By Anvil N Ink Publishing · 7 min read
Anvil N Ink published this title, so the breakdown below is upfront about both its strengths and its weaknesses.
The Harvest Tithe is a level 0 D&D adventure for 5e: a folk-horror funnel one-shot in which each player runs a little crowd of ordinary villagers through one terrible harvest night, and whoever survives until dawn reaches level 1. It is complete and zero-prep, runs in a single two-to-three-hour session for 2-3 players, and is the gentlest way we know to bring a brand-new player to the table.
Most one-shots hand the players heroes. This one hands them the smith’s apprentice, the beekeeper’s niece, the gravedigger’s boy, and a goosegirl with her goose, then asks which of them will still be standing in the morning. Nobody picks their hero in a funnel. The night picks for them. If your group prefers to start as real adventurers who happen to be outmatched, our guide to running an underdog party covers that angle. This book is for the table that wants to start with nothing at all.
How the story unfolds
Every thirtieth autumn, the village of Brackenfield ends its Harvest Fair with the Tithe. At the midnight bell the reeve opens the iron grate over the pit on the village green, and the village pours grain, coin, and song into the dark. Something vast sleeps down there, and its sleeping body is the reason Brackenfield’s fields are the richest for a hundred miles. The village calls it the Harvest King. Most people think the name is a figure of speech.
Act One is the fair itself, played straight: a pie contest, a tangled maypole, omens from the fortune teller. Then the pit cracks open at sunset, hours early. The great straw effigy sheds living straw, and villagers who ate the blue-ribbon pies stand up from their benches and sleepwalk toward the pit. The hired protectors are three days away on the high road. Nobody else is coming.
Act Two is the night of questions. The villagers count their missing and choose a road: raid the reeve’s granary for the truth, or climb down the old well to re-seat the broken ward stones. Both paths fight, and both meet at the midnight bell, when the Straw King walks the green to carry a tagged villager to the pit. Act Three goes underground into the Tithe-Warrens, root tunnels floored with three centuries of pennies, a cult shrine, and the crypt of the first tithers where the truth is carved in stone. Act Four is the Binding Hollow, where the King’s head breaks the earth like a hill waking up and the survivors make the choice the whole night has been building to.
What’s included in this level 0 D&D adventure
The book runs to 95 pages, and everything a Game Master needs is on the page.
- Four acts and eighteen scenes, with read-aloud text, skill checks, and an off-rails fallback in every scene
- How to Play a Level 0 Adventure, a ten-minute primer chapter with the five rules a new player needs
- Twelve ready-made villager cards, each with a Knack, a keepsake, a secret, and a suggested class for level 1
- The King’s Hunger, a hidden 0-10 dial that decides how awake the King is when the villagers finally meet him
- Eight original creatures with full stat blocks, from straw wisps to the Harvest King himself, with scaling notes for a classed level 1 party
- Four maps: an area reference map and three battle maps
- Six opening hooks, a What If guide for off-rails tables, survivor epilogues, and five closing hooks for a campaign
- Gentle Harvest settings for younger or softer tables
Want just the battle maps?
The full-color VTT and battle maps for the festival green, the Tithe-Warrens, and the Binding Hollow are sold on their own as The Harvest Tithe Battle Maps on Payhip for $2.99, so you can grab them for a different game or a homebrew village. If you own the PDF or paperback, they are free: the code is printed inside the book.
We built every one of these maps in Ink Hammer, our in-house map-making program.
Who is this level 0 funnel for?
First and foremost, it is for new players. A villager card holds six ability scores, a few hit points, one weapon, two skills, and one Knack, and a newcomer can read the whole thing in a minute. Mistakes are cheap, because a villager who charges a monster teaches the player how combat works and still leaves them three more. Veterans have no build to optimize, so a first-timer’s goosegirl is exactly as strong as a ten-year player’s smith.
It also suits experienced groups who want a session zero with teeth. The survivors become level 1 characters with a real story about how they got there, and the extra villagers make excellent hirelings and cousins if you keep going. Encounters are tuned for the hardest common case, two players running eight villagers, with a scaling table for three players and for a classed level 1 party.
How long does The Harvest Tithe take to run?
Plan for one session of two to three hours. The book budgets about forty minutes for the fair, fifty each for the night and the warrens, and forty for the climax. Funnels run long when every villager takes a separate turn, so the book has the table use side initiative from the first fight. If you are running behind, the Tribute Vault is optional and one warren fight can be run as a single hazard roll. The crypt in Act Three is the one scene the book tells you never to cut, because the ending depends on it.
Strengths and weaknesses
The biggest strength is how the book handles death. In a funnel, villagers die, and that is the game working. Every fallen villager speaks last words, which grant inspiration to whoever hears them, and leaves a keepsake in the Harvest Pile that helps the survivors in the final fight. At dawn the players name their dead one by one and say where in the churchyard each would want to lie. It sounds grim. At the table it is usually the warmest minute of the night. The second strength is tone: folk horror wearing a festival rosette, where the village is genuinely charming and the bargain under it is genuinely cold, and the comedy comes from practical people holding a raffle during an evacuation.
The weaknesses are real. Running eight to twelve villagers is more bookkeeping than a normal one-shot, and a Game Master who has never run a funnel should read the primer chapter first. Players who bond with one character can find the lethality frustrating until they understand that losing villagers is the point. The climax leans on two specific silvered items to hit the Harvest King where it counts, so a table that loses both can face a long grind. The structure is linear with one branch in the middle. And the content includes implied sacrifice, drugged food, and tight underground spaces; children are never targeted, and the Gentle Harvest settings soften the rest.
How this folk-horror one-shot compares
All of the titles below are Anvil N Ink Ready Adventure Series one-shots for 2-3 players, running about two to three hours with zero prep. The difference is tone, and in this case, starting level.
| Adventure | Tone | Setting | Best for tables who want |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Harvest Tithe | Folk horror, dark comedy | A harvest fair over a sleeping god | A level 0 funnel where survivors earn level 1 |
| The Walking Pyre | Festival dread | A festival effigy that wakes and walks | A burning-giant chase at levels 2-3 |
| Salt & Cinder | Village horror | A drowned village | A Warmth mechanic and a choice with no easy answer |
A taste of the writing
The read-aloud text carries the mood without asking the GM to improvise it. Here is the morning after, as the survivors climb out of the pit:
What is left of the Harvest King effigy lies in a blackened, soggy heap at the edge of the duck pond, its turnip face grinning at the sky, finished at last. A goose walks up to you, looks you over carefully, and decides you will do. The bells stop. The sun comes up. The fields are whatever you have made them.
Where to buy The Harvest Tithe
The Harvest Tithe is available as a paperback on Amazon, as a Kindle ebook, and as a DRM-free PDF on Payhip. The paperback puts the villager cards and stat blocks in your hands at the table, and the PDF and paperback both unlock the battle maps for free. For more in this vein, see our ranked list of the best D&D horror one-shots.
Key takeaways
- A level 0 D&D adventure for 5e: a folk-horror funnel where survivors reach level 1 at dawn
- Complete and zero-prep: 2-3 players, each running a crowd of villagers, in one two-to-three-hour session
- Four acts, eighteen scenes, a branching middle, and three endings the table chooses
- Twelve villager cards, eight creatures, four maps, and a primer chapter for brand-new players
- Every death matters, through last words, keepsakes, and the dawn wake
- Battle maps sold separately for $2.99, free with the PDF or paperback
Frequently asked questions
What is a level 0 funnel adventure?
In a funnel, the players start as ordinary people with no class and only a few hit points, and each player runs several of them at once. A wide crowd goes in at the top and a few hardened survivors come out at the bottom. In The Harvest Tithe, every villager who survives the night reaches level 1, picks a class, and becomes a real adventurer.
Is The Harvest Tithe good for brand-new players?
Yes, it is built for them. There is almost nothing to learn, a villager card takes a minute to read, and losing a villager costs a new player very little. The book opens with a ten-minute primer chapter, How to Play a Level 0 Adventure, that holds every special rule.
Can I run it with two players?
Yes. The encounters are tuned for the hardest common case, two players running four villagers each, with a reserve of four more. Three players run three villagers each, and starred fights add one enemy.
Can I use my own level 1 characters instead?
You can. Each creature has a scaling note for a classed level 1 party of three or four characters, and the What If guide covers it. You lose the funnel’s best feature, though: watching a character you never chose climb out of the ground at sunrise.
About Anvil N Ink Publishing
Anvil N Ink Publishing makes small-group Dungeons & Dragons one-shots for 5e, built for 2-3 players and a single evening with zero prep. The Ready Adventure Series spans horror, comedy, heist, folk tale, and dragon fantasy, so a table can pick the night it wants. For a different take on a village in trouble, read our review of Salt & Cinder, or browse the full catalog at anvilnink.com.
Bring spare villagers, keep the pies away from the poppy, and see who walks out at dawn: The Harvest Tithe is the level 0 D&D adventure that turns a crowd of nobodies into a party worth remembering.
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