The guardian of the Shrine of Ismene has been slain! The cries for vengeance ring out! Will you aid in this noble deed or take the opportunity to pilfer the now unguarded treasures of the shrine?
This seven page adventure presents six rooms in a nerid shrine. While fine from a comprehension standpoint, it is aimless in its design, with nothing really going on … in spite of there being something going on.
Ohs nos! The spring in the middle of town has dried up … like thirty minutes ago! It comes from the little shrine next to it where a nerid lives. She must be pissed at the village! Lets send in some hobos! Inside we find an adventuring party in one of the rooms with a giant snake head and a nerid in another room cradling a dead giant snake, sans head. You can, also, if you want, go find the nerids treasure vault that the adventuring party was also looking for.
I’m not really sure what the point of all of this is. And that’s coming from a pretty hard core exploratory guy who doesn’t really need pretext. EVentually the nerid stops being a whiny little botch and goes and kills the other party. The other party is friendly but standoffish, according to the adventure. Great. What the fuck am I supposed to do? Kill the nerid? Kill the party to avenge a giant snake? I don’t give a fuck about any of this. I guess the other party are bad guys and I’m supposed to see that and help the nerid? And, no, I’m not buying that “open ended movie ending” thing here. This is just something else. A dragon in one room that will leave in an hour to go to another room and kill the balrog that is in that room. Ok. And?
The nerid is a woman with lightly blue skin. Also, she MIGHT have a fish head. It doesn’t SAY she has a fish head in the initial description. “At the edge of the pool is a slightly blue-skinned woman on her knees clutching a 15 f long headless serpent” Ok, so, if she had a fish head you’d think that would go in the initial description, right? But, then, in the follow up it says “The blue-skinned woman is Ismene, the fish-headed Naiad.” Ok, so, I guess she does have a fish head? And, in the same room, the designer felt that telling us how to tread water in a pool in the room was more important than telling us about the omwan in the room, with or without the fish head. The most important things should come first. We don’t put trivia first.
Did I mention the magic item that can teleport water at thirty gallons a second? It’s a waterskin. You fill it from like the ocean, and then when you open up the stopper it will teleport the water you filled it from at a rate of THIRTY gallons a second. Jesus! H! Fucking! Christ! What the fuck man! Isn’t that like one of those “cutting water” things they use in metalwork or something?
The credits say that, in credit the playtesters: “No one yet!” I can believe that.
An aimless dungeon.
This is Pay What You Want at Itch.io, with a suggested price of $1.
Durgam’s Folly sits at the edge of the kingdom, an embattled outpost against the evil creatures of the wild. You travel with a caravan to that distant fortress, transporting mysterious cargo. But as you approach your destination, something is amiss. A local hamlet is in ruins. Strange creatures patrol the land. Has the famed fortress finally been overthrown?
This 32 page adventure uses six pages to describe about fifteen rooms in a golem dungeon under an ogre fort. It most resembles long winded hucksterism making a cash grab through stabbing.
Step right up folks! I have the most amazing wonderful adventure ever to show you! From the hands of Bill Barsh and Mike Mearls, two renown names in the D&D industry! Never again will you see the like of this, the Necromancer dude and Mearls of WotC! This is hours and hours and hours of fun for your entire group! Your friends will laugh and have an excellent time! Your kids will bond with you, though they be teenagers, and you’ll get to have the relationship with them that you always wanted! Yes sir, all thanks to this little adventure here! You know, you watch those old timey western movies and you see the snake oil salesman in town and you wonder, how can anyone fall for that? A golden age! Real medicine that did real things making an appearance! And the notable and famous lending their names to make a buck, though they be past their prime, you can still memberberry it. Welcome to the OSR version of Paizo, where we write for an adventure to be read and make some money. You can search for the meaning behind all of this, though the search itself is more important than the meaning.
Ok, you are level six caravan guards. Your boss is a 4MU and the dudes are mostly 1HD guards. You get treated like shit. At what point does the party NOT have to be caravan guards anymore? At what point can they get a little respect? This is why I so often turn to the knife. Once the DM kills my family 23 times I no longer care. ANyway, after being degraded by the caravan boss you arrive at a village which looks peaceful but in which everyone has been killed. You see ogre tracks and out of the kindness of your heart you track them back, having a couple of monster encounters on the way, to a fort. The top level has ogres in it and you kill them and then go to the dungeon level, which is mostly linear, and kill golems till you’re bored.
I really cannot emphasize enough the overwhelming amount of text in this adventure. That is combined with a lack of any meaningful formatting and a painfully small font. It takes the adventure three LONG paragraphs to explain that there ARE hooks, before it actually gets to the hooks. The caravan boss gets a half column of information and backstory. The other guards gets some also, though less. EVERYTHING here has a backstory. “Two nights ago, a group of ogres led by Grimulak silently crept up on Hansonburg and murdered every last one of its inhabitants. Using his invisibility and polymorph self abilities, Grimulak easily disposed of the guards before leading the ogres into town. Under the Grimulak’s iron-fi sted command, the ogres methodically moved from house to house, killing the inhabitants in their sleep and quickly running down and killing those who tried to escape.” This is not written for a DM to run. This is written for someone to buy and read. It’s that kind of shit everywhere. The ogre you find in the wilderness has a full backstory on why he is where he is and how he got drunk and so on and so forth. A demon, in the dungeon, that you can free gets four fucking paragraphs. Four paras! How much fucking text do you need?
And then, with ALLLLLL that detail and backstory, we get shit like this in the read-aloud “The tension of the journey is shattered by shouts from up ahead. A guard under Uli’s command at the front of the caravan gallops toward you, shouting that Uli has tracked down an ogre responsible for the sacking of Hansonburg.” This generic and lacking in the specificity in bringing things to life. So, both exceptionally long winded AND boring. And the room descriptions follow this same line as well. Lots of text and yet no really evocative environments. There is a pretty good art piece in it showing some decent body horror/borg building, but nothing compared to it in the text to even give the semblance of it. It engages, over and over again, in telling instead of showing.
One of the absolute most interesting of bad choices is how the fort is handled. This is an old fort now full of ogres. Over the course of three or so pages we get like 25 rooms described to us. Short, boring rooms. It’s done in almost a completely different style than the dungeon rooms, below, as if it were a different author. But, anyway … there are no monsters. Not in any room. One room has some human prisoners in it, but thats all. Instead, at the end, we get a page or so that tells us where the ogres are. They hang out in room sixteen. They are also in room seven. A group patrols the courtyard. This is absolutely insane! Why would you do this? Why would you not just put the ogres in the rooms in the key descriptions?! I get that having a separate order of battle is nice. A little section (Ha! Not in this adventure!) that you can easily reference when the infiltration inevitably turns to a raid. Fine. But to put ALLof the monster locations on the first level in what is essentially an appendix at the end of the level description? What possible purpose is there for this?! I’m not fucking making this up. This is the FULL tetx of room seventeen: “STORAGE ROOM This plain stone room looks as if it once held many kegs of ale, judging by the patterns of dust on the floor and walls. Four kegs stand clustered in the southeast corner of the room. This room was used as a storage area. The ogres have gone through most of the supplies that were kept here.” Got it? The text at the end of the level one keyes tells us that there are five ogres there.
Otherwise, you enter rooms and stab things. I guess a couple of times you can free prisoners. yeah.
This is $13 at DriveThru. There is no preview. It’s just $13 for the Frog God/Mearls combo.
What was once a sprawling expanse of magical innovation is now a few scattered buildings covered in muck. Yet, the magic these ancient folk wielded can still be found throughout. It weaves through everything in this forsaken stinking bog. Explorers come from far to sift through the ruins and try to pry open the cold stone doors. Some succeed, cracking open the old tombs to find contraptions, spirits, and long-lost knowledge. Giant reptiles and relentless insect await those who visit, and others lurk out there in the sodden landscape. Beings of power, cruelty, and deception. To come across them is to come across death, or worse. Deep in the swamp stands a cathedral looming over the fetid vestiges. There the Abbot waits.
This 32 page adventure presents seven encounters with “tombs” in a swamp, with a quest giver in one to get you going. It’s not the greatest framing for an adventure, and the descriptions can be cringe at times and generally overstay their welcome by quite a bit.
The Legion of Gold is the Gamma World module I grew up with. I believe that part two is the exploration of the bunkers. A bunch of underground bunkers,maybe four rooms each, that you break in to and explore and find, like eight or ten different things going on. Empty. Travellers, batt-like Obbs. This thing has the same energy as that. While labeled a hex crawl it is really just seven one or two room locations with some shit going on in each. Even with spreads involved, 32 pages seems like a bit much.
There are a couple of empty hexes, two, I believe, to be exact, in the nine hex map. And, along with those, is a table to help fill them with something. “Complications” the adventure calls them. “A dead explorer floats by, covered in leeches.” Well, ok. Nice window dressing, I guess, but not really a complication? More interesting, it has an option to have other explorers around when you visit the locations. “Crawling over Everything” is the heading. 1-4 more explorers are running all over the same place you are, rolled for in each hex! That’s kind of an interesting approach to things. There’s also nothing to them beyond that; I would have enjoyed a simple list of fuckwits and their issues.
Taking a look at what I think is the read-aloud, we get things like “These heavy stone doors have stood open for centuries and are the only thing that indicate this is anything more than a pile of rubble. A foul smell wafts out from the dark passageway ahead.” I’m always down for a good rank wafting smell. But, stood open for centuries and the only thing that indicates are both conclusions. And conclusions should generally be kept out of descriptions. We want a description that leads the PLAYERS to think “wow, that doors stood open for centuries.” This is the very basics of showing instead of telling. You’re telling us that the door has stood open for centuries instead of showing us that the door has stood open for centuries. (Also, shame on all those other explorers. They’ve been digging around here in swarms for centuries and haven’t mined these places for all their loot yet?! Pffft!) In another place we get this “The silence is painful. You have entered the heart of the Monastery. Whatever tales you have heard,
whatever gossip, you will now have to decide for yourself what is true and what is a lie.” Ok, sure man. We don’t use first person. And, as general life advice, listening to The Cure for awhile will help until you transition to a I Feel Love remix.
It suffers, as well, from the generic/agnostic syndrome. “A pouch made of a smooth material containing diamond dust” with no more details. General monster stats that are CLEARLY modeled on B/X, but then also obfuscated further to “unarmored” AC’s. This sort of aggressive genericism does nothing to help an adventure. Specificity is the soul of the narrative. If I’m buying a generic/agnostic thing then I’ve already made the decision to restart … why not help some?
And then there’s a GREAT bunker, err, I mean tomb? It’s got three great big giant stone heads next to each other, along with a great art piece. Along with the requisite strained read-aloud that ends with “The black hole in its neck draws you, calls to you even. With each step closer, the stench of a thousand rotten corpses is exhaled upon you.” I’m still down for the stench and I’m still NOT down for the first person description. However … all three mouths lead to doom. Two teleport you far away, effectively ending a PC’s career, at least for this evening, while the third just kills you. There is no hint. The draws you to it, and seeing another explorer enter a mouth when you enter … these encourage the party to take themselves out. I guess, as a one-shot at level one thats chill? Never get attached to your level one.
There are some great magic items in this though. The same abstraction that hampers many parts of the adventure works in the magic items favour. A magic eight ball like thing. A croc jaw as a sword, a tooth necklace giving you some animal-kin. Nicely done items with a touch of naturalism and mystery about them.
This is a pretty basic adventure. Just seven places to explore framed by the Abboot giving you quests to go find things in them. STrained read-aloud and a need to edit, along with a need to discover the BOLD key, would help comprehension and finding details quite a bit.
This is $5 at DriveThru. No preview. Booo! BOOOO!!!!!!
[…] Twenty years have passed and the boy Dagobert has become a man; cunning, cruel, and simmering with resentment. Gunthigis, re-married, prepares to celebrate the marriage age of his daughter. Dagobert plans to abduct his half-sister during the celebratory feast. To do this he has retained the services of Bleda, a wizard-for-hire. Unbeknownst to Dagobert, Bleda has an agenda all his own – an agenda delivered to him by the silver armband he bears and the vengeful spirit of Carvilius that pours a honeyed poison into his ear each night…
This 47 page adventure has the party assaulting a goth/brigand hill fort. It is rife with politics for the party to navigate, both in the pretext and the conclusions, with the main “adventure” being almost certainly quite the difficult slog. It is a more interesting raid than most.
Okey doke. The time is roughly 55AD in England, I think. Post-roman, Franks and some goths running around, although this could fit in to just about any D&D game. The local manor lord is looking for a husband for his eldest daughter and holds a tourney/fair that everyone is coming to, peasants, freemen, landowners, local neighbor lords and churchmen. He’s looking for someone to marry her off to and everyone is coming to show off. At he end a large man steps forth, declares he is the rightful heir to the manor lord, and a bunch of screaming goths come out of the woods and murder and kill A LOT. Meantime the brigand/heir dude kidnaps the chick and runs off to his hill fort. The party raids it.
And why do they raid it? Well, the local lord can’t appear weak. A frontal assault will weaken him and leave him open to his neighbors raiding him/taking his lands. But he has to do SOMETHING, but, also, he can’t have hired the party, that would be an affront to his honor and strength. So hush hush. Also, he does not mention his abducted daughter. “He does not mention Elke, and if asked, shrugs and states that “he has other daughters.” Ouch! That’s real politics! The neighbor, at the festival, wants the heir killed and the daughter returned to HIM. He’s playing the long game, marrying her and getting a child will give him the manor lords lands in time. Crafty SOB, eh? And the local Bishop? He wants the daughter killed and the heir returned to him. Where he will declare him to be the rightful heir and thus NOT weaken the local lands/bishops power in the area, which would otherwise fall to more decline if chaos erupts and the local manor lord, who he thinks is weak, prevails. You’ve got three separate outcomes the party can pursue.
What I like about this, both in the setup and in the conclusions, is the appeal to a larger environment. The party is getting lands and some social status in all of these scenarios, which puts them squarely in the next part of the D&D campaign, the build a stronghold portion. VERY rarely do you see this in an adventure and yet its present both here and in the previous adventure, ifI recall correctly. And, of course, you make enemies no matter which path you choose, to varying degrees. Thus we have context in the campaign that the DM can leverage going forward. I’m not sure ANY other adventure I’ve seen has put this kind of element in to an adventure in quite a good way. You’ve got a goal to pursue in the raid, not just a vengeance/justice raid. Justice, after all, goes to those that can enforce it.
We move now to the actual raid. The hill fort has about fourteen primary rooms with a lot of sub-rooms attached to that. So, something like “Jail cells might have six or so sub locations and so on. Under the fort is an old barrow with another thirty or so locations. The place is STUFFED. Actually, so is the raid on the fair. We’ve got forty goths and twenty wardogs and like ten level twos and a few others attacking. These are split in three groups so it’s not as bad. But in the fort you will routinely encounter lots of enemies. Five ogres. Thirteen mummies(!) And lots of men. Or, the lake with a thousand snakes in it … There is a little bit of faction play here, with the goths coming from three tribes and some varying loyalty that could be taken advantage of, though not easily and with little initiative to. Following on from the first adventure, the adventure notes levels two’s, but I suspect that, without a larger group of supporters, fours are going to have more options, just from the spells available, such as silence, to make a raid easier. In spite of this, it doesn’t come off as, say, unfair. We’re not doing linear battles with fixed opponents and so on. Stealth and smart play win the day, although, it brings to mind the admonition in certain older adventures that an adventure would be for experience PLAYERS, not experienced characters.
There is some good design here. “A wolf-headed altar here is dedicated to a Celtic death-god. Inside of the wolf’s mouth is the glint of silver” The ever popular (at least with me) tempt the players angle! Who wants to stick their hand in? And, in other places, a good scene or so. The heir, Dagobert is found “Dagobert lies in the light of a fading torch, face ashen. There is a dagger protruding from his chest and he clings to life tenuous” Noice! He can, if th party likes, join them for his revenge “and we’ll sort the rest out later.” And he does! I’m down!
The descriptions in the dungeons are not exactly wonderful. “Empty. Pauper’s graves line the walls, all old bones and rotting funeral-wraps.” or “An ancient gaol; rusted iron cells with wrist-thick bars. Zombified watchdogs lurk amidst the gloom and debris” I’m not exactly MAD at these, but they could use just a bit more to them. But, also, there are situations like this “Four gargoyles squat evilly and scowl at each other, an iron chest between them. Each offers the contents of the chest to anyone who will kill the other three gargoyles. It is a ruse; they will all attack if one is attacked” That just reeks of old school situations, although, again, the descriptions are lackings. Specificity, in things like 3 elf slaves, with not much else to them, could have been done better.
The formatting of the preamble is a bit rough also. Long paragraphs that could use some more formatting to call attention to things and organize the longer text sections better. More specificity int the rumors “Stay away from the forests to the west, across the river. A witch dwells there and
she’ll suck your soul dry if she catches you” would be nice. Mag Maggy or the like. And, the events at the fair come in their own section rather than in the sections of the contests. So, a description of all the contests and then an outcomes section at the every end of them all makes page flipping a requirement.
I have a decent number of reservations here. The raid is not bad, just not great. But the preamble and conclusions are very good, in situations if not in the formatting of them. A little more specificity, a little more … events? Situations? In the dungeon or the events would have really gone a long way here to lifting the whole thing up to the level I think it could achieve. It is absolutely worth checking out though just for how the political/larger game is handled, as inspiration for how to design and integrate your own game.
This is $5 at DriveThru. The preview is the entire thing, which is great! But you’ll need to dig deep to get the entire sense of it.
“Nicetius [the Bishop] reminds the player characters that Elke [the daughter] is a “loose end” that should be “tied up” to ensure a seamless succession for Dagobert.”
By Karla Adder Karla Adder Press OD&D Level ... 4?
At the base of the northern mountains, within the twisted ruins of a great subterranean fortress, the vicious Twilight Dragon – known to his slaves as Stallas the Great – has amassed a legendary horde of golden treasures and magical relics. From this fastness his armies of orcs, goblins, kobolds, and other monsters launch raid after raid on the civilized lands to the south. His Majesty the King, seeking to reclaim the lands his Imperial forefathers withdrew from generations ago, sees a chance to gain the loyalty of the North by defeating the draconic menace. But the dark and winding tunnels of Stallas’s treasure vaults are no place for a massed assault; such a task requires a team of specialists to infiltrate and systematically wear down the Dragon’s layered defenses. Thus, he has turned to the Adventurer’s Guild, offering the King’s seal and a commission in his army as a special reconnaissance squad tasked with defeating the dreaded foe. The reward? Fame, fortune, the favor of his Majesty – and all the treasure they can haul out of those miserable halls.
This 47 page adventure presents a three level dungeon with about a hundred rooms. It’s a dragons lair populated with an army of humanoids at his command. It’s got the B2 style of minimalism going on. It’s going for a quasi-military “raid on the lair” thing, complete with some guidance on using Chainmail in places.
The dragon has an army of humanoids and evil men. He’s been collecting tribute from the towns and villages of the north. The king has decided its time to reassert his claims to the north and thus sends in his army. The party acts as a kind of special forces group. Thus, in addition to the dungeon description you also get a couple of missions to go on. Assassinate general Whatsit, outside the dungeon. Raid it to rescue some prisoners. Clean out some nearby caves to act as a forward base for the kings army. And then do a full on wargame scenario to keep reinforcements from reaching the lair. You’re fighting goblins, orcs and kobold troops with some evil men and occasionally a beast such as a room with some harpy, beholder, basilisk, or ghouls in it. There is a notable section which contains “assorted other things”, the home of the future lawful forward base.
Your enjoyment of this is going to be influenced mostly by what you think of B2. This very terse minimalistic room style is common between the two of them. There is a room with a monster in it for you to fight. There is sometimes a pit trap or a scything blade trap. The monsters may run for help to the next room. The room contents, other than a stabby stab, are generally only VERY briefly covered, with a word or two. If you examine this room, does it leave you fulfilled? “Against the eastern wall a stone statue of the Twilight Dragon has been erected. The Kobolds have left offerings” We can say for sure that the terse descriptions, as well as the formatting present, make locating information easy enough 😉 If this is what you’re looking for then you’ve found it. I would have two comments though. The first is easy: I don’t think this is a good thing to do. The designer clearly had a vision and they implemented it. But, I would assert, we should expect more than that. The VERY terse nature of the rooms is done at the expense of evocative environments to adventure in. And while I am supportive of raid type adventures I think that they also offer a substantially reduced D&D experience than exploratory adventures. I’m willing to be told there is room for disagreement here, or, rather, to the size and frequency of such.
The more interesting discussion, though, is what a raid tyle adventure should consist of? What qualities make it good? The closest analogy I can come up with here is that to DCC and the fighters might deeds. You can’t swing from a chandelier if there is no chandelier. You cant kick over the boiling cauldron is there is no boiling cauldron. You gotta have something to work with. This is, I believe, an argument for interactivity in a fight/raid/stab adventure. The minimalism in the rooms doesn’t really lend itself to interesting combats. At most we’re told “theres a barricade”, but that’s it. The monsters reacting to parties incursion isn’t really covered much either, other than they might run to the next room to get help. And there’s not really anything in the way of faction play to turn them against themselves or to stick in some roleplaying. I’m not the biggest fan os 4e, but it did introduce the terrain and tactics stuff in a more organized form that helps bring more dynamic environments. Otherwise things devolve in to rolling to hit and damage over and over again. And that ain’t fun.
I have a few other complaints as well. Sometimes we don’t get a race for some of the named commanders. I guess the general of the orcs and goblins ais a human then? And some of the map stuff feels disconnected. I can’t really figure out how the “second caves” are supposed to work. It really feels like there’s an underwater portion, and there are (otherwise normal dungeon rooms) with a ships hull in them. In the middle of the dungeon? I can’t really figure out how this fits in to the adventure and the entrance to the main dungeon.
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention my way description in the adventure. It is, admittedly, VERY good. “Nearby are two half-consumed goblin corpses, wild dogs gnawing on what remains.” Ouchies! I’m still not sure that is what I’m looking for in a description, but it is certainly a whole fuckton closer! It has the energy of the orcs playing knucklebones, I guess. Which, while still not exactly the interactivity I’m looking for in an adventure it IS better than a simple hack room.
The designer specifically notes, in the adventure forward, that this is a hack adventure. Which is fine. Perhaps putting it in the product description would have been a better choice, so as to make an informed purchasing decision. They also note an explicit appeal to nostalgia. I’m not going to go too far down this road, but I reject those statements. A good adventure is a good adventure and mimicking a bad way of doing things (*clutches pearls*! Bryce judged a playstyle as bad!”) doesn’t make that an appeal to nostalgia. If that’s the goal then it needs to be accomplished while still explicitly being worthwhile. (And none of those “what is good” bullshit things there. You gotta be able to run it and it needs to be evocative and have interactivity.)
This is $7 at DriveThru. The preview is six pages. It shows you the map and encounters, so VERY good preview. I am disappointed by the lack of any level ranges though, for the party. You can also see that second set of caves, on the south, that gave me such problems understanding. The big thing running down the middle? The stairs up? I’m not sure. There’s not much context at all to the location of the entrance, except “a short flight of stairs leading up.”
By Christopher Travers Shadowroth press OSRIC Levels 6-8
In the town of Easthallow, all is not as it should be. The balance of magic has been disturbed. The townsfolk have an empowering but dangerous new habit. The dead rest uneasily wherever they lie, and it’s never been more relevant to be afraid of the dark.
This 48 page adventure is a small investigation that finishes with a raid on the assassins guild in a 32 room chateau, all with a drug addiction theme/pretext. When it leans in to that it hits well, but it doesn’t do that enough, doesn’t know how to edit itself, and relies far too much on the standard “stabby stabby stab” and munchkinism of using assassins.
When this thing is touching on addiction and despair it does a great job. It hits just he right tone with it, using it in a way to bring to the vibe things that the players should recognize, as well as a humanity to the despair. It’s going to be hard to relate in this review what it does, because its surround by so much dross. But the relatable parts of this, the parts that the players can empathize with and bring their own context to, those are good. And it manages to walk the line without it being exploitative.
Actually, let me back off the drug angle and go with Criminality with a drug pretext. There’s a new drug on the streets. The party gets called in for a disturbed grave … which has had a SECOND body buried on top of it. Covered in runes. Tracking it back to a noble family, it’s a spy they sent in to t local gang to track down some drugs that were impacting their estate. That small time gang gets their supply from the dudes in the chateau. Parts of that plot are done in a way that is really great, along with a lot of missed opportunities.
Let’s start with the rumour table. It has rumors ABOUT the party on it. “The party is responsible for the mysterious deaths in the village.” Of course! There are people disappearing and dying in the village/town. The party are outsiders. OF COURSE there are rumors about the party! This is that kind of “it makes perfect sense!” shit that I really get in to. When the content is relatable it is impactful.
Theres another part where, in the guild lair, you find the body of a middle-aged woman. Dead. She’s not important. Just someone that crossed them in a minor way. That’s sad. The brutalism or pragmatism. Maybe it woul dhave been a bit more impactful if wed seen her in town, after all, we don’t KNOW shes just a rando, and knowing shes just a minor rando is what brings the impact to this.
And that is going to be one of the major problems with this adventure. Well, no, it has a lot of problems that would make me never run this, but, at least with the implementation of its theme its a major problem, and since this adventure actually tries I figure the least I can do is actually comment on it. It has these REALLy great little things. Or, actually, little things that COULD be really great. But the players will never know about that lady. Just a rando middle aged woman who somehow fell afoul of the gang. Cheated them? Ranted in public? A junkie not paying or stealing? She lived across the street from a drug house? She looked at someone a fraction of a second too long? Well, shes been tortured to death now. And the second body in the grave thing. A naked body, tortured to death with sigils on it, buried on top of an existing grave?! But again, not really fleshed out enough to make a true impact. The local thugs, upon hearing of the grave thing and theparty, the ones who put the body there? They are cleaning up. The person who asked you to look in to it? Missing, along with their family. House accidentally catches fire. A message to the town. And making sure that secrets don’t go farther. GOLD! Brutal pragmatism. But also just an aside with no impact, a missed opportunity. The local priest dude in charge of the graveyard? When the body shows up he swears the man was obviously killed in some sadistic ritual or sexual depravity; the noble family is known for it!” (They’re not, but whos gonna investigate that?) Anyway, not enough of this ,and the stuff surrounding it.
What we do get is an adventure full of level 7 fights and level sic clerics and about a zillion four, five and six assassins and gish and … This is a level six through eight because … why? This could have been a great lower level crim adventure instead of a strained belief where every named assassin level shows up in some rando village.
The chateau hideout outside is described BEFORE the approach to the chateau is described. The uncle, who you go investigating the grave of, doesn’t ever get anything about him, even a name, other than The Uncle. It’s full of if/thens. The text is LONG PARAGRAPHS without much in the way of formatting and if full of first this happens and then this happened, interrupted only by LONG stat blocks that confuse the first this then this further.
There is some great window dressing here. Or, the potential for some great window dressing. But the adventure text is just a nightmare to dig through and I suspect your highlighter is going to go dry working this up. What you end up with with just a simple hack (with no order or battle to speak of) with a bunch of assassins and some gish popping up here and there. Which, frankly, is enough of a red flag for any adventure. If I made a dungeon where you had to save or die every twenty feet then would that be fun? “This room has four tarrasque. The next one has seven tarrasque.” I really liked some of the context ni which this adventure happens, but the actual encounters are not great, at all, nor is the way they are presented.
In ages past, an ancient town was lost and destroyed to a seige of orcs. Only one building survived and to this day, the manor is the only still standing building to be seen for miles around. Some say it is haunted, a few whisper of great treasures within, whilst others whisper that it is the manor itself that lives! No one knows for sure, only that a great evil haunts its halls. Do you dare enter Montarthas Manor?!
This sixteen page adventure presents 24 rooms in a two floor haunted house. If you liked the Dwimmermount chess players then this adventure is for you. Otherwise, it’s just a collection of what not to do in an adventure.
For [reasons] you are entering an abandoned manor home. You know the deal, tired old generic you were hired or you need a place to stay or it feels evil shit. You approach. There are front doors. You try to enter them but you cannot, in any way, open them. Then, as you turn to leave, the doors open with a creeeeaaakkkk. Welcome to this adventure, where the tropes are done childishly and the adventure is a railroad.
You are not adventuring here. You are EXPERIENCING this. Because it’s a railroad. It’s all telegraphed through a series of simplistic vignettes that tell you how to feel and what to think instead of showing you. There is the front door thing, it not opening until you turn your back on it after trying. Because a front door opening on itself with a creak is c00L! No mention of the doors, windows, roof, or anything else. YOU WILL DO AS THE DESIGNER INSTRUCTS YOU!! You want free will? You want to explore? You want some player agency? Fuuuuucccckck you! “A portcullis blocks the way up until the party has explored at least 5 rooms on the Ground Floor (in total)” It’s clear what is meant to happen. There’s no mention of the windows or roof or balconies or alfresco areas as entry points because that’s not how the adventure is meant to be experienced. I can, perhaps, get behind this. If this were some story game and not D&D. Write the fucking thing for a story game if you want to fucking story game. This is a shitty fucking D&D adventure. “Once the heroes enter the basement, the door slams shut and a noxious green gas begins to fill the room” Yes, I am fucking aware that this has happened in many an adventure. And it was bad then and its bad now. There have always been designers doing these shitty things.
And the prose. It is almost purple, and not for lack of trying. I suspect that if it could be it would “The looming black space behind the entryway stares menacingly at you, inviting you into its abode.” Ug, ok, so, second person. Never good. It tells you what to think instead of showing you, with that menacing word. And the room descriptions aren’t even god at all. It’s just barely a description, at all, with nothing evocative about them and sometimes the read-aloud telling you what to feel. It’s fucking weird.
The map is super simplistic. You can go right or left, down a hallway, with rooms hanging off of it. Oh, I guess you can dgo up one set of spiral stairs to the second floor. Where you can go right or left with rooms hanging off the hallway. And the kitchen is on the second floor?
Whatever. I mentioned the chess players. I don’t mean to keep crapping on it, but it was an iconic moment in the OSR. This thing has, I don’t know, eight chess player rooms? Meaning that there’s a hologram in the room that you watch and essentially has no impact on the adventure. There is the (required) ghostly dining room. If you do nothing they do not interact with you, or have anything to do with the adventure, just floating around. If you do then the host screams at you “You should not be here! Leave this place!” and then everyone disappears. Or, perhaps, if that’s too much interactivity for you: “A ghostly apparition is stirring an ectoplasmic load of dirty
clothes. She fades once the party attempts to interact or they enter the room.” This is not horror.
It’s padded out. “But the heroes must defeat it [ed: the monster] one way or another to retrieve the jeweled sword.” Yup, sure is. “This is the tea room. Where the residents drink tea and have refreshments.” Yup, that’s a tea room all right. The read-aloud over reveals details of the rooms. The adventure is DESIGNED to split the party. For “Atmosphere” purposes. I fucking HATE running splot parties. One group is always bored to death. I don’t know, maybe I don’t know how to run a split party.
The main baddie is a hag. You meet her in the last room to stab her. There are attempts to foreshadow, through the ghost vignettes and diaries, but her evil never really comes through. The more relatable evil is a little childs doll that does hit and uns on you when you reach the second floor. No description of it, of course. But it drops from the ceiling, stabs you with a knife and then teleports away … as a bonus action. A little uncool. More like a “take damage” situation. Don’t get me wrong, an evil little possessed doll with a knife and glinting eyes is, BY FAR, the best concept in this adventure. It’s just not handled well and doesn’t really have enough room to breathe. Also, you actually find the doll in room two, inert. If I found a doll like that I’d destroy it. No notes from the designer about that. It’s just a doll laying on a chair. Maybe its not the real doll? But I think the adventure says it is. It’s fucking weird. It doesn’t occur in the plot yet so it doesnt occur in the design yet, of course.
I leave you now with this read-aloud, the last thing in the adventure: “You manage to escape the falling manor, which has been the epitome of true evil. The night hag, Gertrude, has been defeated, the horrifying evil doll was removed from this world, and the undead have been laid to rest. You know not who the hag’s victim was, however, but they did leave you the emerald in their departure. Now, standing before you, are the piles of rubble and decayed remains of the manor; finally resting in peace. The night begins to grow old as the first hints of dawn start to creep over the horizon. Today is going to be a good day, well a better day, you hope”
This is $7 at DriveThru. The preview is three pages, with the last page showing you some rooms. If the entire preview were like that then it would be a good preview.
by J Lasarde Broken Rat Games System Agnostic Levels ???
The forest of Bleckdell is around a mile from the village of the same name. The forest has always been a part of village life, used for hunting, foraging, and other activities. The forest has also been the subject of rumours, stories, and dark tales, which most of the villagers either did not believe or felt were tales for children. Now something has changed. People who enter the forest never reappear, hunters are never seen again, and now the children of a respected farmer who went into the forest to forage for mushrooms have not returned. Something is amiss and brave adventurers are needed to help.
This sixteen page adventure uses three pages to describe about 26 ‘encounters’ in a forest. It is boring and has nothing to recommend it.
And thusly we come to another one of those “Bryce regrets all of his life choices” adventures. The adventure is generic, padded out, and poorly done. It’s not that it seems to be going out its way to be bad, as a great many do to lean in to some shitty design principal, but rather that it just doesn’t seem to want to do ANYTHING. In spite of it being in the OSR section, this has the hallmarks of the traditional Generic/Agnostic adventure, being too afraid to do anything specific.
The intro is the hook, you’ll get nothing more “People who enter the forest never reappear, hunters are never seen again, and now the children of a respected farmer who went into the forest to forage for mushrooms have not returned” I believe we call this missing white girl syndrome. If he was a poor farmer, or a hunter, or someone else we’d all just tell them to go fuck themselves, I guess.
Anyway, the hook doesn’t matter. What’s we’re looking at here is “the heart of the forest”, meaning some trails through the forest with some clearings to have encounters in. You walk through the “normal” forest for an hour and then get to the “thicker” dungeon map forest. The map, as presented, has no scale. The encounters are practically on top of each other. It feels almost like one of those “greater area” 4e tactical maps, you know, where the entire adventure is taking place on a 200 foot by 200 foot complex? Anyway, you wander around in the first having encounters until you get to the the one where you meet some dryds and the captured children in a clearing and then you can be a pussy and talk to them or you can cut them down like the dungeon scum they are.
Yes, I understand that seems like a rather harsh analysis of the situation. But, also “should the characters decide the Dryads are evil and should not be kidnapping children and killing the villagers …” Why, yes, I think the monsters should not be kidnapping children and killing villagers. I think it would be super cool if the monsters didn’t do that. And I shall brook no cultural relativism bullshit in this discussion. Killing a rando deer and chopping down a tree does not equate to LURING in and killing a bunch of hunters and kidnapping children. So, yes, the dryads are getting fucking stabbed. Any party that does otherwise should be visited for the rest of the campaign by continuing ongoing acts of violence by the relatives and friends of the hunters and children. “the Dryads are not monsters but are powerful and do control monsters in order to protect themselves and the forest. they will attack any human attacking them, and do it indirectly if they can, using the forest beasts, trees, plants to do so they will not harm children, though they have taken them hostage” Well, except for that whole luring people in to kill and/or kidnap them thing. Oh, and the take away others free will in order to use THEM to kill the party. Our definition of evil differs, I guess.
Ok, but, also, who gives a fuck about ll of that. Let’s stab some shit! There are random tables for “random” things, for asterisk” encounters, for “discoveries” and for “strange noises.” This is all just window dressing and doesn’t do anything. You hear a twig snap or see a dagger stuck in a tree or some shit. Yeah yeah, I got it, ambiance. “A dagger stuck in a tree” is not ambiance.
Forward! To Adventure! About thirteen or so of the 26ish encounters are forks in the path. “You can go north or you can go south from this location. So … not much adventure in this adventure. Also the read-aloud is in italics, which is never good, and in second person, which is never good. It’s also WRONG in more than one place. “You can go north or you can go south at this intersection” actually means, according to the map, you can go south or you can walk east for twenty more minutes and then the path turns north” Yeah, giving a shit about the adventure you write!
One of my favorite read-alouds is one of the first “The pathway twists and turns for a short while before eventually coming to a dead end. You feel watched, test Str vs a DC14 or become fearful.” That’s the read-aloud. The effect of being fearful is that you will want to turn around and go back down the path. Also, this is a dead-end to you have to turn around and go back down the path. No, there is nothing here to explore or investigate.
The read-aloud also overrevels. ”Behind the ogre resting against a tree is a greatsword made of iron.” Time and time again I’ve noted how a read-aloud that overreveals destroys the back and forth between players and DM tha is at the heart of an RPG. Not to mention telling us that this is an ogre instead of showing us that this is an ogre. But, sure, it’s a greatsword made of iron.
In one encounter you see a wounded deer. “ the deer’s meat would keep you fed for a week and it’s pelt would fetch a good price in town, or you could release and heal it.” Hmmm, what do YOU think the designer is telling us to do? Because the designer has already decided how the adventure should be played, of course.
There’s nothing here. Overly simplistic encounters with encounter text that does little to describe the encounter environment and instead makes an overly direct appeal to mechanics or morality.
This is $3 at DriveThru. There is no preview. Sucker.
In the days before the rise of the Jade Empire and the rule of the serpent men, the enigmatic axolittians reigned in Halith Vorn and there built their cities amongst the reeds in the swamps and caverns below. They mastered sorcerous arts and paid homage to devils and terrifying elemental beings. In the end, their serpent men slaves rose up and rebelled against their rule, driving the axolittians into the lower caverns; there they lingered on, slowly degenerating to a primitive and base level. In turn the Jade Empire was cast into ruin, and the former slaves of the serpent men occupied parts of the once great city. Finally came the Cultists of Thul, worshipers of disease and inheritors of serpent man sorcery, enemies of civilization and the Baron in Longfelt, searching for a weapon of great power…
This 120 page dungeon contains numerous levels and rooms all centered around an evil cult in a ruined city/civilization/cavern and its neighbors who hate them. Evocative descriptions, interactive encounters and situations, with formatting that works and great design. This is the adventure you were looking for.
I do, what, twelve or so reviews a month? Usually of shorter adventures; it takes me a few days to work through them. The hundred-page-plus stuff is piling up on my todo list because I have to review them as time allows in inbetween other adventures, since it takes often weeks to absorb them. But, then this came out. I got it and set to work. Generally, I think, I might find one adventure a month or so that is not terrible or even good. Then something like this comes along; something that is not just good but is FUCKING GREAT.
Like most reviews of good things,I don’t even know where to start on this. The very first words are the background. Does Hawk drone on and on and on? No. The designer gives us a short paragraph that sets up the dungeon and situation and then moves on. It’s enough to get us oriented as to whats to come and doesn’t get up its own ass. Perfect. The Hooks? How about “We received a strange report from the village of Hroogpith. Something about pestilence assailing the village; and the village blacksmith’s deceased grandmother rising from the grave and eating his leg or something” See that? That’s fucking specificity. That’s what makes your adventure evocative. That’s what gives the DMsomething to work with. A faction table? Sure. Everyone is evil, but, also, they all hate the evil cultists. That was cute. ?
The designer knows what the fuck they are doing. An NPC is a short stat block, where needed, followed by a terse personality. Dude oils up and “Poses to show off his figure before combat,” Noice! The start village is short, doesn’t overstay its welcome and yet is described with a great vibe. You KNOW how to run this place from the terse but evocative descriptions. Edge of the swamps. Smells of fish oil. DIlapidated. Shrouded in mist. Corpses lying in the streets rotting and bloated and covered in flys and maggots. Oh … ope! That is, after all, why you’re here. ?
The formatting here is clean. It’s easy to find information with a decent number of cross-references. Bolding and whitespace are used effectively to help the DM locate information during play. Boxes and shaded text and bullets … not becoming an eyesore but used effectively. The designer knows WHY they are using these techniques and it shows.
The writing proper is somewhere between good and great. “A field of corpses lying half-submerged in the mud. A thick cloud of flies blankets the area; the air heavy with the droning sound of their wings. The corpses are bursting with puss and filth” Heavy air. We’ve all experienced that. A FIELD of corpses. THICK clouds. Not a large or big to be seen here. It’s terse. It’s evocative. “A gnarled, weeping, leafless willow tree stands by a black stone monolith.” Gnarled. Leafless. “Water cascades down a shaft; mist swirls out of the opening. The sound of crashing water echoes up from below” These are almost impressions of a room rather than a description of a room. And, frankly, I like that best. I’m sure some fuckwit will take the wrong message from that statement, but, I think you want to communicate a message, a vibe, to the DM. The DM is the designers greatest asset. Inspiring them, getting the vibe across to them, that’s the key. Then they can expand and expound on the situation, the description, whatever. Like the NPC doing poses. That’s enough for the DM to run with, to be inspired by.
And situations abound! I love situations! Not just a room stuffed with a monster to hack, although there is certainly a place for that. But, also, everyone hates the cultists. And, also, they are all evil. So, enemy of my friend? But they are assholes also. And then there are things like this, a prisoner in a cell: “Lealock, merchant (frizzled hair, lesions on body, ripped clothing); fetal position in cell corner, rocks back and forth whispering ‘My good little doggy, my good little golden boy’: if released, runs screaming to area 11 and throws himself down the pipe—this alerts the cultist guards in area 10” FOOL OF A TOOK! Not just the dude, and roleplaying with him, but also consequences of NOT handling him.
There are so many other details here that are great. A timeline for the village. Not a static place but a living place and shit WILL happen as you rest and fuck around. A whole booklet of additional resources, like a time tracker and henchmen sheets to track things with. These things are fucking great and go a long way to show someone who is actually RUNNING a game and an understanding of what you need to run a game like this. I don’t comment on art frequently, but, personally, the art style here appeals to me. I’m not sure it contributes as much, specifically, to individual situations going on, but it does contribute to the overall vibe.
This seems like a good place to comment on the maps. They are fucking great! Complex, with caverns and rooms, water features, chasms, good same level features. There is a sense of verticality in many of them. Claustrophobic tunnels and wide open spaces with all that entails for encounters in them. I need to up my map vocabulary to better relate their complexity. Hmmm, not so much complexity as it is variety and … opportunities for gameplay? Whats a word for that? “Enables better/more interesting gameplay.” Seems like in fifteen fucking years I should have figured that out by now.
But, also, I would have put the business names on the village map.
I’m a big fan of this. I wish I could better convey all that makes it work. The factions, the cultists proper. The interactivity and variety of types of things to do and explore. It’s really all of the components integrated as a whole, working together to bring something more than the sum of its parts. Design.
This is $12 at DriveThru. The preview is 25 pages. More than enough to show you the clean formatting, the great maps, and a variety of encounters and text overview. Great preview. Hawk has done just about everything right to produce to a great adventure.
First, a strange goblin sorcerer managed to take over an ogre cult, then he somehow knew how to navigate a hidden crypt and turn it into their lair. Now he has stolen the Gauntlets of the Ice Demon Kofnar and is on the verge of unlocking their power. The party must journey into a trap-filled, ancient crypt to get to Furvik and his followers in time to stop him.
This 71 page adventure presents twenty rooms in an old trap and puzzle tomb. It engages in every bad adventure writing trope possible. I hate it. A lot.
Frequent readers will need to take that I Hate It and make up a Bryce review in their head, reminiscent of the old days. I made a mistake. I thought the credits had a lot of same last name energy and was aghast at flaming on at a group of jr high students. It turns out I was wrong. But, also, I’m still not flaming on. I could take this review to a bunch of places. These are places I’ve been before. Dozens of times. What’s more important, the act of creation or the act of selling? What are the moral ramifications of claiming to write for yourself and yet putting it on a blog? Do designers have any obligation to figure out what the definition of the word good is, or shall we simply let pure unrestrained capitalism decide? The annual autumn of new students discovering UUnet and horrors until they figure it out become eternal. No one is born with the innate ability to write an adventure. Once more in to the breach!
We begin this adventure with eight pages of padding telling us how to run an adventure. The designer spends time telling us what a stat block looks like. They tell us that the DM can change things in the adventure. They tell us that … You get the picture. The boilerplate. This is part of how you turn twenty rooms in to 71 pages. What if, instead, you just write a fucking adventure? And then just published it? Without a bunch of appendices? WIthout a bunch of intro shit? Just twenty fucking rooms. No context. I mean, those twenty rooms ARE the adventure, right? It’s what we’re paying for? You can shove the aesthetics of a book up your ass; I’m paying for an adventure to run at the table. It can look nice, or have supporting material or whatever, but, first, it’s gotta be a decent adventure. A couch that is all Bed Of Nails isn’t a couch it’s an art piece. Concentrate on the fucking adventure.
Our hook here involves a dead family member. Jokes on you buddy, no player character has a family. Do you know why? Because the DM is always killing them or kidnapping them or something. My cold father is dead, my estranged mother keeps going on about the church of Wheatana. My brother got his hand cut off for stealing and now is the hickest of hicks. My sister is drunk all the time and miserable. Why the fuck do I give a shit about any of them? You think a happy family that I care about led me to a life of murder hobo’ing?
“It’s up to you as GM to determine what type of close friend or family member works best for the party – brother, sister, father, mother, cousin, aunt, uncle, etc. Wherever you see [Family Member] in the text, swap it out for whatever you decide.” Ths, then, is a major theme of the adventure. Beating a dead horse. WHich anyone reading this will I’m sure be WELL aware of. The same information. Over and over and over and over and over again. The most basic of things expanded out in to PAGES of content. There’s a section here on pit traps. They have poisoned spikes at the bottom. Two pages. It takes TWO PAGES to describe this. Remember when it used to be a simple X on a grid square with a dot in it? TWO PAGES. And, then, the pit traps get even MORE text when they actually show up in a room. This is madness. I’m not sure how it is even possible, with a highlighter, to wade through this during play. And, of course, there’s Bryce’s core assertion that shis shit detracts from the actual room keys proper and this is all wasted effort that should have gone in to polishing the actual keys.
Oh! Oh! I was talking about the family member thing and then I got interrupted by going on a pit digression. Let me digress from that digress and talk about gimping the party. The fucking thing is a puzzle and trap dungeon. And it’s got some ogres in it, the minions of the goblin sorcerer. (Ug!) And, get this “Furvik and his lieutenants have crypt keys which unlock secret doors and deactivate (or activate) traps. They have all memorized where they are. The party should not come into possession of a working crypt key too early as it could bypass a large part of the adventure. Feel free to have any keys found too early break when used.” Man, just fuck you. I was going to be nice in this review but I just can’t stand this. I get it. You want the party to “experience” the dungeon. How about you let them do whatever the fuck they want? Fucking level sevens. “All three of the doors are made of two-foot-thick stone and have anti-magical powder in them which renders them immune to magical effects” YOU WILL EXPERIENCE THE DUNGEON!!! “As mentioned earlier in About the Crypt, the players shouldn’t be able to pick the lock successfully or use a crypt key until later in the adventure. However, any failed attempt to pick it will trigger an alarm in Area 15, 16, and 19 which cannot be heard from Area 1.” YOU WILL EXPERIENCE THE DUNGEON!!!! God fucking forbid the players use their fucking heads or their characters abilities to overcome obstacles using imagination. You might not fight some random ooze that shows up. Heavens to mercy!
Back, now, to our hook. “A party member gets to [Family Member] in time to hear them say, “Ogres attacked the temple. Please, make it right. Help the elder. Outside.” The Family Member dies, unable to be healed from their wounds. They have nothing of use in their possession.” How heartwarming! *barf* *barf* *barf* I’m level seven. Ra is my best bud. We hang out on Sundays (get it?! Get it?!) Sun god bro before Ho’s. You’re seriously powerful as sevens but, no, your beloved [family member] dies. This is the worst kind of dreck. Oh, oh, and “Once the party agrees, the elder teleports the party to the entrance of the crypt” Wouldn’t want to waste time, would we. “Time is of the essence. If the party attempts to return to town to get provisions, or rest up, they will fail the mission.” How does the party know this? A hidden fail condition, always a great thing to slap down in an adventure. I’m down for some fails. I’m down for some Broodmother Skyfortress. But it’s not a game unless the player is making an intentional choice for a meaningful condition. They must choose to suffer their wounds and chance blindness, or whatever, in order to Save The World. Even our player characters are doomed by the existence of Free WIll.
I can go on and on here. The read-aloud is is in first person mode, never a good thing. Doors slam shut behind you and lock when you enter a room. Treasure is light for a gold=xp game. The ogres all wear plate mail and carry +2 sabres. On and on and on it goes. Rooms that take four pages to describe because of all of the padding and if/thens and instructions to the DM.
Two parting statements of a more personal note: Far after I developed my opinions on this adventure I reached the description of a door with symbols/scenes on it. “ A success will reveal that it tells three tales. One is of how greed for knowledge gets the better of the curious. The second tells of how sacrifice is needed and often unexpected. The last seems to be about having patience and that pain, as all things in life, is transient.” This is how you become a wizard. By rejecting the small minded caprice and impudent convention of the prols.” Some murals “… show a scene of a rolling countryside with burning towns and skeletal warriors battling people from all walks of life.” Good for you skeletons. Good for you.
You should write. Over and over again. You should create. Over and over again. And you should strive to understand what you are doing, if only for yourself.
This is $5 at DriveThru. The preview is ten pages. You get to see part of the first room. So, I guess, it’s an ok preview. You just need to understand that nothing is done if it’s not beaten to death. No aspect of the adventure.
The link to the product in this review is probably an affiliate link. If you follow the link and buy the product, I make some money. Just thought you should know.
