A War in the Valley

Posted on December 11, 2024 by Bryce Lynch 
By Thom Wilson
ThrowiGames
D&D? No. Shadowdark :(
Level 1

Two tribes of humanoids are warring within a small valley. Goblins, having just arrived on the western side, are trying to push out the eastern cave-dwelling Kobolds, who have been in the valley for many months. Each clan has been bringing reinforcements in to assist in winning their little war. The Goblins are likely to prevail unless the Kobolds’ latest plan can succeed.

This thirty page adventure uses seventeen pages to describe about 22 rooms inside some humanoid caves. Badly done OSE style descriptions, a hodge-podge of monsters, and no real interactivity beyond stabbing. I think I’ve seen this film before, and I didn’t like the ending.

Let us wander through the DriveThru listings for D&D, OGL, Classic D&D. It’s been awhile. Ah, here’s one! It’s listed as D&D! Game on! Oh, wait, it’s not D&D. It’s Shadowdark. Which is a fine game, but has now attracted the attention of the masses … and their own conflicting intents. Like $$$$$$$$$$.

It’s a cave. There’s a big central-ish room with goblins on one side and kobolds on the other. The goblins have a drow mercenary. The Watcher in the Water is sitting in a pool outside the cave, worshipped by cultists that show up twice a day. I don’t know, maybe you can do a Yojimbo, but the adventure is NOT going to support you in those endeavors. Not in any way other than to say “the kobolds will give you a jewel for helping.” Fucking great. The DESIGNER should be DESIGNING the adventure. They should be doing DESIGN things. I can roll on a random fucking table and pretext pretext pretext. But, dumping shit in to the adventure to facilitate interesting play? That’s fucking DESIGN. I shall resist the temptation to rant more about this, but it’s just so frustrating. No one cares. Not anymore. Ever. Anything decent that comes out is just a fluke, to be treasured. Perhaps because what is defined as decent has shifted to keep up with the top 3% ?

Ok, so, no real design here. It’s just a bunch of shit thrown together., Oh, goblins. Oh, drow mercenary. Oh, kobolds. Oh. the water in the water. Oh, cultists. Like, wtf?! The watcher, ok, maybe. It’s a pool of water and sticking a monster in a pool of water is time honored tradition, and we all know I love a well done trope. It’s not well done here, but, hey, you can’t win if you don’t play. But the fucking cultists?!? LIke, why the fuck are they a part of this? They show up in exactly one place, the lake in the valley (where the water lives) that the caves are by. What possible reason is there for them to be there? “Well, I rolled a white dragon, so I guess it’s there …” Yeah? Ok, sure, I guess we come up with a reason?  I DO believe in random rolling as inspiration. But not to the point you’re ruled by it, and certainly not “as rolled.” Shit just seems to be thrown in here. 

Let’s talk descriptions. Lest I be accused of being an asshole, here is a good description from the adventure: “Murky, sludgy pool. Brown water with thick slime along top. Filthy rags. Stained cloths discarded poolside. Facedown. Murdered Goblin floating face down in rear of pool.” Murky and sludgy? Awesome! Brown water? Great! Thick slime on top? Cool! Filthy rags and stained clothing are both ok. And a body floating facedown in it? Fucking rock on my man! 

And, then, in other places, we get a terrible OSE style description. “Paid the price: two goblins lie dead in pools of blood on the floor.” Oh fuck off with that paid the price bullshit. 

In other places we get such exciting descriptions as “Short cave opening. Four feet in height and width. Skull pile. 1d20+5 skulls of goblins, kobolds, and humans nearby. Filth. Humanoid excrement, thrown out of the cave opening.” It’s just bullshit, this intro keyword bullshit and then the follow up detail. If done right I think it can be effective. But this isn’t done right, at all. 

Run around and stab shit. Very little to do beyond that. Bad descriptions. Just another adventure for the pulp mill.

This is $3 at DriveThru. The preview is six pages. You get to see a very small part of the first encounter, so, no way to make a purchasing determination from the preview. Which is the purpose of the preview. This means that the preview is a bad preview, not accomplishing the singular purpose of its existence. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/503255/a-war-in-the-valley?1892600

Posted in Reviews | 5 Comments

The Lost Garrison

Posted on December 9, 2024 by Bryce Lynch 
By Stephen Smith
Mister Smith Design
OSE
Levels 2-4

200 years ago, Goshawk Keep was overrun. It has been mostly buried for generations—the hidden underbelly long forgotten. But deep within the darkness life goes on…some things lost…some things found!

This thirty page adventure uses about five pages to describe eighteen rooms. It is overly simple, both in description and interactivity. A minimally described dungeon turned in to thirty pages … somehow?

This adventure is boring. It’s not altogether bad. There’s not enough content for the adventure to be bad. It’s just boring. And it’s boring in a very specific way. There’s this way of describing a room. It’s a minimal description, like “12 rats in a bedroom” or something like that, something close to Vampire Queen. But, it IS given an actual description. Something like “A Victorian bedroom with a dresser and 12 rats in it.”  The description doesn’t really do anything for the room. It doesn’t add anything. It is not really evocative and doesn’t really lend itself to the actual play of the adventure. That’s not an altogether uncommon complaint of mine in an adventure, but the degree to which it pertains, the … lack of other issues? Really brings it into focus. Which kind of makes sense; if you’re not really saying anything in a description then there’s really not much room for me to complain, is there? 

Let’s look at one of the rooms in the adventure. “Dispensary: Abandoned medical storage area” Are you not inspired!?!? There is a DM notes section, the DM text. It says “Treasure: 2 potions of healing, 1 scroll of neutralize poison, 1 scroll of cure serious wounds” I mean, this IS vampire queen. The description simply defines the room name. Yes, a Dispensary is a medical storage room and, yes, we ARE in an abandoned ruin. I’m not fucking around and being hyperbolic. That IS the complete room description. Can you put in a fucking rooms that says “Empty” or something like that? Absofuckinglutly you can. It’s just the … perfunctory nature of this that offends me so much. It’s a room that COULD have something interesting in it.And, in fact, it DOES have some decent treasure in it. But that was not enough to deserve a room description. If that doesn’t deserve a room description then what exactly DOES deserve a room description?

I note that this is just an extreme example in the adventure. It’s much more likely that the room would be something like this one “A small chapel with rows of stone benches facing a raised votive alter. The walls are painted with chipped and faded landscapes.” And then the DM text ONLY tells us that you see a ghostly figure float down the hallway. It takes a lot more words than that, but it doesn’t say anything more than that. It is EXACTLY the fucking same as those fucking chess players in Dwimmermount. This is, essentially, an empty room. Can you give an empty room a description? Yes. Can you put a weird thing in the dungeon? Yes. Can your dungeon consist primarily of this? WHhy the fuck did you write the dungeon then?

I know what this is. This is essentially the same as a random dungeon. You rolled on the back of the 1e DMG tables or something and that gave you list of monsters and treasure. Then you got a list of random room names to put on each room. Then you gave each room like a one sentence description. Done! That is the closest I can come to accurately describing what this dungeon is.

Can you write a dungeon like that? Sure? I Guess so? I mean, who the fuck am I to tell you what to like? But this just seems so … I don’t know. I mean, there is a small section at the end for amping up play. It says thing like “Maybe the kobolds are bullied by the orcs.” Well then why the fuck didn’t you put that in the actual fucking adventure? I mean, that IS the value that you, as the designer, is adding to the adventure. I can roll on the fucking random tables myself and say “looks like a sea cave theme to me.” But the actual shit beyond that? That IS the value that a designer is adding. I think that’s the joy, also, in creation. Is it just drudgery to get through so you can move on to the next thing? What the fuck would the point of all that to be? A school assignment? A futile hope to generate revenue? 

In spite of the thirty pages, there is almost no content here. A simple definition description of a room. DM notes that are as minimal as are humanly possible, to the point of “12 rats.” There is almost no interactivity beyond a simple trap “Block trap: 1d10 damage” or stabbing something. I just don’t understand at all what the motivation for writing something like this would be. 

This is $5 at DriveThru. The preview shows you eleven pages of spread, so about 22 adventure pages. Good preview. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/494867/the-lost-garrison?1892600

Posted in Reviews | 2 Comments

Across the White Marsh

Posted on December 7, 2024 by Bryce Lynch 
By Olav Nygard
Cyclopean Games
Blood & Bronze
Intro Characters

The White Marsh is a great waste of caustic sludge. From a distance it looks like a wintery swamp, but it is arid and hot instead of wet and cold. In the summer months, the rapid evaporation causes the pale mire to coagulate into an ice-like crust of saline crystals, thick enough to carry the weight of an army. The marsh is corrosive and houses nothing but horrors, so travelers avoid it at all costs. Still, a caravan has gone missing, its tracks disappearing into the dreaded waste. No-one knows what madness or desperation led it there, but reasons matter little—what does is that its cargo was valuable beyond comparison.

This 48 page hex crawl with 10×14 hexes, details a salt swamp and the parties search for a caravan full of tribute. It’s a frustrating combination of great hex crawl content that can’t sustain itself over the full range of hexes. It delivers on those Akkadian vibes, but I suspect can be used in most wildernesses.

I’ve had a brand of Gilgamesh in cuniform for thirty years, that I get redone every ten. My home wifi is called humbaba. My truck says Enkidu on its plates. My passphrases are from a tablet. I played QAGS at a convention just so I could be Gilgamesh, and then framed the character sheet and hung it on my wall. This adventure setting is the land between the rivers. I may not be the most objective reviewer. Also, it’s for Blood 7 Bronze, so, I’m kind of reviewing this as a hex crawl that one might use in a more traditional D&D system … meaning some judgements could be wonky.

Weirdly enough, I also tend to start my new Dungeonland games with a missing caravan of gold. And, I also have it disappear in to a marsh, the Bleakmarsh. As the intro to this adventure states “It is but a matter of time before someone else will venture out to salvage the wealth; the adventurers’ only advantages are their speed and their willingness to recklessly travel where others are reluctant to.” It gives the party something to chase to get started, before they start running in to people and situations that expand the game. So, a decent little thing to get the party moving through the hexes. Likewise, the rules for hex crawls here are relatively decent, terse and yet covering what needs be. Get your ass to some dry land at night (the map is supposed to help here, I think, but I can’t for the love of me figure out the dry land portion of it) , what you can see next door, how far you can move. It’s all pretty simple and effective enough without becoming simulationist. 

Hang in there as I describe what’s going on. We’ve got an aristo traitor, leading the caravan, in cahoots with some bearers. He got it in to the swamp with the intent of some swamp creatures/environment killing most of the caravan and making off with the gold. But the guide was too good and now he’s lost. The guide is still wandering the swamp, ol DeCaprio from the Revenant, on a revenge mission. (50% chance that when he dies he doesn’t actually die. Driven by hatred as he is. Nice simple but evocative mechanic to describe his passion.) We’ve got an invisible witch that can ride your back in the swamp, a necromancer up to some Make A Deal evil, cockroach people, brigands in multiple forms and desperados wanting to join them, as well as soldiers in the swamp sent to hunt them down. All with some potential clues scattered around on where the caravan is as well as the usual assortment of random danger and weird shit in a marsh. Rumors abound, with everyone getting one. Unless you’re a courtesan, then you get two. That’s the kind of specificity and idiosyncratic I can get behind! I think it adds loads of flavour when an adventure does that.

There is a main bandit camp. “Safe in their knowledge that no deputy will pursue them here, the raiders have painted their houses in every color and hung gold and silver from the ridges of their twigroofs to parade their illegitimate wealth. In their back-yards, water is slowly boiling in large bronze shields heated by the sun. There is a 50% chance that all raiders are out, leaving only the kidnapped women that are their wives and serfs” And then it goes on, for one of the NPC women “Despite her status, she hates her captors with passion but is prevented from action by her child with Yarosh who lives in his house together with Hamala. Has a small vial of poison and a dagger that she traded her soul for with an old crone promising her vengeance.” Now that is the kind of old school revenge drama/revenge thing I can get behind! FOr sports sake I spit my last!

The adventure is great when it has these little citations going on. Either some kind of a relationship between hexes or something interactive in a hex. And it is substantially less interesting when it abstracts or goes all Isle of the Unknown. “The soldiers are led by a deputy.” Well, fuck me. The adventure has no problem naming people and giving a brief personality to others, but not this very important dude. And then ethere are hex entries that are “An ossified tree from the time when cyclops ruled the earth.” That’s it. Or “Shubbery.” Ok. Sure. “A tunnel, leading straight down into the ground roughly five feet across and perfectly round. Its edges are dripping with pink slime.” That’s it. No more. Yeah, sure, every day is not Disneyworld, but, also, we’re looking for content here, and these things stand out given how good the NPC’s and situations are, and what a fantastic job it does communicating the overall vibe. I’m also more than slightly annoyed at the lack of … treasure? We don’t get anything on the hoard, just notably that 1/3rd of it is left at a certain location. Or that another group has a few urns worth. Worth of … ? I’m guessing that this all makes sense in Blood & Bronze … but its also a bit of a disappointment in the loot category. I guess maybe I’m a power gamer at heart?

That aside, I don’t think the Sumar & Akkad thing is necessary here. While I think the theming is spot on, I also think you can easily fit this in almost anywhere, as long as we’re doing a vast wilderness thing where we can have the unknown abundant and civilization pushing at it. 

This is $5 at DriveThru. There’s no preview. And that always makes me very sad 🙁

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/215459/across-the-white-marsh?1892600

Posted in No Regerts, Reviews | 2 Comments

Cult of the Sky Titans

Posted on December 4, 2024 by Bryce Lynch 
By Into the Weird Blue Yonder
Self Published
Knave
Level 1

A blight creeps across the land. Trees blacken and die. People disappear in the night, only to return taken by madness and rot. The spirits cry out for heroes.

This is a deceptively dense 36 page adventure that uses about eleven pages to describe nineteen rooms in some cultist caves … during caveman times. It is doing almost everything right, only getting a bit long in some encounters and needing a little more work in the appendices to make them more accessible. Weirdly niche, though. 

The designer has a supplement, Fire&Stone, that I assume describes neolithic roleplaying for Knave or some such, and this adventure is meant for that. Hence the weirdly niche comment I made. I’m going forward with a review though since we can always dump in a lost valley setting or some such; I’m not sure anything here precludes that. 

The setup here is that a hunter gatherer tribe has returned to a certain place. Near the mountain where they bury their dead, and the once lush valley is now not. Or, as one of the hooks puts it “A party member knew this place in their youth. It was once lush and verdant.” I think that’s a pretty decent hook. Simple, Moody, to be sure, and a pretty decent pretext. The adventure outlines three “camps” near each other. They each have a little bit of information and the third one has a VERY sick child. People have started disappearing. Once has come back, the child. Let’s see what the adventure has to say … “A bibilious child reeking of death, covered in  failed poultices. His veins are black, eyes and hands crusted over with black tears. He lies in  the dirt; writhing, screaming in hoarse tongues.” Yes, that would seem to be a fucking problem, ey? Great little fucking description. Writhing. Screaming in hoarse tongues. Fuck yeah! There’s some showing instead of telling!

The designer has a knack for this. The NPC’s are pretty well described, terse, but with explicit Wants, Needs, Knows sections. A couple of little vignettes in the camp that bring a sense of unease to things. This is married with a kind of omen table that has something like “a single fish, no more. It is filled with black glass shards.” Well that’s not cool, eh? And we don’t have a perfect society here, we’ve also got a vain woman and charlatan fortune teller. “You shall meet a tall dark stranger with exquisite feet.” The reason for the season is not forgotten in this adventure, with the designer inserting these little moments here and there. It’s got this excellent vibe, of a worried tribe. The omens are appropriate and help build the setting.

Ok, so, old dude who tended the graves up in the mountain burial place is dead, so, no help from him. Up you go.  “A thick fog shrouds this rocky clearing. The icy bottom layer soaks into your legs and conceals something that darts between the rocks.” Pretty chill, eh? That’s a good ominous description, especially for the entrance to the caverns. All of the rooms start with a little thing like that, impressions, but tied in to the actual room elements further described below. They are pretty decent, being terse, giving good impressions, and yet also having the elements you need, or that the players should be paying attention to, to ask further questions of the DM. It’s not perfect perfection, but it hits pretty well most of the time. This knack for using descriptions appropriately extends to creatures “Scars healed and reopened too many times crust on a wretched face, converging on a malformed mouth and a bloodshot beady eye. Infected piercings cover all else.” Hey man, aftercare instructions, yeah? “Wants; Bloody violent entertainment. Failing that, entertainment.” Me too buddy! (Both the sequel and gameshow version of Squid Game are abhorrent misreadings of the theme. I’ll watch them anyway.)

I note that the rooms start with a little description. Then they go to “Connections” the dreaded Bryce “where the exits go” text. But, in this case “To the west two rows of black bloody  footprints flank a red-black smear leading to …” and “To the north the occasional glimmer can be seen from …” and so on. A vibe, a hint, a decent but terse description. Those are exits I can get behind! 

For interactivity … we’ve got some fuck around and find out shit going on. Fuck with the deep pool and get The Evil Eye and maybe summon up an abomination from the depths. Wade through chest high water and maybe kick loose something from bottom … that maybe you should chase after. Some decent amount of stabbing, and/or rescuing people with a surprising amount of potential talking. Some psychedelics and environment features add to the mix. And the weirdness. A cavern, with thick rolling mist and a suffocating stench of blood. Putrid mists and a strange stillness. In the center sit two cultists, eyes and hands locked together, a cord tightly wound around their hands, breathing incredibly subtly … with one appearing pregnant. Ok man, are we trying to save them or just executing them? I know what I WANT to do and what I SHOULD do. The strength here is that the should competes against the want, the preamble camp and so on helping to build empathy. The whole thing just builds and builds and lyrics on top of each other to create more than the sum.

There’s a turn of phrase here and there that isn’t great. In some spot we’re told that this is where cultists try and funnel intruders … which is really something that should be in a general notes section and not in a room description. It’s deceptively dense for an eleven page 19 room adventure. And the rooms can also sometimes get quite dense and/or full. Too much, I’d say, for any one location given the formatting used. And not just the page long central room. The formatting IS working well to help locate and run things, but it’s WAY leaning to thick side.

This thing is just full of great things. It’s doing just about everything right in the way it does it, and I think that excuses a little bit of the content being a bit flat or samey. I have no idea how you would use this in a “normal” game, but its certainly worth the ol college try, perhaps with a restating and a bit more treasure to match your chosen level range.

This is $2.50 at itch.io. The demo is just the map. And the sample page is white text on black background … which is not present in the adventure at all. I think, though, otherwise, that’s a good sample of the room content of the adventure.

https://weirdandblue.itch.io/sky-titans

Posted in Reviews, The Best | 6 Comments

Mad Mask Spire

Posted on December 2, 2024 by Bryce Lynch 
By Nickolas Zachary Brown
Five Cataclysms
Five Cataclysms
"Mid levels" ... 8?

The Spire has stood as a bastion of evil for centuries, and now under the rulership of the dread witch, Hagatha, the evil blossoms anew. Over the years, many noble heroes have found their minds twisted by the evil here, drawn in by their lust for dark power. Will the heroes of today fare any better?

This 45 page adventure presents a tower with sixish levels and about sixty rooms. It is best described, perhaps, as a grosser Tegal: house themed, somewhat welcoming, but an unmistakably evil locale. A fine little place to bop in to, if you can handle its flaws.

I’m going to do my best this morning. Sometimes, when you are descending in to the depths of the earth or going stonehelling, you stumble upon MonsterTown. Businesses and so on mingle about in an area. Thoroughly evil, but also a little chill. Sometimes monstertown has someone in charge who is also evil but chill. Hey, jst don’t go looking behind the sign that says Employees Only, ok? This also pops up from time to time when you are invading Lord Evils castle … there’s are parts of it that are kind of chill to visit. Evil, but not outright KILL THE INTRUDERS hostile.

There is something similar going on in this adventure. Maybe not explicitly, but that’s the vibe.

I’m not super in to the cover, but that’s the dungeon layout. It’s a spire with these giant mask faces carved in to it. There’s a smaller illustration further in to the adventure that I think better depicts the place. Anyway, there’s your mad masks of the spire. You enter up a slimy ramp/tongue in to a mouth to get inside what would otherwise ne a “normal” dungeon. Where “normal” means some dudes without heads but faces in their chests, dumb but numerous. FLying brainsstill dripping blood, or a read mist floating around as wanderers, among others. THis place is … weird? I don’t know how to describe the vibe. It’s a normal place … but the rooms and creatures are abbynormal. I don’t know, not body horror, but in the same neighborhood in that you see/meet something on the more visceral (sometimes literally …) end of the spectrum in a somewhat otherwise normal environment. We will leave the build up and release of tension theory to those that know better,

Ok, let’s see here, room five. A dining room. The swell-dressed keleton butler comes in to take your order as he recites the menu. “Baby back-ribs”, Heartdevoire, Oculemon, or Manling Dumplings. I note that you’ve not yet reached the kitchens, or their meat locker where “Dozens of the bodies of children hang from chains, skewered on meat hooks, their heads and several ribs removed. Bits of flesh, rotting and fresh, are scattered all about the floor. Pieces of flesh have been haphazardly torn from the bodies here. “ The ribs are indeed baby back ribs. And the adventure des this quite a bit. The main enemy is a witch, but we can squint to see a hag. Perhaps a bit less swamp hag but with the same sort of evil showing through. The adventure has no problem “going there.” I don’t think it’s ever inappropriate, but, it does do a decent job of noting that, hey, these people are evil. 

“Thump, thump, thumping, the beating of hearts, dozens of them, fills your ears. They are chained to the walls, little tubes sticking out of them, as blood flows through the tubes and all around the room.” Oh, also, a giant heart behind glass in this room, also chained to the wall with tubes sticking out of it. And, in another room, the lab experiments room, some tables with specimens on it “A horse corpse covered in blue shrooms; a man with a shrunken head, intellect reduced to 1; a corpse wrought by severe necrosis; a man with blind eyes; a badger with teeth so long it can’t close its mouth; a person whose legs appear to be made of worms.” Helga the witches devotion to the scientific method could be better, but you can’t fault her innovation. I think, from these descriptions, you can get a feel for the vibe here.  There is a little bit of a lighthearted vibe mixed in here and there, not comedy but more of a slight absurdity to the goings on. Our minions are so dumb that they frequently bring anyone they capture to the nearest boss create (Which, would be a complaint; it’s up to DM to locate the nearest on their own without assistance.) So we get this bumbling threat of the hulking dudes with faces in their chests, keystone copping their way through dealing with the party, until the party meets a unique creature. 

The main map page is not my favorite, it’s too small to be useful, but there are some break out maps that are slightly better. I gotta be able to see the map to run the map. And treasure can be a bit low also, for an gold=xp game at level ten, anyway. There are other little bits, like amy doors causing you 1d6 damage just to open. Formatting is ok, decent for the text length if a little basic. And interactivity is … fine? There’s a lot of “turns out there was something interesting at the bottom of this barrel of pimple juice” sort of thing.

And, thusly, formatting that is not terrible. Descriptions that are not terrible (in spite of “appears to be” appearing a little too often.) An adventuring environment that is more neutral based, ut certainly still full of hostile creatures, with a theme of “search the gross thing” in order to get some loot. There are a few fetch quests in this, a little too explicitly in some cases, with ghost children demanding toys, for example. Thus we have the setting to fall back on as a kind of stand out. And stand out it does, with the viscera. In this respect we’ve got something like the place, oh, the Psychedelic Fantasies adventures with the teeth and bubble/membrane shit. It’s a more unusual environment, but the interactivity certainly isn’t quite as varied as some more traditional dungeons … but that environment IS a selling point. No the best that FiveC has produced, but an unusual place without going over the top.

This is $5 at DriveThru. There is no preview.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/281441/mad-mask-spire?1892600

Posted in No Regerts, Reviews | 5 Comments

Baron’s Gambit

Posted on November 30, 2024 by Bryce Lynch 
By Matt Finch
Mythmere Games
S&W
Levels 1-2

Recruited by the Baron of Cat’s Cradle, the characters are tasked with investigating the deaths of some guardsmen in a small hamlet known as Baron’s Gambit. They will end up exploring the ruins of an abandoned temple in search of a strange foe, and uncovering a secret that could make them quite rich … provided they survive.

This 26 page adventure details a small investigation and then dungeon exploration with about twenty rooms over a couple of levels. Aimed at introductory players, it’s got some decent advice and some nice challenges in it that illustrate a more complete understanding of a dungeoneering environment. It also leaves shit out in a frustrating way and someone needs to introduce Matt to updated formatting principals. 

The local Baron is a real go-getter. He’s doing some redevelopment work, but his local dudes he sent died. He sends the party in to straighten shit out before he gets there in two weeks to take charge. Tracking things to the local abandoned temple (sitting on the edge of a village with five buildings) gets you to a dungeon crawl with a few interesting features. 

Right off the bat, nice cover on this one! I mean, it’s not really an accurate reflection of the village, at least not in the way it’s described, but that cover is striking, yeah? And, Matt seems to be a pretty decent DM with a good understanding of what D&D is, as shown by little bits of advice sprinkled throughout. Like, allow the characters to have an impact on the game world. Fuck some shit up, for good or ill, but the impact will really bring the play home to the players,. Absofuckinglutly! And, there’s a cute bit of snark present as well, such as, when the characters are getting the deal from the Baron “And as you know, it’s a bad idea for nameless, landless adventurers to bargain with people who own their own prisons.” I do love a sly grin.

But, more importantly, are the interactive elements. You know, the adventure. The investigation portion here is pretty simple. Poke around and look at the four or five buildings and half a dozen people until you reach the little girl who tells you she saw a little man near the abandoned temple. She IS in the house closest to it, but, also, I would have loved a little bit of “her room faces it” or something. Anyway, I’m not sure an investigation is all that needed when “large ruined temple” sits a hundred feet away. “Whats that you say?! Monsters are coming out of the monster summoning portal?!” 

The dungeon, proper, has a couple of VERY good rooms in it. One involves a one way door, with a possability that the party fucks up their most obvious manner of escape. This is integrated well in to the adventure, with the opportunity for a direction before you get it, possibly, as well as, perhaps, a little lesson in stabbing shit. Another section has a collapsed stairway to the next level. We deal so often with common dungeon features being taken for granted, and some of my most favorite things are when this is upended. That cave adventure in one of those AA’s, or in this case, stairs that are collapsed. Such a simple thing, but showing such a more expansive view of the dungeon … not just the perfunctory room challenge or hallway trap. There are a couple of others as well, but these two just really really stood out for me. Excellent examples of putting interactivity in … and hopefully a lesson to be learned in an introductory adventure for both players and DM.

I am, however, quite frustrated with two things. First, there is a tendency to just leave shit out. Like, to the extent that I’m not certain this thing was playtested. Th reason you are in the village is the dead guardsmen. You’re told repeatedly about the tools they were guarding being broken up.  And, yet, there is not one mention of what happened to their bodies or the tools, for players that want to investigate this. I mean you get told 196 times that an earth elemental attacked them, but not what happened to them. And, then, at the inn, there’s a dude that disappeared recently. Turns out he’s a little central to the backstory. Also, we’re told repeatedly that he left a box of papers with the innkeeper. And, yet, there is absolutely no indication AT ALL about what they are about. I guess why he was in the village? That makes logical sense, I guess. But for being told so many times and then NOT to mention what they actually are? And, then, the various NPC’s are all a little boring. Like, they don’t have any personality to themselves. These are all wildly missed things.  Oh! Oh! “This chest contains an egg, which contains a talking mouse. The mouse remains on the material plane for only 2 hours before it vanishes into smoke.” There’s nothing more to this. Do with it as you will. DId anyone proof it? What the fuck do editors do these days? Spell check? Doesn’t Lotus Notes do that for you? (I wouldn’t know. I, obviously, turn it off)

But, also, there’s the formatting. I was growing a little weary of the paragraph text in this but soon came across a list of bullets for what the innkeeper knows. Great! I was wrong and this is going in the right direction for certain things. No. It’s not. This is almost all paragraph text. We get a long, slow description of a hut collapsing. All so you can, I guess, figure out it has no nails. We get a HUGE paragraph describing all of the things in the rooms, all muddled together, for the DM to pick through to find the elements they need in that moment. It’s padded out with “The room is indeed empty, but there are a few things the characters might observe if they poke around and look at things.” And the phrase “appears to be” is used far, far too commonly. Look, you don’t have to go all OSE on things, but, also, a wall of text paragraph with all of the different room elements, a LONG wall of text paragraph with all of the room elements in it, is not very conducive to running this thing at the table.

If I were having a good day I might be tempted to squeek this by with no regerts. I do really like the core premise and the impact on the area from the characters and the little bits of great interactivity in the dungeon. But the descriptions are not standout and the formatting is terrible, along with the things left out. Who’s decision was it to scatter the fucking maps out of order in three different parts of the book? You put level two on page six, in the middle of the book, and level one on page thirteen? Who the fuck made this decision? No, more than anything else, I want to know who did this and what their reasoning was? I know, it sounds trivial, but, also, it’s such a simple thing … and indicative of other things. 

This is $3 at Mythmere Games.

Baron's Gambit (Swords & Wizardry Adventure) – PDF
Posted in Reviews | 28 Comments

The Wizard Remains

Posted on November 27, 2024 by Bryce Lynch 
By Sean Ferrell
Hangry Dwarf Press
OSE/5e
Level 6. Ha!

There used to be a wizards tower here, but an earthquake changed that. The tower fell, and no one ever heard from the old wizard again. Some say he was responsible for the quake. Some say he left powerful magic behind. Some say he was conducting terrible experiments. Some say all of the rumors are true.

This ten page adventure uses five pages to describe about 21 rooms in a funhouse dungeon. It smacks of just throwing shit in for the fuck of it all. I find the lack of pretext disturbing. I do not like it Sam-I-Am. 

I like pretext. I like a suspension of disbelief. We could all just sit around the table and have the DM roll on the wilderness tables until we go back to “safe place” to heal and repeat until we get enough loot from the random rolls that we can level. Or, we can just do the same thing in randomly generated after randomly generated map. I like a decent pretext. I like the suspension of disbelief that comes from making things work together, to bring them together to something larger than the sum of their parts. To discover the gatehouse at Stonehell and the clues it provides as well as the framing of what’s to come. 

There’s a room here that has the read-aloud “An empty room that is covered by burn marks. “. Another just has a pedestal in it with a gargoyle statue on it. The challenges here are not that of a dungeon at the base of a wizards tower. The challenges here are just a bunch of shit that was thrown together. Random, in the poorer sense of the word, in that there is no rhyme or reason as to why they are there. I guess this is the “A Wizard did it!” nonsense. I wanna get in to the mood. Discover something. Put something together. Say Oh yeah, that makes sense! Yeah yeah, I like Dungeon of the Bear. Fuck off.

The room titles here are pure funhouse. “Dont be Shelf-ish” or “What a Boar” This is all solidly in the realm of funhouse, even if the lack of pretext room encounters lead you in the same direction. But what stands out here are the encounters themselves. An empty room with scorched walls. Obviously a challenge room. A room with a pedestal on it with a gargoyle statue on it – obviously a challenge room. A room with a sign on the door that says “Remember to bring the right tool for the right job” – obviously a challenge room. And, I can, in some circumstances, get behind a funhouse dungeon. Some of them fit and work together. White Plume or Inverness, or even Bear. But, then there are things like this, that jut seem to be a bunch of stuff in a bunch of rooms that are all disconnected to each other. 

The usual nonsense about conversions apply here. It says you can do this in 5e or OSR. Which means it’s a 5e adventure and stated for 5e and, more importantly, TREASURED for 5e. You might be going home with less than a thousand gp for this one and no Blackrazor to show for it. 

But, back to the dungeon. When the read-alouds are not being inanely terse they are instead being overly descriptive. “Six statues made of wax—all amazingly rendered to look like actual people—stand about the room.” Well now, you’ve just destroyed a crucial part of the game. The back and forth between DM and player. No one gets to ask questions about those statues now, not what they are made of anyway. You told us in the read-aloud. You want to the read-aloud to help contribute to the interactivity between player and DM that is the core process of the game. The players ask, the DM answers and the players ask more based on that answer. If I tell them everything in the opening text crawl then that critical element is greatly diminished. 

Oh no! Burning oil got lit! Oh no! The gargoyle came to life and attacks you if the party has a MU in it! Oh, also, it comes to life and attacks you if the party doesn’t have a MU in it. Oh no! Take 1d6 slashing damage from the trap in the hallway! Oh No! Ok, I’m bored of that now. This is not a level six adventure. 5e? I don’t know. Or care. There is the BARE  minimum at the end of the adventure related to scaling. Look, just fucking design the fucking thing for 5e or OSR. Fuck me, it’s 2024, you can publish both versions … I mean, you know the differences between the two systems, right? What, at the core, makes them tik? Like … gold for XP in a certain family of games? 

No, tentacle worms will not save this. No, the racoon pig will not save this. It’s just a series of random rooms poorly balanced and badly described.

This is $1 at DriveThru. The preview shows you four rooms, so, good preview.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/501913/the-wizard-remains-5e-knave-2e-osr?1892600

You gonna be my teenage dream tonight, baby?

Posted in Reviews | 6 Comments

A Strange House

Posted on November 25, 2024 by Bryce Lynch 
James Crane
Crumbling Keep
OSE
Levels ... ? Fuck off and buy it l0ser

In the middle of a deep and dark forest along a babbling stream, the PCs come upon a wide and long field. It is extremely overgrown and has become a mix of bolted plants and dead, dry, and decaying foliage. Despite this, there is somehow a completely clear, straight path through it, untouched by the growth on either side. At the end of it is a tall and warped house standing by a single tree. Each PC catches a different scent in the air that reminds them of a specific memory of their childhood …

This 42 page adventure presents eleven rooms inside of a ‘whimsical’ poi crawl house. Aimless, the writing is unfocused and it comes off as something between a museum tour and a funhouse. You simply wander about and interact with strange stuff for no other reason than to do so.

Ok, encounter one. You’re walking towards this house and you see a bird. If you feed the bird then it changes in to a small, wicked-looking six-legged three-eyed winged goat. If you attack it then the goat explodes in powder and you sneeze for a minute if you fail your save. This takes a page and a half to communicate, along with the four one sentence rumors he’s got. So, monster description? Pretty interesting! There’s something you don’t see every day! I might be more specific than “wicked” in a description … wiry brustle fur, sharp fangs and blood red eyes or some such. But, hey, three eyes and six legs with wings has got it going on! The core of the encounter though? This kind of attitude in the encounter design … where an attack causes it to party explore with no real effects. This is meaningless. It is a thing that happens. It has no real impact. It is mostly disconnected. It is meaningless. This is the normal manner for this adventure. You encounter a room and something could happen in the room, if you interact with it. But there’s no purpose to it. To any of it. As if each room were a carnival game you could play … but without reward or context or anything to tie them together in to something more than the sum of the parts. “When it sees any PC, it’ll instantly start taunting them, pausing to squawk and laugh at its own jokes. It can’t be bothered to follow the adventurers, however; that’s too much work.’ This is the Jerk Bird, a parrot nesting on top of a chimney. There’s nothing to this. You might as well say that the door is red and unlocked. This is a museum tour, where nothing matters. A funhouse where all of the encounters are bizarre and disconnected. (Yes, if you befriend the cat then it will chase off the sprites in the attack.)

“Arriving at the house, the PCs see a strange sight: the structure appears to be …” This then is the opening line of the first real room. Note the padding. Note how it doesn’t say ANYTHING. You can literally delete everything here and not impact the adventure in any way at all. And encounter after encounter does this, is like this. Near he start you face two outside doors, two ways in, side by side. A board head trophy in between asks you to sing it a song and if you do so then it tells you that the safe way to the left. My left or your left? Whatever … the point is that the OTHER door describes the kitchen that it leads to … and then we get a description of the kitchen in the kitchen. The organization is MADNESS. There’s no map, each room tells you which room you can go to next … but … can you go back? The sitting room has no exits listed. These are the absolute basics of adventure design and yet they do not exist at all here. 

What level is this for? JUST SHUT THE FUCK UP AND BUY IT. The inanity of this shit. The second half is just a bunch of random encounters, disconnected from the adventure proper, as if we just tossed in another supplement called “Interesting encounters” to the rear of the adventure. 

I don’t understand this. I don’t understand this. I don’t understand this. There is a chair in this room that you can sit in. There is a mouse in this room that curses at you. What is the point of encounters like that? TO be clear, these are not from the adventure, but they represent the vibe of the encounters in the adventure. It’s Isle of the Unknown all over again. 

This is $14 at DriveThru. There’s no preview. Because FUCK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/499909/a-strange-house?1892600

Posted in Reviews | 11 Comments

Twin Lakes

Posted on November 23, 2024 by Bryce Lynch 
By Yochai Gal
Self Published
Cairn

Two weeks ago, Aldra, the beloved butcher of Isthmus Town, suddenly vanished without a trace. Some days later, a local teen reported seeing a man swallowed up by the earth near Deadmill. Others have also gone missing. Now, the townsfolk are left wondering: Who might be next?

This little 24 page digest adventure presents a classic setup: a small village with some shit going on for the PC’s to investigate and then fix. The NPC’s and situations are real enough to be more relatable than usual, and the text is focused on DM using it for gameplay. This is a basic adventure done well.

Hey, just don’t fuck up your adventure and I’ll probably be ok with it. I might not drool over it and gush but I won’t hate on it.There is nothing really wrong with this adventure. In fact, I think it grounds itself pretty well. The asshat reeve (always a good villain choice!) and a meek selfish POS farmer have been defrauding the tax collector. One night they get caught by the butcher and the farmer knocks him and drags him to an old mound where an entity rips out his heart and eats it. Hmmm, that took a turn, eh? Turns out ol meek farmer found something and it’s been promising him power. The reeve is kept complicit by fear and selfishness. That’s all pretty relatable. It’s a nice solid grounding in human emotion and character that the adventure then leverage with its “fantasy RPG” elements. And that’s gonna give the DM a lot more to work with than just generic NPC’s in a generic village. On top of this lets add in the tax collector. Just as a coincidence, he’s gone and fallen in to a time loop at an old ruined mill. Every 30 seconds he comes out of the door and stumbles in to quicksand and dies. He, also, is kind of a real person; he likes old stories, from a historian point of view, and collects them and was out looking at the mill. Old Gran knows, he used to talk to him a lot. The tie in to the reeve thing is interesting, just a coincidence, but any DM should be able to use it to amp things up. And then there’s Annafanax. “An elder half-witch living deep in the [the nearby deep wood]” Also “ She eats mostly fungi, as well as the occasional rude traveler” Fun! Sh’es not really evil. Or, maybe she is? We’re looking more at a force of nature type of thing here. SHe’s got a very Witcher setting vibe to her. She doesn’t really care about whats going on. But, she is exploiting the time loop death to charge up a Wisp with the tax collectors death agony. She just wants to use it to open a portal she’s interested in. The … banal? nature of this is so appealing.  She’s not really an antagonist. There’s a nice little column or so backstory that explains all of this in a very relatable way. It cements these NPC”s and their motivations in the DMs heads. See, I will read your backstory; if it’s not shitty.

There are some supporting NPC’s, the granny, the dumb kid who works the inn, the butcher’s wife and so on. Just enough information to bring them to life so the DM can riff on them well when the party comes a calling to question them. And the rumors. ALL of the rumors, here, point the party in a direction. “A hunter drags a large net stuffed with dead quarry. There is blood on his shirt. “Have you been through the Downs lately? A wind is blowin’ from the East, carrying with it something foul, like death rolled over.”” Well now, thats the butchers body rotting in the fens. The rumor gets the party going that direction, they do a little explore and find the body, his heart ripped out … the rumor led to something. The other five, also, get the party moving towards a person a place in which to take off and that will lead to more. It’s an interesting take on the rumor table, different than the traditional BreeYark model. 

The mill thing is nicely done situation. It has elements of puzzle to it, in that the party needs to figure out how to do the things they want to do without falling afoul of the rotting, sinking mill, etc. And, after the village investigation there’s a little dungeoncrawl to resolve the butcher situation. Both can end up in bad way, with a rift to another place/sinkhole in one and a lich queen in another … nice little touches that can impact the campaign … but not become overwhelming to it. “Yup, on my way to the front to guard to old forest. THings aren’t going well there ….” Oh, sorry sir, good luck to you, me? Nope, first I’ve heard of it …

The text is clean and easy to read and locate information. If I had a couple of complaints it would be, I think, in the writing. The various encounters and locations are … I don’t know. To it’s credit some are fact based, so a hidden trap on a path doesn’t really bother with a description … it doesn’t need one. But, also, “The creek terminates in a small bog just a few minutes’ walk south of White Tower Fens. A smell of rot and decay permeates the area. On the west end of the bog is a large mound of grass and detritus” So, this is not terrible, but, also, the wildlife found in a bog? We get smells but not sounds. It just feels like an incomplete picture. And most of the locations are somewhere in this range, a little fact based and a word or two to spice it up. It could use a little more in this area. It’s not BAD, and it’s not padded. But, also, it’s not really giving the DM more a lot to riff on. I suppose I could be persuaded that this is in the right part of the spectrum of acceptable descriptions … it’s just not where I prefer it to be. Hence the Not Bad designation. Bah! Humbug! I’m unsatisfied but I can’t really complain. 

I note, also, that while I enjoy (meaning: find useful)  the village people and the mill, and the various smaller locations throughout the wilderness (and, in fact, almost everything about this) I am also a little let down by the dungeoncrawl, perhaps because of the descriptions. This feels like it should be the climax, logically, but it is a little straightforward. I don’t get a descent in to the darkness with a torch vibe, exploring the unknown in fear, or really , much of anything from it. There’s a good viscera sac now and again (always love a viscera sac!) but it can feel a little hollow. 

But, also, this is free? From a production values standpoint this may be the one of the best, if not best, free things I’ve seen. And it’s certainly not making me angry. As a free intro adventure I think this is hitting VERY well. I don’t know that _I_ would use it as an intro, but for just another Tuesday night? Absolutely. 

I note, also, that there are hints of a larger gameworld here that are very intriguing. Almost like the game world factions in the D&D Organized Play garbage. But integrated well. The Cities are giving that same kind of vibe they did in that … what, Blood of the Juggers Rutger Hauer movie?  Nicely Done. Other random notes: Twin Lakes DO appear in the adventure … a hurdle some can’t seem to do, and does the title remind anyone else of a Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew title? That’s kind of fun for an investigation!

This is free at DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/500557/cas-1-trouble-in-twin-lakes?1892600

Posted in No Regerts, Reviews | 42 Comments

The Unleashed Evil

Posted on November 20, 2024 by Bryce Lynch 
By Simone Zambruno
Classic Dungeon Adventures
OSE? Generic/Universal?
Levels ... 0? 2?

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!

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/500958/the-unleashed-evil?1892600

Posted in My Life is a Living Fucking Hell, Reviews | 14 Comments