The Valley of Flowers

Posted on May 18, 2024 by Bryce Lynch 
Jedediah Berry, Andrew McAlpine
Phantom Mill Games
OSE

Wildendrem! Where quests unfurl like the petals of the blood-red poppy. Where monsters haunt the edges of the world—and the edges of the world draw ever nearer. Aerthur the Hornèd King is gone, but his shining vision lives on, borne by countless knights over a land in the grips of a sorcerous delirium. The sun has gone strange, and the roads are beset by phantoms and brigands. The once united provinces grow ever more isolated, ever more themselves Now the valiant and the foolhardy alike seek glory in regions riddled with sinister enchantments. Oaths sworn, oaths broken, treasures claimed and lost and claimed again— and so the whirligig of the seasons unveils its perilous mysteries. Wildendrem! Your golden age is ended. New adventures unfold in the light of a ragged sun.

This 150 page supplement is a campaign guide, regional supplement, and dungeons combining to form a slightly offbeat mythic environment for gaming. An idiosyncratic vibe with a MONSTROUS number of things going on, and a tone that is magnificent.

The very first table in the book, in the cover, is “What is the sun doing today” that you roll on each morning. “7 Maintaining a low, indecipherable chant.” This sets the tone for all that is come. A tone that is very hard to describe. It’s not like you can compare it to things well, such as “LotR except Sauron won” or something like that. A mashup of the Wizard of Oz, Arthurian myths, the movie Wizards … I don’t know what else? Maybe we start at the Arthurian thing, full on Pendragon mode. But, also, lets push things, in every direction, until we get to a place where knights could maybe joust on giant bees and, while it would be unusual, you also wouldn’t totally freak out. (Also, The bees are quite bureaucratic here, with lots of rules set down by Her Highness, and its likely you might get in trouble at some point.) The church is a little askew. The Faerie court could show up and it would not be all that out of place. The nobility is pushed to foppish excesses. In fact, everything is just pushed a little more. Not hyper-realism, but just a bit beyond that. Maybe the world of Quixote? It’s everything the default LotFP setting is, but, turned on its head and instead of being all evil and hopeless instead the sun is shining and everyone is optimistic. Not really, but let’s go with that as I continue to struggle with communicating the vibe.

“Aerthur is missing, and the sun has gone strange and monstrous. The steward Unther, a hollow suit of armor, makes oracular proclamations, mystifying the old king’s ministers. An intoxicating strangeness ripples over the land as knights of myriad orders, in the grips of  lunatic passions, undertake quests of dubious provenance. Meanwhile, the people of Wildendrem stray from the faith, seeking the forbidden mysteries of old.” That’s not a bad overview. Whimsical … but with a flavour of deadly that leans for to the frequency of the typical D&D world … and occasionally slips in to LotFP territory. Gone Fishin’ would not be out of place here. 

There is a writing and creativity here, creativity aligned with tone, that just fits perfectly. “Dark and musty, unfinished stone walls, creaking iron steps.[]. Roseate light spills through the cracks of the marble door at the bottom.” Now That’s a fucking description. And it’s just a fucking spiral staircase. Some throwaway place. Or, let’s talk about The Prayer Beast, found in the Graveyard of Idols in the Tower of the First Heresy, a place the Holy Church keeps things hidden: “A 10’ tall humanoid that crawls on knees and forearms. It is headless and blind, and covered with dozens of hands and mouths. Its hands make occult gestures while the mouths whisper prayers to different gods; sometimes one will shout an expression of futility and despair (“nothing triumphs over all, no one hears your prayers, we are alone, the sky is empty, empty”). The beast is confused, erratic, and in constant pain” Now that’s a fucking monsters description. It focuses on play, not some ecology bullshit. This is what the party will EXPERIENCE.

We’re getting, maybe, six distinct regions in the land, Each with nine or so different places of note. These are described in a short little paragraph, a couple of sentences, with three keywords for notable NPC’s (which I love, in theory, and wish were a little more thought out, in practice, in places in this) and a little section after that, again just a couple of sentences, for some quest ideas/things to do at this place/people. In addition we’re getting about five dungeons and maybe, of, ten r so other places that are more described than a single entry but less than a full blown dungeon. 

One notable place is an old monk abbey, recently abandoned. The monks having committed a drunken murder and summoned a drunken god … who is evolving in to a five-fold facet of themselves. With some knights present also who have sworn to drink all of thor special liquor known to exist in the land. A site/quest/adventure that could end with The Great Sobering or with The Forever Feast. 

There’s a strong social element to most of what goes on in these locations. It’s not your typical hack dungeon, although there are still things about to stab. I don’t know, a comparison to Castle Amber? That Abbey, for example as three or four pages (digest pages. SIGH) of factions, people, dunkkard rules and so on, before we reach the keys, 21 or so rooms. “ Five umbral imps (p. 32) put the finishing touches on a large, sumptuous meal .” in the kitchen, so, we stabbing or sucking up?

“Cardinals and archmystagogues may usually be recognized by their enormous, swollen head”. Literally, in this case.

A magnificent little regional setting. Strong on vibe, consistent, deadly, whimsical, or, perhaps, farcical? It’s not in any way silly. I would have no problem at all running something here. One of the more decent things since Scourge of the Demon Wolf. (Yes, I know the scope is different)

This is $15 at DriveThru. The preview is fourteen pages. It’s a good preview, showing a fine selection of things, focusing on some of the regional locations and few of the more in-depth location pages. And the art matches the vibe perfectly. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/458107/the-valley-of-flowers?1892600

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Constant Downpour – Remastered

Posted on May 15, 2024 by Bryce Lynch 
By Marco Serrano
Self Published
Mothership

In Constant Downpour, players are Space Military soldiers who have just been dispatched to Venus in response to a distress call. SD-021, a sun dome located deep in the Venusian jungle, is under attack and requesting immediate backup. Most soldiers deployed there become insane from the constant downpour, lack of sleep, and hallucinations caused by the atmosphere. Others die at the hands of Venusian soldiers, fall victim to lethal traps, or the horrors of the planet itself.

Fuck You, gentle readers. I like SciFi. It just sucks much more than the OSR and I don’t know how to run it. But, sometimes …

This 104 page adventure presents a little jungle hex crawl in the rain after you crash land on a planet. Decent atmosphere, and a lot of subsystems, that end up at about forty digest pages to describe about seventeen hexes. I’m not sure I can support the randomness, as presented, but I must say the entire thing is one of the better scifi adventures.

You’re a group of mercs on a rocketship going to a mining dome on Venus-3. Oh no! Your ship has crashed! And you ejected! But you landed safe! On a planet covered by water at least half an inch deep and thick thick jungle, with no sunlight and CONSTANT downpour. (Yeah! I worked in the title!) Oh, and, I guess your comms devices don’t work. Time to head out in the direction you think the dome is, I guess, braving the wildlife, the plants, the rivers, the jungle, the hostile natives, and the psychological wear from the rain. 

Unless you dawdle. Then some dudes show up. Dudes who were on a different rocketship that crash awhile back. You see, they think that the merc company, the ones you’re under contract for, crash some ships on purpose. To get rid of the crews that they don’t like.So, add, maybe, some crazed mercs to the list of things to deal with as well as maybe the mercenary company proper. Maybe? Along the way back to the mining dome you might encounter some bunkers, in a couple of hexes, or maybe a dome or two … destroyed by the natives. All in addition to everything else.

And I don’t know what to think about all of this. There are A LOT of subsystems here. Stress builds up, and the party can have nightmares that can do weird things. Or you can have a collective dream in a bunker that reduces stress. And there are a lot of native berries and frigs with weirdo powers. And when you enter a hex, or move through it, you encounter not just what’s in the hex, if it’s one of the seventeen special hexes, but you also roll on the random hex encounter table for something. There is a tremendous amount to keep track of here, both in terms of bookkeeping and in terms of tables to roll on during play.

And I’m generally not sure what to make of it. One the one hand I can see how everything kind of works together; you’ve got this Heart of Darkness thing going on, or, maybe Apocalypse Now, and I’m totally digging it. And the systems generally make sense. You don’t need the frog table till you got a frog and you don’t need to pull the old River Crossing rules and subsystems until you cross a river. I think it all kind of works together well, although I do think you’re gonna have to read and reread things and pull out some tables to organize better and have at hand and ready, as well as rolling some encounters and things ahead of time. 

And I find a decent amount of that annoying. Especially for the fixed encounter hexes. I would have much more liked to have seen less randomness in these and more things that fit in well with the main hex theme. 

But, man, some of the encounters are just dynamite. A collection of rocketship nosecones,making their own rocket, a monument constructed by the natives. That’s some freaky ass shit! Or a cliff, with hundreds of dead people in spacesuits, just like yours, at the bottom of it. With warnings of what happens to your kind here. And a HUGE native, pensive, who will fight no more forever, with some hints and wisdom. Some of this shit is absolutely terrifying! If I’m playing this I am, 100 percent certain, shitting myself during those two encounters. Really big venus flytrap? No problemo. Obscure references to my inevitable fate presented in a very visceral way? Game over man! Game over!

Oh, oh, did I mention the Deja Vu and Details to Repeat rules? It’s tips and a table for the DM so they can sprinkle in some phrases and shit in their hex descriptions … knowing that players pick up on this shit and will think they are traveling in circles. That’s how you fuck with the players man, none of this cheap ass gimping or teleporter shit, but by using them against themselves. Remember Brycies boardgame 102 advice: You are never playing a game, you’re always playing another person. 

The thing is also a shitshow, in places. Editing and descriptions, while great in some places, do seem to fall down in others. We get references, in one place, to a hidden recorder … and nothing else. No information on whats on it. It feels like something is missing. And in other places it feels like the formatting, used in other places pretty effectively, just disappears. (and, a weary criticism by now, this should have been letter sized pages and not digest. I know, we all like to masturbate over zones, but paper size works better for something running longer and more complex, generally) And the map, well, I could be perhaps convinced otherwise, but it seems like it’s a little sparse. I’m down with the preplanned hex descriptions, they do a great job of building tension with that sort of evocative writing that I love to praise and find on such an uncommon basis. But, also, I suspect there’s a lot more randomness in encounters, during play, then there is stumbling over the preplanned ones. There are map fragments, and the like, to be found, that might ameliorate this issue, but it just feels like you need a little more to get people moving towards the “points of light” so to speak … even if they are not light … 😉 And when some of that does exist it is buried IN the hex in question, far too often anyway. “The reflective peak sticks high above the jungle line and can be seen from up to 4 hexes away” one hex tells us. 

And I’m not entirely sure of the venusians. They might be a little common on the tables for my liking. Or, perhaps, a little more advice on running them, as hit and run tactics or something. This is clearly an adventure that plays on the players vibes, and advice, about the venusians, etc, on amping that up and meshing with it could have been a better use of space than some of the information presented. 

When you enter a hex with one particular shattered dome: “Dominated by a massive clearing and rolling fog. Shapes and figures are undistinguishable besides the waving grass and reeds. Tangle grass (2m tall) wraps together for seconds before whipping apart, flinging water. Heavy granite-colored reeds poke out above the grass, intermittently bopping to the ground.” And then as you enter it: “The heavy door is slightly ajar, letting through the smell of fresh bread and rich spices. Four steps in, the illusion fades. The air is stale, chilly, and scentless. There is no sun in the center of the massive dome structure. The ceiling is black and bashed holes let the rain in. “ A build up of tension, you think you are safe now. And then you realize you are not. That’s some good shit.

This is $18 at DriveThru. The preview is nine pages. A better preview, perhaps showing some hexes, should be in order at this pricepoint.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/441688/constant-downpour-remastered?1892600

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Carcassay – Titan Rat City

Posted on May 13, 2024 by Bryce Lynch 
By Joseph R. Lewis
Dungeon Age Adventures
OSR
Low-Mid

The ancient world of Harth withers beneath its dying sun…but it’s not dead yet. Welcome to the strange and dangerous city of Carcassay, huddled below the skeleton of a titan rat, sprawling above the ruins of countless dead civilizations. This is where folk come to find wealth, power, revenge, secrets, oblivion… and everything in between.

This 120 page supplement details the shops and people in a city built around a GIANT rat skeleton, as well as three “dungeons” under it. It’s full of quirky people and treasure and the like. It’s also almost certainly not an adventure, in spite of the three dungeons.

So, weirdo city. Kind of? We’ll get to that statement later. This presents a city with a few quarters, the lands outside of it in the immediate vicinity, some sewers, and a few dungeon/underground areas. Let’s call it eight or so places in the city and another twenty or so outside, with as many underground again, roughly. This is presented in the typical Dungeon Age format of triple column with underlines, bolds, and section call outs, which all works very well for a terse format that is easy to reference during play. I can’t say enough good things about it; Lewis knows his format and knows how to use it. We’re getting about three shops/buildings a page, using this format, with a few exceptions for some of the more weird ones … which generally means the more faction-oriented of the sites.Cross-references are pretty good here, with decent references to other sites to help a DM out during play.

Lewis has a knack for terse and evocative writing. A pawn show is described as “A small shop crowded with dusty shelves laden with old assorted wares. A large woman reclines in the corner, petting an old hound.” A hound that barks out but has not much bite. And a woman that is described as “Large, bob, monocle. Slow, deliberate, precise. Wants to get away from this city. Fears religion.” That’s great! We get a little physical and a little mannerism, along with some goals and fears of hers to help the DM add some additional colour to the running her. The descriptions, especially of the people, are totally oriented to helping the DM riff on them during play. You can really get in to them and run them in an ad hoc manner, filling in things as you need to, with guidance from the designer, as you deal with the parties machinations. I can’t say enough about it. Another example could be Miss Ophelia: “Miss Ophelia (20),

amateur rat-catcher. Small, babyface. Awkward, shy. Loves animals. Loves killing animals. She’s complicated. Paid by the shop owners to keep the street clean of vermin.” Loves animals, loves killing animals … she’s complicated. GREAT! I don’t know how the fuck dude comes up with this shit but its very high fucking quality and occasional GOLD, like Miss Ohpelia. 

And it gies on like this, entry after entry, with most also having some small task that the party could accomplish. Some entries refer to others, with things like “sure would be nice if someone burnet down his new rivals inn … “ or some such. People wanting things and, in some way, having something to bargain with that DOESN’T feel just like a job board with posted rewards in the town square. Hows about a flash of 6000 year old absinthee or a Ossuary of 4d6 tiny skilver 

So far I have described the thing as buildings, individual things that you could putt out for your own cities, or perhaps in pairs the like in some cases. A few of them are weird enough, or idiosyncratic enough to this setting, that it’s going to be hard to pull out. But that’s general not the case.

The city, proper, though … well, we need a little more, I think.

It does feel more like the individual buildings are disconnected. The overarching themes, and even major factions don’t really come through very well. There is a VERY short section in front of each city section, a short paragraph, describing it roughy, n terms of sights and smells and so on. But, also, there’s no real VIBE of major factions at play, or themes, or so on. Sure, you’ve got the Corpse Lords in one section, but, also, they feel more than a little static. In fact, it pretty much ALL feels static. Like, hey, here’s something you could do with this business/person that I just described. Does that make sense? It’a a list of businesses with things that could happen to that business (which is great) but it lacks the feel of a larger scope than perhaps an individual business. Even the ones which cross business boundaries, like burn down Franks inn, are little more than that statement. But the overall VIBE of the city just isn’t there. The scope, of the interactivity, feels small.And this would extend to the dungeon areas. They don’t really feel connected, the rooms in each I mean, to each other. Here’s some rooms and here’s some dudes in those rooms and oh yeah they want the thing that those dudes in room 23 have. The sense of viscerallity of people wants and fears doesn’t really come through on these things. 

“Blackest Heart (appears to be a preserved human heart, the bearer can sense the emotions of any creature they can see).” Oh man, that’s a good fucking item … and this thing is thick with them!

So, not an adventure, even, I would assert, in spite of the three dungeons included. And not really a city, in the sense of machinations held together by people. It is a lot more individual building based, or even group based,without those crossing in others. Perfect for stealing from though. I love the place! The density of city places to steal from is VERY high.

This is $10 at DriveThru.The preview is nineteen pages. More than enough to get a sense of the place. CHeck out actual page ten from the preview for the “overview” of each city quarter. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/464124/carcassay-titan-rat-city?1892600

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Sepulcher of the Sorceress-Queen

Posted on May 11, 2024 by Bryce Lynch 
By Michael Stone & Alexander Macris
Autarch
ACKS
Levels 7-9

Over a thousand years ago, the Zaharan Sorcerer-Queen Semiramis reigned over a court notorious for its decadent arts and lavish opulence. The hidebound nobles of Zahar were troubled by the ascendance of the kingdom’s first female monarch. Semiramis was beset by over one hundred suitors, each one demanding that she marry him so that the kingdom might have a king. Many of these suitors were powerful spellcasters who wove enchantments upon her, but to no avail: The Sorceress-Queen wore the Ring of the Queen’s Heart, a legendary magic item gifted to her by the goddess Nasga that made her immune to her suitor’s charms. As beautiful and cruel as her goddess, Semiramis instead seduced her perfidious suitors into swearing eternal love to her – then had them slain. The Sorceress-Queen mummified and interred all one hundred suitors in her own majestic sepulcher, where they would serve her as loyally in death as they ought to have in life. Since then, the sepulcher of the sorceress-queen has lain hidden and undisturbed, its undead inhabitants slumbering in torpor until the prophesied time of the Awakening. But now a reckless warband of lizardmen has broken open the ancient tomb and disturbed evils not seen in centuries…

This 58 page adventure uses 34 pages to present a tomb, in the process of waking up, with about 67 rooms. This is, I think, the poster child for Decently-interesting-but-never-gonna-use-it cause-its-a-pain-in-the-ass. I am genuinely interested in knowing if anyone has run it COMPLETELY and how you handled it, both generally and specifically in terms or prep and game-play delays. As far as level 7-9 dungeon crawls, though, nice!

So, I’m paging through this for the first time. Title page padding, backer padding, blah blah blah, intro padding, long backstory padding, some rumor stuff, some pretext travel to the site stuff, blah blah blah, padding and nonsense. Then BLAMO! The map page hits you in the face. Lots of features on it. A note for dark alters, braziers, monoliths, sarcophaguses, walls that you can kool-aid-man through. And, a notation of “water/blood.” Heh. Nice. We’ve got some red bubbles noting undead monsters that can react to sound, lots of room features, lots of features. Sweet little map the likes of which you don’t usually see … and wish you did. 

The environment is nontrivial. There are, I think, nearly five pages of subsystems for the dungeon before we get to the room keys. Dark Alters – Destroy them and reduce the queens regen/magic resistance. But, also, summon a shadow each time. Weak walls to bust through. The impact of the sounds the party makes, including busting down doors and destroy alters and casting spells, and how that could awaken and/or summon monsters from nearby (up tp 150’ feet away … which is then suggested to be The Nearest Occupied Room within range, for simplicity purposes) And, then, how to put those creatures on the wanderers table. There are lizardmen in the tomb also, making an incursion, and they get reinforcements. And, also, they make attempts to clear dungeon rooms each day, with their own rolls and impacts on the dungeon. There are Doors, secret doors, sealed doors and blocked doors, all with different rules. And more. That’s a lot to keep track of. Enabling a rich and deep play experience, to be sure. 

The rooms are … deep. We get a read-aloud section to start with, generally. I’m not thrilled about them. Not quite the evocative writing style I prefer. More fact based.And this includes over-revealing in the read-aloud “the doors, which carry a relief depicting a stormy night on the sea,” and so on in the read-aloud. I think an over-reveal in the read-aloud is detrimental to the game. It sets expectations around what the DM will reveal to you and how and when you ask questions of the DM, beyond simply the Q/A cycle being the core loop of the game. And, sometimes they feel random. A room smelling of moldy paper, in the read-aloud?! Let’s investigate! There’s no reason for it, or any hint of paper in the room. 

I suspect the read-aloud is this way because there is no traditional DM text, or, at least, not generalized DM text. Each entry will have a section(s), if appropriate, called [Monster] or [Lore] or [Trap] or [Loot] or [Noise] or [Trick]. And in that section the treasure, or trap, or effect will be described. At length. You’re not getting away with less than a paragraph for each, sometimes more. It is not infrequent for a room to be a page long. Now, this is levels 7-9. There should be some shit going down in some of these rooms, involved shit. I’m not sure though that the selected format is really paying off for rooms this complex. There is very little formatting beyond these section headings; it turns back to paragraph form with a monster named bolded. It’s fucking DENSE man. And frankly the monsters are not done very well. “5 wights.” Well fuck me, that’s great. All undead look the same unless we personalize them … and, one section of those five pages of intro to the dungeon rules was about interacting with intelligent undead. GENERIC intelligent undead, it would seem. 

We’ve talked about some interactivity already. The doors. The sound situation. The alter thing, and other general dungeon features. As well as the lizardmen and them being potential allies. And maybe saying hello to some confused undead. And then there is specific room interactivity, IE: the keys stuff. Beyond looking at frescoes and traps we get … well, not much. Fighting dudes and looting and avoiding traps. It’s all pretty straightforward. There ARE some traps that may be a little more interactive than usual. Let’s say a pool  and if you add a drop of your blood then the monster doesn’t attack you. Or, wearing some holy garb form the tomb will give you bonuses on rolls or help avoid traps. Beyond that, man, there’s really not a whole lot. A stalactite next to a bridge being a roper? Ok. I guess.

So, great map, good concept, lots of always on things to do. But the creatures turn generic, and I think the room descriptions are uninspiring. I really want there to be more to this than there is. But, also, it’s a fucking tomb. As a tomb it’s great, because tomb adventures generally suck ass. And it does pull off a 7-9 adventure. It’s just a little … I don’t know, uninteresting? Both in the descriptions and the encounters? I need a little more in my life. 

This is $7.50 at DriveThru. The preview is ten pages. You can see the map and a few of the always on features, but none of the rooms. I would have preferred a room page be shown also.

https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/317788/sepulcher-of-the-sorceress-queen?1892600

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The Greydeep Marches

Posted on May 8, 2024 by Bryce Lynch 
By Peter Schweighofer
Griffon Publishing Studio
Generic/Universal

Three hundred years ago adventurers from the Vilburg Kingdom forayed into the untamed border region and quickly drove away isolated, unorganized bands of humanoids. Many settled here under the watchful eye of the Sentinel Knights and have prospered in their enterprises. But dark powers left from a wicked empire 2,000 years earlier still lurk in dark forests, forlorn ruins, and subterranean labyrinths…and a growing threat in the Ostmaur Peaks to the east threatens to overrun the apparent peace and prosperity in the Greydeep Marches.

This 34 page regional guide has three adventures in it. It’s quite wordy, full of things that don’t matter, and has nothing interesting in it. I don’t understand what the value here is.

This is a regional setting. That can mean one of two things: either it’s a fluff piece with some mini-adventures or it’s a sandboxy area. I tend to avoid fluff and love sandboxy things, which leaves me in a pickle when it comes to those that pop up in my potential review list. This one turned out to be of the mostly fluff variety.

And what fluff it is! Oh, no, I mean, not in a good way. It’s long and boring and drawn out. What, a page I think, on the Hammer & Tun, a tavern. A page that regals the mighty oak beams and jovial atmosphere … without actually saying anything of use to run the adventure or, I would assert, even creating an evocative environment. WHich is interesting. It’s clear that the designer is trying to invoke an evocative atmosphere in the inn, but it’s so generic and so long-winded that I just didn’t care. It was completely ineffective in what it was trying to do. And this happens time and time again in the fluff portions of the adventure, the descriptions of the regions, the places and the people. It’s long-winded and boring, even through its clearly trying to evoke imagery. But, man, it’s all the same shit, time and time again in these things. It’s generic fantasy land with generic fantasy taverns. We’ve got monsters with an evil forced behind them making incursions from the mountains. Duke McDickhead is collecting artifacts and some Sentinel Knights run around bumbling. These are the divergences from typical fantasy world. And this is what twenty pages of overwrought text tells us … the description of the typical fantasy place without those brain spikes that make them memorable. 

This is supplemented by a wandering table that is mostly nonsense. A dude sitting in a tree warns you about the forest. Great. Bob is in the woods taking a leak. This doesn’t fulfill the purpose of a wandering table. The purpose of a wandering table is to make the party GO FORWARD and take Foy. Cause if you don’t then something is coming out to get you. So move your fucking asses. 

And this lack of understanding extends to many other places. There are three mini adventures in the supplement, and in one the reward you are offered from the villager is determined by rolling a d6. This is not the point of randomness in an adventure. Rather than a table, the space could have been used to really work that portion and come up with a couple of sentences to really bring it alive for the DM, and thus the party.

The adventures are unremarkable little things, with two being small six room complexes and one being just slightly longer. Inside you’re mostly going to find hacking. I must say, though, that there are times in which the writing really does get better. “Water drips down the moist walls of this dank cave into a small pool, eventually running out the cave entrance into the puddle beyond” That’s not too shabby. I like it, for evoking the imagery that a designer should be trying to imbue in to a place.  It’s terse, and really gives you a sense of the place. Now, I can quibble that the pool of water being outside the cave, really should have come before, but the overall effect is still there. Likewise there’s a monster description that goes “Something lurking in the far shadows breathes heavily, then emits a growling croak. A large toad – three feet tall with green on top and a speckled red underbelly” Lurking. Heavy breathing. Growling croak. Green and speckled. Not the greatest of all time but certainly far far better than is usually seen. 

And then we get a long backstory for a common pig that is the inciting event for the adventure. ARGGGGGG!!!!!!!!

The region setting is unremarkable and the mini dungeons not great. 

This is $7 at DriveThru. The preview is five pages. You should be able to get the gist of whats going on, in tone, with it, in the region.


https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/242741/the-greydeep-marches?1892600

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Heart of the Sunken Lands

Posted on May 6, 2024 by Bryce Lynch 
By Rudy Kraft
Midkemia Press
Generic/Universal

About six hundred and fifty years ago, invaders from the Empire of Tsuranuanni, on the planet Kelewan, used powerful magic to open a “rift” through space and time to Midkemia. The invaders were repulsed but only after a long, hard and bloody nine-year struggle (the First Rift War). One of the more significant disruptions of that war was the wholesale retreat of the Moredhel, called the Brotherhood of the Dark Path, from their long time homelands in the Grey Towers mountains and the great forest called The Green Heart, as they were driven before the invading Tsurani. Almost all the surviving Moredhel fled to the Northlands, to join with their brethren in safety behind the great mountain ranges to the north of the Kingdom.

This 182 page adventure, originally published in 1983, contains the rules for resource extraction from a jungle-like area known as The Sunken Lands. If you want a resource extraction game, and over a hundred pages of movement and encounter tables then this one is for you!

This is an adventure from 1983 that has been retyped for 2023. You’ve got this giant giant GIANT sunken area of land, the titular Sunken Lands, filled with a jungle, swamps, and a mountain range. A kind of Lost Valley without the dinosaurs. There’s a hex map of the valley that spans a couple of pages. (This is one of the very few (only?) parts that does not seem to have been updated, but rather scanned in from the original product. This was a massive mistake as the entire thing is blurry. You COULD run from it, but also you’re going to be bitching the entire time.) And then there’s the random encounter table. This is similar to the one in the back of the 1e DMG: percentages rolled on a terrain type. The encounters are things like “animal” or “”insects” or “humans” or “gems/minerals” or “water feature.” Then you roll on a subtable, or three to determine the nature of the water feature, the gems, or the animal type. Something like “crocodiles” or “insects” or something like that. And then the descriptions have the monster status and maybe a description/ecology. As per the early days, you’ll be doing the rest yourself.

Let us examine, if you will, a big hexcrawl map with terrain on it. Just like WIlderlands. With a random encounter table but WITHOUT the special hex descriptions. Take that …  and where does the interactivity come from? I don’t really think there is any in that  very basic model of terrain type and random encounter table. Widerlands, and most hex crawls, resolve this by having those special hex  descriptions … what most people would imagine a hex crawl is. This, though, posits another type of play: Resource Extraction.

Some of the encounter types on the encounter table are with trees or gems. And by trees lets think Ebony or other tree types. Wander in to the woods looking for Ebony trees and diamonds in those Arkansas mud fields. When you find them, harvest them and bring them back for ca$h. That is, I’m about 98% sure, the core loop of this adventure. But how to do you know where the uranium is? You can hire some guides/experts who have skills in geology, botany, and so on, and, working with the random tables, they get a percentage, when you find a potential resource hex, to say “hey, we should dig here.” Without those experts the chances are MUCH slimmer that you stumble upon a diamond on the surface, for example. So, we’re in a loop to dig up shit from the ground and find ebony trees and the like. (Not exactly what you can harvest, but close enough for this review without going in to the entire regional backstory.)

There are to locations in the region that are special, two different religious cults. One of them is a safe haven in the wilderness … with a secret. The other gives off hippy commune vibes (I think so anyway, it’s darker in the text) except they have headless slaves and worship a god that lives in a pit in the center of the village. Mostly chill, if you can get past the bizarro shit they do. Which the party will not be able to. Which is fortunate because the “dungeon” under their village (the only dungeon in the adventure) has the largest quantity of static wealth in the adventure. Like, you meet from very friendly people who turn out to be cannibals, but it’s all chill … unless you’re a redhead. You’re not a redhead are you?

So we’ve got a resource extraction scenario. But the supporting material for that is a bit week. Mining timelines, logistics, moving gear and resources. And, more importantly, the complications. If you look beyond the simple “wanderers” for any hex you’ve got to have more. You need rivals and other things going on that will add some spice to the game. There’s an attempt here to do that. We’ve a couple of rival “houses” that extract gems, for one, and wood, for another. (There are also a variety of interesting NPC”s for the party to hire, but we’re not looking at that.) What we need, here, are for those houses to meddle. For the supply base at the edge of the Sunken lands to have some intrigue. For some events and perhaps rough timelines present to help the DM initiate complications for the party to overcome. 

Otherwise we’ve got a simple extraction game with some tables for finding it and little for extraction. And it’s all regulated by a three page bullet list of things to roll for and check for for each day and hex that the party travel/explore/etc. That’s quite the system, even if you do roll a lot in advance.

This reminds me of … oh, what’s the board game … Magic Realm? A complex seriee of tables and rules for exploring and playing D&D by yourself, straight out of the 70’s. The time before computers. Magic Realm was really a computer RPG in boardgame form, much like many of the wargames in that time would have benefited from being computer games, due to their intense rules and tables and flows to follow. As a simulation of some exploration focused on resource extraction it would work better that way.

This is interesting in that it’s an early hex crawl that doesn’t have the features of a hex crawl and that it focuses on another element: people  looking to exploit natural resources. But, other than that it’s hard to look at it as a playable game, in the same way that a traditional hex crawl moves forward and drives gameplay. In spite of this the exploitation minigame and the hex movement elements are interesting on their own, as systems to steal from for a hex inspired game.

Oh, and the magic has a certain early T&T charm. “A scroll which contains a spell that will render the person invisible” and or a leather satchel with a wide mouth that you can store 10,000 coins in but will weigh only as much as one. Nice job there.

This is $6 at DriveThru. There i no preview 🙁


https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/464567/heart-of-the-sunken-lands?1892600

Posted in Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, Reviews | 4 Comments

Doctrine of Ghul

Posted on May 4, 2024 by Bryce Lynch 
By Bruce Cordell
Monte Cook Games
Cypher/5e
Levels 4-5

Ghul. The creator of Goth Gulgamel, the fortress halfway up the Spire. Self-proclaimed offspring of Eslathagos Malkith—who himself created the wicked citadel at the top of the Spire, one of the most innately evil sites in the world. Lately, talk has been swirling around Delver’s Square—talk of a newly uncovered ancient manuscript scribed by the Half God himself. ome seek the manuscript to ensure it is destroyed. A few want it to glorify Ghul. And some believe it holds the key to powerful magics they hope to harness for themselves. The motives are varied, but one thing is certain: the race to find it is on! Does the manuscript even exist? And if it does, what does its unearthing portend?

This 31 page adventure has the party doing three mini dungeons with different themes. It’s overly wordy and is doing its best to befuddle anyone running it. But, the dungeons do have some interesting concepts behind them, poorly executed. Monte COok Games is a brand with people hired to produce content for it, and it feels like it.

For [pretext] to hunt down an ancient manuscript at this chicks house in the city. Oh no! Now you’re cursed! You have to go “underground” to find three shrines and visit each to undo the curse, and you’ve got seven days to do it. After visiting the three  mini-dungeons you are NOT turned in to an evil demi-god so the dude that created the manuscript, Lareth the Beautiful, teleports in to try and kill you. What’s actually going on is that Vruce Cordell has three ideas for dungeon effects and his pal Monty slapped his name on it as publishers and no one gave a shit as they shoveled it out the door. I’m going to hope that Ray Vallese’s name, associated with this as editor, just meant he was looking for misspelled words and we can blame the layout and managing editor people for not knowing how to run an adventure. [Ray is the only person who has ever published anything remotely resembling good advice for an adventure writer. Well, him and Guy Fullerton, who has a lot of good tips.]

The three mini dungeons have some decent little ideas behind them. I wouldn’t say that, given the size of the dungeons, at sixish rooms each, that the ideas are given the best environment to grow in. There’s just not enough depth provided by six rooms to allow anything to grow well. But, you can see where things are going. I’m going to focus on the second of the mini-dungeons, a kind of ooze themed area. The characters can get sick in here, and get the sniffles. Which can cause them to cough up grey good. Oh, also, getting seriously hurt with a slashing/piercing weapons, spilling their blood, then the stuff congeals in to an ooze that attacks them. Insult to injury, man oh man! That’s a decent idea! Sniffling, building up to coughing up shit, to your own blood attacking? And that gets about a little less than a column to explain, never becomes relevant again, and doesn’t really build at all, at least not through the designer. The other two dungeons also have some distinct theming (yeah!) and some kind of interesting effect going on. 

Everything else is shit.

The hooks are pretextual. Yes, all hooks are, in a sense. But if you’re going to include content then you must make an effort at that content. The party is hired, the party is interested in it themselves … these are not hooks worth mentioning. The job of the designer is to breathe enough life in to these so that the DM can take the hook and run with it, inspired. Something to hang your hat on. Leave them out if you’re not going to make an effort.

The initial investigation involves the party tracking down a copy of the manuscript, in a chicks house. There’s no way given to connect the dots. This is not an investigation. It jumps from some rather loose rumors directly to the house, with nothing in between about finding the house. There is NO investigation, no way of getting from the rumors to the house.

But, the rumors, the only thing you have, are behind some DC skill checks. And if we don’t succeed on those? Yes, the DM can fudge it. Then why put it behind a skill check at all? Just as the rest of the adventure is behind a skill check in the house. Just as finding the door to the first dungeon is behind a skill check. TWO skill checks, in fact. Do we not want to play D&D tonight? This is not the way skill checks are used in an adventure. 

The path to the mini-dungeons is linear. The DM is given advice to “If you wish, sprinkle a couple of the following encounters into the PCs’ path as they make their way between the three shrines, or include an encounter of your own creation.” This is not design. There is no progression. This is time wasting. Just throwing shit in because you think the adventure MUST have that element, and yet putting no effort at all in to it.

The first dungeon a kind of tomb, has such exciting entries as “Sarcophagus B: “Yurik Leor.” When opened, an ice-cold revenant lurches out. Still worn on its finger is a gold ring set with bloodstones worth 200 gp.” There should be horror elements here. No real description of the tomb. No description of the revenant. Just here, here is a monster. Attack! THis is fucking boring. It does NOTHING to assist the DM. 

And the page count here is not trivial. 31 pages. For about 24 rooms? There was plenty of room to concentrate and focus effort on those dungeons and their entries. There is text, a lot of it. Long read-aloud that over-reveals and yet still produces environments that are not inspiring. Mountains and mountains of DM text that do nothing to add to the adventure. 

Wasted words. Long background on who write the manuscript. That is totally irrelevant, because he just teleports in, a random dude teleporting in at the end of the adventure to attack the party? This is Lareth at his worst, the secret force behind everything, with nothing to go on or develop.

Everyone involved here should have known better. It should have been trivial to look at the thing and say that the layout is busy, that the adventure text focuses on the wrong things, that it is uninspiring and a chore to use. 

But no one did.

This is $6 at DriveThru. There’s no preview at all to help you make a purchasing decision before buying. 

https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/377652/doctrine-of-ghul?1892600

Posted in 5e, Reviews | 11 Comments

The Fenworthy Inheritance

Posted on May 1, 2024 by Bryce Lynch 
By Simon Todd
Montidots
BRP/CoC/Gore

When David Farrington decided to drag his sister, Jinx, away from the hedonistic vortex of London’s Bright Young Things for a peaceful walking holiday he little envisioned that they would soon be entangled in a web of murder, sinister cults and a festering thirst for revenge that has been festering for over sixty years.

This 75 page Call of Cthulhu-type adventure uses about forty pages to describe a revenge/occult situation in a manor home. It’s VERY wordy, and while not entirely focused on being scene based, I don’t understand how you could run it any other way … and thus linear. 

Ok, so, kids mom was a witch, running a coven out of their manor, kills her husband and gets arrested and executed. Kid grows up and now wants revenge on everyone in the village that he thinks was responsible, etc. Also, the witches body is in some kiddy doll. Also, there’s a cthulhu monster under the ground that is granting some power. The party arrives, car broken down by a pothole, finds a body (probably) and is present for the ritual that happens in a couple of days time. Not stopping it is a bad idea, with the usual ramifications. 

I love a good manor mystery/situation. It’s one of my favorite genres of mysteries/movies. You have a list of characters, a timeline, situations that happen. It’s a great genre! But, also, I think mysteries are more of a social adventure than an exploratory one, and thus the method of presenting it to the DM has to change. There’s a lot to keep track of, and the DM will need to be able to use the people, places, and situations to adjust what happens on the fly to adapt to the players … and the designer needs to create something that is focused on helping the DM do that. And that can be quite hard.

What we’re looking at here is roughly 25 events that happen over three days. You check out of the inn. You see a torn down signpost. You hit the pothole and find a farmer. You find a body. You hit the inn. You go to various places. These are ROUGHLY linear. The ones I just described could be the kick off/hook. Then you get this long list of locations and/or events. Like The Burnt Out Croft or The Inspector Calls (to look in to the dead body.) So, a mix of locations and events, culminating Monday with the summoning at the ancient stone circle. But,, also, peoples descriptions and motivations tend to be mixed in to the places in a linear order. So, if you go to the Grange then the read-aloud has you seeing the gamekeeper, which then has a short description of the gamekeeper and whats hes done, etc. And then it moves on to the location proper. WIth other people mixed in. Since this is ann estate & village and there’s a lot of people and places and normal events and occult events and timed events and untimed things … well, that’s a lot to run. It’s just not organized in a fashion to make it a reference document. You could go through it, place after place and event after event (for  the most part) and run it that way. But, there’s no overall NPC register or anything like that, and the timelines (there are multiple) tend to be scattered through the text. 

This is all compounded by the length of text. There’s a decent amount of read-aloud, some of it stretching in to a point where it’s hard to pay attention to it. And then there is A LOT of DM text. Sometimes we get bullets, especially when an NPPC knows multiple things. THis is a GREAT help. But, also, there’s STILL a lot of text not in an easy to grok format, and its also padded out with things like “if the  party chooses to investigate the bicycle then they find …”  and then it breaks in to the bike stuff.

Things are lost in all of this. The giant bug that goes around causing trouble. The pooka-thing causing trouble. It’s just a rough one. You can see what the designer was going for. There is a lot going on and a lot of places to look at. And quite the short timeline: you get there on Saturday and the ritual pops off Monday at 8pm … with a few events prior to that. Of course, one need not explore all of the sites, after all the ritual is popping off no matter what. But we want the party o have a sporting go at it, What What? I have some regrets, it seems. It’s just so rich in content … roughly fifty pages of it, and it feels likeit needs just a bit more time to really stretch its legs and go. 

But, also, it’s such a jumbled mess. Jumbled isn’t quite the right word … you can see WHY the decision son formatting were made, but, it’s just so alien to me in how one might want to organize things in to run an adventure like this. Substantially more reference data/summaries. Condensed timelines. Massive cross-references, and locations really focused to themselves rather then mixing in timelines, events, locations and NPC’s.

This is 5.50 at DriveThru. The preview is six pages. AT best you get the table of contents. That’s not really enough to make a judgement call on purchasing the adventure, so, No Bueno preview.

https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/192842/the-fenworthy-inheritance?1892600

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Dungeon of the Unknown

Posted on April 29, 2024 by Bryce Lynch 
By Geoffrey McKinney
lotFP
lotFP
Level 1

Located near the coast of hex 2214 of the Isle of the Unknown, this dungeon enshrines the mysteries of the Isle’s lost Minoan past. 

This 38 page booklet including two dungeon level maps and some random things, generated randomly, that you could populate in to them. Sometimes weird in a good way and more times just random and disconnected. Not a fucking adventure. 

“Can be used immediatly” says the marketing …. pfffft!

There are two old school style dungeon maps. In blue even! With the thin little lines for walls, so, using every square on the paper for the map, just like that famous Gygax “behind the screen” photo. The “key” for the dungeon is included on the same page as the map. The Yellow Temple. The Fiery Room. The Monolith of Dripping Fangs. The Shaking Sands. Just a room name. And each one is named just like that, like it’s the set piece room of all set piece rooms for the dungeon. Nothing is mundane and everything is grandiose. Well, the names are. All of them. There are no keys. What there is is a little notation. “W3” or “T2”. Some are entirely blank. That’s all there is. That’s all you’re getting.

The other pages of the booklet describe what W4 and T2 are. There are twelve of those special rooms, for the seventy or so rooms on the key. Things like “reroll one set of your stats”, which you can use as many times as you want. They have no relation to the room names. The monsters here are Goops. And Gloops. And Gobs. No description. Roll on a table for the random ability of each. You do get some random humans to toss in also. “These Brigands are accomplished robbers and murderers. Their leader (the individual of highest level amongst them) is called the Brigand Lord.” There are other monsters with the names of C1, C2, C3, C4 and so on, the Geofrey special of a random chimeric creature. 

That’s the “Adventure.” That’s all it is. Nothing more. I’m not being facetious. That random reroll room? “Six ever-burning wax candles float 6’ high in a 5’ diameter circle. Anyone extinguishing a candle will fall unconscious. One minute later the candle will relight and the person will awake. He must re-roll on 3d6 a randomly-determined attribute (no saving throw).”

Everything in the adventure is like this. It’s not an adventure. It’s just a fucking collection of ideas. And, I’d argue, a collection that can’t be used in the manner in which the designer intends. Nothing present really wors together. The theme is just “a bunch  of rando bizarre shit.” Random monsters. Rooms you place yourself with no hint of working together. It’s trying to out B1 the B1 adventure. But that had some theming. This doesn’t. 

And it’s all that weird abstracted language. Afraid to say anything specific. 

There’s an interesting weird thing here and there, I guess. But, seriously, just go to the Dungeon Dozen and use it. Or any of those other rando dungeon design books. These are too specific to be used as tools and not related enough to be used in the same space. 

This is $5 at DriveThru. Sucker. No preview, double sucka!

https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/114330/dungeon-of-the-unknown?1892600

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Tar Pits of the Bone Toilers

Posted on April 27, 2024 by Bryce Lynch 
By Malrex
The Merciless merchants
OSR
Levels 5-8

A new trade route is being sought through the Dalgarian Canyonlands, pass the friendly Kharazan, Village of Plenty. But the last two expeditions have never returned and the merchants are getting anxious for the new route, causing bags of gold to exchange hands. Meanwhile, the ancient portal, the Maw of Ghormaug, has opened once more and invaders, ‘bone men’, are beginning to take over territory. No one is safe. Left unchecked, these lands are destined for horror and ruin, unless a brave party steps up to the challenge.

This thirty page adventure presents a small jungle canyon, full of trees and swamp, with various encounters orbiting around a cult of neanderthals with a bone/skull motif. The overall vibe of the valley is there, with things fitting together well, but the individual encounters seem off. Weaker descriptions and encounters that feel less like situations. 

We’ve got this jungle canyon. Merchant dudes want to chart a course through it to open up a new trade path. Off you go to figure out why the last expedition didn’t return. Inaside we find a host of little mythic like encounters, strong on player cultural memory. And the bone toilers. These are primitive men that like to dress in boine armor, etc. And sometimes their taller leaders ride animated skeletons of dinosaurs and shit like that. So, lots of bone monsters and bone motifs and skulls hanging around. Turns out they are from another dimension, the gate is in the bottom of their cave lair in their fort, and there’s a … bone devil inside! So, not too bad in the It All Makes Sense Now Of Course school of player thought.

Malrex does a decent job here, as I mentioned, of putting in some iconic encounters. We’ve got a mad hermit in a hut who knows just about everything. We’ve got a hooded woman living in a cave, wary at first but also having information to trade for magic items. Also, hey, don’t piss her off maybe … what are all of those statues in the nearby jungle about? And then theres the … spirit? We likes walking out of a copse of trees in his spotlessly white robe and pointing, ominously, to a better path for the party to take. A Duskwalker … enemy of the bone toilers! Also, this one is missing his heart. A village, the former inhabitants of the valley, now massacred. Undead wander, a pyramid of corpses in the center. And, of course, The Looters. Not adventurers. Not bandits. Looters. Great word choice. They are in over their heads and want to get out. And some of them are missing. And their little band is about to be torn apart by some internal strife. Really kind of iconic little things. Oracular medusa? Sign me up!

Maps are not the greatest. We’ve gt a small wilderness area map. The scale is 10 feet, but that can’t be right. That would put most of the encounters within about sixty feet of another one. That just doesn’t make sense for the vibe of the text, which implies a large canyon with jungle and swampy water. The wilderness has several small “dungeons” hanging off ot it. A ruined village, a couple of cave complexes, and the main bone-dudes fort and the caves/hellmouth underneath. This sort of wilderness with smaller dungeons is intriguing and I like the concept a lot, just not at the scale presented here. And the maps, of the dungeons, are not the greatest. A little blurry and not the most complex things ever, but still better than square rooms connected by lines.

The descriptive text can be maddening. Overall, i think it’s not great. Not, perhaps the weakest, but it tends to avoid the evocative text that some of the Malrex product produces. Things are a bit better with the dungeon entrances. Here’s “Sheeting water and mist drench everything at the bottom of the roaring waterfall. Two rivulets enter a cave mouth, making a set of eroded stairs slippery as they lead to darkness.” That’s one of the entrances and it’s not too bad as a forbidding entrance to something. But they fall off from there. 

The dungeon rooms, in particular, tend to the hack side, especially in the bone fortress caves. It’s stuffed full and a raid/stealth/assault is going to the word of the day, even for characters of this level. “1d6 bone dwellers join the fray every 1d4 rounds.” Ouch! And those dudes are 4HD. A tough fight to get out. And the designer recognizes this aspect of th adventure and provides a rough timetable of events, for the day, for the fortress, to assist the DM in players planning an assault. 

Good magic items here, and some really good descriptions, in places, as well as challenges. “Corpses cover the stairs leading up to the 6’ high platform. The corpses create a ‘ramp’ surrounding the entire temple, so characters need to climb over the corpses to reach the top” That’s a nice little thing.Or “Characters who touch the orb have their eyes roll up, showing only the whites of the eyes.” That’s a great little effect to help the DM out. 

But then, in other places, things fall flat. And that is the overall effect, I think. Not to say that it’s BAD, but just that so many opportunities are missed. In one case you’ve got a room with some beetles eating an alligator corpse. But, also, not mentioned till the end are three skeletons of a dead party lying in a heap on the north wall. THis could go two ways. Take a chance to kill the beetles .. for no reason? On the hope that there’s treasure? Or lure the party in by hinting at the bodies, giving them a reason to push their luck? I think those sorts of things are delicious so I’m readily in the second camp.

I want to also mention an art piece, of a ghast. Of a child. It’s well done and communicates the horror, I think. But the descriptions of the monsters don’t follow through, in most cases. We do get some pot-bellied ghasts at one point, but even that description falls a little flat, and it’s one of the rare examples. 

Don’t think I’m too down on this. It’s doing some nice things. But it doesn’t hit as hard as some of the other Malrex adventures. The concept is good and the overall vibe of the setting is good also. And some of the descriptions and encounters and situations. But It just doesn’t reach those heights that we all know Malrex is capable of.

This is $5 at DriveThru. The preview is fourteen pages, more than enough to get a sense of the place and the writing style and the encounter style.

https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/253868/tar-pits-of-the-bone-toilers?1892600

Posted in No Regerts, Reviews | 10 Comments