Here, characters without heroic skills or amazing powers and weapons (but now with a hint of experience and awareness…) must face undead creatures, traps, and ancient mysteries from the lower level of the mysterious temple they discovered in The Lost Temple.
This adventure is trash, from start to finish. It is one of the most sloppy adventures I’ve ever seen, in addition to making all of the usual mistakes layered on top of a boring set of encounters. 32 pages with fourteen rooms. I have so many fucking regrets.
This adventure is on a one level map. It has fourteen rooms on it. The encounter keys go as such: one, two, three, six, six, nine, six, and then comes a heading saying “level 2” and then the keys start over from one through fourteen. I don’t know. I odn’t think there is a second level? Maybe the map is level two and the initial keys are modifications to the map in the firs adventure in this series … not included? I have no fucking idea. It’s not a Veil of Maya type thing or anything. It just … is.
The adventure intro tells us that this adventure, as the first one, is ideally suited to zero level characters. It then throws a ghoul at them immediately. No, this is not a funnel, you have a single character. There’s also a weight in the dungeon, potentially. It also tells us that the second two adventures are for mid-level characters. I guess you jump from zero to mid? NONE OF THIS MAKES ANY SENSE TO ME! The pregens are level two. Also, a wight?! At level two even?! In a plot adventure where you’re supposed to be overcoming obstacles?
It’s listed as the OSE system and then makes a point of touting itself as Generic/Universal. But, hey, there are character tokens everyone! And a soundtrack on a per room basis! You fucking enjoy that shit, right?!?!
The text here is in a white font on a black background. ANd it’s in some hard to read font, doubling down on the hard to read thing. And then it ups it even further by using long sections of italics. I don’t like long sections of italics. I think they are hard to read. On top of a fancy font being hard to read. On top of white text on a black background being hard to read. “First, make the adventure legible …”
The initial read-aloud is absolute garbage. “The village gathers in the appointed place for Beltane activities.” That is nearly a platonic example of abstracted text. Appointed place. Beltane activities. Name the fucking names! It goes on to tell us that there are sudden screams, coming from the millers house, where his three year old was left sleeping in the care of an aging nurse. In the read-aloud. What the fuck man?! Maybe in a Memoir 44 intro or as a part of a con game, but not in a home game. DId I fail to mention the page long read-aloud in the leys proper? In the requisite italics text fancy font white color on black background. *sigh*
One of my very favorite rooms has read-aloud that says “Sinister chains hang from the ceiling. You neither understand or wish to investigate further.” Uh. Ok. No? That’s it for the room, by the way. There’s nothing more.
Oh, oh, how about this for a room description! “Here, chaos reigns supreme! A chair lies overturned in the corner next to a small table and several scattered books.” Uh …
There’s nothing here. No evocative descriptions. Shitty read-aloud. An adventure of stabbing and simplistic traps. Sloppy formatting, to extreme levels. “Seems to be” “Appears to be” “As you step in …”
This is the kind of thing that makes you wish you could exclude publishers in your DrriveThru explorations.
This is $1 at DriveThru. No preview. SUccccccckkkkkker!
The Abyssea Cave is known to be an isolated cavern near the sea, seemingly devoid of activity. Its remote location, far from major cities, means it rarely sees visitors. However, significant events transpired here before the adventure begins: a boat en route to these lands was invaded by a group of half-man, half-fish monsters known as the “Werish.” During the invasion, they plundered the ship’s treasures and kidnapped two individuals as part of a deal made with a cultist leader. Following these events, the Werish found a secure location to establish their base—the Abyssea Cave. In the aftermath, rumors began to circulate in the nearest village about the missing boat that typically brought new arrivals to the land. Locals whispered that what was once a cave where herbalists gathered plants was now overrun with monsters.
This thirteen page adventure uses two pages to describe eight rooms. It uses a conversational tone to describe things on the map. Straightforward rooms with little description in which you stab things.
First, yes, I can be bad, my keyboard dropping letters and me not catching it. But, yes, the designers name is Elln the Witch. So I didn’t fuck that up.
This is nothing good about this adventure. Well, no, that’s not true. There’s this amulet that give you like a +4 to your fire saves. But, also, you are always drenched in water, like you just came out of a pool. That’s sweet. That’s the kind of fun D&D that I like to see in adventures now and then. But, otherwise, there is nothing good here. It’s not BAD bad. It’s clear that the designer is literate and had an idea, they just don’t know how to write an adventure. At all. This is not a backhanded compliment, there are plenty of adventures in which the designer is not literate or does things like use color coding like it’s the skittles rainbow or something. This adventure is not those adventures.
The adventure starts with you being hired to go to a remote cave by a herbalist to collect a couple of herbs with “good healing properties.” I’m not a fan of these sorts of “you get hired” hooks. A pretext is a pretext, after all, but, also, I tend to find it an omen. It means a certain way of looking at an adventure. And, for better or worse, OSR means not only a retro toolset but a mindset and vibe as well. The Hero to Superhero worldsaver arc is not just 180 degrees, it’s a different reality. A Boot Hill adventure sets in the 94th century should probably disclose that. This is a VERY simple adventure with a small plot hook where you are hired and a distinctly lack of treasure … and we know that no treasure means no XP. Which means the designer has left out a very serious thing … which would make me think that the designer isn’t in to the OSR thing at all.
We should talk, also, about the conversational style of the text used. “The first thing they notice …” or “If the players walk in to this room …” This sort of writing style is the only one used in the adventure. And while I can forgive the occasional Player/Character thing, I think it does show a certain sloppiness in the writing. A sloppiness ground home, again and again by this conversation padding in the adventure. IF the players walk in to the room THEN they see … that is all padding. I don’t know, maybe, 30%, realistically, is padding in this adventure? And the rets if not exactly rocket science. You walk down a 10×20 corridor and need to search it to find the weird thing sticking out in int. Or you try to sneak by monsters … who are alert and you only have 5’ on either side of them to make your way around. Elln, I’m not sure that’s a sneaking situation. This begins at the beginning with “Just upon entering, they can see that this cave might be empty because the entrance was blocked by stones and covered with webs. They notice three passages at the entrance of the cave” Well, even if we remove the padding (and map description), we place the covered by stone and webs things first. And, if the entrance is blocked off, how did the hostages (there are hostages in this) get in to the caves? It’s a jumble of text, with little thought as to how the text will actually be used at the table or what it implies.
There are no real evocative descriptions, or many descriptions at all for that matter. The interactivity here is stabbing monsters, with a bit of Free The Hostages. Otherwise this is just a half page adventure padded out to thirteen pages.
This is $2 at DriveThru. The preview is two pages. It shows you nothing of the adventure encounters … the purpose of the preview is to help the buyer make a determination if they want to buy the adventure … and thus you need to show them something of what to expect, not the intro pages.
A mile from the village of Breckdell is a solid oak door built into the side of a steep hill. Rumours claim that the door once led to a chapel of an evil cult that terrorised the area many years ago. Not much has been heard of this cult of the rotted claw and locals presumed they had left or be slain, and as the years passed memory of the cults activities were forgotten by most. In recent weeks hunters have claimed that they have seen the door in the hill open, and an eerie light emanating from within. Fear that the cult may have returned the village wants to hire some hardy adventures to investigate and put an end to whatever evil lies within the Chapel of the Rotted Claw.
This 22 page adventure uses about eleven pages to present about thirteen rooms in a small cult dungeon with undead. It’s going for a slow creepy vibe in the catacombs, which it does a decent job working towards. The somewhat evocative writing is organized poorly and, in the end, there is not much special about a dungeon that abstracts insteads of using specifics.
Really/ A mile from the village is a hill with a door in it? I can see it from the front window of my hovel? And the cultists within are stealing babies? Really? Sometimes I wonder what people are thinking and if they have ever lived in the real world. I guess you get to do whatever you want to in your fantasy world, but the more I have to suspend disbelief the less engaged I am. Things should be relatable. People should react the way people react … perhaps with a bit of hyperrealism and such, but it should be relatable if in a What You Would Like To Do if not a Really What You Would Do manner.
We’ve got a lot of effects attached to this adventure. Things like clerics and paladins losing a point of wisdom, temporarily, every two hours. Or the offensive impact of magic-user spells increased, at the expense of a temporary loss of a hit point. I note that the impact of that offensive increase is not mentioned.
This is a general trend in the adventure/ Things are not expanded upon, in even the most basic way. What IS the impact of that offensive increase? No advice. In another room the description goes in to great detail on the trap/puzzle that is in the room and how you make a chest appear. That chest is never mentioned again. Yes, you survived the no-save crushing lowering ceiling trap by solving the puzzle and made the chest appear … but there is absolutely NOTHING mentioned about the chest other than “a chest appears.” Or, even, perhaps, we can extend this to the marketing for the description … in which no level range is listed. It’s as if no one actually played this. It’s abstracted content. And abstracted content is NOT good content. Specificity os the soul of the narrative. Not length. Specificity. “There are symbols, linked to an ancient cult.” Wonderful. I am inspired.
The descriptions are a maddening mix of relatively decent evocative test and padding. “This door seems to be unlocked. ‘Uh. ok. Is it or isn’t it? What does seems to be unlocked even mean? The adventure is rife with this, padding, seems, appears to be. Backstory. But. then, it will hit you with something like “Stepping down the stairs leads into a large stone room, thick marble columns reach up to the ceiling, at the top weird sculptures peer down at the PCs. The area is musty smelling, and dust, mold and strange stains cover Everything.” Thats actually not that bad. Good impressions of the room and a nice inclusion of small, dust, mold, stains. This is what a decent description should be doing. It’s sets the mood while telling the party what they can, at first glance, explore.
And then, of course, it all gets fucked up. It just dumps in monsters generally at the end, even if they are gonna gak you in the face in the middle of the text. Imagine a corridor. There’s a full description of the corridor. What you find at the end of it, etc. And, the, at the end of the description, it says something like If you step foot in the corridor then twelve monkeys appears with switchblades to attack you. Well, maybe that goes somewhere else in the text other than tacked on at the end? And it doesn’t help that this thing has some mania with describing room exits. In detail. “The exit to the east goes down a short set of stairs and ends at a door.” Yes, that is indeed what the map shows. Thanks for not adding anything to it.
And then there’s formatting. Let’s us imagine paragraph breaks, in the text, to help organize things. But let us now do anything with the line spacing or an initial start of paragraph indent. It’s just … a left of page alignment? This is the anti-method of making things more scannable.
There’s nothing special here. The adventure is kind of slow burn. There are undead under water in corridors. There’s a temple flood/escape thing at the end, which it intimates a story for by noting that undead don’t have to breathe, setting up a madcap escape. Bt, other than that we’ve just got some standard traps and standard encounters, poorly formatted and described. Abstracted content rather than the specific content that would bring the adventure to life.
This is $2 at DriveThru. There is no preview. How can you have any pudding if you don’t eat your meat?
By Hilander Self Published OSE Level …? I guess we don’t use levels anymore? The Big Bad is 10HD.
The folk of Almsville enjoyed a quiet existence far from the worries of city life and foreign wars, but recently a strange spirit has been seen in town, a weeping woman beckoning strong folk into the Harwood, pleading with them to free her from her curse. Just last week the mayor’s son, young Constance, disappeared, stealing away in the night with a sword and shield taken from his father’s wall. The town fears the worst, and Sister Verity senses unease amongst the local spirits. She has sent word to the City, pleading for help.
This twenty page adventure presents a hex crawl with about fifty hexes and twenty-ish encounters. It can turn a phrase now and then, but it’s simplistic in its implementation, mixing plot with what should be hex situations … and not doing either.
Let us assume I have a hex crawl adventure. It’s a thousand hexes. Your starting hex is along a border. I develop a page of backstory that within it contains a plot. The essence of the plot is that the prince has gone missing while searching for a monster. I populate the hexes at some density of encounters. Then I stick the prince in the hex next to the starting hex and the monster in the hex next to the prince. The other hexes don’t really have anything special in them, no help to defeat the monster or things to save the prince or anything like that. It really is as straightforward as I just described. Yeah, the other hexes have some stuff in them, but, also, it’s not really SITUATIONS. Yeah, there are monsters and treasures and weird shit. Some of them are just scattered randomly in the hexes without roads or trails leading to them and not really “in the way of” something you can see from a distance. I think we could all say that this is a poorly designed hex crawl. It meets the definition that it has hexes that you can explore, but there’s no real reason to and a decent number of them are VERY unlikely for you to stumble across in pursuit of other hexes. And, no real situations. Not really things for the DM to riff on and explode and for the players to exploit in a more strategic sense. This would all lead to me saying that yes, it is a hex crawl but it’s not a very good hex crawl, missing what makes a hex crawl a good hex crawl. And that is this adventure. It can, at times, turn a decent phrase of description, but it also seems to miss thes of what makes an adventure an adventure. The WHY of how things are put in to an adventure to drive gameplay.
The mayors son is missing, trying to free some ghost chicks curse. The city is on the edge of the ghost wood. There’s a haunted house one hex away, before you get to the wood proper. A hex away from that, in the woods, is the witch chick who controls the woods and knows everything going on. A hex away from that is the big bad monster. None of the other woods encounters really contribute to this ghost lady/woods/monster/son plotline. They are just things like “Frank lives here in this house and can’t get out because of the animated vines” or something like “50 albino goblins, bloodthirsty, live in a cave complex here.” They might stretch to, say, two or three paragraphs, including a read-aloud paragraph, but there’s not really situations unfolding. This is far, far closer to Isle of the Unknown. Perhaps not quite as obviously from a generator, but also not with anything larger or more interesting going on in them.
The town is minimally described, which is fine. It does, however, have an encounter table. Thisis one of them: “Old Farmer Dale has seven daughters whom he’d like to marry off; Patience, Prudence, Mercy, Grace, Faith, Hope, and Charity. None live up to their names. “You could do, really, but I wonder for which?” So, yeah, but, also, what’s the point? Yes, it does add a bit of local color. But I think that’s all it is, Some local color to add in to some kind of home base place, that the party is likely to return to time and again. And in that case I’m not sure I make this a random table at all.
What’s frustrating here is that sometimes the text is decent. At the site of a drowned woman in a river: “The skies grow cloudy here, and a cold breeze blows down the river. A single tree stands beside the water, its roots reaching in to drink” We’re going to ignore the “roots reaching to drinks” purple prose, but the rest of it is decent. It sets a good melancholy mood for the site of a drowned woman. There’s a forlornness that this description invokes, helped along by the room title “The Drowned Lady.” THis is how a room title sets the stage for what’s to come. It gets you into the right frame of mind for the description to come, helping to conjure more than the sum of the words used. The adventure des this a time or two, and when it does it’s a really great description. But those are by far the exceptions.
I mentioned that haunted house a hex from town. That place has 23 rooms in it. They are described in essentially ONE COLUMN. Jesus fuck man! You get such rooms as perhaps this one: “10. Guestroom. Huge plants.” Well, that’s something right out of Vampire Queen I guess. I’m not really cherry picking. It’s almost all just a room title and one or two words, an object to be found in the room. “Robes 300gp.” Yes, the room titles are decent (although, perhaps “RUINED guestroom” or “OPULENT Guestroom” would have been better.) but that’s it. It’s an extreme minimalism. To fit in twenty pages, I guess?
IN other places there is a distinct note of information missing. One fine example is “If the hill is dug into, it will reveal a large hoard of golden coins and rare treasures” With no details of what that is … although the consequences are spelled out large. It’s baffling.
There is, I guess, a mix here of two adventure styles. The hex crawl/exploratory where you create your own adventure and a plot adventure in which you have something explicitly to do. I guess, if I squint hard enough, i can see adding some plot to a hex crawl to get things moving … but then you put the endgame to it next to the basE? And the hex encounters are not really the sort of strategic/dynamic situations that make hex crawls thrive? And the dungeon is straight out of Tegal? Nope.
This is Pay What You Want at Drivethru with a suggested price of $3.
By Mr Pilgrim Tomes Self Published OSE "Expert Levels"
A sunken cathedral on a quiet mountain lake hides a long forgotten temple to Mathanoga, God of Knowledge and wizardry. Abandoned by Man for centuries , but protected by the legend of man-eating fishmen lurking in it. Or until a few weeks ago the young wizad Elric embarked on its expedition. With help from the accademy of Greykeep he found the temple and began to explore it, hoping to uncover its ancient magical secrets. Now the wizard is missing and the accademy has put a bounty on its head: its weight in silver to whoever will find him and bring him home alive and well.
This twenty page adventure uses about eight pages to describe a temple complex with about fifteen rooms. It’s a basic adventure of this type, with basic encounters, non-evocative room descriptions and straightforward puzzles that are poorly described. I guess that means it’s inoffensive? Which is not a recommendation in any way.
Oh no! Some wizzo has gone missing! You’re sent by the guild to find him. As the intro tells us, the fishmen in the temple “have attacked Elric’s camp, fatally wounding the wizard.” To be clear, in this context, “fatally wounded” means that he’s made it through four or five of the temples rooms and then turned himself to stone. Which is a different definition of fatal then I would use, but whatever.
Let’s dig in to this, shall we! Room one is the upper lever, with the rest of the temple being underground. As yes, a room with a statue and an altar, with the altar having the inscription: “I’M KEY TO EVERY DOOR SOUGHT BY SAGES AND SEERS SINCE THE DAYS OF YORE”.” That’s it. What do you want to do? No, fucking with the statue and altar don’t do anything and there’s nothing else to find. What do you do? This is, obviously, a riddle. Answer the riddle. ANSWER THE FUCKING RIDDLE! Did you answer it? No, there are no clues. No, you cannot continue the adventure until you answer the riddle, because that’s what makes the secret door appear. At least Gandork knew there WAS a door. This, of course, a classic example of putting your adventure behind a skill roll/secret door/etc. You shouldn’t fucking do that. Yes, the DM can fudge it. Yes, the DM can also buy a different adventure, one that is actually good and doesn’t put the adventure behind a secret door. Anyway, the answer is at the bottom of this review if you’d like to play D&D tonight.
But, hey, let’s move on to a different room, yes? Let’s see “First Trail: The room is designed to test the intelligence of newcomers, and to remove those unfit for study.” Oh fuck me. It’s a trial dungeon. Great. I fucking hate trial dungerons. Lets are the weakest example of a pretext for an adventure. And, of course, we have the aside text telling us that the “first trial” room is a test to weed people out. No shit. Who woulda thunk it. Overly explaining and justifying rooms. Bleech.
How about another puzzle room them? This one has an orb in it. It has “the four alchemical symbols carved in it” and on the four walls a dwarf head, a bird head, a flaming head and a fish head. So, yeah, I think pretty obvious. Except, of course, I’m not sure I know WHAT the four symbols are? If you asked me, I don’t know, I’d good the fifth element and steal from it? There’s no description of the symbols at all. The whole adventure is like this. It just seems to leave out pieces of information or hand wave past it. It’s weird as all fuck.
I don’t know, the combat encounters seem bullshitty to me also. They get stuck at the bottom of room descriptions, where they might be more appropriate in the middle IE: if there’s a statue and approaching it activates a monster then maybe we say that around the statue description instead of describing a hole bunch of other shit and then dropping the monster at the end. I think there’s another room with a statue in it with an inscription on it and if you read the inscription you get attacked by four monsters. This seems MAJORLY arbitrary and I think is the kind of shit that turns players in to bad players that are unwilling to engage with rooms .When something as simple as reading a statue inscription kills you … why read anything? Yeah yeah, explosive runes, etc. But this aint that. We WANT people interacting with the rooms, not doing some pavlov shit so they learn to not engage with them. Risk/RewardPush your luck are the goto’s, not arbitrary wandering table tables.
I guess, ultimately, it’s inoffensive. Not bad, just not good at all. Oh, and, yeah, before I forget, PUT THE FUCKING LEVEL RANGE ON THE FUCKING ADVETURE.
This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru with a suggested price of $1.
By Joseph Mohr Old School Roleplaying OSRIC Levels 10-14
The sect has not been heard from now for hundreds of years. A few ruins and relics of their order can still be found for those who know where to look for them. One such place is a long forgotten cave complex once used as a temple to their order. There are a few whispers about the cult making a return. Children have gone missing. Strange symbols have been painted in prominent places across the land. Rumors of their imminent return are on the mind of many in the land today. No one knows for sure if there is any truth to any of them.
This 27 page adventure uses about eight pages to describe about 27 rooms in a simple cavern. More shovelware from Mohr, it’s poorly produced, full of errors, and consist of little more than hacking un underdescribed chambers.
Tricked! I was tricked in to buying this! Tricked by my own incompetence in selecting adventures, anyway. Whatever qualities Mohr has, he’s a master of designing a cover and blurb that instantly draws me in and makes me buy something … without looking at the designer or publisher first. I’ve caught myself several times in last few months, before I hit the purchase button, but this one slipped through. And thus we find ourselves here. With a theme of, shall we say, not giving a shit.
The map is, at first glance, fine. It’s mostly a cave with stream and pools and several nice topology features. But then we get to play the Find The Key game. The key numbers are small and, if its possible, in the same font as the gridlines? The same line width as the gridlines? In any evet, they are disguides. You have to really hunt to find them. And I don’t like spending my time and energy just trying to figure out which rooms the party is in on the map. Or, where the next key is so I can check to see if there’s something over there that can see/hear the party and react. I prefer a little reaction note on the map, to draw my attention, but i’d settle for a number I can see, especially in a large wide open cavern type map like this. For it’s size it’s a surprisingly compact place, with the encounters almost on top of each other. I think I counted a 10HD a 20HD and another 10HD encounter almost all on top of each other at one point. The design of the encounters, their placement, is pretty shitty, with illegible keys on a map that is too open and too cramped with encounters for its openness. And, of course, there’s no order of battle for the cultists. Just stand around and get slaughtered dudes!
Speaking of those cultists. Most of them are level ten. At least the ones that are not higher than level ten. If I recall my distributions correctly, I suspect that every level ten character in the entire world is present in this cave. What is it, one in a hundred thousand or something like that? Well, there’s a dozen or so of them in this place.
The encounters are hacking. Oh, there’s a trap now and again, like a rockfall, but it’s mostly hacking. A 20HD golem. A 10HD mist. A dragon turtle. Eight ropers in a room. That’s it. Just walk in a room and stab something. Nothing more complex than that. No nuance. Just a stabfest. This is the WORST way to write a high level adventure. I’m not even sure why th Grand Druid and Master of Autumn decided to go on this adventure.
Did I mention the green slime? It has 20HD and 2-16HP and is worth 4000xp (plus forty per hp, of course.) Nice! A typo you think?! Perish the thought!
Ah, but what about our use of language, you ask. Here, then, is the description of room one: “The trail up the mountain leads an area just outside two entrances to the caves. A stream of water rolls down the higher reaches of the mountain and into the mouth of the cave. A pool of water gathers near the north entrance. A short set of steps has been cut into the north cave entrance. The southernmost entrance is much wider but is more difficult to climb. “ This is, literally, just a description of the map page. If you looked at the map and write a description this is what you would get. Other rooms have such magnificent descriptions as “A child’s doll has been left here on the steps.” Or, perhaps, you enjoy backstory and padding in your descriptions? Worry not, this adventure has you covered! “A large fish has swum into this area from the larger pool at area 18. That pool also connects to an underground stream and a much larger lake miles from here.” Yeah! Now you know why there is a fish here!
High level stabbing with minimal descriptions. That’s all this is. And it’s poorly done at that.
This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru with a suggested price of $3. The preview is seven pages and show you none of the keys. Poor preview, not giving you any help in making a purchasing decision.
By Marco Giulio Fossati Hellwinter Forge of Wonder OSE Levels 6-8
The Antrum was a temple dedicated to the chaotic god Chryzothuul, but the priests dwelling there abandoned it some years ago after a plague decimated them. The Antrum lies in a small valley amidst the Rolling Red, rugged plains and hills covered with sanguine-red grass.
In the last months, rangers and lonely travellers spotted an undead presence near the Antrum. So, the local authorities decided to send a group of adventurers there to investigate. Who or what is behind those undead?
This twenty page adventure presents an old temple dungeon with about seventeen rooms in about five pages. It is boring. Boring in interactivity. Boring in descriptions. Low effort does not begin to describe it.
Right about now I should be waxing philosophically about the measure of a man and so on. It’s traditionally, when I see a poorly designed product, to speculate why as you describe the hows, I think. But not this time. I HATE this adventure. It represents everything I loathe. It is low effort. No one seemingly cared about it during its creation. Instead a coat of paint was slapped on and it was called done. Be it to satisfy some deadline or some other reason, instead it received nothing.
Let us begin with the original sin: the level. Levels 6-8. And the hook? “The characters are the adventurers sent to investigate the undead presence of the Antrum, and they have been hired by a reasonable law force in the area, such as a military commander, a local reeve, or the council of a nearby town” Yes. my level eight got hired by the village reeve. That’s exactly what happened. I’m currently engaged in a bloodbath in the village ala Kid Marvelman and the village Reeve walks up to me and hires me. Great. But, sure, whatever, yes, I do want to play D&D tonight. The adventure, proper? It’s full of undead. “You gotta bring a cleric!” says the designers note to the DM. Actually, no, you should NOT bring a cleric. And why is that? Room one: eight skeletons. FOr your level six through eight cleric. Or how about some zombies? Shadows? You’re just gonna blast right through each and every undead in the adventure. I don’t think there ARE any undead present that are not an automatic turn. Did you actually even ever run this for ANYONE? Now, I know that D&D-mine’s favorite hobby is changing the Turn Undead rules, but, still … I think I understand the OSE rules. It’s like an auto-turn. And most of the time it’s an auto-destory. There are new undead in the appendix, created just for the final boss fight, and they get auto-nuked also. The custom monster you created for the boss fight is an auto-nuke. And they are ALL like that. The designer made it and the editor looked at it. Or said they did. The same person did the layout, which presumably means the C00l color scheme. Maybe, instead, do the work of an editor?
But, hang on. Let’s change the levels. Let’s say its, I don’t know, level four or so?
Reven now, in the magnificence of the descriptions! “Two stairs, both going down a few steps. At the end of each stair, there’s a closed door. A small alcove lies in the south wall.” Behold now the modern wonder of the full power of this designers evocative text! “There are still some old chests in this storeroom abandoned long ago.” That’s the fucking room description. I didn’t cherry pick one sentence from it. Are you not inspired?!?! You know, you really should be. After all a good DM could … spend their money and time on something worthwhile?
Shitting fucking descriptions. Nothing evocative about them AT ALL. And, then, that kind of writing style that I just abhor. “There are still some … “ This kind of passive voice description. Just tell us about the storeroom and the chests. The absolute best bits of this are when the designer IS getting specific. When they mention the consistent low haze of the plains on your overland journey or the pulsating shapeless blob sitting on an altar. But those may be the ONLY examples of decent text in this. There is little specificity. It’s abstraction. Our rumors read “The Antrum still contains a sacred relic of Chryzothuul. (true)” No, it does not contain a sacred relic. It contains the head of saint whatever, missing its blue tongue, or some shit like that. Specificity, not abstraction. Abstraction is boring. We’re paying for specificity.
How about mechanics? It takes a day to get to the temple through the grasslands. You have a 2 in 6 chance each day of getting lost.. If you get lost three days in a row then you automatically find it on the fourth day. You can find some laser gemstones. They shoot out a 2d6 laser beam, continually. Well, that’s fun, anyway!
The overall effect is one of low effort. Clearly not play tested. The writing is abstracted and not evocative in the least. Boring stabbing encounters sprinkled with a few simplistic traps and not enough treasure to warrant a walk through the plains for my level eight.
This is $2 at DriveThru. The preview is the first seven pages, which doesn’t show you any encounters. Not a very good preview of what you would be purchasing.
By Jacob Densford Illuminated Snail Press Knave 2e
Only one of the foul creatures remains—abominations forged by the meddling hands of wizards. After generations of slaughtering us, we’ve finally driven them back to the brink. Let the final hunt commence: the hunt for the last Owl Bear.
This sixteen page adventure has seven hexes to explore as you slaughter the last living owl bear. You’ll need all of your wits to survive the monotonous boredom of hexes with nothing/close to nothing to do in them.
Sixteen fucking pages my ass. I’ve been noticing a lot of Knave adventures pop on DriveThru all at once. Looks like there was a contest and this thing was the third place winner. Which seems to mean the public voted on it being the third place winner, so you know, the unwashed masses and all that jazz.
Ok, so, there’s one owlbear left. You’ve just arrived incountry at some white colonizer camp in the jungle. There are two hunting parties going out tomorrow. You want to join the big game hunter and her quisling local businessman sponsor or you want to join the white savior environmentalist and his smiling caricature of a local? Or maybe go your own way?
But first, the news. You wander around those seven hexes, notably NOT going south. IE: you start on a hex border at the six o clock position with nothing else shown on the map but the rest of the surrounding dial from the centerpoint of the hands. And from there you wander from hex to hex with little initial direction in finding the owlbear. Eventually you’ll find something. A village of locals who have all been grisly slaughtered by the owlbear with some ghosts playing a flute.. Or a bunch of monkeys in a tree banging on a drum. Or a wizards hut with nothing to do in it.
I really really can’t emphasize enough how shitty the encounters are. There is this thing that designers sometimes do where they are SO resistant to actually putting anything concrete down on paper. Maybe, if you squint really hard, you can get what they are going for. But, the wizard hut. It takes a fucking page, like all of the encounters do. And it’s nothing. It’s a dude living in a hut. He’s not fucking histile. He doesn’t really even have anything. You CAN get a spell component from him, for some project later, but it’s just so empty. He’s got no real personality other than “likes flowers.” The entire thing is pointless. I get it, you want a place to get the spell component. So, put some interactivity there. Likewise the monkeys in the trees. They’ve got a drum they bang on. That’s it. I guess you are motivated to get the drum because you se ethe monkeys have it? And I truly am guessing; I don’t see any reason to do anything here other than yawn. You’ve got to lead the party on, give them something to follow up on, give them SOME kind of bone to get them going an interested. We’re not talking spoon feeding them, but, something. ANYTHING to get the going. “Monkeys in the trees” ain’t it.
You know what else isn’t it? If you pick up the drum then you hear in your head “Rebuild my shrine and I will reward you!” Likewise if you pick up the ghosts flute or the other thing. LIterally a voice in your fucking head. This is not roleplaying. There is no subtly here. Telling someone directly what to do is not embracing the joy of player discovery. But, in the rumours, there is no specificity. “The local gods are feuding with each other, with dangerous repercussions for mortals—take shelter in bad weather” Well that’s exciting. DO the local gods have names? Is there a story to go with this? No? There’s just senseless abstraction of a rumour? Got it. I am not amused.
And now to the part of the review that the fuckwits will feel the need to comment on. You know what’s a decent novel? Things Fall Apart. Not my favorite, but pretty decent. You know what’s not Things Fall Apart? A sixteen page adventure. I have no fucking idea why someone decided that a sixteen page adventure, with a contest deadline attached, was the correct medium to comment about white colonization. We get white colonizers. We get the enviro dude with a white saviour complex. We get lots of references to white colonizers. We get a note about portraying the locals with empathy … even though we don’t get any information about them except they are all friendly. It’s fucking nuts. But, sure, dump in the smiling native caricature and the evil quisling businessman caricature. Or, the infantilized natives who can’t solve their own problems. And don’t forget to slaughter the smiling natives family so we can know for sure he’s just there as a trope. Got it. Ham fucking handed. And let’s be clear, I’m not bitching about your white colonizer shit. I’m bitching that its done is a hack fucking way.
But, also, I’m a hypocrite and can get over that. Well, I could get over that that. I mean IF THE FUCKING ADVENTURE WAS ANY GOOD. The smiling native guide has a village. If you go there everyone is slaughtered bloodily by the owlbear. There are some ghosts playing a flut. If you bury the villagers bodies then the spirits go to rest. IT TAKES A FUCKING PAGE FOR THIS. An entire page. Is there detail? None to speak of. Evocative descriptions? Not really, not to justify a page. Big fonts, a lot of white space and A LOT of extraneous padding. “IF the party picks up the flute THEN [fuckwit local god] speaks directly in to their mind: Build me a shrine and I will reward you.” Fuck off with that shit man. There’;s nothing to this village, or any of the encounters. There’s no content. There’s an ABSTRACTION of content. “You could, maybe” put in some ghosts of the villagers or something, I guess.” This is the equivalent of what is going on here. The specificity that brings an adventure life is just nt present at all.
This is $4 at DriveThru. The preview is nine pages, a mix of intro and hexes. That’s enough to know what you’re getting.
By Roberto Marcarini Old School Fox OSE Levels 2-3
The wedding of Baron Duncan was meant to be a day of celebration and joy for all his subjects, as well as for you, brave heroes, called to witness the event. During the ceremony, however, just before the fateful ‘Yes, I do,’ Xanaxarius, the bandit-sorcerer known throughout the surrounding lands, broke in with his horde of followers. You remember very little of what happened next: the cries of the almost newlyweds, the dark and arcane words of Xanaxarius, and the red flash that engulfed you and the other guests…
This forty page adventure uses about seventeen pages to describe about thirteen locations in a magic land inside of a red crystal. It’s got a conversational style, full of backstory and explanations, that are inappropriate for room descriptions, as well as a lack of specificity to bring places alive or situations to develop for interactivity. And thusly …
I don’t even know where to start with this. Room one I guess. “Among all the guards and heroes who came to the rescue of the two newlyweds, the characters were among the luckiest and appeared on the cliff that rises to the north of the magical river, which flows through the dreamlike crystal landscape” It continues. For almost half a page. That has told us almost nothing. I guess it says you can see a river? So, mabe a vista landscape descriptions, orienting the party? But, also, all that shit is on the map. And you know how I love a description that repeats obvious shit from a map. Otherwise, this is some kind of commentary. A very conversational tone in writing a room description. Unfocused, repeating information for, like, the nine hundredth time, about the red landscape and sky. And this thing is just FULL of that shit. Asides and commentary, explanations and backstory. Repeated information. There is actually very very little information present that could be of use to the DM running the game.
Evocative text? I think not. “An old staircase carved into the rock of the cliff that descends to its base about forty feet below.” Yeah! I’m inspired! The next three sentences about the staircase do little more. How about “ A small grove nestled between the cliff and the nearby river.” How’s that? Cool? There is just SOOOOO much text here. The page count to encounter count would imply that, for sure. And yet there is almost nothing present that you could turn in to a game. The gnome couple, on the cliff, don’t really have a personality to interact with. Or a purpose other than telling the party to go south, I guess. The Crimson Toad! “As large as a medium-sized dog.” That’s your description. Great. Oh, wait, it does say, buried deep in the text, that maybe the party learned how to bypass the toad from information in room one. But, that’s in room four, not in room one. Room one doesn’t mention ANYTHING about this. Uh … we put the information where we need it to use, not in a different room.
And yet the adventure goes on and on and on. The creatures and challenges here are expanded upon at great length. And yet they say very little about them. Nothing really evocative. Nothing really in the way of interacting interactivity. Sure, you can stab something. Yeah?
One of my favorites are some old rotting bags that say they “have become the home to some parasites and other horrid creatures.’ That’s your description. But that’s not a description. That’s some kind of meta overview. Why put this in? Why not just describe some giant grubs or water bugs or ticks of unusual size or something? Why the choice to NOT give a description but instead focus on the abstraction of the encounter? There’s no specificity here. And, in the end, you get attacked by four cockroaches. Yes describe the horrid parasites! But, no, that was not the choice chosen for me. We all need a savior to come our way.
There;s nothing really here. It wants to be a fairy tale land covered in a red tint glow from the crystal you’re trapped inside of. It comes off, though, as meta abstractions of encounters without real descriptions or interesting interactivity. A shadow of a shadow.
This is $3 at DriveThru. The preview is seven pages. You get to see the first few encounters which should be enough to give you a feel for the writing style.
Adventurers gather at the mansion of a well-respected noble for what seems like an elegant dinner. But as the night unfolds, it quickly spirals into something far more dangerous. A deadly game of murder is about to begin, where survival comes with unimaginable rewards. Is it simply a twisted contest, or does the noble harbor a darker, more sinister secret—one that demands bloodshed before dawn to save his own life? Prepare for a night where trust is shattered, alliances are tested, and only the sharpest minds—or blades—will make it out alive.
This 52 page adventure presents a mansion and its grounds and outbuildings along with about thirty people, the setting for a Battle Royale type adventure. I should hate it. But the degree of chao and interactivity here does successfully channel the genre and does so with a delight and glee seldom seen in an adventure. This is the one, if you want a Battle Royale.
Absolutely bat shit fucking crazy. In exactly the way it should be. The premise is bullshit. The intro tells the DM “With time running out, the dinner is just a lure for contenders. Gladiators. A life-or-death contest will be held until dawn, one that may hold the key to his survival.” Ahh. Bullfucking shit. A test your might gladiator fight. Boo! Boo! Except … NO! This thing is great. It delights in its tropes, leaning in to them with glee. Hit after hit after hit after hit comes through the text. The NPC’s, the rooms, the wanderers, all working toward a common goal and theme. This is absolutely the fucking way how you do it.
Conrad the wizzo invite you to his mansion for dinner . It’s an open invite to the village. The party is present with about seven others, along with some house guards (about 25) and some servants. Dude is friendly and affable, but sick, and has got a dungeoncrawl prop for you. Except, of course, the drinks are drugged. But you wake up with a note telling you that you get his inheritance if you’re the last group standing by dawn. And the house guards are a group/alliance also. Turns out he’s dying and made a deal with a demon. He needs fifteen people to die in the mansion before dawn in order to save his own life. The guards know that and the servants don’t. It’s on, motherfucka! Oh, also, if you fuck around then there’s poison gas at dawn that will get everyone, says the note, so get moving! Also, if you don’t get drugged and/or go willingly with guards … then THIS SHIRT STARTS NOW!! No railroad here!
It is absolutely absurd. This may be everything I hate about a railroad Test Your Might setup. But, man, everything that comes after this nonsense is fucking great. It is tropy and schlock in the absolute best sense of the word. Giddy. And therefore this hook/intro nonsense makes perfect sense. I’m in LUUUUUVVVVVVVV! Seriously.
Ok, so, what makes this thing absolutely great is the … I don’t know. Interactivity? Vignettes? The shit that’s going on, or potentially going on, in the various rooms. This is a combination of things in the rooms (there are 85 or so, I think, probably more than a party can do between drugging and dawn, but, fuck it! It’s not TOO long, and it’s not too short. I think it’s the perfect size of a kind of free exploration game. And, dude covers rooftop shenanigans! Always a staple, I appreciate that! Man, this parenthetical is dragging on now …) and people doing things in rooms. (And, of course, wanderers showing up.) Weight get a room with a secret door in it, a cupboard shelf full of dishes. Dishes shattering requires a d4 roll on a little table. Many rooms have this, something to amp things up. A maid runs in hysterical, or you summon guards, or you hear footsteps running away, or “. Danjel shouts from the courtyard, “Let us not hide anymore! Let’s help each other in the name of Lumenor!”. Heh! Just the kind of psycho shit from a battle royale movie. Or, a small island, crossing the lake, you get wet. You’re freezing. Build a fire to get warm? A guard shows up. “Hey, lets all work together, we can … ARG!” He’s shot in the chest with a crossbow! If that aint a trope I don’t know what is! Or, you’re in a room and there are three guards. Chick is on dudes lap and they are making out frantically while another dude is bored. Fuck yeah! That’s exactly what happens to three of the guards! So, something in the room or something in the room that could up the stakes in the room. And focused, completely focused on the adventure at hand. All of it working together towards the same vibe. Clues in some rooms to other rooms, which is exactly what you want. In one room “Thick carpet covers the floor, gray and muted from a thick layer of dust.” and then “Under the carpet: A carved raven on the hardwood floor, encrusted with blood. Inscriptions in blood, rituals to the raven god of death. The phrase “Let the raven fly in” comes often in between.” Gah! That’s fucking freaky! And is a clue to another room.
The entries are relatively short, maybe five or six to a two-column digest page. Bullets are used well as a kind of initial features description, easy to scan and expand upon and easy to locate follow-up information with the section headings that follow. “G12. Guest Suite ? Ornamental king-sized bed with torn silken sheets. ? Thick carpet covers the floor, gray and muted from a thick layer of dust. ? Open balcony doors. ? Round table by the bed, dagger pierced note on top.” Those bullets are indented on seperate lines, and easy to scan and grok.
I understand it sounds weird, bt this thing is just so focused on brining the kind of psychotic chaos interspaced with quiet, the exact sorts of beats you might find in one of these movies. There is just so much going on, but, not really. The room formatting, and the d4 tables and ability for the party to get in to trouble in the various rooms is what lends to this vibe of a lot going on, but doing it in a way that is very manageable for the DM to run. It all brings this air of chaos to the vibe. It’s the kind of chaos that so many adventures want but few succeed in. It’s not craziness … but the party will absolutely be thinking that “This is crazy!” Is the build up, room after room and encounter after encounter. A kind of bizarreness, without any one thing going over the top and saying this is bizarre. It’s not ham handed, is what I think I’m trying to say, even though the individual things sound out of the ordinary. And it is that build up from the lack of ham handedness but still unusual that contributes so much to this.
I don’t know how this would work in OSE. We’re still pretty squishy at 2-3 and this is over a single night. Maybe lean in to that vulnerability, perhaps. I don’t know how I would fit this in to my game either. My campaign or a one shot … but it is the sort of thing that once you see it you you are immediately thinking “Man oh man, how do I get this shit in to my game?! “ I get it, battle royal. BS setup. But also it ha sthe space in the place to breathe and let the party get in to trouble and then leans in to that when it happens. It gives you the tools and the space to run a magnificent adventure. If you can get over the battle royale nature of it.
And, hey, yo! A NPC summary sheet next time, yes?!
This is $5 at DriveThru. The preview is nine pages and gives you a good overview of the adventure. Page seven of the preview is a good sample page to look at and I think communicates the room vibes, the little tables, and formatting well.
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.
