By Richard Kropp
Basic D&D, OSRIC, LL, etc
Self Published
Levels 4-5
A relaxing evening at the Virulent Flask leads to your next adventure when the locals take up a collection to hire some heroes. It seems an ugly beast with odd magical powers has been harassing travelers and they want the nuisance stopped.
This adventure revolves around a troll, his pet gar, and some accidental magic. It has a village, a small set-piece, and then a small cave complex. It seems to have a weird mix of village, set-piece, dungeon encounters that leaves me feeling it places emphasis in unusual areas of the adventure. It also has a strangely detached voice in the read aloud, and is need of some interesting content/language, especially in the dungeon. All is not lost though, the village life section is rather solid, and the thing is generally organized quite well. However, creativity always trumps organization.
Two pages of backstory tell us about the trolls history and justify the presence of the gar as his pet as well as his ability to cast magic. I’m not sure I’m down with that. It’s certainly not needed. There’s no real reason to need the backstory. I’ve lightened my position on this recently, as well as, maybe, my position on shitty fiction in adventures. (And to be clear: all fiction in adventures is shitty.) There is no fiction in this, but the backstory remains. My wife noted to me the lengthy backstories that plague adventures are only really a problem when they get in the way of the adventure. As long as we don’t HAVE to read the 12 page backstory in order to run the adventure then it doesn’t impact the my ability to run it, and some people find it interesting and get inspiration from it. In this limited case I can agree with her. As long as I don’t have to read your backstory then it’s cool from now on. Which reminds me, I need to change my review standards. But, still, in this one the backstory seems to exist to justify the troll being able to do what he can do. And that tweaks me the wrong way. The reason, for the DM, is always “Because D&D”, and nothing else is needed for the DM. For the players, no explanation is ever necessary, mystery should be part & parcel. Ok, I’ve now beaten to death, out of proportion, an innocent little backstory. Joy.
The hook is about a page long. While at a tavern the barkeep comes around, taking up a collection to hire someone to solve some disappearances. Two others in the bar take him up on it, and spook the PC’s horses for good measure, just to be sure they are the only ones able to proceed. I like a good rival mercenary company, livens things up. It takes about a page to go over this hook, which seems long to me. There’s far too much “if they do x then Y happens” type of stuff. A brief list of the facts and other salient points would have been much better. It’s this sort of thing that will happen over and over again in this adventure: some nice little setup and too many words that add little to the first bit of awesome.
The read-aloud in this adventure has a strange voice. “An overly concerned citizen grebs ones of the PC’s and demands to know if they are going to do something about ‘the beast’.” See, it’s all written in this strangely distance voice that makes little sense in read-aloud. I’ve noticed this in a few adventures recently. The read-aloud is summary information, and non-specific. It’s a weird trend and it dies. Here’s another example. “A nervous citizen walking by.” It’s almost as if these were the designers notes and they meant to fill them in more later. The adventure also has one of the generic rumor tables that I dislike. I like my rumors to come with a voice, but these are the usual boring fact based things. “The beast is a large fish, 20’ long, with a long snout and razor-sharp teeth.” Fact based. Voice based would have this in the voice of a fisherman, telling about how it bit clean through his boat like it was butter.
What’s a little frustrating is that some of the encounters in town are genuinely interesting. The overly concerned citizen is a great idea, it’s just implemented poorly. Likewise armed woodcutters, the BBQ stirge on a stick at the bar, the woodcutters union, the slick used-rowboat salesman, and the asshat in the trading post. The town wanderers and sites are all pretty good actually, with a nice originality to them. They do tend to run to the long/wordy side of things, but, again, creativity trumps. The trading post guy has lost 14 consecutive elections for mayor? NICE!
The wandering monster encounters are plagued with the same weirdly distant read-aloud, and don’t really have much going for them. River pirates on pole barges and grumpy fishermen are nice, but don’t really have the flavor of the town encounters and the rest of the encounters don’t even have that going for them. “A PC has leaned over their boat too far to look at a cute baby crab playing with a fallen leaf n the water surface – and has fallen in.” Again, weird. Nice little detail, I like it, but weirdly worded/perspective in the read-aloud.
The twelve or so dungeon encounters are accompanied by a few wandering monsters descriptions. Both have the same sort of problem: all of that originality from the village is gone. In it’s place is just mande encounters with mundane text to go with it.
2. Underground beach
“This cavern floor consist of a mix of sand and dried mud, creating a sort of underground beach.” There is a sloping tunnel rising up into area #4.
It’s nicely terse, but not really interesting and doesn’t really add anything to the adventure at all. The read aloud tries in place, with sunlight shining through a small hole in the ceiling to a stairs out made of cave formation, to little bits like paint on the floor (marking safe spots!) and other little clues. It’s all got a little bit of a generic feel though. I’m not even sure I can explain why. Perhaps the descriptions are trying to be evocative but need some work? And then DM advice following that adds a little too much detail? “The hole in the ceiling is their exit to go hunting outside.” That sacks of explaining and not of “detail that makes the adventure more fun.” Another example would be of the monsters actual lair room.
This musty cavern contains a bed of animal furs and a couple of short stalagmites against an outcropping along the eastern cavern wall.
It’s clearly trying to give some details (and is nicely terse!) but it’s not really that interesting or evocative.
The treasure is done B1 style, with a list the DM can then insert into each room as they see fit. The non-magical treasure tries a bit to add something. A copper bracelet with a jadestone, or a small music box with coins in it. Those could use a bit more specificity in them, but again an effort was clearly made. With one exception, the magic items are a disappoint, being only book items. +1 sword, +2 shield and the like. The single exception is a helmet the troll is wearing that lets it cast 1st level spells from scrolls. Again, no real description of it but he additional bit, beyond read languages, that allows you to cast a 1st level spell from a scroll is a nice little bit of bump that I can see causing covetous feelings in the party … and still not really unbalance things at all.
I picked this up at DriveThru
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/176865/The-Inadvertent-Wizard?affiliate_id=1892600