Zine Zone: Swineheart Motel

 

This December, I am participating in the Covert Critic blogging extravaganza, as celebrated by the bloggers nesting in the Prismatic Wasteland Discord server, inspired by Clayton Notestine's 2024 Gifts for RPG Designers. This is a very fun exercise, and has me reading things I otherwise might not have picked up. Today: Swineheart Motel by Ty Pitre, AKA Mindstorm Press.

Swineheart Motel is a system-neutral horror adventure for modern settings, set in and around a roadside motel deep in the forests of northern America. A podcaster has gone missing (the horror!) and the players are tasked with finding him. This is all contained in a 40 page zine, to the best of my knowledge only available digitally. Art is sparse, but what's there is bespoke and good. Instead of more spot art, many pages have little hand-written quotes, possibly attributed to the missing podcaster, though this is unclear. What is beyond doubt, however, is that they work well for setting the scene with their slightly florid prose. It reminds me slightly of the monologuing in Alan Wake, which is a good thing for a horror module set in a northern forest.

The information design of the zine is good, starting with an overview and a timeline, followed by hooks and general guidance for running the module as well as tables for events, the weather (snowstorm), and encounters. This takes up the first quarter of the zine, with the remaining thirty pages covering the locations, the characters are each described at the location where they appear, though the most important are briefly covered in the introduction. The descriptions are good, being detailed and flavourful enough to evoke the intended vibe, while also short enough that a quick glance gives you all the necessary info while running it. It helps that the characters and locations are all presented with bullet points with important keywords bolded.

Helpfully, all important characters are presented with their resources, goal, and means of attaining it clearly defined. All in all, I feel well prepared to run the module after reading it, despite the fact that I have very little experience with running horror games. But reading this? Now I want to. 

Here starts the Spoiler Zone, read at your own risk.

As implied by the title, a pig plays a pivotal role in this adventure. An Archaic (the adventure's name for the cosmic deities wreaking havoc on human lives) named Swineheart has convinced the motels owner it is worthy of worship, but another archaic has "killed" it, but needs a mortal to retrieve its essence to steal its power. This puts Swineheart in an odd limbo between life and death, hanging from a hunting stand with its belly cut open, it's massive heart still beats deep inside.

The tension in the module comes from several sides: the dodgy motel owner who will have the player characters killed if they try to escape, the other Archaic who will try to cut a deal with the characters to bring her the heart, and the characters desire to find Jimmy, the missing podcaster. The adventure is neatly separated into two acts, with the first focusing on investigation to determine what's going on, and the second on dealing with it. Two set-pieces will likely be the stand-out events: a chase by the chainsaw murderer Chainsaw (the henchman formerly known as Harvey), and the descent into the non-euclidian bowels of Swineheart (if the investigators survive long enough to reach here).

The latter is suitably nasty, having the player characters make their way through the monstrously sized innards of the pig, trying to get at its still-beating heart while dealing with challenges such as a lake of stomach acid and half-digested slop raining on them as they climb through intestines. It is suitably foreshadowed by pig motifs throughout the adventure, and a particularly disgusting table of "treats" dispensed by the motel's vending machines.

The adventure encourages the investigators to split up, in particular during the Chainsaw chase, and while I think this would work well during the initial investigation phase, I do worry about the aftermath of the chase. As the murderous former caretaker is generally invulnerable and wields a chainsaw, I have a hard time imagining a lone investigator surviving an encounter with him. With the Motel relatively isolated during the snowstorm, it is difficult to bring in a new player character without violating the fiction, though it could be possible to take over one of the side characters: Leslie, the gas station attendant, Morgan, the criminal on the run, or one of Amy and Michael, the honeymooning couple. A bit more guidance on this eventuality would have been useful.

The way the couple is described, something also seems off about them, though this is not really elaborated on. I imagine that this could serve as a hook if using this module as the start of a longer campaign.

Another point where I would have appreciated slightly more guidance is on Swineheart's actual heart: there are guidelines for what happens if it is eaten, presented to Cacklebones (the other Archaic), or destroyed, but it is unclear what it takes to destroy it. As it is, I imagine it is like a normal heart, but big, and thus knives or guns should do the (messy) job, but it would be nice to have this confirmed. There is also the comment that Harley's phone will receive hundreds of texts and missed call notifications if charged and connected to cell service, despite the introduction being very clear that there is no cell service at the motel. I imagine this is then just for consistency, if the player characters take the phone with them after they leave?

However, these are minor quibbles about what otherwise sounds like a great module, though not for the faint of stomach. Ty makes everything sound disgusting in the perfect way, slathered in pig's blood and viscera, and buried in old garbage. All in all, I'm excited to try running this module, and will definitely pick up the future modules in the planned series.