Zungeon Zunday: Cure Wounds Inc.

In 2025 I’m reviewing zungeon zines. They’re stream of consciousness and unedited critiques, just like Bathtub Reviews, but they’ll be a little briefer. The goal here is a little different: I want to spotlight what a craft-based, just-do-it approach to module writing can do.

Cure Wounds Inc. is a 14 page zungeon for B/X or similar systems, by Richard Gottlieb. In it, you investigate a failing factory that once produced healing potions but whose healing potions are now causing horrifying mutations.

The module opens with 7 NPCs and encounters — the creatures here have a bunch of interesting things going on, perhaps too much in a 22 room dungeon — with so many features, you may need more space for the surprises to be discovered. Very cool, though. The NPCs, though feel a little flat — the businessman is supposed to appear disinterested — but his entire company is on the verge of collapse and you hired him. For my players , this would play very poorly, disincentivising participating at all, or perhaps making them suspect a conspiracy.

The dungeon here is the machine itself. The rooms are very interactive, which makes sense for a giant factory. It’s incredibly cool from the referee-end, but I fear not enough attention has been paid to how to make these connections between rooms obvious to the players. In a real factory, there would literally be a manual or labels on everything showing what they did. If you didn’t want it so obvious, you could have had the mutants shred the manual, leaving scraps, or have it all in a strange language that needs to be deciphered. As is, while the interactivity is cool, it may not actually eventuate.

One major issue in a similar vein, is the 48 hour timer imposed on the players: They don’t know about it, and I can’t see how they could learn. Positioning Adam as a monologuing, threatening villain would forefront this timer, and make it far more interesting. You could also do this by placing more mutants floating about the time limit, or planting journal entries, or something of the sort.

The layout, as befits a zungeon, is simple and easy to follow, but there’s nothing flashy here. There are 2 pieces of public domain art, and a functional isometric map. Not much to comment on, but no errors here either.

Overall, though, this is pretty interesting and a fun module to run, particularly as a one- or two- shot, although it may not fit into many existing campaigns with B/X, and is honestly more of an Electric Bastionland kind of joint. I would make some tweaks — clarify the timeline, and I’d also make the connections between rooms clearer, as well as tweak a few of the character demeanors a little. But overall, Cure Wounds Inc. is a really fun, interactive module, that’s well worth checking out.

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