If there’s a product that demonstrates several features I very much dislike about adventure formatting, Altar of the Spider God is it. It’s a four-page encounter that can be included in the dungeon of your choice, although Undermountain is a likely candidate. The document neglects to suggest an appropriate level for the encounter. I expect level 2 or 3 characters would find it challenging.

The map of the encounter is shown on the front cover (no scale attached) and several formats are provided as separate files (no scale attached, although one does have a grid – I guess they’re 5-foot squares). The player version of the map shows a corridor with no doors allowing access. On the DM’s map, the secret doors are shown. I doubt their existence will be a surprise to the players. Apparently, a Wisdom (Perception) check will reveal that the secret doors are non-magical in nature; there’s no check for finding the doors!

The encounter itself is a fairly simple affair. Two drow elves guard an elven prisoner who is manacled to the altar. The altar has a trap and a secret panel containing a treasure. The drow elves guard the prisoner with their lives, and that’s the extent of the personalities of any NPC in this encounter. Meanwhile, the text describes how difficult it is to attack the walls (AC 17, 170 hit points per 5-foot square) and doors.

The monster stat-blocks are presented in the main body of the text, providing significant difficulties in parsing the text. This difficulty is magnified by the liberal use of bold text whenever a mechanic is mentioned. Please, don’t do this! The more bolded text you have on a page, the harder it is to read. Bold text should draw the eye of the reader to important things, and mechanics are rarely important. Knowing that a monster or a trap is in the room is important; once the DM’s eye has been drawn to that, then they’re in the right place to discover the mechanics.

The text is occasionally badly phrased. I’m particularly amused by “They will initially have cast one faerie fire on the group of intruders whilst the other casts darkness.” There are so many things wrong with the syntax of that sentence! Perhaps, “When combat begins, one drow elf casts faerie fire on the intruders, whilst the other casts darkness” is what is meant?

The product does a few things right – it has subheadings for important elements of the room and describes monster tactics in an effective way – but then buries it all under a tide of bold text and irrelevant details. The biggest problem? The encounter isn’t that interesting. The altar has no effect on the play of the combat, the drow elves are just standing there (and have no lives outside of this encounter), and the prisoner doesn’t even have an interesting story. This is a filler encounter in a bigger dungeon, not a major set-piece. Including how hard it is to break a wall down without giving a reason for the players to want to do so is not a great use of space.

This is presented as the first product in a series. If others get released, I hope they’re better laid out and designed than this one. Not recommended.