tenfootpole.org

by Rick Maffei
Expeditious Retreat Press
1e
Levels 2-3

Bandit and humanoid raids have increased on Ashen Ridge rendering the trade route increasingly more dangerous. Spurred by a recent, brutal attack by humanoids that claimed an ingot caravan, guards and all, the elders of the towns below the ridge have put aside their differences and agreed to reclaim and permanently re-staff the fallen watchtowers. Engineers and guardsmen stand ready to attend the towers, but first they must be scoured of any threats and wildlife. The towns have put out a call for brave adventurers willing to seek out the towers, assess their condition, and cleanse them of hostile humanoids and beasts if necessary! Will you hear the call?

This twelve page adventure presents four-ish adventuring areas of a ten or so entries each, for you to stab your way through. Lots of backstory in each entry turn the caves of chaos in to rather long-winded examples of what it should be.

There are some old watchtowers along a ridgeline and the local towns hire you clean them out so they can be garrisoned. For hitting up three watchtoweres, which they KNOW have bandits and humanoids in them, you’re gonna get the princely sum of 500gp. Fucking live it up boys! 500gp! Speaking of, monetary treasure is WAY on the light side, but a gem of seeing, pearl of wisdom, +1 manual (bodily health, iirc?) and a tooth of Dal-Vahr-Nahr reside within. Along with a necklace of adaption, esp, and a decent amount of other magic. But, yeah, just in cash and jewels you’re gonna be hurting a little at this level range. Oh, while I’m on the plot, there’s some subplot that involves  L6 fighter, and his L1 cronies (six of them?) hitting you at the end when you’re wore out. You see, he’s a member of the town council and has been getting kickbacks from the goblins in tower two. Having been outvoted in the Hire Adventures vote he hits you at the end to keep you quiet. Not that there’s much to give it away anyway. Basically it’s just a pretext to hit you on the way out. I don’t really get this. There’s three different watchtowers and a little fairy grover to deal with. Which one does he hit you after? The second I guess. And takes up A LOT of words. I mean, A LOT. It doesn’t really add anything to the adventure before or during it, and afterwards it’s just stabbing Lareth. But, sure, whatever.

And I feel like this adventure does this kind of thing A LOT. B2 and the caves are note exactly a masterpiece, but they are terse to a very great degree. This thing could be as well if the designer could keep the backstory out of the room descriptions. “In a rear corner of this cell, behind a loose wall stone, is a brilliant yellow topaz (worth 500 gp). A bandit imprisoned here stashed the stone for future times and later escaped while being moved upstairs for questioning, only to be slain by an irritable owlbear in the woods some miles distant while making his way back to his hideout. Neither the tower’s original inhabitants nor current residents know about the gem.” So, I’m not opposed to an occasional aside or two in an adventure. But, also, I prefer them when they add to the overall adventure trajectory. Here, everything after the 500gp portion is just backstory. WHY is the jewel here? Well, let me tell you why … When we look at this entry we can see that far and away the text bloat here, in relation to the content, is way out of proportion. And it’s this way with EVERYTHING in this adventure. Why use one sentence when five more are possible? The town council of, like, seven or nine people (a select group from a larger council of forty or so, the text tells us …) is described in detail. Because they will hire the party. It’s fucking insane. There’s no real reason for them to have multiple paragraphs each,or the backstories they do. It’s great that you grew up in Virginia. It’s great that the hogs got the fever. It’s great that you moved to SanFrancisco and prospered in dry goods. But, man, I need to know what I need to know NOW to run the fucking adventure at the table, not the adventure twenty years ago before I had eight kids. We’ve got a small font and a lot of words. Not a good combination.

This is an assault mission. You are stabbing things in the three towers, one with bandits, one with goblinoids, and one with a yellow musk, ending with a fairy kill in their grove. Mostly everyone just sits in their individual rooms to die. Notes about bandits reacting to the noise in room one are found in room two, where the bandits are, instead of where the noise/reaction is needed. I guess you can stab things as an adventure. I’m not the biggest fan of just stabbing, but a good ol assault with a sneak up and plan and infiltrate thing can be a great one. I don’t think this is that though. The towers just have, like three or four rooms each, usually. That’s rough. I guess the bandits hiding on the second floor, with no way to reach them, can be interesting. I suppose the town council would be shitty at me for undermining a wall and collapsing the thing on them. Mostly, a gem of seeing, painted back and used as a paperweight, is what the interactivity here is going to be. Do your tactical assault, 1e style. 

This is just way too long for what it is. I get that, perhaps, you need a page count to publish something, physically. And maybe twelve is the magic number here, hence the smaller font. But cutting back on the text bloat and padding and working a bit more on some interesting descriptions of rooms, magic items, or jewelry would have been nice. Not to mention, perhaps, a bit more involvement in the tower portions. A slightly more complex environment for our fours and fives to take on. Basement tunnel in. Trees too close. I don’t know. Some pretext to get inside and bluff? Nothing certainly precludes this, although the adventures lean is certainly to the “they attack!” side of things. 

I guess the publishing spectrum runs the gamut. Some will suggest changes and some will copy edit? 

This is $6 at DriveThru. The preview is six pages, which shows you all of the intro, tower one, and part of two. I really like the inclusion of the areas around the tower, which you can see here in the preview of one and two.  

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/502703/advanced-adventures-45-the-fallen-watchtowers?src=newest_recent?1892600

The Dour DM
Self Published
Knave
Levels 1-3

A magical barrier that has long held the threat of the Frostclaw Orcs at bay has suddenly begun to falter. As orcs begin to push their way south, Queen Lillian Farborn has sent out an edict across the kingdom: find the wizard Talbrek Zod before the barrier falls and the lands descend into war and chaos. Great rewards await those who answer the call. And so, mercenaries, soldiers, and adventurers begin to arrive in the town of Westhaven. Their motivations vary, but their goal is the same: find the wizard of the Iron Spire.

This sixteen page adventure features a few dungeons with about nine rooms each and a pretext of a hex crawl. Terse one pagers surrounded by a lot of text meant to be a framework, I suppose. Ya gotta commit to have something of value, and this doesn’t.

Yes, I know. It’s Knave. And it’s from an adventure jam. But the designer sent me a nice little note that said they were new to the OSR and brand new to putting together content like this. I know, I know. This is not a recipe for success. But, also, they’ve been reading the blog and released it for free. So, they tried to learn about adventure design and they didn’t expect their first work to be The Greatest Thing Evar. So, I’m going down this path.

The idea, I think, is to kick around the starting city a bit and pick up some rumors and then set off to the various dungeons to look for the missing wizard. Weirdly enough, he’s in his fucking wizard tower, so, maybe go there first? That makes both the hex crawl portion of this (which is really just an overland journey to the various dungeons) and the other dungeons just a sideline effort. The wizard iced in a wizard tower. Go to the wizard tower. If for no other reason than to loot it. Thus, our little section on gods, the city, the overland, the other places … these are not really going to contribute much in practice, I think. And one much question some of the choices in this section, beyond including the local gods that have no impact on the adventure. The city is a big map, with like four sentences on it, one for each business. “Best brothel in the city” or some such energy. There’s not much reason to detail the city AT ALL. While the NPC’s are terse described, I’m not sure their inclusion in a “hiring you” hook is really going to justify the word count spent about the city. And, in particular, the “you search a hex” table looks to be just weird for the sake of weird. “You find a sack of mushrooms,” Ok. Great. That’s it. Im not really sure that’s enough to build an interesting encounter off of. 

“The enigmatic wizard Mezzerklop constructed his maze of mystery as a form of sick entertainment. Once inside he watches in delight as helpless souls traverse the murderous Maze” This leads us to rooms like “Painted blue room, a large lavish blue chest, glowing white question mark on top of the chest.” Or, maybe, the intro to the second dungeon: “Tormented by her appearance and madness, she preys on treasure hunters looking to rob the tombs wealth, warping them into undead zombie minions.”  We are presuming an adventurer economy. The bog witch doesn’t exist for her own sake, shes preying on treasure hunters. The wizzo has constructed a test. This is a little too meta for me. And, then, the tonal shift to super mario land just adds on to it all. Am I running a grim orc invasion or a pastel marioland? 

The dungeons here, the format used for them, is a little weird. We’re essentially talking about four one-page-dungeon type things. You get the map and the wanderers on one page and then about nine room entries on another page. Laid out in a two column table. A kind of first impressions in one column and then some details.mechanics in the second column. So, “1) The Chasm: Stalagmites cover the floors and ceiling, a deep fissure filled with strange mutated bodies, a rickety rope bridge.” and then in the second column “Trap!: Bridge collapses if more than one person tries to cross, 40’ drop. Mutant corpses grapple those who fall in.” I’m not sure I’m surviving a forty foot drop, but, good energy there. Always love a good Pulled Under By A Pile Of Corpses thing. Another example might be “Four statues of ancient elves that are covered in moss and mold, slippery and slimy stone tile floors, damp cold stale air.” I’m cherry picking a little with these, they are the better examples in the adventure and, perhaps, a way to do things. But you’ve gotta work those entries, given that they are so short, they need to all be hitting hard, And they do not. They tend to the one sentence variety, which is a little short. Just a couple more to develop things well would have maybe made all the difference. 

Also, the ratio here is off. Four pages, maybe eight with maps, for the dungeons. About … thirty rooms? In sixteen pages of adventure text? It just feels off to me, like the density is a lair adventure for 5e rather than something more involved.

And then, I’m confused. The final dungeon, in particular, the wizards tower. I’m kind of at a loss for figuring things out. The orc warband leader is standing outside of it. Why? I don’t know. All his minions are out raiding the city and on the wandering table for the hex crawl but he stands there alone, brooding. How do you get in to the tower? I don’t know. It says there is no entrance. I guess maybe you are meant to grab the portable door from a different dungeon? And then there are these glyphs and magic portal doors inside, that usually get powered by killing a Level six monster (!.) I’m not gonna pretend to understand Knave power balances, so feel free to ignore me on that one. “Lightning strikes every minute; hits character on 1 of d6 (3d6 direct damage).” WOOF! This shit is ROUGH!

So, perhaps an overly minimally described dungeons that show some promise in some of the rooms, with both evocative text and room ideas. Just not hitting very well, and a lot of space wasted on things that only tangentially impact the adventure. The jam contest constrained things to sixteen pages in a digest format, and I think the impact of tha shows. Just a tad more intro how the dungeons are supposed to work and a little more rooms for the wanderers and wilderness and town to breathe, A little more for the rooms. A scope, perhaps, too large for a city, hex crawl, and four dungeons.

This is free at DriveThru

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/498754/the-lost-wizard-of-the-iron-spire?1892600

By Keith Sloan
Expeditious Retreat Press
1e
Levels 5-7

Orcs have long been a danger in the northern woods, but the Dukes have always been able to contain them and protect the human southlands. No longer. Rumors swirl that formerly warring orc tribes have united under a new leader, and make ready to march under a single banner, a banner depicting a black spider. Even the stolid men-at-arms of Dermoth Duchy are nervous at what all this portends. What can be done to stop the rise of the orcs and their new Spider Goddess?

This sixteen page adventure details a small overland journey to a two level cave system with about 65 rooms worth of orcs, giant spiders, and undead. It’s more on the hack side of spectrum, and while it has a few decent concepts I don’t think it ever does anything very interesting with them. 

Hey hey! It’s XRP! Looks like they are back! This time, it looks like them warring orc tribes have pulled it together under the banner of a black spider and are advancing on humanity, as they are wont to do. And ohs nos, the local army get chewed up by hit and run orcs, so they need a group of hobos to go in and deal with it. Through the spider woods, next to spider mountain, you see the spider temple. Looks like the orcs have been busy, it was someone else’s temple but now they redecorated with spider statues and carvings. Inside you’;ll stab orcs. Inside you’ll stab spiders. Inside you’ll meet a bunch of undead who used to be a part of the former temple and are now being forced back by the spiders and orcs. Undead. Wights and Spectres. Shadows. Forced back by orcs and giant spiders. I guess when you die you lose your will to live? I’m here all week folks. Anyway, get to stabbing, cause non-magic fire clears 10’ of web per turn. The wood itself is four miles by eight miles. I’d just burn them all out, but, timber resources blah blah blah, I guess.

I am somewhat disappointed by this entry in to AA. Ignoring our pussy undead, there does tend to be a lot of stabbing and not a lot of exploring in this. You’ve got just a couple of opportunities to talk to shit, mostly unmotivated undead who can energy drain. Other than that this is going to be a VERY stab heavy adventure. There’s a random room thing or two, think Deck of Many Things, but those feel out of place. And, there;s no real order of battle, so just get to stabbing as almost everyone just dies in their own rooms. There’s a comment or two about the spiders being arrogant, so I guess that’s it. 

But the adventure has some ideas that are ok, especially in decor. There’s ye olde bottomless pit in a room, and it’s got leering demon statues around it, peering down in to it. Hey, that’s pretty good! If I had a bottomless pit I’d put those in. Well, no, I wouldn’t, but when someone else suggested it I would KNOW I fucked up and that they fit PERFECTLY the vibe of the room. And if you squint hard then this is not altogether uncommon in the adventure. Some of the trappings, or room set ups are not terrible. A couple of giant spiders in a room, sisters, who always bicker with each other. Noice! You’re just gonna stab them and the bickering will be mocking the party (a lot of spiders like to mock the party. A lot of spiders gonna die. Seems like a flaw in the spider … forbrain?) not any sort of REAL human-ish connection with the party. 

The language used just doesn’t make the scenes stick. The demons around the pit thing isn’t really sold well. These are, I guess, fact based descriptions. “The remnants of someone flayed, probably alive, are in the center of the room. The remnants are not recent and seem to have been undisturbed.” Ok. Sure. As the end all be all of a room description? (I’m omitting a scrawled message, but thats it.) They just are not sold at all. I will readily admit that ths the hard part of writing. Making someone feel something. And, yet, in a world in which every adventure ever is available, and AI’s (human or machine …) churn them out at ten a day, you’re going to need to to a good job to rise above the slop. 

And this is in spite of long sections of text. I’m not really sure how its done. I’m not sure how you can have such long sections of text and NOT have a decent description. When I looked at the first page of wilderness encounters my eyes kind of glazed over and I sighed. Take a second wind and get that pointer ready to mark my place and go through it. It’s not really padded out, in the traditional manner. Maybe, it takes two or three sentences to communicate, in a far lesser way, what one good sentence could? That, and the small font, do certainly make one spectre-like. No will to live. Sapp’d. Sucked right out of you. Get it?! Get it?! I Stalkered late last night and am slap happy. 

“SHRINE: Formerly a shrine to some obscure demon lord, this has been converted to one to the Spider Goddess. The depictions of the demon lord and his cult have all been desecrated, damaged, or destroyed. Now, a crude wooden statue of a great black spider sits at the west end” Sure, I guess so. Meh. But, then also, there’s a room with a vampire dude in a giant bell jar. “Its charm ability will work through the glass, but there are no rats or bats for it to summon.” CAUSE ITS FULL OF SPIDERS!!! There’s a little bit of thought here. It’s just leaning more to the trivia side of the house (while still being relevant) than I think it needs to be.

It’s an ok adventure. I don’t like the degree of stabby stabby. I get that assaults are a thing, but a simple room by room stab is a little dry. The descriptions are not top notch. I would not want to try and run it. But, also, some people like these things and it’s not TERRIBLE. 

This is $6 at DriveThru. The preview is six pages. You get to the wood journey and some of the upper dungeon rooms. It’s a good preview. I’d take a look at it if you are at all interested in buying it. If you’re ok with the presentation and content of the rooms then it may be for you.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/503141/advanced-adventures-46-the-dismal-glade-of-the-spider-goddess?1892600

By Daniel Harila Carlsen
Mudnight Media
Knave
Levels 1-3

Crimson Creek, a scenic slope up a young mountain. Your adventure starts of in a familiar, almost homely fashion. There’s a hamlet, home to quirky villagers with mundane problems. But every trail you follow will take you deeper down into the meat of the mysteries, scandals, and unusual horrors hidden under the red moss.

This 24 page hex crawl presents seven hexes in a dark whimsyish environment of orphans and necromancers. It mostly hits the technical aspects, but is just weird for the sake of being weird, and shows, with low stakes being the result.

I watch some horror but I tend to not watch the ones with demons and ghosts. There is a tendency amongst those to have No Rules. The demon/ghost can do whatever they want whenever they want. Knowing this, it’s hard for to buy in and attach. Whats the point of attachment and/or caring if the game world rules just don’t make sense at all? 

It should be obvious where I’m going with this. The technical aspects of this adventure are relatively decent. It’s laid out fine. The whitespace and bullets are mostly ok and the language, while strained at times, does an ok job. The pink/red shit that it uses as color is a little busy, in my opinion, but it’s not a no go. But the problem is one of tone and/or understanding what a D&D adventure is. 

The adventure just does shit. “Bully Dregbuck, miserable ratcatcher. Spine replaced with an untuned accordion. Hates rats. Can’t sneak, stalk, or hunt. Got kicked out of the graverobbers guild. Followed by his one-eyed cat, Astrid. Carries rat-stabbing spear, traps, chewing tobacco, catnip.” So, dudes got an accordion for a spine. The adventure has told us, up front, that theres this dude who is replacing peoples parts with prosthetics. I think that word means something else though. An accordion for a spine seems somewhat different. As does a tub for a head. As does a wood stove for a stomach. 

This is the world that this adventure takes place in. I don’t see how you can adventure here. In a world in which there is no logic AT ALL then all actions are as likely to succeed as fail. Just stab your friend to do damage to the monster, because I mean, there’s no indication that you should NOT, right? 

And this fucking does this, over and over again. And it does it while also tossing in shit like “Grimspoon’s Home for Bastardly Children” as the name of an orphanage. That’s not bad. It’s like, I don’t know, Series of Unfortunate Events turned up to eleven. But then it also, in all seriousness, has a black bear in a point hat in the tavern, on stage, playing the bagpipes. 

And this shit extends to most aspects of the adventure. “Garden: An overgrown shrubbery of

thorns (d4 damage). A small skeleton can be found deep inside” This is meaningless. It has no impact on the adventure. It’s just some bit of trivia thrown in. And a HUGE part of the adventure is this trivia.  

If I were to write “A kklsdfkjhd is sdkljfhsdkjfh here.” then you’d, rightfully, be wondering what the fuck what was going on. You have no basis for running this. There is not context to help you figure this out. Ok, so, what about a human face, no longer attached, that now shits coins. It’s not a head. It’s explicitly a face. Not attached. Eating corpses and shitting coins. There’s just not enough here to do something with. “A printing block of flesh.” Uh, ok. “A grandfather clock that records the history of the universe.” Uh. … ok. 

This is the standard nineteen hex flower. Seven are populated. It takes 24 pages to do that. The titular Crimson Creek makes no appearance in the adventure. And there is just nothing here that matters. The world rules don’t matter. The words looks like they were randomly generated and then pieced together in to an adventure. It’s Porky in Wackyland. There is a semblance of plot, with necro dude making monsters who have escaped, but that’s it. 

Is this the kind of work you’d like to do?

This is $9 at DriveThru. There’s no preview. Else you wouldn’t buy it, silly goose!

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/504571/the-curious-creeps-in-crimson-creek-revised?1892600

By Danilo Frontani
Hellwinter Forge of Wonders
OSE
Levels 2-4

Until two hundred years ago, Brightmoore Manor stood as a beacon of splendour and harmony. It was home to the noble Lord Faulken Brightmoore, his enchanting elven wife Lady Narielle, and their children. But envy and fear of mortality twisted Lord Faulken’s heart, leading him toward forbidden magic and unspeakable sacrifice. Now, the manor is a shadow of its former glory, shrouded in a curse. Somewhere beneath its decaying halls lies the Orb of Souls, a malevolent artefact that feeds on life itself. The adventurers are the final piece of this haunting tale. Can they unravel the secrets of Brightmoore Manor, break the curse, and end Faulken’s ritual before his ultimate ascension — or will they, too, be consumed by the darkness within? Enter the manor, uncover its horrors, and face the price of immortality!

This 36 page adventure uses about twelve pages to describe 22 rooms in a ruined manor house. It’s going for a Spooky Haunted House vibe. The writing and interactivity are quite poor though and it comes off as a forced effort.

I am clearly missing some piece of pop culture knowledge, either in film or fiction. The large number of adventures featuring some person in an abandoned manor collecting souls/making sacrifices towards some demonic-laughter-end can only mean that there is some famous book or Hammer film that I never caught on to. In any event, this this another in that genre. Old decrepit mansion and 99 people need to die inside of it and 95 have died when the party shows up. 

There are a couple of the usual things to talk about with this, but before I do that I want to focus on one of the hooks. I know that a decent number of people don’t care about them, but, also, I want to use one of the adventure hooks as a note on human behaviour and the suspension of disbelief/verisimilitude. One of the hooks here has the region being abandoned and settlers moving back in to the area. Everyone knows about the house but “no one has yet dared approach it.” This is not human nature. Everyone has dared approach it. _I_ would approach it. Jewels? Gold coins? And that’s in a world without magic carpets and djinni in lamps running around.  A draft adventure I saw once has villagers knowing that their kids were in an abandoned house, and yet they hired the party to go in. Nope. That’s not human nature. They mob up and go in. Maybe a bunch of them get killed, but they mob up and go in after their kids. This outright blatant ignoring of the way humans work is So distracting in an adventure. Sure, we all want to play D&D tonight so we ignore it. But the word verisimilitude runs around the RPG circles, and the OSR circles in particular, so much for a reason. It puts the players in the game in a play that is invaluable. Getting the players investment, instead of the characters, is so much more valuable to a rewarding game.

Ok, so, old manor house. Doors slam shut and lock behind you when you enter. And, also “All the doors and windows leading outside are magically locked and impossible to open or pick.” So, we’re off to a strong start here. Also, no mention of burning the place down. Not that any of that really matters, because thee’s no description of the manor as you approach. You looking for a backdoor? A veranda? Widows walk? Old well nearby? How about ANY description of the house AT ALL from the exterior? Nope. We just start out on room one. I find it hard to believe that this was ever playtested; those notes would HAVE to come back. 

A feature of the adventure is the clock in the first room. It counts the souls, on its way to 99 and the looming evil about to be unleashed. A centerpiece of the adventure with a section all its own, we get this magnificent description of the adventure cornerstone “7’ tall, is made of wood except for its single hand, crafted from an unrecognisable black metal.” Revel in the opulence of its description! Now that’s what I call music! But, let us not cherry pick! “As soon as the last PC crosses the threshold, the heavy

entrance door slams shut behind them. From this moment on, the curse of the Orb of Souls prevents the adventurers from leaving the house. There is no light within the manor. Frescoes depicting rural scenes adorn the walls. Two curved staircases lead to a balcony on the upper door. To the east and west are two large doors. Between the staircases stands an enormous clock. Two skeletons are seated, slumped against the wall near the entrance door“ The skeleton thing isn’t bad. Slumped is a good word. The rest of the description though is just a dry factual description of the room that fails to give us the vibe that the adventure is so desperate to communicate: creepy haunted house. 

The houses interactivity falls in to two categories. Either something creepy happens or you need to stab something. There is VERY little other than that. A rooms window is dirty ”: If the PCs attempt to clean it, the face of a young human girl appears for a brief moment.” I’m going to excuse the if/then clause, but I still think it should be rewritten to remove it. Anyway, that effect is irrelevant. Its just meant to be creepy. And so, so many of the encounters are just that. “Bed: Finely crafted; the mattress appears sagged, as though someone is resting upon it. When the PCs move away from the bed, they hear a faint, mournful whisper saying: «Free me!».” Sure thing buddy. 

In another room the floorboards are weak! “If they fail, they must save vs paralysis when moving through the room; on a fail, the oor collapses under their feet, and they can’t move for 1 round” Yeah, You don’t actually fall through or anything. I note that in Strahd, in the appendix starting adventure, my kids used their crowbars to go through the floor to get to the hidden basement instead of going all the way to the fucking railroad attic to get there. In another place, the kitchen, there’s a sink. If a “PC dips a hand in the water, a skeletal arm grabs it and begins to pull it in, trying to drown them.” I don’t even know how that works. The sink is … eight feet deep? Four feet deep? I mean, good energy here. Creepy. But how the fuck does that work with a kitchen sink?

I could go on and on with the irrelevance of the creepy stuff, but let’s cover combat. I’m pretty sure everything here is undead, as I recall. Almost all 1 HD with some 2 HD scattered in. If the baddie wakes up he’s 7 HD, so that a TPK, I hope four people don’t die inside the house before then. Anyway, 1 HD and 2HD undead. Do we all see the problem? What’s our level range again? Two to four? That an auto-turn at level 2 for 1 HD and and auto for ones and twos at level three, the midrange points.  I swear to fucking god, it’s like people have never played D&D before. 

So, no good descriptions. A mostly lack of interactivity beyond stabbing. The stabbing is vulnerable to clericing. Gimping the party and no real effort in creating a holistic environment to adventure in. But, hey, go hard on those production values, yeah? That’s a pass.

This is $3 at DriveThru. No preview is available.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/503147/the-house-of-99-souls?1892600

By Steve Gilman
Sundered Blade Games
S&W
Levels 1-3

Long ago, the kingdom of Aranure was lost in a war against the minions of Malak, the demon lord of hate. Pilgrims have recently repopulated this land in hopes of finding peace and an easier way of life. A farmer has gone missing from the village of Rockcrest, and heroes are needed to answer the call!

This twenty page adventure details a dungeon with nine rooms. It is the old wound my lord, full of loose writing in a conversational manner and full of backstory with nothing really going on except stabbing things. The bare basics, stretched out.

Ah, the days of old. When a ten year old adventure was new, and not hiding out on my bookmarks list. In between Stalker2, I’m cleaning things up in celebration of an upcoming anniversary. And this old gem fell out of my todo’s.

Let’s see here, we’re starting out on page five, always a good sign, with the village description. It’s your typical village. Nothing special. At this point you could just list businesses and their owners names, along with maybe a quirk, all Ready Ref Sheet style. It would certainly be much better than what we have here. A page of text. A page out of text out of any novel. Just words in some paragraphs. No attempt at reference material at all. Just dig through to find whatever you want.

The adventure has a farmer go missing. His wife says he was watching little creatures go in and out of an old mine. Uh huh. Inside we find goblins, hobgoblins, and giant rats. And, of course, the farmer still alive. Can’t be heroes without rescuing someone, yes? Bad form to have the goblins stopping his brains out with spoons while he’s still alive. They would make them demon worshippers or something. Oh. Wait. They ARE demon worshippers in this adventure? Frankly, I think I would make a MUCH better demon worshipper than 99.9% of the demon worshippers I see in these adventures. I’m a think outside the box kind of guy. You think your demon lord wants some morons worshipping him, bestowing power upon, or you think he wants the dude who isscopping out still living brains with a spoon?

Anyway, nine rooms in the dungeon, about a third or so empty. Oh, wait, before I get to hat, there are some wilderness encounters. You knowhow I love those, right? Here’s the DM notes for one f them. This is the complete notes, I’m not cherry picking here. “Long ago, this graveyard was a resting place for the early people of Aranure. Through many years of disuse, the graveyard has become overgrown, and something sinister has awoken the dead here. The skeletons here are of the long dead, but the zombies, with their flesh still intact, must have been more recent deaths.” Yup, just getting attacked by skeletons and zombies. Nothing more. With a lot of padded out text. Nothing more. Nothing evocative. Nothinginteresting about the combat,

And the dungeon is the same way. Worse? Rooms have monsters, right? Not according to the read-aloud. So, maybe we can forgive that. The read-aloud in one room concentrates on some statues in the room. And then the DM test tells us all about the status And ,then, at the very bottom, that there are, like eight goblins and four giant rats in the rooms as guards. NO! NO! No! NO! No! No! We put the most important things first. That might be the status, that the th party see, but then it’s almost certainly the screaming goblin hoard. Yes? “This room was once a dining hall, but all that remains of the old furniture is some rotted and broken wood.” Then how do we know it’s a dining hall? HThta’s read-aloud, if memory serves me correctly. Why is it a dining hall?

There is nothing here but combat, It’s the goblin caves from B2, expanded to twenty pages. Except with WAYYYY less treasure. Good luck leveling. Also, the titular shrine, the dungeon, is one room with some chaos goblins in it. Have fun.

This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru with a suggested price of $2. The preview is five pages and shows you the town. Enjoy that.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/147743/the-shrine-of-sruukor-swords-wizardry?1892600

By Robert Alderman
Pulp Hummock Press
OSE
Level 1

On the arctic frontier, at the border between the mountains and the wastes beyond, looms Castle Thar-Gannon. For centuries, the Skull God ruled his domain from his blackened throne. But 20 years have passed since the routing of his armies, and now the castle lies abandoned with riches unclaimed. Yet, death still lurks in the shadows of the ruins. An ancient doom arises from the depths of this place…

This 482 work of hubris describes a city, wilderness hex crawl, and five dungeons in the frozen north, all working towards an end-of-the-world adventure path. Excellent worldbuilding, pretty decent hexes, and absolutely no understanding beyond a 3e level of what an adventure is, in design or formatting.

I’ve been reading this and ruminating on it for a week now [ed: a week and a half now.] I’m not sure what to think. Well, no, I do know what to think: there’s no way in fucking hell I’d ever run this and only a masochist would read this for fun. But the worldbuilding is there and it’s got some interesting parts to it.

We’re gonna ignore the lengthy backstory for the most part. There’s this void-worm thing devouring the world, evil sorcerer king who rules the land goes away, settlers move in. Ultimately this appears to be a kind of adventure path. The adventures all kind of lead to each other and its all leading to this sorcerer king reappearing and the void worm thingy in volume three, I suspect. To that end we’ve got a city homebase described, a bunch of wilderness rules/tables, a hex crawl, and about six interconnected dungeons that get to level four or five by the end. And that’s all gonna take FIVE. HUNDRED. PAGES.

I don’t know these people. But they put out FIVE HUNDRED PAGES. I could never do that. They put it out in a way that looks like an adventure. For some definition of “layout” and “editing”. Those things were done to a level that, at first glance, seems chill. I’m going to be very critical of this thing. But, the folks involved did a professional job on it, for some definition of that word. Just not the “Adventure” definition of it. 

The worldbuilding here is great. I mostly ignored the lengthy backstory, so I didn’t pick it up from there. But the individual locations and encounters, those do have a way of building on each other. There are elements of mystery and hinting at things in them that is excellent. It leads to wonder and be excited. (This is complimented, in places, by the art. There are some pieces, at times, that do a great job at giving a sense of scale. Cyclopean, the way you imagine Moria but few can capture. It’s a small percentage of the art, but those pieces are GREAT.) 

This penchant for worldbuilding is interesting. I wondered frequently if this was an over-investment in, perhaps, a home campaign. Whatever the case, the worldbuilding and the hex crawl combine to produce some stellar outcomes. If you think about it a bit, the qualities overlap a lot. You’re trying to build something interesting, a citation, in a hex crawl encounter. And yet you need to keep it somewhat short; you’re doing scores of them in a typical hex crawl, at a minimum. And the hex crawl here is memorable because of that, the combination of worldbuilding, and its associated flavor for real and hinted at, and the quickness of the hit and ability of the DM to then riff off of it. 

“The domed Shrine of Taggarik looms over the desolate mountain wastes like a tomb. This structure of ice and stone is carved into the side of a windswept peak. Its entrance archway has been marked with two square pillars etched in swirling symbols.” Inside is a giant ice throne with a cyclopean figure seated on it, surrounded by trophies. “They are both a source of incredible pride and agonizing shame.” Saumen Kar. So, demon, pride and shame, goes on benders sometimes and terrorizes the countryside till he chills out. Talks to the party a bit probably.Some of the trophies are malnourished young children frozen in ice.It seems one of this favorite pasttmie is tormenting a nearby village full of orphans. He killed at their parents. They worship him for food and sacrifice of their number to him. It’s all they know, there is no other worldview for them (I’m describing two hexes here, the demon shrine dome and the orphan village.) Escape? The wilderness outside has the 12 Black Wolves of the Garngat. Do I know what that is? No, but it sounds fucking awesome, yeah?!  And I’m leaving a decent amount of awesome shit out!

Also, the demon is fifteen hit dice. Also, JUST the demon dome, and it’s one room, go on for two pages. His stat block takes up a column. Did I mentioned the three eight HD golems? Levels 1-4! The demon, the nearby village, there are situation here. And that’s what a hex crawl should be. And they are flavourful as all fuck. But the designer CANNOT shut his fucking mouth. This is one of the more critical flaws in the adventure. Dude will NOT shut up. I am not wading through three pages of text to run a fucking encounter. NO ONE is going to do that. This this five hundred page adventure is something that get read, and might get purchased, but will not get played. Is that what the designer really wanted? Adventure writing is technical writing. You need to communicate just enough. You need to inspire the DM to take what you’ve written and run with it. But it needs to be terse, so they can scan it at the table and run it. You can’t run a fucking encounter if you have to stop the game for ten minutes to read it first. The phone come out. The players lose interest. Write terse. Write evocatively. Leverage the fact you’re got a DM to riff on what you’ve them. Specificity, not detail. Hint at backstory. Leave room for wonder. That adds so much to mystery and the flavour of a game. But this ENDLESS droning on and on … Man, a quick hit on how to run an NPC that the party meets can last a column. 

The books credits imply that a lengthy cutting of text was involved. It wasn’t enough. And the layout and formatting were NOT up to the task of managing such a huge word count. Our starting city a fucking mess. It is close to being a generic-ville (and, in fact, I’d say the theme of the Northlands is generally lost, in spite of lengthy sections on terrain, weather, and the natives. It just doesn’t come through.) There are some brief moments in the town that are ok. The gate guards of the “wealthy” gate turning people away to other gates. A weird obsession with hookers appearing throughout. (I think maybe every word on that 1e DMG table was used here?) But there IS the kind of specificity, in places, that cement a locale and help bring it to life. It’s just surrounded by a MASSIVE glut of words that obfuscates anything interesting. And forget about finding anything during play. Your ability to locate a specific tavern or, say, a tavern in general, is going to be close to nill. It’s just a stream of text with very little overriding organization behind it and WAY too many words for each item. 

As for the first adventure,  “An innovative feature of this mega-adventure is the step-by-step character creation process packed into the starter quest’s beginning.” *GROAN* Ok, sure, but I can live with that. WHat’s harder to live with the generic “throw in every trope possible” for this first adventure. A pickpocket chase?! A guard captain with a job?! A LONG ass tavern section? “The heroes awaken next morning, eat breakfast at the inn—eggs, goat’s milk, and a hot helping of caribou sausages—and get ready to explore. It is an overcast day outside without rain” *groan* “When ready to continue, read or paraphrase the following text aloud to your players:” The designer, editor, and layout never saw a word or turn of phrase they didn’t think to include in the adventure. This first one is just tropes and has none of the characteristic flavour found in other sections. You do get to tell the guard captain to put a homeless kid to death though. Also, kid has 95gp and a full weeks worth of food costs 5gp, so … 

Anyway, in the middle fof this mess of a third adventure, here’s some typical text “Second Wave. Zarcand expends his word of bones ability to summon 4 loam gauntsA. The gaunts burst out from under the muddy road pavers and rise from the earth. This creates muddy groundC hazards in their wake. The battlefield is getting treacherous! Zarcand directs the undead to attack the amulet wearer and his allies. The gaunts claw at heroes locked in melee and loam lob everyone else” The battlefield is getting treacherous!  And you can see from this an emphasis on these battlefield tactics. Terrain restrictions. Long stat blocks. MOSTLY combat. This is 3e. More than a few of the rooms have “It attacks!”, as the dungeon exists only for combat, it seems.

The first dungeon is this weird death trap puzzle. It’s got a nigh unstoppable enemy and poison gas at the end, so you work your way through this tomb and then run for freedom.  Then there’s this raid on a slavers stronghold, with two islands and “The Guzzler”, a literally unkillable enemy on the second one. The monster as a muzzle, so to speak, or obstacle. There’s a barrow that’s pretty simple and then a lighthouse like thing, a tower. The first, in particular, is pretty overwrought with text with things settling down a bit in the others, but, still, I don’t know how I would run slavers island assault as written. There’s some REALLY good details in places, like grasping hands coming out of a door, but it ALL runs on for far too long. And, to no good end. It’s not the worldbuilding, its the conversational tone. Almost every undead is a generic one with no soul to them. That’s really too bad. It’s just there to stab.

This is clearly a heartbreaker. I suspect volume two, already out, is more of the same. EXCELLENT worldbuilding. But a 3e style of dungeon and, more than that, the dungeon AS a puzzle, as a whole. That’s a little too perfunctory for me. There’s a slavish devotion to format/layout even where it doesn’t make sense. WAY too many words, three paragraphs are used when two sentences would be much better. This IS a real adventure, but I don’t see how you can run it without a stupid amount of prep. And I can buy something else, far cheaper, that will be far easier to run and even more fun.

This is $35 at DriveThru. The preview is nineteen pages. It shows you nothing of the dungeons, or the town, so you’ll have no way of figuring out if the content is for you. Just that someone paid for layout.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/451792/gods-of-the-forbidden-north-volume-1?1892600