tenfootpole.org

By Jokin Andersson, Johan Nordinge, Olav Nygard
Cyclopean Games
S&W
Level 2? They never say ... ?

There once lived a Moon Sage in a wondrous palace. Dilimbabbar—for such was his name—was a leader of armies and a scholar of the night sky. In his palace, he collected wondrous things and hoarded riches beyond belief. He summoned servants from the ether and demons from the earth to bring treasures no mortal eyes had ever seen. But that was long ago, before the flood washed over the lands. Now, the Sage is lost to an unknown fate, his powers having faltered. Yet his palace remains, brimming with wealth locked away in the vacant halls. …or so travelers say, telling tales to each other under starlit skies.

This sixteen page adventure uses five pages to describe sixteen rooms in an arabian nights/sumerian type setting. Decent interactivity, but a shit way of presenting it that I’m not gonna dig through in order to run it. 

Seems unfair, right? I mean, you come up with an ok adventure and then it gets ignored because you wrote it in Basque in iambic pentameter. Cause there’s 600 hundred other adventures that are ok, or better, and easier to use.

Let’s cover some random encounters! I fucking love them in this, and when I saw them I was cautiously optimistic about the adventure to come. “The warm wind brings the laughing voices of a group of women, bathing in an azure pond of remarkable depth.” Hey, man, that will get some players attention! And, for once, they ain’t Oh Brother sirens! Or, how about “A long line of prisoners of war are being escorted to Sippar by a troop of well-armed soldiers. One of the prisoners is an Akkadian prince, promising a bountiful reward if he were to be freed and brought to his kinfolks in Ashur”. Where “troop” is define as “74” … which seems a little large to get up to some fun, but, still … that’s a great concept! And the random encounters on the way to dungeon are pretty much all like this. A bolded sentence that grabs you and a follow up sentence that only adds to it. Really top notch chance encounters. In contrast to the actual wanderers in the dungeon, which are, like “1d10 centipedes.” Meh. Ok, then how about “1d6 skeletons”? No. Yeah, me neither. A real disappointment after those desert encounters. (Which, I will continue to praise on, are REALLY fucking good for their size. Like, hex crawl good.)

Ok, so, you’re going on The Wonderous Hoard adventure and you’re hired to go to the dungeon and bring back this mask. And told you can only take two things from the dungeon or you’ll be cursed or something. Grrrr … ok. I’m not sure I’m down with that. It absolutely fits the theme of the arabian nights/folklore thing this adventure has going on. Almost every creature is a person or demon or insect/animal, so, it’s got the human-centric/realism thing down pat, which I groove on, and the “only take two each” fits in with that. And if you do take more than two then theres this chance of not escaping the dungeon and being cursed afterwards … more for each thing beyond two each. So. Ok. It’s a different vibe, I guess, which is ok. 

Ok, so, the actual adventure. It’s ok. The rooms have some decent things in them to interact with. A hallway in tiles of glazed clay in blue and black … the severed corpse of an adventurer in the middle of it. That’s fun! And the man, dressed as if from Sippar, carries a healing potion  of the sort sometimes sold in the foreigners district – in a small leather pouch. That’s hw you integrate extra fucking information. Not quite the usual evocative writing, but something behind it. Or, how about the Moon Beasts room! “A giant centipede lies coiled in the middle of the lower room, preternatural frost radiating from its body. It is chained by silver shackles to a large meteoric rock that prevents it from climbing the balcony, but not from moving freely—albeit with some effort—across the rest of the room.” I love a truly giant centipede … especially as a moon beast!

And then the magic items are great also. The Bone Crown brings back to life anyone who wears it. Until they take it off and they drop dead again. How fun! The “mundane’ magic items gets a little bit of fun to them and a large percentage are non-standard. A good mix, with everything done well.

But man, that fucking text is a fucking mess. “It was here that the moon sage rested between his campaigns.” So the fuck what? How does that contribute to play at the table? More importantly, lets look at the COMPLETE CHAOS that is the room organization in this. I present room two.

Taking up a column (not unusual here, for the text to stretch out that far in this adventure), we get a room with walls covered with shelves stacked with cuneiform tablets. Which contain astrological calculations and formulas. Then we get notes about a secret door in the room. THen the same paragraph tells us about glass vials and amphorea with strange infusions scattered on the floor, some broken. Then what in the vials. Then that there’s a robe in the corner of the room. Then a paragraph break to tell us about the robe. Then another paragraph to tell us about a big round rock sitting in one of the wall. 

It’s almost a stream of consciousness writing style, for organizing the text. SOmething gets mentioned, then some details about that. Then something else gets mentioned in the same paragraph. With details about that. Thus, any overview of the room requires a full on grokking of the room. You can’t scan the text, at least not easily. And then shit just shows up elsewhere in the room descriptions, in other paragraphs, There seems to be no  overarching format at all other than “I guess I’ll put this here now.” And that’s not cool.

Either giove an overview of everything in the room, up front, that the players will notice, or separate them out in to separate paragraphs, Or put them in bullets. Or something. But I, as the DM, need to be able, when the party enters the room, relate to obvious contents in split second. A second, maybe two, that’s how long I have to glance at the text Before I start relating shit. And the format chosen needs to support that.

And this don’t do that. You have to dig. You have to read the entire thing, slowing down the game. You have to hunt for information. I missed the secret door location TWICE in room two, while scanning the room description. That’s not cool. The descriptions are long. They pad out with useless information, and they are arranged in a manner not conducive to running it at the table. Uncool man. Uncool.

But man, those random desert encounters … In the middle of the desert, a city of tents has sprung up. Here, a drunken revelry is held to the deafening sounds of countless cicadas. The ecstatic festivities culminates in an ancient ritual—led by Tuol Aham, a copper skinned priest from Borsippa—where two teenage boys are sacrificed to summon the vile cockroach demon Bahaga.

Also, when you call your adventure The Wonderous Hoard, then, maybe, you should have a wonderous hoard in it? “There are plenty of precious things in here for example …” (gives three examples …) Hmmm, so, not so much wonderous?

This is $3 at DriveThru.The preview is five pages. You get to see a good portion of those desert encounters, ad well as the intro. Meh. Show us a fucking room man! Or three! So we can make a real purchasing decision.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/205392/The-Wondrous-Hoard-SW-compatible?1892600

By Christian Blair
Self Published
Generic/Universal
Low levels

The adventure is themed around exploring an ancient temple in the middle of the desert, hiding dark powers and amazing treasure beneath the sand. Danger awaits around the corner, and the players must be wary of the wandering shadows lurking beneath their feet. While their mission may seem simple, and their reward great, the possibilities of certain death are always following close by.

This nine page adventure has nine rooms. Non specific, abstracted text. Boring. Generic/Universal is a warning sign: Stay Far Away. 

Man, I don’t know what it is. Every time I see a Generic/Universal adventure I know it’s not going to be any good. They are all written the same way, as if being being specific about something will somehow make it specific to a system and therefore not Generic/universal anymore. Heavens to murgatroyd! Not that!There’s this abstracted way of writing that prevails in these. It seems universal. Get it?! Get it?! Universal?! What did you expect when you asked me to review this? 

You approach THE SAND TEMPLE. After ten minutes you have an encounter and then explore the rest of the temple and actually start it. Your encounter is determined by rolling a d4. 

We don’t do this. This is not a random encounter. This is not a table that you could pick multiple items from at some point in the future, like a wandering monster table. This is not the purpose of a random table. There will ever only be one encounter in that temple. So why the fuck have you put in a random table? Just fucking stat out an encounter. “A small room crumbles, revealing useful items.” This is what I’ve come to expect from Generic/Universal. “Useful items” What if, instead, you had just, as the designer, rolled on that table and instead spent a paragraph describing what happens? You know, actually creating an interesting encounter? Wouldn’t that have been better? FAR better?  The use of randomness in an adventure, when it’s not called for, remains a pet peeve of mine. It shows a fundamental misunderstanding of what randomness is used for, and, a lack of understanding of what IS important … the fucking encounter.

Ok, so, we’re in a temple. There’s absolutely no description. All we get is “sunken a quarter of its size into the sand.” That’s in … a couple of paragraphs of text? We get generic background text on everything, and I do mean generic, but no temple description. Ok, sure, how about you wing it? Except for this “the entrance is found beneath an old carpet in the center of the temple.” Uh. Ok. So, I guess there’s furniture and stuff in this abandoned temple a quarter buried in the sand? It’s fucking weird. Toss the carpet in the corner, torn and fucked up. Or half buried outside. Or it’s what you buy from some dude in town or something. It just doesn’t fit, the juxtaposition of ruined and “everything here is normal!” 

Ok, so, like, a column of text later we’re past the entrance puzzle and canget to the nine room dungeon, proper. But first we have some generic dungeon description. Like “Now, turned into a tomb

for eternity, this dungeon houses the memories of forgotten times, under the unbreakable will of forbidden magic.” That text is fucking useless. It does nothing. And, yet, text like that ABOUNDS in this adventure. In fact, that’s what makes up at least 50% of the adventure text. And, frankly, I think I’m lowballing things. It feels like 80 to 90% of the text is that kind of aggressively generic overview description shit. I’m not even sure you can call it an overview description. Abstracted background? 

Let’s get on to the rooms!

“This corridor leads to the only exit of the dungeon. There’s no light at all here,” Yes, the fucking map shows that. And, yes, we all expect there to be no light in the fucking dungeon. Useless description. Useless padding.

“This is the only known exit out of the dungeon, other than the entrance. The exit is actually blocked by a massive pile of sand, which can only be removed in the presence of the Sun Engine. When the relic is nearby, the sand automatically makes way for the players to exit. This dark cave is inhabited by various Giant Scorpions (2-4). These are strong and deadly creatures. They can’t resist much damage but their natural armor means they can tank most hits. While they don’t deal a lot of damage on their own, their sting has a deadly poison that can kill easily.” So, again with the random number of monsters. Just stick a fucking number in, man. The only known exit. Great. Again,m useless overview/padding. It’s actually blocked by sand. Perfect. More padding. How about “Blocked by sand that parts automatically in the presence of the Sun Engine.” That’s fucking boring, but, also, I did it in FAR fewer words. And then the fucking monsters. We don’t say that the cave is inhabited by the monsters. We know that already. That’s why the monsters are there. And then this garbage description of them.. Just say Giant Scorpions and move on. Tell us about the cave. Give us something interesting about it. Or the scorpions. Or how they attack. Or how one of them looks like Nobboc. (That’s your reward for writing multiple examples of how room text could be laid out 🙂 Just do SOMETHING to rock me like a hurricane. Just something.

But, alas, no, that is not to be. Aggressively generic text. I repeat again, for those in the back: specificity is the soul of the narrative. You don’t have to do this with everything, but you need SOMETHING to hang your hat on. To spark the imagination. 

This is Pay What you Want at DriveThru, with a suggested price of $3. The preview is three pages and shows you absolutely nothing of the adventure. Leroy Brown preview.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/397993/EQ4-The-Sand-Temple?1892600

By Stephen Grodzicki
Pickpocket Press
OSR
No Levels

Armed with this compilation, filling your sandbox with small – medium sized adventures has never been easier. Browse the collection, throw out a few hooks, and let the players bite where they may. Whichever direction they take, you’ll be ready to handle it with aplomb.

This 245(!) page volume compiles 22 of the adventures released by the designer. As with all compilations, it can be hit or miss. Themes emerge, with great wanderer encounters and room descriptions that need trimmed with the writing beefed up to be more evocative. This work, in particular, has more than a few “gimmick” adventures. I don’t know that I would ever buy a compilation?

Yeah yeah, it says “framework” and not “adventure.” But I think they are adventures, not frameworks, so I’m reviewing them like adventures.

Two of the works in this, Fane of the Frog God and Whitestone Tower, have been previously reviewed by me. Go check them out if you want a more in-depth covering of the adventures. They are decent enough reviews of decent enough adventures and the commentary there holds well for this volume.  I’m going to do a bad job in this review.

I’d like to cover two highlights of the adventures: the art and the wanderers. I seldom comment on art; I find most art in adventures worthless. Ideally, it would compliment the adventure, helping to bring it to life, as everything in an adventure should. The art credits in this are all over the place, but, there are some highlights. The monster art tends to be quite good, really bringing them to life. It does what good art should, helping bring the adventure to life for the DM, contributing to the evocative nature aspect of the adventure needed for the DM to convey things effectively to the players. To a lesser extent  the “general scene” art does this as well in this collection. Ruins, a tree with a skeleton on it … it helps convey a mood and they range from ok to excellent. The rest of the art tends to be the throw away stuff you see in every adventure. 

The designers wanderer tables are pretty fcking good as well. Soldiers shooting dice in an alley, An injured bear near death and not really a fighter. A beggar, getting a chamberpot dumped on his head. Even a stray cat encounter is a good one here. The energy in these little vignettes are something that I wish would also be found in the designers actual rooms/encounters. 

There are bits and pieces of other things I could talk about. NPC descriptions tend to be short and relatively good, following the three word system. In one adventure there’s a throw-away line about being hired by The Crone of Sumptown, and in another your shadows slip away from you … letting you know that things are about to get weird. These little bits and pieces, details and specificity, do wonders to bring an adventure to life. Most designers don’t come anywhere near this, and this designer sprinkles them in but a little too sparsely. 

The issue with these s that tend to be wordy. The individual rooms and encounters blow up the word count, for no good reason. In fact, The evocative writing seems to go down, quite a bit, when the rooms and encounters appear. “The face of the fortress is carved from the

mountainside, expertly cut and fashioned by the dwarven masons of old.” This is the entrance to a dungeon. It’s boring. It’s written like we’re reading a novel or series guidelines. There’s nothing useful about this description at all, for running the adventure at the table. It’s just padding. Parts of the adventures have some good bits to them. You can see them in descriptions like this one: “The tree at the centre has a skeleton nailed to it, wooden stakes hammered into the hands and forearms pinning it upright. Over time, vines have grown up around the bones, further securing them in place.” That description could be better, but its also supplemented by an good art piece. There’s this padding, and an abstraction of detail. A use of boring adjectives and adverbs, quite noticeable in the rooms proper. There are two issues here: the need to prune back the padding and the need to amp up the evocative nature of the descriptions. I will fully admit that evocative writing is hard … the hardest part of adventure design, I think. But it should be possible to prune these descriptions way back and get rid of the fluff that detracts from the good bits.

Collections are rough, because of the mish mash of adventures. This one seems particularly full of idiosyncratic adventures. One in which you play the monsters. A fey picks on the party. A zero level adventure. A roman gladiator/chariot racing one, a gang war hiring, a rooftop chase. There are some delights to be held though, or, perhaps, some better than others. An adventure involving a missing orphan and a town investigation, a couple of adventures sprinkled with the more alien of the D&D creatures … though eaters and the like. And a lot of fucking adventures where the party gets hired to escort someone to explore something. I guess its inevitable, when you’re producing so much, so reach a bit in the easy bucket. 

I’m not a fan of the abstracted treasure used in these. “Roll twice on the moderate valuables table.” This is not the evocative treasure that appeals to the PLAYERS that I’m looking for. The designer does the work. That’s the rule. If I did the work then we wouldn’t need the designer.

Cultists in Crows Keep, Folds Between Worlds, Red Moon Harvest … these are some of the more appealing ones to me. Mostly because they break away from the “Stark Dwarven Halls” that are impossible to do well … figuratively or literal stark dwarven halls, that is … 😉

This is $20 at DriveThru. The preview is thirteen pages. You get to see an overview of the adventures and part of the first one … which has that pretty nifty crucifixion tree that I liked so much … even in its iffy form.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/268944/Adventure-Framework-Collection-1?1892600

By Kevin Conyers
Flooded Realms Adventure Press
OSE
Levels 1-3

Fear the waves, the tides and the sea itself! A fearsome tower of stone roams the oceans, delivering its deadly cargo of lizardmen wherever it happens to land!

This eight page adventure, written in three weeks, features nine rooms in a floating keep full of lizardmen. It’s a pretty standard affair, with little to either recommend or condemn. Meh.

Wavestone Keep keeps on giving! We have a late context entry here … from the designer of the original Wavestone Keep! And the verdict is: it’s meh. Which is good news! That’s a massive improvement! This is the kind of adventure that I find the hardest to review. Nothing really to gripe about or praise, so I narrow in on a few points. And I’m going to do that here. I wouldn’t run this, but, if it appeared in one of the Lair Compendium adventure booklets I also wouldn’t go out of my way to slam it.

So, we’re going to take a look at a couple of the room entries. Here’s the first one:

“The twin towers which flank the entry door. The are each 20’ tall and manned by two lizardmen guards. The guards stand on the roof of the tower. They are each armed with a throwing spear and a club. They have a 1in 10 chance to identify approaching ships as not belonging to their tribe, and a 4 in 6 chance to spot intruders approaching along the trail. Each tower has an alarm bell which they will ring, alerting their companions in room 4. After ringing the bell, they will attack intruders on the trail with their throwing spears before running down the stairs for melee. The entry hall is made of finely carved wavestone, and engraved with idyllic depictions of the sea, fishing vessels and sailors.”

It’s padded up. The first three sentences could be one, trimmed down. And then we’ve got a kind of reaction text that is also padded up. FInally, we have the description at the end. Normally, I want to see a description up high, first thing, but in this case the first thing the party is going to encounter is going to be the lizardmen, so they make sense to come first. Trimming up the text we could get to something like:

“Twin towers, 20’ tall, flank the door, with two lizardmen on top with a javelin and club. They spot intruders in boats 1 in 10, and on the trail 4 in 6. They ring an alarm bell, summoning room 4, then attack.” We’ve lost nothing in this, and it’s much easier to handle at play during the game. The final line, the description, is trying to be evocative but comes off a little bland. This is, I think, the hardest part of adventure writing, creating a terse but evocative description. The current one is a little abstracted and it could perhaps be improved with an actual description, using more adjectives and adverbs. (I note this is a theme here. Room two is “finely carved wavestone, and engraved with scenes of great navel battles between ships and sea monsters.” Again, abstracted.)

Room four is labeled as Barracks, with the description “Originally a barracks for the noble’s personal guard, now used by the lizardmen as a sleeping area. It is a roughly hewn room, containing a 9 sleeping mats. Kelp Tail sleeps in the section to the north, where the guard captain was supposed to sleep. At any time, there are three normal lizardmen here asleep. Kelp tail only sleeps here at night, else he is in 9. The door separating Kelp Tail’s area is made of a giant oyster shell. When sleeping, he keeps his Staff of Striking under his cot.”  Again, note the padding, through repetition of the room use, and a description of “what it used to be.” Trimming this up we could get something closer to “Roughly hewn with nine masses of rotting seaweed nests. Kelp Tail sleeps in the north section at night, with his door made of a massive opalescent oyster shell. Three lizardmen are half buried in their nests, asleep.” Shorter, more evocative. I did this in five seconds; I recommend agonizing over the descriptions and working them to death to get something really evocative that captures the feeling you are going for.

Interactivity here is pretty minimal, with most things being combat. The wandering table has a few decent entries, like a giant sleeping croc or a kobold having stolen a silver piece, intermixed with some normal “just the monster” entries. I harp, sometimes too much, on good wanderers, but a mix, like this, gets the job done. 

So, an also ran. Better room descriptions, cut the padding, and some interactivity improvements and this one could muster up No Regerts.

This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru, with a suggested price of $1. The preview is six pages, and you get to see some rooms, so, good preview.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/415206/Return-to-Wavestone-Keep?1892600

By James Mishler & Jodi Moran-Mishler
James Mishler Games
Labyrinth Lord
Level ?

Jordvann was once a land dedicated to Law and Good, until the rise of Eldisor, the Devil’s-Son, who together with his hordes of giants, dragons, trolls, ogres, orcs, and goblins conquered the land, reduced the people to slavery, and brought down Fimbul Winter, which caused empires to fall world-wide. Eldisor ruled for 400 years, until he was slain or brought low during a rebellion of his captains, the Old Evils. Fimbul Winter ended, and civilization rose again elsewhere, while the survivors on the Isle of Eldisor sought to stay alive between the warring Old Evils.

This 76 page hex crawl might better be described as a regional setting. And, maybe, I’m actually reviewing a regional setting instead of a hex crawl. I note, however, that the hex descriptions are lacking in situations and are more places to explore … if the DM has time to quickly make a three level dungeon map.

So, Let’s take our own world, in, say the sixteenth century, in terms of geopolitics. But, lets set it in time of the norman invasion of England, in terms of tech, etc. And let’s add in dwarves and elves and shit. And then word gets out that ATlantis has been discovered and everyone races to colonize the new world … then advance the timeline by fifty years or so and go adventuring there. That’s what you’ve got here. I’d call this a campaign setting, more than a hexcrawl. As such, I’m not really going to cover MUCH of it, since I don’t review campaign settings. I don’t know how.

So, yeah, there’s a lot of talk about The Colonies. And you start as a part of the The Colonies. The framing of this is strange. I’m all for a West Marches game, and Points of Light and so on. But when you use the word Colonies it brings subtext and meaning with it. You want that in your game? Maybe? I don’t know. I usually just want to stab shit in the throat.

This thing is listed as a hexcrawl, Cyclopedia and Gazetteer. It is a gazetteer and cyclopedia for sure. You get some backstory, a description of the major parts of the island and surrounding seas, some weather, the local population and so on. The monsters are a little reskinned, so “Hobgoblins look a lot like small to medium-sized carnivores or omnivores, such as black bears, large birds, baboons, chimpanzees, crocodiles, large dogs, goats, panthers, and so forth. Their bodies resemble those of twisted elves.” Meh, I was down for the black bear thing. I’m also down for the twisted elf thing. I dn’t really know what the two together mean, but, our humanoid pals are reskinned and very Dr Moreau … without the good doctor around. 

Eldisor is an ok place. Nothing super interesting and freaky stands out in the campaign guide. Just a solid fantasy setting that deviates a little from the Greyhawk/FR baseline. 

Hexcrawling is a different beast. The hex descriptions take up about 27 pages of this 76 page adventure. Each is a short little entry. And, this is where I take exception.

I don’t think this is a hexcrawl? If so, its a bad one? 

Hexcrawls are a different beast. You want something that has a lot of situations in it. You want the party interacting with folks and doing things and solving problems and making things worse and leveraging shit. Wilderlands is the classic example. For more, I do a comparison of Wilderlands, the Stater crawls, and Isle of the Unknown where I go in to more detail on what makes a good crawl. This, alas, is not it.

“WRECK OF THE ZEESLANG. This sunken large sailing ship houses 56 Drowned Zombies, 7 Brine Ghouls, 5 Sunken Wights, and 2 Deep Sea Wraiths.” That’s not a situation. That’s monsters at a location. And the vast, VAST majority of hex descriptions fall in to this category. There is a decent number of “village” or “stronghold” listings as well, with 450 orcs and two chifeten types things going on. But, again, they feel static. Like “here they are!” and not much else going on. This is the Isle of the Unknown style of “in this hex is a rock.” sort of descriptions.

There is a random ruins/strongholds generator for the DM to use. FOr each hex roll and see if there’s a minor village/settlement or stronghold in it, and then roll a few more times to see what race, if there’s a monster, etc. 

This is ok, but, again, I think it would be nicer if a little more thought were given to it. Asa DM you’re going to need to roll up a few of these in advance … there’s little chance you could do something on the fly in a meaningful manner. So, as a designer, roll up a page or two othem, like, two lines each, and give them a couple of words of descriptions. Keywords or something, I don’t know. Just something to get things kickstarted. 

And, our hexes proper, follow this example. We’re told, A LOT, that there’s a three level labyrinth, or some such, in this hex. Obviously the DM is going to need to do something with that. In advance.

So, is it a hexcrawl? It says it is. I’m going to say no. This is a campaign setting. And the map is a hex map. And major settlements/sites are on the map. And there’s a way to put some other stuff in hexes. But, it’s not a hexcrawl. There are not situations going on. The hexes don’t really interact. And, in fact, I might say that the hexes themselves are not the most interesting hex descriptions in the world. 

I might liken this to Blackmarsh, from Conley. And I don’t mean that in terms of quality … I think Blackmarsh is quite well done. But, rather, I don’t think of Blackmarsh as a hexcrawl either. (I think it IS one, but it doesn’t occupy that space in my head) I think of it as a regional campaign setting … with a hex crawl. The hex descriptions are there to augment my own dungeon placement and stuff. IE: Just add your own shit. 

This is $15 at DriveThru. The preview is nine pages and shows you a lot of the hex descriptions. Good preview! Even though the hexcrawl is not the point of attraction, I Think, in the product. 🙂 Maybe I’m just like my mother; she’s never satisfied either …

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/384497/Isle-of-Eldisor-Hexcrawl-Campaign-Cyclopedia–Gazetteer?1892600

By Vasil Kaliman
Singing Flame
OSE
Level 1-?

DNGN #1: Weird-Fantasy Megadunegon is the first issue of a serialized zine that takes place in a megadungeon. Each issue will cover ten levels of the dungeon. It’s cover-to-cover of classic B/X monsters, magic items, encounters, secret doors, and old-school fun! It is a quick and easy resource of adventure material that a referee can use at the gaming table with no prep. DNGN is designed to work as a complete megadungeon adventure, or for levels be dropped directly into your pre-existing campaign setting.

This 44 page adventure features ten “2 page’ dungeon levels, each with about six rooms, and a “bonus adventure” at the end with a second dungeon. It’s HEAVY gonzo and, while the format is decent, the actual encounters feel almost procedural in the degree they are are on-theme and yet ultimately disconnected and unfulfilling, either seen separately or as a whole.

Yeah, how’s that bitch for a summary? 

The first of many issues, it claims, each with more levels of the DNGN. This feels like the art punk crowd found OSE and latched on to it. And I don’t mean that in the bad way. There are some fresh ideas from the art punks, and the OSE style is a decent baseline for formatting. But, ultimately, both are like buying a $800 drill and thinking it will turn you in to a carpenter; window dressing to the main event.

First, the OSE format. I like it and the rest of you dick heads who don’t can just fuck right off. We start with a room title, to orient you to the framing of what’s to come. Getting you in the mood, so to speak. Then some bolded keywords like “6 stone bowls” with some more details in parens after that, like: (12” radius). We then get some bullets to epands on the above descriptions, with their own bolded words and terse little descriptions. I think it lends itself well to scanning and fall naturally in to a “tell me more” Q/A style for play. The DM glances down, hits the bolded keywords, the players ask followup question and the DM can relate more, based o nthe paren information or the bullets. And, fucking importantly, it’s hard to fuck this shit up. Oh, it’s possible, I’ve seen it. But, also, it’s REALLY hard to turn this fucking shit in to a three paragrapgh wall of text shit fest. It kind of forces a terseness in the descriptions while leveraging the “less is more” style that I think our imaginations work best with. And, did I mention IT DOESN’T LEAD TO THREE PArAGRAPGH SHIT FEST DESCRIPTIONS? So, is it the best? Meh. It gets the job done. Do I respect the person who can craft a three sentence evocative and interactive room description in “sentence style?” Absofuckinglutly. But that number is quite rare and at least the OSE style formatting doesn’t lead to an unusable adventure. Theoretically, you could then focus on the interactivity and making the descriptions evocative.

So, on to this. I’m mildly surprised when I see, first thing in the adventure, the wandering monster table. 1d2 ACOLYTES dragging 1d3 ZOMBIES in chains. 1d4 DEEP ONES * sacrificing a human to an idol of a star god. 1d4 DUERGARS looting a charred and smoking corpse. Hey, that’s not bad! I can dig it! And then, looking depeper, only twenty entries for ten levels? And, I cherry picked some shit, there’s a lot of “they attack” on that table. Or, a merchant who has a key for sale for the nearest door? What’s that about? And, pay attention, the “what’s that about” applies to almost all of the entries, as we will soon discuss.

Ok, so, ten levels. Two pages per level. A sixish room map on one page and the facing page (digest format!) having the rooms keys. The map is clear and easy to read … but it only has six rooms also, so, meh. It does have light and  floor(?!) conditions though, for each room, on the map. Which is nice for running the dungeon, at least the light anyway. 

And the room entries? “Dead dwarf (in adventuring gear) sprawled on the floor. Bone fragments are scattered around the body.”Hmmm, I’m not sure … “Here lives a sadistic? CLERIC. He gathers his victims’ thumbs, strips the flesh away, and uses them to make bone curtains he sells to an eccentric clientele pictures/art” Oh, could it be that … “One statue in one room emits a foul odor. (entire figure is carved from human ear wax.)”  Ah, fuck me man. It is, essentially, procedurally generated. And I don’t mean a series of tables in the adventure. I mean that the entire thing is so disconnected from one another that it feels procedurally generated. There’s a theme, I guess, of some insects, and a heavy HEAVY gonzo sci-fi theme. So much so that I’m not even sure this could be classified as D&D. maybe a splugorth dungeon? Almost every room has some sci-fi in it. Anyway, the contents of a room don’t make sense. It’s like someone rolled on a sci-fi’ish version of the dungeon trappings table from the 1e DMG. Just some things in the room. And the individual rooms don’t really relate to each other. No zones or anything like that. Those acolytes? Who the fuck knows where they are going or why. That cleric? He’s got no story at all or relation to anything else in the dungeon. Just each room, individually. Almost like a funhouse dungeon. But, also, each room is not a set piece. It’s just a collection of random things. 

I’m super supportive of using tables, in a design, to help the DM spark ideas and get their imaginations going. But you can’t just write them down. You have to riff off of them, put them together. Make them work together to be larger than the sum of their parts, and, not detractfrom each other because they are all seemingly random. 

At one point, in a 30×80 room, there is a mass of vibes growing 4’ up the wall. With a purple worm hiding in them. For serious? There is no sense at all.

And the entries themselves, going back to look at them? Generic. Abstracted. The deep ones are calling for a trans-dimensional being! No. Absolutely not. They summon Cthulhu! Or one of the Great Old Ones! The Shadow People of Karth! Be fucking specific. “There is a journal in an unknown script.” Well, what the fuck does it say? I’ve got a fucking spell, that’s why!

So, the trappings are here. A “Megadungeon” with but six rooms per level. A format, but nothing to format. 

This is $8 at DriveThru. The preview is fifteen pages and shows you the maps and dungeon levels, so its a good preview.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/410800/DNGN-1?1892600