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The original was posted on /r/osr by /u/barrunen on 2025-10-18 02:16:47+00:00.

Nightmare Over Ragged Hollow, printed by Merry Mushmen, originally written by Joseph R. Lewis.

Disclaimers,

• Long-time GM, mostly in 3.5/PF1e/PF2e. I haven’t run a module in over a decade. Most of what I’ve done is homebrew. I name this because I may have just grossly misinterpreted elements of the adventure as a weird oldie-newbie.
• We used World Without Numbers by Kevin Crawford as our system. This was my playgroup’s first foray into something more OSR-y in system. Our previous mini-campaign was a homebrew PF2e heist-centred homebrew that brought them to level 8.
• We play only online, and usually in sessions around 2.5 hours on some kind of biweekly schedule.
• There are 3 explorable hexes in the module, but due to time constraints, we only got through Mount Mourn and the Wailing Hills, plus the final dungeon (even that I truncated a little, because see below).

Actual Play Highlights,

• 3 Players, who played 5 Characters. Two PC deaths – both to the same boulder trap in the Mount Mourn hex! After that, only 1 encounter had multiple PCs hit 0 HP.
• 13 Sessions, on average about 2.5 hours each. Brought them from Level 1 to Level 4.
• Final party was a Warrior, Wizard/Monk, and Warrior-priest/healer, and a last-minute Warrior/Squire of Lady Constance.
• That big encounter where they almost failed was a final showdown between Bogden and Fergus. My PCs really latched onto the bandit subplot, and I rewrote the bandits as Fergus trying to usurp his boss (Bogden), and Bogden recruiting the PCs to try to kidnap/subdue Fergus. This lead to a final confrontation by a windmill, a big fight, lots of backstabbing, the Ragdolls being allies, and 2 PCs nearly dying, etc. It was great. (It felt partly weird for the PCs being victorious here in the conflict that, according to the conclusion of the module, could have ruined Ragged Hollow if they failed.)
• The random emaciated horse with onions ended up being Mr. Horse and a stalwart companion.
• One of the PCs was bullied by the Ragdolls, and thanks to a lucky reaction roll, the Ragdolls became friends (not enemies or rivals).
• The ogre was dealt with peacefully.
• Tobias and most of the villagers were saved!

What Worked Well:

• This module is fantastic in its design and presentation. Layout and art and readability is really strong. I found it easy to flip back and forth and most sessions required little pre-reading or prep.
• To re-iterate: it is a joy as a product to consume.
• The overall hook, tone, and ‘feel’ of the module was great for my players. I think the ‘small town with a problem’ wasn’t so easy to parcel out with all of the plot hooks, NPC problems, and the looming golden dome. Having the town be the ‘home base’ to then explore the adjacent hexes worked well.
• I made each PC roll on the ‘player hooks’ section and also encouraged players to be from Ragged Hollow if they wanted. (I renamed the adolescent pilgrimage to ‘going on your rye’, as a kind of linguistic nod to the Rime River, the farmers, etc.) Some of this worked, some of it didn’t, but I enjoyed the module’s overall worldbuilding.
• Lots of weird and interesting things is going on. Everything has a point of engagement. A particular favourite was the weird alien ruins in the Wailing Hills. Once the PCs started realizing there was cool shit out there – loot, fiction stuff, or new abilities – they definitely saw the world as something to engage with meaningfully.
• As a canvas, Ragged Hollow offers a lot for the GMs to make their own. I did appreciate how some ideas were barebones (NPC relationships, the ichor, etc.) and really let you flesh it out.
• There was so much that they missed, and I think the players got that feeling too. That their choices made a difference, and the world was something to explore and engage with, and wasn’t going to come to them. The world was crunchy and immersive, and the connections between different characters and going-ons required a bit of (rewarding) digging.
• For its price point of <$50, you could easily run 10+ sessions of this and not get bored. This is advertised as a “starting adventure location” but for us was basically a mini-campaign. It could be expanded out ever so slightly and be a full 20+ session year-long campaign. I think it has incredible value, and the structure of the adventure will always mean it’ll be a different experience each time you run it (except, maybe, the finale finale. But some things do need to be immutable!).

What Was Challenging:

• Defile, coomb, breviary – Ragged Hollow has a lot of rich language, and sometimes this was great, but other times (especially when describing terrain and environment) the language was a little too “academic.” No one at the table knew what a coomb was. This distracted from the experience. This could just be personal taste.
• I still don’t understand what the flame thing was at the base of Mount Mourn. Why is the pile of rocks not just described as a cairn or a tomb? Why is it… out in the open, next to the dwarven ruin? I thought the Mount Mourn tile was easily the most challenging to convey and play through at the table – compared to the bandit-plot of the Wailing Hills, which I could grasp more readily.
• I thought with the layout of the hexes and travel times and plot, some of the narrative was a little hard to understand and convey in a realistic way. Why do Gustav and Gaston travel -six- hours along a dangerous road to smoke with the bandits? How did Tobias manage to travel 4+ hours through the mountains while seemingly possessed? This had some difficulty conveying distance with the PCs, and I had to rework the scale and narrative to make this ‘fit’ better.
• NPC information was occasionally littered throughout multiple sections instead of concentrating into a singular section. This was apparent with the Temple Survivors, where some of the traits are listed on the table rather than the room keys themselves.
• There isn’t an easy way to explain what happened to Tobias – or the Crown of Dreams. Since all the priests (save Acolyte Justin) was trapped in the temple, PCs didn’t really have a meaningful way to engage with the ichor, priests, etc., prior to delving into the dungeon. While I appreciate the deductive nature of the module, I felt it was bit too vague considering there is so much else going on. I would’ve really appreciated something to expand the main golden dome hook elsewhere in the hexes.
• Over 13 sessions, they had 1 Night Encounter. I even messed that up, and got rid of the 1-in-6 chance. For a module that wants you to explore all over, the requirement of being in town at midnight was surprisingly hard to manage. I gave up on tracking this meaningfully.

What I Learned To Not Do:

• I think the worst part of the module was by far the final dungeon (the temple of Halcyon). From my reading of OSR adventures, the dungeon design is basically a series of floors with a singular corridor with optional rooms aplenty. My PCs did explore, to a point, but just clearing rooms was unexciting. It was also just a lot. I cut down and combined to make more meaning behind every door. I ended up adding in a lot cooler monsters from PF2e’s Bestiaries (mostly aberrations).
• There was also very little choice in these rooms themselves. I thought there lacked a narrative thread or conflict for the PCs to engage with beyond “save the villagers” or “oooh look at this whacky exploding sheep.” I spent a lot of time rethinking and retooling what was going on here and trying to tie Tobias’s plight into the dungeon itself, and to make saving villagers more of a choice.
• I found some of the text convoluted or inaccurate. I think there was confusion between Halcyon and Gideon, as a god and their angel? Or were they the same? They’re seemingly used interchangeably.
• A lot of important information rests with Acolyte Justin. He’s like the key witness. I wish the module had a little more investigative storytelling baked in—a lot of information felt like it was an ‘on/off’ switch rather than something gradual. Now I know to create multiple witnesses or sources of information.
• There’s also no way, in my understanding, of learning about the Crown of Dreams prior to Tobias himself. Even Lady Constance doesn’t really seem to know. I thought this was weird, and it came out of left-field. For such a powerful artifact, I would’ve seeded this more throughout the adventures.
• I think having PCs from Ragged Hollow has a benefit of narrative oomph but also created the occasional weird vibe of “shouldn’t I basically know almost everyone in this 500 person town.” I found that I struggled to expand an already large cast of NPCs to make the town feel richer. I’m not sure if I’d make the town larger, to where PC anonymity could happen, or smaller, to really create a concentrated cast of characters.
• I struggled with the Crown of Dreams/Ichor plotline, overall. There was no meaningful choice, as written, so I really did some heavylifting to make it end in a different way (sidebar: my PCs decided to risk it all to ‘fight’ the ichor possession and save Tobias. Statistically, they had the advantage. But, got pretty close to a PC wipe and the ichor unleashed!).
• I also learned that for shorter online sessions I need more concise adventures and modules. Something about Ragged Hollow felt like it was really meant to be played for…

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