Basement Whatever

The Fungus that Came to Blackeswell is an adventure for 2nd-3rd level characters that is incredibly descriptive – with language that reminds me of the movie Annihilation. It’s set in an eerie, isolated village and is a total sandbox for players to explore.

It is an absolute blast to play and to run.

The problem is, I couldn’t find any play reports on The Fungus that Came to Blackeswell, and I certainly couldn’t find any advice on how to best set up the adventure. The best I could find were online reviews from people who read the adventure. I set out to fix that with this post, for the benefit of future GMs who are thinking of running this incredibly fun adventure.

This is my play report, with tips on how to run The Fungus that Came to Blackeswell in a way that creates tension, is really fun, and makes it easy to run.

Analyzing The Fungus that Came to Blackeswell

This is the setup:

“Fungal apocalypse has ravaged the isolated village of Blackeswell, blanketing the streets in blanched mycelia waving eerily to an unheard hymn. The village is to be razed to the ground, but the bold may be able to get in and out before the troops arrive.”

Before starting, I worked with Claude AI to help analyze the strengths and weaknesses of the adventure. The analysis was that:

• The Good: The atmosphere is A+. These descriptions are absolute top-notch, quality writing. The village is a really tight location, with tons of variety and areas to work with. It was clear that the players could really start to “feel” the location.
• The Challenges: The village is too passive, as the main threats only occur when players enter the buildings. Although the descriptions of the buildings were excellent, more work needed to be done in the preparation to key in the locations to make them real landmarks in the players’ imaginations.

How I prepped The Fungus that Came to Blackeswell

I worked extensively with Claude AI while prepping the adventure by first uploading the adventure to Claude, then asking questions about concerns that I had, and working with Claude to identify areas where the adventure could be prepped to add tension and increase fun. As a result of that analysis, here’s the breakdown of how I prepped it and recommend prepping it:

• Give the village distinct locations. I split the village into four zones on my own GM map, giving each zone a distinctive landmark: 1/ The white chimney for the upper zone; 2/ The church steeple for the middle zone, 3/ a purplish glow for the bottom zone (near the Blacke) and 4/ puffs of white smoke to indicate the mine zone. From the moment the players entered, they immediately had four landmarks to work with.
• Added even more landmarks as the players got deeper into the village. I called attention to several other areas as the players got deeper (much of this came from Claude suggestions). This included a ticking sound from the workshop, a light coming out of the inn’s upper window, a purplish glow from the Blacke, and also a giant spider climbing on the watchtower to help players further anchor their sense of place.
• Make the village itself actively react to the players. The problem is that the entire village is taken over by a literal Wood God with an agenda, but the Wood God doesn’t actually do anything to threaten the players or react to their presence, removing key tension that makes the village feel more alive, more alien, and more dangerous. After working with Claude on this approach, I asked it to create three random tables with escalating weirdness as the adventure went on. For example, over time the “mycelial veil” carpeting the village floor started trying to restrain players who stayed in one place too long; the number of strange occurrences increased throughout the village; the village floor reacted to the deaths of infected, and in general the infected village increased its animosity over time to ensure the players always knew that the village itself was reacting to their presence.
• Keyed every NPC with a quest. Some NPCs – like Kerth and Father Bertil – already come with quests. I sketched out very brief quests for each of the NPCs, which each revealed more information and continuously provided the players with different suggestions for interacting with the village.
• Integrated the Mines. The mines don’t really need to be visited if the goal of the players is to rescue survivors, so I set it up so that many of the quests pointed to the wizard. Working with Claude, some of the random tables indicated mechanical sounds down below, the mines erupted in a geyser of smoke periodically, and several of the NPCs actively hated the wizard and gave the players clues for finding him.

How I ran The Fungus that Came to Blackeswell

When play started, here’s how I ran the adventure:

• I aggressively worked the countdown timer. I renamed the head of St. Faxis to Father Grymveil, then told the players that he would arrive in 3.5 IRL hours from the time they set foot in the village. I said “whatever choices you make up to that point are yours, but the adventure will wrap up around then.” This added a very high level of tension to the game, as the players needed to make decisions about where to explore, and how much to explore. When time wrapped up, Father Grymveil arrived and the adventure ended soon after.
• I made the entire (unkeyed) map available at the start. Full disclosure – I didn’t do this at first, because I thought I could project pieces of the map on the screen with Owlbear Rodeo, but it was obvious immediately that the players were getting lost. I had to pivot fast mid-game, giving up on my Owlbear Rodeo idea and enlisting a very helpful player to quickly draw out the map, before putting the map in front of the players. I’m glad I pivoted in real-time, because the players started labeling the buildings as clues were revealed through play. This wouldn’t have happened without a map, as an anchor. This level of immersion in a “sense of place” in the village is exactly what I hoped would happen. Even though I made the wrong decision in the beginning, by fixing it quickly in front of everyone instead of doubling down, I created a much better experience. The players started learning the village, moved back and forth between locations, and reacted to its changes. Moral of the story: Give them the unkeyed map from the beginning.
• I emphasized very strongly that this would be a total sandbox: I stated this repeatedly, and indicated that I would honor any clever role-play, but this was their story to tell. I had given them the goal – save villagers – but whatever they chose to do was up to them. I phrased it as: “think of this as the story of what happened when seven adventurers entered the Village of Blackeswell to rescue villagers. You’re telling the story, I’m just keeping it on rails.”
• I also emphasized that they might die, and most importantly, that some deaths would be unfair. That’s the nature of Old School Roleplaying, but it sucks to lose a character, so I wanted to be clear from the beginning. I gave them an example of OSR: You might get a poison roll that is “succeed or die.” I also noted that there were no death saves. This way players knew exactly what they were in for.

Some additional prep for The Fungus that Came to Blackeswell

• I used Dolmenwood’s hexes for even more flavor. I love the details of the surrounding hexes in Dolmenwood. When the quest started, the questgiver assigned his deacon, Brantley, to guide the players to the village quickly, and I read players a short travel script from the beginning to anchor the Blackeswell hex as part of the game world (side note, I prefer three mile hexes, so I changed the Dolmenwood travel distances). Here is my script:

“On your way to the village of Blackeswell, you pass three oddities:

— “To save time, Brantley first took a shortcut through an infuriating profusion of watery ditches and mud-choked pathways. The watery grasses seemed dreamlike. In the distance a stork stood on top of the watery grasses, like it was levitating. Something felt very wrong, but Brantley urged you to continue.

— “After two hours, you reached the Blacke Road, a rocky path winding under great oaks. The oaks were draped in pulsating fungi, stretched between their crooked branches. Oddly enough, you heard a slow, resonant ticking, like a clock. Whatever it was, it followed you while you walked. Deep in the forest you spotted a small door, set into a low hill and coated in a turquoise slime. When you reached this door, the ticking stopped, but Brantley told you that there was no time to investigate.

— “After two and a half hours, the forest broke into a region of enormous, pallid toadstools, hung with glistening fungal parasites and swaying in unison to something you could not hear. Brantley gave you masks to cover your face before you passed beneath them. As you passed under them, your memory got hazy, but you seem to remember passing by an overgrown shrine along the road that was swarming with beetles. Or maybe you misremembered it? Brantley waved you forward, indicating it was too dangerous to stop. And when the toadstools were behind you, you removed the masks and saw that they were clotted with thick, wormy spores.”

• I increased the number of random rolls. Every time the players left a location, I rolled. This turned out to be the right number of rolls, in my opinion.
• I built a combat simulator in Claude and ran combat simulations. My biggest concern was that the encounters were too easy, but running the combat simulation changed my opinion. The encounters were perfectly balanced.
• I used Replit to build a character generator. I wrote about this more here, and it helped out my players a lot.

My overall review of The Fungus that Came to Blackeswell

The Fungus that Came to Blackeswell is extremely fun, and I received incredibly positive feedback from the players. The adventure is tense, it’s challenging, the descriptions are bonkers well-written, and it’s easy to run. The adventure gives the players latitude to do what they want, and to approach solving the adventure their way. I really liked this adventure, and highly recommend it to anyone considering it for their group.