tenfootpole.org

By Richard Ruane
R. Rook Games
B/X
Level 0

For many decades, the towns of the valley were guarded by Olkana, a kindly, young brass dragon, who lives in the even older Dragonmaw Cave to the north. No one has seen any sign of her in months, though, and recently livestock and pets have been stolen, travelers have gone missing, shrines have been desecrated, and even some wells have gone foul. You and your friends have traveled three days to Dragonmaw Cave to see if the elusive Olkana can help.

This 24 page adventure uses five pages to describe eight rooms in a cave system. It’s minimally keyed, but with expansive text that turns the entire thing in to a meaningless slog of a deathtrap.

This zero level adventure features two cacodemons! Yeah! And a 5hd dragon with “armor as plate.” Like, what the fuck man? I don’t even know … like, I get it. It’s OSR. You can have overpowered challenges. But, things you are meant to kill? Like, placed in your path as an obstacle, or, the goal of the adventure? A 5HD dragon? With breathe weapons? Ok, sure … 

Oh, wait, I’m supposed to say something good or nice in each review. Here, this is a cute thing: “If the PCs don’t immediately attack, she’ll offer to wrestle one of them in exchange for safe passage. If the PC wins, Hano will create an icy bridge so that they can cross the underground stream safely.” That’s an ice mephit, doing that. The wrestling thing is cute, as is the ice bridge. Very folklore, both of them, and you know I love folklore. Of course, the rest of the adventure has no folklore elements at all, and no vibe at all in that area, but … again, I’m supposed to something nice at least once in every review, says mom. Oh, and there’s no hook. And I’m taking that a bonus. Or, rather, maybe I mean there’s no intro text, no lead in to the adventure in town, etc. It’s just what’s in the marketing blurb. And I’m totally cool with that. This is a location, it’s got some shit in it to stab and steal from, and all you need to know is what’s in the marketing blurb. There’s enough there tossed out to play with. Fouled wells. Ship missing. “Desecrated shrines” … like what the fuck is that? Covered in dragon shit maybe? Idk. But, whatever. You don’t need a lot of background shit to get goin in the adventure.Just give me a bit to riff on and a location to go with.

One room has a dragon nest “lined with several silver chalices.” No word on how many. This drives me nuts. Put in the fucking amount man. Same thing with monsters, when it happens. This is pretty basic fucking shit. And room keys. Put it the fuck in. Stop fucking around and fulfill the basics of the format. Once you get a few under your belt and don’t suck donkey balls anymore tTHEN you can experiment.

Let’s see, room descriptions. How about “This location is guarded by the ice mephit

Hano, who’s bored with working for Calder. …” Yeah. Nothing. Or, how about “Amari the hatchling spends its time resting atop its small hoard here. …” There are, essentially, no location descriptions. There’s maybe a line, that says what is here, and it devolves in to mechanics. Lots of wordy mechanics. Lots of wordy tactics. Lots of focus on shit that don’t matter.

The rest of the page count is a fuck ton of new classes and zero level rules. 

Whatever.

Sucks.

This is $6 at DriveThru. The preview is six pages and shows you a few rooms, and some of the new class shit. The few rooms ARE representative, so, good preview.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/400448/Dragonmaw-Cave-for-OSR?1892600

Now that shits over with, let’s talk important shit: New cars. I give my car to my son, who got his license two weeks ago. He’s starting his first job at the home of Winter Fantasy and, no, you are not riding the fucking bus for ninety minutes like a peasant when you could drive ten minutes away. So, all I’ve got is the truck, which I have turned in to a camper with a camper shell. It’s an old Frontier, so, small, but still not something for running around town in. I start looking and think I want a Miata. Go look at some, manuals of course. I’m looking forward to getting twelve speeding/reckless tickets in the first two weeks and then driving in to a pylon and dying. THen, I think, woah, no backseat. And the girlfriend has three-ish young kids. That’s not a cool relationship move. But, I still want something fun. So I start looking at two door Wranglers. Right?! Softtop, fun, backseat for kids. Perfect! Ain’t none new. Used is looking pretty ratty. One dealer has a new one but what’s a $500 window etching fee, I walk out over it and they don’t chase me down, even though I’m paying fucking cash. “We’ll sell it tomorrow.” Fuck, the market is hot, especially for Wranglers. Depreciation websites show that they are the #1 least depreciating car. Wow. I try Carvana. Find a 2012 with 98k on it for $1k MORE than the 2012 window sticker was. Wow! I grab it. Comes in. A little loose (jk) but, hey, it’s a fuck run around town car, right? That’s cool and adds to the charm. On the way to the mechanic (which I bribe each time with a meat and cheese gift platter. Always tip folks, it gets you better service.) the check engine comes on. Great. I get a call two hours later “You DO NOT want to buy this car.” I go in. Misfires on #2 and a main seal leak. Ouch! I go straight out and try to look at some buy here pay here places, but all they got are jacked the fuck up four doors. I find a dealer with a 2-door sport thirty minutes north in BFE, go up, and buy it on the spot. Fucking thing will never leave the pavement. Gonna take off the roof and door and put two yellow surfboards on top and drive it around year round like that. Off road is for the truck, man!

By Josh Domanski & Reilly Qyote
Exalted Funeral
OSE
Level 0 Funnel

Terror descends upon a quiet town, kidnapping citizens and thrusting them into a hellish nightmare. Trapped aboard a vessel crewed by prophecy-driven shapeshifters, unfortunate souls must band together—or perish. Fight brutal monsters, avoid devastating traps, and test your wits against an inscrutable enemy in … ZED & TWO NOUGHTS

This thirteen room single-column adventure contains about nine encounter areas on an alien spaceship. Descriptions are good, and it’s well organized, but it lacks substantial interactivity and there are some annoying deviations from the format and editing missteps.

This is a zero level funnel, with a decent chunk of the book, maybe half, devoted to creating funnel characters and how to run one. That leaves about sixish pages for the adventure adventure. It starts with the characters being abducted from their village by a spaceship and ends, hopefully, with the characters escaping the nine room ship. 

It has some decent descriptions in it. Evocative, and working hard to create an alien environment that is still recognizable as a play space. Our opening scene starts with “sounds of destruction exploding in the dead of night. Fires rage, buildings topple, and townsfolk flee in every direction.” That’s not bad to set a vibe. Toppling buildings. Fleeing people, raging fires and explosions. That’s a good use of descriptive words, non-typical ones, that paints a dynamic scene for the DM to then rif fon. Which is exactly what a good description should be doing. The spaceship is a writhing disk of tentacles. The hallways and floors soared in tiny hairs. You are pulled through slimy circulatory tunnels in the ships walls. Circulatory … that it’s evocative.

Our first actual room, the prison, contains the following one line “teaser” description “Warm metal floor littered with confused townsfolk.” Perfect! I’m oriented to the room now and everything I take in will now be in that context. It’s followed by “Fleshy walls sprout hard bunks like scabs. The ceiling squirms overhead, as bulbs of glass emitting sterile light form across its surface. Seven bowls on stalks stick out from the floor around the edges of the room, resembling the placement of numbers on a clock.” The descriptions here are good. Squirming, stalks, sterile light. The two descriptions parts work together to build on each other.

Following the description are some bullets with more information about important things. It’s laid out well and easy to scan, although, a two-column format probably would have worked better and made things trivial. This isn’t the OSE house style, but a good example of one of my favorite styles. A brief intro, a good description that’s short, and then bullets to follow up on things. 

When you finally make it to the alien overlords they react to the party base don their actions. Great! “Were they murderous and cruel? The Observers are fearful and ready to defend themselves. Were they clever and competent? The party is met with respect and deference.

Did they lie, cheat and steal? The Observers are suspicious, ready to take control or strike a deal. What about the foolish and humorous? They are met with condescension and mockery” We see consequences of the play style chosen. Big fan.

There are a few things I can criticize. The escape pods are … pretty non -escape pod looking, and in the lab. That’s going to be hard to put together without some direct DM assistance. It’s not clear to me that the bowls in the prison are toilets, or that you can crawl through arm holes … both of which are mentioned in a different room, in reference to things in the prison … that should have been in the prison room. In retrospect, the phrase “a friend from town is squeezing in to one” should have clued me in, but it appears a little randomly in the DM notes, with no reference to what the “one” is. Another room has some important “general” information, magical instruments floating on a stage, buried in the DM notes instead of up in the main description. Just these little issues that really should have been caught in editing and fixed up.

More seriously, though, I’m not sure about the interactivity. The various rooms are a little sparse on things, and there are only nine, including the village abduction. Primarily, i think, it’s supposed to come from the Random Events table … which is supposed to be rolled on every turn. Yikes! That’s a lot! And there are only ten entires, some of which are unique enough to make reuse difficult. Overconfident bully from town taking over the party? Maybe the second time its a spineless one? A young dwarf, bloodied, who’s an imposter/alien? Maybe the second time its the exact same and they ALWAYS do the young dwarf thing? So, yeah, maybe … but, also, it’s pretty frequent, and I’m having a real hard time with the … length? Lack of interactivity? Things going on? It IS a small space, so maybe I just need to adjust for that? 

I wish there was more here. I don’t know … I don’t tink size … I’m just left a bit feeling empty. This one is close to a regerts … and maybe it should be one. I’m just not very excited about it.

This is $10 at Itch. Which I’m chill if, if the adventure is a good one. We do lack a preview though. Never a good thing, and always a good thing to give the suckers a chance to see if they are going to vibe with your selling them ahead of time.

https://afterthought-committee.itch.io/zoo

By Curtis Lyon

Three Sages Games

Level 3

When a chance encounter on the road turns out to have a more nefarious story behind it than meets the eye, you’ve got Gobs o’ Trouble! Are you up to the challenge?

This twelve page adventure describes, like, I don’t know, three encounters? I can pick out something nice here or there, in twelve pages, but it’s still twelve pages for three encounters. 

Am I up for the challenge? Well, I don’t know. Well, I do know; probably not. I mean, sure, I’ll match the energy at the table, but, a short con game with three encounters? I mean, probably no. What are the odds tha the DM and the adventure are going to be ok? I mean, it’s mostly the DM, right? Still, I mean, no. 

We’re starting out strong with that cover! Not my style, but, hey dud is carrying a human head tied to his saddle, so, Rock On! No level range anywhere on the cover, or in the production description. So, Fuuuuuuuccccckkkkkk Yoooooooou number one.

Title page, and other filler. Let’s see … oh, a disclaimer! “This book uses the supernatural for settings, characters, and themes. All mystical and supernatural elements are fiction and intended for entertainment purposes only. Reader discretion is advised.” So, you know, I almost didn’t make it to the adventure, having been advised that I may not be able to handle it. This fucking disclaimer … look, I’m not against trigger warnings for some serious shit, but you start slapping them on with “Warning: D&D adventure may contain a D&D adventure” then I start my eye rolls. 

We start by meeting a farm family on the road, who had obviously had the shit kicked out of them. Bleeding, dirty, exhausted, etc. Mom, holding a pitchfork, calls out “Well met travelers! Do you have any medical supplies?” I love to trot out possible worlds theory, and I’m going to do it again here. In NO possible world does this fucking happen. It’s just forced dialog. “Medical supplies?” seriously? No, it’s some kind of wary hesitancy, a plea for help, screaming and crying kids. Fucking make it viscereal man, not some abstracted and distant vignette that is a mockery of true emotion. 

Whatever, I guess I knock adventures these days for not bringing forth true emotion. Meh. Also, it lasts a fucking page. Tofucking tell us that goblins raided their farm and took it over. They held them off and killed a few, so, you know, a party of threes should be able to handle it, I guess. Also, if you kill the family you earn the enmity of the gods. You get no reward, but do get 300xp for helping them. So, you know, that’s worth it. I mentioned the enforced morality, right? Always good to see in adventure. How about we get the quest and then ALSO kill the family? How very Russian!

Off to the farm where you fight some goblin. On no map. No tactical fun. Just kill twelve goblins. I mean, still takes a fucking page to put twelve goblins on the farm. *sigh*. No real treasure here either, but there is a magic sword, with inscription! “Lemja: To strike and maim.” Hey, that’s nice! . You can track them back to their lair, since they got no loot. I can tell this is gonna be an XP poor adventure …

Tracking them back you see some tromped down vegetation. You get attacked by an eight headed hydra. !!!!!! That will wake you the fuck up in the morning! Do do get 3k in gold from this, in its lair, which contains a single good line, where the loot is “mixed in with the remains of

its victims (mostly in the form of bones).” Nice there!

On we go to the goblin source, a cave with two hobgoblins outside. They fight to the death, as do all hobgoblins, the adventure notes, so, you know, no morale checks here. No map of the cave, or anything really, just that there is a cave, two stand outside and that there are eight total with a magic portal inside. It, also, has a nice line “The rotting corpses of a dozen Goblins litter the surrounding area.” Otherwise, just another page to describe something useless.

There’s nothing here but text. Three encounters in twelve pages? Even at a page per I don’t see how you got to twelve? And, no tactical maps, as one might expect in such a short adventure. (I don’t love tactical mas, but I can see how sneaking up on a farm and taking out sentries, etc, could be a little mini-adventure in and of itself.) There’s a line or three, here, that shows that the designer is not devoid of imagination. The tromped down hydra vegetation, the sword, the bodies outside the lair. But there’s just NOTHING HERE. I don’t give a fuck that it’s labeled a short adventure. This is not that.

This is $1 at DriveThru. The preview is two pages and shows the title page. Woo Hoo! That’s certainly enough to tell if you want to buy the adventure. You can read that disclaimer through!

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/149323/Gobs-o-Trouble?1892600

By M. Greis
Greis Games
Labyrinth Lord
Levels 3-5

In the ruins left by the wizard Kataphrasis are left strange artifacts from the age when the stars fell from the sky. In the dim corridors inhabited by foul goblin raiders and their gnoll allies are left strange magics and few explorers are left umtouched after exploring the depths. It all begins with a caravan plundered by goblins and a rescue mission to free the prisoners of the goblins but from the within the dark, deeper than the goblins care to go something calls to the curious – and this may be the undoing of the adventurers for magics of ancient wizards are better left alone.

This 33 page adventure describes a three level dungeon with about 25 rooms. It’s got some creative encounter details, and is also dense enough, with enough text, that I don’t care about the details.

Kind of a strange one, this one. At it’s heart is a standard “dungeon with some humanoinoids in it who don’t control the entire place, the rest of it being a ‘normal’ dungeon.” It’s a strange one because even though it does many things right, the information density is so high that I think it gets quite wordy and hard to scan and run at the table.

We’ve got the usual assortment of iffy hooks, including getting hired. The start is the party finding a destroyed caravan, along, perhaps with “Terruce, the young local they recently met at an inn, who wanted to be an adventurer and therefore took a job as a caravan guard.” I’m always up for a little mangled body of a local youth energy. It’s that kind of detail that pervades the adventure. That’s great specificity. The actual descriptions of the various things in the dungeon may not be stellar, but, the concept behind them? Absolutely. 

The dungeon, proper, starts with the party seeing a large namd of gnolls in front of the dungeon entrance, being sent away by a group of goblins and being told to return at sunrise. Thus you’ve got a timer, the return of the gnoll warband, to act as a force driving the party forward. (Along with, presumably, the rescue of some prisoners obviously taken from the caravan.) This start is all supported by a small table of six rumors that goes something like “Some herb gatherers” and “an ancient ruined fortress that nobody should ever go to.” The rumors have their heart in a good place, even if the writing is more than a little cumbersome in places … which is a great summary of the entire adventure. 

“Wagons are emptied and overturned, and guard  peppered by goblins’ arrows or ripped to pieces by savage gnolls. Among the dead are goblins and gnolls.“ So, sure. Empty, overturned, peppered with arrows. And less great, this read-aloud, telling us they are gnolls and goblins. Errr, sorry, SAVAGE gnolls. Its got more than a little taste of high brown/flauting in my mouth. Technically, you can see what they were going for, even though they didn’t reach there in a natural way.

The individual room entries can be long, a column or more not being uncommon. Green text telling (I just typed repent instead of green. This is not an autocorrect situation. Hmmmm, thats weird … the tribulation has begun?) us the room name. A grey text books of a couple of paragraphs with read-aloud text. “Here sits seven goblins swaying from drunkenness amidst dice, coins and empty wine bottles. The place reeks with stale wine, coal and goblin sweat.” The end of the room read-aloud, there, again is trying hard. Reeking. Stench, sweat, wine. Sure. But the description is more than a little off. Here Sits? Really? Then we’ve got a paragraph description the seven goblins in the room and their drunk attack modifiers. Then a yellow boxed text with some treasure details. Then a paragraph each for the vampire and portcullis in the room (starting wth thos bolded words to make finding them easier) and then a pink boxed text section on bribing your way in. It’s busy. Very busy. 

Is it wrong? Meh …. It certainly feels the fuck wrong. Maybe from how busy it is. Maybe from the length, or what it implies. Combined with the somewhat cumbersome writing, the grammar and sentence structure, and youtube a section of  text, for each room, that feels like a struggle to wade through. I look at it and just sigh. I close my eyes a moment to gird my loins for handling whats to come. Not exactly what you’re looking for in running something.

And the map … the map is really strange. Three levels, if a room has a 30’ high ceiling then it shows up on all three levels of the map. Isolated from the other rooms for the upper two 10’ sections, for example. This sort of multi-level map details should be great but it comes across as confusing.I had to keep returning to the text over and over again to be like “where the fuck does this room connect to?”

And yet it also does so many things right. The map, multi level complexity, is great. Its just a  poort implementation. And individual encounter elements being great, like the campfire attack details, or bribing your way in, or any of what feels like twenty other nice little details and specificity in the dungeon. One room, with a weak/collapsing ceiling, is supported by a sweet little table of a kin of escalating room/ceiling collapse type. I ike it, a lot. The bear claw goblin tribe gets no real “bear claw” descriptions, but, sure, what the hell, why not have each of them holding a cruller? 

It’s got great specificity, but it’s handled in such a cumbersome way tha tits hard for me to do anything like recommending it. And i feel like an ass for saying that *also, because I think there are some EASL issues) but, ultimately, I don’t want to run it. I don’t want to fight what I’m running to run it. Even though I’m not sure that’s the case.

This is $3 at DriveThru.The preview is six pages and shows a couple of dungeon rooms, so, good preview.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/391622/Dragon-Teeth-of-Kataphrasis–a-B-X-adventure?1892600

By Stephen Ashmore
Sword and Tower Games
OSR
Level 5?

The Tomb of Kor is a legendary tomb of the great king Kor, never before opened, until now. Your players will venture into this legendary tomb that robbers have recently opened, inside they will find secret doors, traps, and treasure; and may awaken mummies who have been sealed away for centuries.

Kor was man!
I mean, he was a mummy man
Or maybe he was just a mummy
but he was still Kor!
Kor!

This seventeen page adventure uses nine pages to describe an eight room tomb with a mummy. Two encounters. Lot’s of boring traps. And a writing style aimed at two years olds. Yes sir, it’s a banner day in the old brych place, full of the fucking dreck that makes life worth living!

Let us talk my loathing of the hallway trap. Random. Out of nowhere. Take damage. Or, I mean, you can search. And slow the fucking game down to the crawl. Yeah yeah, I know you disagree. I’ve never seen it NOT slow the game down. You know what else is fun? A room with six pit traps in it ! In fact, there are pit traps everywhere in this place, with five more making an appearance in other places! Weeee! Pit trap! We get a paragraph up front at the start (or, actually, three) telling up how to run a pit trap! You can search and find one! Blah blah blah. Roll a search to find one. Does it find ALL of the pit traps in the room? It doesn’t say but I presume not. I’d be shitty as a player. But, as a DM, I’m shitty because of the text. Ready kids? “Traps and other room mechanics are handled in the same way. The room determines all skill checks’ difficulty levels, including finding secret doors, dodging a trap, or investigating something. For example, in room one, the DC is 14. That means to find or disarm a trap, it requires a roll of 14. It also means that to find a secret door a roll of 14 is required.” Congrats! Now you know how to run a pit trap! Just like every other trap. Just like every trap you’ve EVER run. Good thing the designer was there to tell us how to do it!                 

But wait, there’s more! We are also told that “… two secret doors can be found in this room, as well as several traps. Floor traps are small, five-foot by five-foot pit traps that are triggered by any weight above a handful of pounds leading to a drop of around twenty feet. Ceiling traps spill large quantities of debris, sharpened quartz stones, and various sharpened pieces of bone when anything steps on a pressure plate on the ground below. Both kinds of traps deal 2D6 damage, or half if a reflex or dexterity save is successful.” Yes sir, the text repeats! Yeah! Now I’m not dumb anymore! I’ve been told how to breathe AND then had it reinforce! An excellent use of space and a text budget!

No? Ok, how about this: “How the adventure works: Each room of the dungeon is listed separately, with a description that should be read to the players.” Yes, the designer has told us how room keys work! No one, in the history of the fucking world, needs to be fucking told how a room key works. Jesus H fucking Chris. Maybe, also, you can tell me how to count to eight so I can follow that as well? I mean, what the fuck were you thinking? This? Thiis is good adventure design?! This is whatyou dreamed of doing and stayed awake at night pouring over in your head as youlay in bed? How to tell people what an adventure key looks like and how to use it?                                 

“ To increase their chances of finding a secret door, allow extra rolls for searching different areas of the rooms. Perhaps a failed roll can reveal the location of the door, but not how to open it.”

IE: do not play D&D. 

“Searching the room can lead to treasure with a successful search check. Roll 1D6 on the following table to determine the treasure. Each character can search one time.”

IE: life is fair. I want to puke. (That may not be the adventure, I had eight shots of fireball and three long islands at hte bar last night. Hmmm, or, maybe its a combination of the adventure AND the liquor? Whatever; I’m blaming the adventure.)

The adventure backstories. “Brought here at great expense is the Throne of Kor How do you know this? You don’t. How does it improve the players experience to know this? It doesn’t. How does it help the DM to run the room to have this information presented to them? It doesn’t. “The room has been disturbed recently” How do you know this? You don’t. 

Here’s a great example of some room text. It embodies the spirit of the entire adventure: “Pulling the players in: There are a few ways to position Kor’s Tomb as a hook for players. First, the king of the land, or some other ruler, hires them to chase down the tomb robbers who have broken into the Tomb. Second, perhaps the players come across the tomb while exploring the desert. Third, the players could be associated with the tomb robbers themselves, arriving to help their friends. There are certainly many other ways to draw the players to the tomb, it should be made clear that the tomb is famous for being undisturbed, full of traps and legendary treasure.” That paragraph says nothing. NOTHING. It’s just words. Filler words. Words that add absolutely nothing to the adventure. No specificity. NOTHING. Nothing to work with at all. And that is the adventure room after room of that nothing. 

The tomb entrance was covered by a large boulder of marble, too heavy for most to move.” and then in the read aloud “it has never been moved until now. The tomb robbers who entered before have not been seen since.” Note the contradictions. 

It’s just crap.

Did I mention all the, long, read-aloud is in italics?

Save yourselves, my children. 

This is $2 at DriveThru. The preview is four pages. It shows you the traps page and a couple of rooms, so, good preview. Enjoy the fuck out of it.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/398136/The-Tomb-of-Kor-A-PocketSized-Adventure?1892600

By Cameron Shanton
Shanton Productions
OSE
Levels 1-3

The Laboratory of Ord has within it a self-contained mystery for players to piece together and solve, centered around the maddened sorcerer Thorngage Ord. Rumors of mass disappearances have plagued the local countryside, and many believe that Ord is to blame.

This nine page adventure uses four pages to describe the eleven rooms, on two levels, of … an alchemist lair! I was prepared to hate it and instead just merely dislike it. The writing is ineffective, the environment mostly boring, and, overall, more than a little confusing.

Who, today, troubles my weary slumber?

First, there’s no context for this adventure. You see that marketing blurb? That’s what you get. That’s ALL of the context you get. Otherwise we just get a “room 1” start. This is after a boring table of wanderers and one for random loot. Both of which filled me with dread. “Oh no! Will I be expected to roll on each room to determine what’s inside?” Well, kind of, but, no, there ARE encounters and treasure in this other than the stuff on the random tables. So, major crisis averted. But, also, no context on the dungeon. A stairwell leading down? I guess so, since that’s what outside of room one. But, nothing else. I don’t need a lot here, but a single sentence noting the dungeon environment, it’s entrance, etc would have gone a LONG way to helping a mood here. But, no, just what’s in the marketing blurb. Again, not two pages of backstory. But, fuck, even G1 had SOMETHING for the DM to work with.

The map is two levels. It’s kind of “manorly” in tha the rooms are essentially opening in to each other. No creature reactions for an environment that small. And, the map is rather generic. A large hole in the floor in room one, indicates the text. Is the hole on the map? No. A curtain sealing off an alcove in room three. On the map? You know better than that! Pillars and staircases are the extent of what we get. Even though the hole down IS the way forward. This is a homemade map, it looks like, not a Dyson affair. Put some fucking shit on it, man, to help a DM out! I don’t need every table and chair, but help me out!

Descriptions? How about we use the magic items as an example? BOOK items, for the most part, as boring as any book items listing. Also, how about “a strange +1 dagger, with an inlaid opal.” This is the height of descriptive text. An inlaid opal. What the fuck does “strange” even mean in this context? Are yu going to tell the players its strange? When they ask “How?” then what will you answer? “It’s strange.” Yes, please, do that. There are two things goin on here. First, the word strange is meaningless. You want to provide a description that makes the PLAYERS think “hmmm, thats strange.” Whats part of the value you are adding as a designer. You need to do more then just roll some random monster and put them on the map. You need to bring some things to life. Use all of the joy present in the english language to make inspire the DM so they can then inspire their players with wonder and awe. Strange is not that. Strange is a conclusion. “Evil looking” is another common thing that designers do. Don’t do that. Provide a description that makes me think Oooo, thats fucking evil!” Second, beef that shit up. Gimme a description, or an effect, that’s more than just a roll on the table of magic items. Make me WANT it. Make it special. No, not in The CHosen One way, but just something to make the fucking thing stand out. Players LUSTafter magic items. Its part of the reward for playing. Make them happy to be here and to risk life and limb. With an over-powered item? No. Just with SOMETHING. ANYTHING. Make it fucking mundane. I don’t care. Just put SOME effort in to it.

I mentioned confusing. How now brown cow?

Room one tells us “The dungeon is crawling with the ancient bones of old priests and people who fled here.” What does this mean? Literally? Figuratively? It’s never mentioned again. It’s not mentioned in any concrete way, or even alluded to, after this sentence.What am I to do with that? Do I take it as a description of the current room? Of the entire environment? Even if I did so, it’s a pretty boring description. There’s no specificity. Bring it to life! … and let me know what the fuck is actually going on in rooms. Especially every other room which imply, heavily, they are clean.

“A lever at the end of the hallway seems to control something unseen” Yes. Wonderful. That’s what levers in hallways do. I’m not even sure how this works. I think maybe it controls gas in a nearby room and not in the hallway? Not to mention the padding.

“There are four Normal Humans standing idly huddled in the bottom corner, breathing loudly in unison and concealing daggers. See Monsters, in Old-School Essentials Undeadnormal human” Ok, so, I’m guessing these are zombies? Another entry has four normal humans in it, without mentioning they are zombies. I don’t know anymore. I don’t cARE.

I think I’m done caring. I’m done seeing the good in things. All I see is a de rigeur attempt, and a poor one at that, at creating eleven rooms.

Hey, you know what? Let’s do all this shit all over again tomorrow!

This is $2 at DriveThru. The preview is six pages. It shows you the first eight rooms, so, good preview. AND it puts the level range in the product description. Most don’t. Nice job.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/392565/The-Laboratory-of-Ord?1892600

Is this a review? No. Why should I try if no one cares to?

By Christian Blair
Self Published
Generic
Low Levels

The Mysterious Witch is an adventure designed for low level players, for use in any fantasy generic-system TTRPG. This adventure is themed around dark magic, mystery and corruption. Exploration and dangers await players as they travel into a forsaken village among the woods, besieged by undead creatures and horrors. The village asks for help to find the culprit, but the actual truth is more complicated, and beneath the dark veil, a sad reality awaits.

This seven page adventure features a five room dungeon. And small glade to explore. It’s generic, in the abstracted way, rather than in a system neutral way. Well, it’s that also, but, the adventure is more of an outline, devoid of anything interesting that would be useful to the DM in a meaningful way.

I think system agnostic adventures have a lot of potential. At least, system agnostic adventures of a certain type. You’ve got the ones that try to stat something using a “universal” system, usually the older fold who got traumatized by The Game Wizards lawyers. Then you’ve got my favorite type of system agnostic adventure, the ones that are really just an adventure without stats or mechanics to speak of. I mean, sure, a small mechanic or here, but, generally the designer trusts the DM to do what they need to to run the adventure, and maybe stats things for BX or something. This is, I think, the way most people run adventures anyway. You take something for some system, probably not your own, and do a kind of conversion on the fly. Maybe monster stats ahead of time but the rest is on the fly. I really like this sort of thing and I think it has a lot of potential. I really don’t care about balance or mechanics in my adventures, that’s what I’m there for. I’m in this for a decent environment for the party to explore an dplay in, some fun situations and so on, and you don’t need mechanics for that. Then there’s the third type of system agnostic adventure. The kind that is all too common. The one that is essentially an outline. Abstracted content that is not too specific. Almost minimalism. And usually, as in this case, minimalism that is expanded and padded out. Booo!

So, villagers are going missing. Like, ALOT of villagers. There’s not much information on that, almost none at all. They suspect undead? But also, they suspect a witch and know where she lives and want you to go get her. This is the first abstraction. Not many villagers and no real story to tell of the abductions. Or the undead. Nothing really at all. Just what I typed above. Yes, absolutely, it’s up to the DM to fill in things and bring a game to life, but, also, the designer needs to give them the tools to do that. And just saying that there have been a lot of abductions and they think undead might be invoved is not enough. You need some terrified looks. Boarded up windows. Some personal tales from people. You need to set the VIBE for the DM to then riff further on. And this don’t do that.

“Once the layers reach the clearing they will find themselves surrounded by four ruined stone houses and a dry well.” Note the padding. “They will find themselves surrounded by.”  and “once they reach the clearing.” My old quantum example I thinks makes the best point about this, but, whatever. This is a conversational style. That pads things out. There is a clearing with four ruined stone houses and a dry well. We then get a description of the dry well. “The dry well has an object hidden at the bottom. It is a dungeon map that reveals the witch’s last location”. Again, padded out They find a hidden object. No, They find a map. And, to boot, it’s boring as fuck. “That reveals the witches last known location.” This is an outline. There is no specificity. It’s an abstraction description devoid of any life. Going further we get the same sort of descriptions for the first house and the big house. Then a paragraph tell us tat amongst the ruins of “a house’ there’s a giant creature feasting on a dead body. The feasting is good, but thahat’s not the ont. It’s another paragraph. AND THEN we learn that, in another paragraph, there’s a zombie lying stuck on top of the dry well. NO! We put things relevant to an object near the object in the description. Stuck is an abstraction. Tell us how. Zommbie is an abstraction. Describe it to us. Paint the picture of what is ging on for the DM to expand upon and rif fon and run the encounter. It’s fucking terrible.

The entire thing is like this. Abstracted generic descriptions. No life in it at all.

And then there’s the design, proper. “On the altar lies a scroll with the following riddle: ”It’s so magical, it comes every night. It takes you away without moving. To see it, close your eyes. ” If the players say the answer out loud: Dream. The scroll magically transforms into a golden key.” This is the worst kind of thing. Just a meaningless riddle, unrelated to the game, a pretext to give out a key. Lame.

This is free at DriveThru. But you will never get your time back. All for a misunderstood evil witch.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/396898/EQ3-The-Mysterious-Witch?1892600