A lair long known for harboring giant spiders, this ancient dungeon is tolerated and periodically invaded for the valuable silk that is produced within. The local village of Spinner’s Folly have long since woven this silk into useful items, from light clothing to strong rope, but must retrieve the silk three times per year to maintain their supplies of this preciouscommodity.
On these three special occasions, adventurers– especially those with rangers and druids within their ranks – are invited to enter the complex and subdue the spiders long enough for bales of raw silk to be gathered by the weavers. However, there are two provisions; none of the silk may be significantly damaged and the spiders may not be harmed during this harvest – the weavers do not wish to kill off their rich source of silk. Failure to do so certainly earns the enmity of the local population and forfeit any payment.
Mini-Dungeons are single page, double sided adventures for D&D 5th Edition which are setting agnostic and are easily inserted anywhere in your campaign.
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This pdf clocks in at 2 pages and is a mini-dungeon. This means we get 2 pages content, including a solid map and all item/monster-stats hyperlinked and thus, absent from the pdf, with only deviations from the statblocks being noted for the GM. Unlike many 5E Mini-Dungeons, this one does not come with VTT-maps or player-friendly iterations, which is a bit of a bummer.
Since this product line's goal is providing short diversions, side-quest dungeons etc., I will not expect mind-shattering revelations, massive plots or particularly smart or detailed depictions, instead tackling the line for what it is. Got that? Great!
This being an adventure-review, the following contains SPOILERS. Potential players may wish to jump to the conclusion.
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There is a little village called "Spinner's Folly" - and it may be aptly named, for they have an...interesting local tradition: Thrice a year, nature-affine adventurers are invited to a local dungeon, the selfsame one depicted herein, and given an interesting task: Enter the dungeon known as the eponymous spinner's hole...and subdue the giant spiders therein. You see, the local economy is relying completely on the giant spider silk, so killing them as per the usual adventurer modus operandi just won't do. This also means that this level 1 adventure would make for an interesting "man/womanhood rite" type of introduction to the adventuring life. Kyle Crider’s conversion manages to translate the evocative original rather well, offering proper hyperlinks and diverse skill uses.
Conclusion:
Editing and formatting are very good, I noticed no significant glitches. Layout adheres to a beautiful 2-column full-color standard and the pdf comes sans bookmarks, but needs none at this length. Cartography is full color and surprisingly good for such an inexpensive pdf, but there is no key-less version of the map to print out and hand to your players.
Jonathan Ely's "Spinner's Hole" is perhaps the most concise of his mini-dungeons that I've analyzed so far: On paper, it may not sound like much; the traps, for example, with their exclusive emphasis on poisoned darts, could be more diverse. In play, however, the module actually works really well. I used it as part of playtesting and the unique entry vector of the scenario with the emphasis on the odd, local economy/custom, alongside with the challenge of dealing with swarms at level 1 made this a fascinating module that turned out to be more fun than its very focused theme would lead you to believe. Better yet, Kyle Crider has obviously taken the time and effort to make the conversion suitably nice, losing nothing of the module’s original appeal. It is hence that I award this 5 stars.
