The Machine of Madness by Todd Jeffcoat is a role playing game supplement published by Ironfox Studios for use with Knave 2nd Edition. This is an adventure for 5th-7th level characters.
The supplement is available as an eight page Pay What You Want PDF from DriveThruRPG. About half a page is the front matter.
The first page has a map of the wizard’s tower.
The Overview explains that 100 years ago the wizard Razik disappeared along with his tower. He was guarding a dangerous artefact and his tower has just reappeared.
It then gives a general description of the appearance of the outside of the tower, followed by one for the inside, before moving onto the various locations. The locations are basically described in a series of bullet points and sub points to these for more details on a particular item.
The machine itself has a nature that is determined randomly, which then affects what’s encountered. This nature also changes at times, meaning that the device can regularly change things.
The Conclusion explains what happens when the machine is activated, with a chance of trapping themselves just like Razik did.
The Machine of Madness in Review
The PDF lacks bookmarks and is short enough that they aren’t needed, but would have been appreciated. Navigation is okay. The text maintains a two-column format and appeared to be free of errors. There are a few black and white illustrations. Presentation is okay.
Though written for Knave 2e, this adventure would be easy enough to convert to other systems, especially OSR ones; there are stats for various creatures, but these can be replaced without too much trouble. The Machine of Madness is a decent, though potentially dangerous, short adventure and it can be found by clicking here.
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