Now in the OSR area of D&D gaming “Gold for XP” is a pretty basic tenet and one that drives most of the players adventures into the wild. Following that is, that a dungeon that doesn’t give out that much treasure (or appears to do so) will be one, that the group will have les incentive to actually clear or investigate. It’s also kinda frustrating for players to not get little dodats and a bit of treasure her and there.
The treasure all in all comes to around 6000 gp mostly in coin or jewelry… which again is all fine and well but could’ve been better. A low-level party in B/X clearing this lair will gain a level or at least make good progress towards the next one. There’s also a Potion of Growth though the Chief will probably drink it himself before going to fight the group.

What to do here then?
First: Take a hint from your own room descriptions and your backstory.
These orcs raided merchants and the local villages… so where’s the silk, the wares, the spices? To be fair, these are in there in the storage room, but no values and weights are given.
You’ve got an old orc smith in there… where are his masterwork tools?
These orcs are constantly feasting, so where’s the meat, the cheese (cheese is great treasure), the sausages and such? This site has a slight disconnect between what is presented in the rooms and how treasure values and weight is given. A good DM can work this, but it shouldn’t be their job to scrounge the adventure for mention of treasure, to then assign value and weight to them.
Second: Here we come back to the above-mentioned underused dwarf motive in this old outpost. When did dwarves ever build something without including hidden caches, hidden doors and such stuff? Never is the answer. Include some old dwarven treasure here. Maybe a statue has a hidden compartment with some jewels inside. There could be a hidden door into an old shrine with some nice stuff. An old tapestry shows the history of the place. The orcs ignore it, to a dwarven leader it could be worth a pretty coin… stuff like that.
Third: Give individual orcs some treasure too. This is really just a nitpick and I know of people who don’t like the whole “every monster has 1d4gp in their pocket”-thing… but… You can further use this to give the orcs character and give your party something to look forward too. If the first group of killed orcs has 4d4gp, 8d6sp and the blood smeared and defaced love letter of some farmer boy to his sweetheart in their possession, your group will then loot every orc in the place simply to see what they have on them.
The party can also find a small golden key which opens a merchant’s strongbox someplace far away… which is good and I see what you try to do here, but how the heck would the party know this? They’ll assume the key is for something in this lair and if it’s not, it is likely to be simply forgotten.

Interactivity/Traps/Puzzles
Most of the adventure is pretty straightforward and the gist of the interaction will be driven by the orcs and their behavior.
There’s an old well in the feast hall which could serve as some sort of trap and there’s some doors to be picked. There are two big fireplaces with each one being connected to a passage system and some chimneys. Characters can use these passages to sneak into two rooms. The chimneys could also be used to maybe gain entry to the lair proper, but that isn’t really mentioned in the rules. Missed chance here.
As said above, the main source of interactivity will be the orc tribe itself and that is all great. Assault the lair, sneak in, do a siege, lay a trap… all very possible solutions to the orc problem and while not all of them are supported by the writing in the module, the tribe and the location is described well enough to make it easy for any good DM to incorporate such ideas into the game quickly.
The orcs also have an alarmed state in which guards will be doubled and surprise chance will go down for the orcs. Nice.

Mechanics and Rules
This is pretty standard B/X from what I can tell. You’ve got a lot of percentages of someone being here or there, surprise chances modified by circumstances… all well done and in support of the gameplay.
Not much to say here.

Highlights

• The Grim Gasher Orcs in their entirety. The tribe oozes character and is very well designed from a challenge perspective.
• The nicely done map which allows different ways to play it while still being straightforward and fun enough for a lair assault.
• The phenomenal execution of the old “orcs in a hole” setup

Final Thoughts

• Do I want to DM this? Does the adventure site make me excited to try and run it?
  Hell yes. As you might’ve gleamed from my review I really, really like this entry. It could be stronger in places, but it is a well done lair assault that already has been placed on my campaign map.

• Do I think it works at the table? Do I think I can run this for one of my groups?
  Yes to both. This’ll work like a spell as everything you need is there. My groups will love this as much as they hate orcs… which is to say: very.

• Do I think players would have a blast playing through it?
  I can think of no group who wouldn’t love to plan the assault and then execute it. There’s one or maybe two sessions of very fun old-school D&D to be had here.

And once again we’re done with a review.
Next time we’ll take a look at
The Observatory by Ben Gibson

Thanks for reading.