The Flute of Sailroc Edifice

An OSR adventure for a party of level 3 characters. Assumes the gp=xp rule.

Designed to be run without prep.

Characters obtain a magical flute that causes a tower to sail on a rocky island from the ocean. There is a lot of filthy lucre inside, but much of it is bulky, brittle, puzzling, or dangerous. When the tower starts sailing off, the player characters will need to devise a plan to get the treasure out before the tower leaves for good.

Run it (no prep required) or plunder for inspiration and unique magical treasure.

See below for quotes from the Tenfootpole review.

The kind of stuff in the module

• A painting of a moonlit forest that can be entered, with a golden monument prominent on the hill—worth a fortune but larger than the frame.
• A horn that summons the Dancing Goat Witch who, for a sacrifice of 1 CON (permanent) worth of blood, will eviscerate any creature.
• A secret treasury hidden where the stairs make an extra loop.
• A false treasure hoard that is a mimic nest, complete with the mimic mother.
• A saddled and rideable giant tuna fish.
• Lots of treasure + advice on how to spend the money.

Design goals and notes on gameplay

• Zero prep: after you grok the format, you should be able to run this without reading the whole thing in advance.
  
• Mystery and wonder: a mural shows a flute-player summoning a tower that disgorges monsters who pillage and rob a town... and there is a flute in the same secret chamber.
• Risk and reward: for example, a sleeping seven-foot bronze giant of a man wears a dragon hoard's worth of rings, earrings, pendants, and bracelets.
• Down with the status quo of the character sheet: get bitten by a magical cricket on the library floor and turn into a cricket-man; drink afrom a chalice and gain bat ears and echolocation; etc. etc.
• The playtester shot the saddled tuna fish to death because he thought it was another monster—and was sad afterwards. Loser! Shouldn't have admitted you were sorry! You've shown weakness.

Reviewed by Bryce Lynch of Tenfootpole!

Some quotes and the conclusion:

"You find a sea cave and inside the cave a dead guy on a cot with a key around his neck. Under the bed is a locked chest. Inside a flute. Playing the flute makes a tall tower ZOOM out from the sea and arrive off shore. What magical wonder await inside? The murals on the cave wall imply TREASURE!!!! Ok, so no, they don’t imply treasure … THEY OUTRIGHT SHOW MOUNTAINS OF TREASURE INSIDE!!!

"There’s another mechanism going on here as well: after thirty minutes of game time the tower heads back out to sea. Rapidly. So, you’re either in for it and along for the ride in a tower full of loot and no way to recover it, probably, or you’ve got thirty minutes to grab as much loot as possible. Thus, if you started at the top, and, given about fifteen minutes per floor, you probably miss the giant if you work your way down methodically. If you star at the front doow and go down you could be dead. If you work your way up you don’t make it to the top. And in BOTH cases, the secret treasure room is in the MIDDLE floor, which you don’t reach in thirty minutes by starting from either the top or the bottom. This means substantially different outcomes depending on the choices made. Nice!

"Or, nice in theory. As implemented, I have some issues. (...)

"So, encounters? Interesting. The concept is decent also, or, perhaps I mean the design choices of “choose your entry and difficulty” being so intentionally made in the design. I’m not sure, though, tha I could run this well, given the format and may want a little more in the form of a “room introduction”/overview in a format like this."

The entire review is here.