The Gnawbone Encampment

Joshua Bassler
Jitur Games
Generic/Universal
Level: Ha!

Smoke rises from the hills,
and in the shadow of a colossal skull,
the Gnawbone goblins prepare their blood-soaked feast.

This twenty page adventure uses about eight pages to describe five rooms in a goblin lair. Proving, once again, that Generic/Universal is the kiss of death, it fails to present an adventure and instead presents ‘possabilities.’ Thus in spite of more than few decent ideas it trudges blindly down the failed path of the Five Room Adventure.

What is the ratio of good to shit that you will put up with? Like, if i stick in ONE room in a 150 page adventure will you call it good? Worth playing? If it’s ten percent? Fifty percent? And how torturous can I make those good ideas? Can I surround it with so much bullshit that it makes you roll your eyes and vomit? 

Dude can write some read-aloud. “Smoke drifts into the night sky. A rough barricade of sharpened logs blocks the canyon path ahead, its timbers hung with bone charms that clatter in the breeze. Goblins cluster near a fire, their laughter sharp and cruel. A mangy wolf pulls at its chain, teeth bared as it scents the air. Beyond the wall, firelight flickers — and in the distance, looming above the tents, the shadow of a massive skull rises against the night.” It’s drifting heavily towards purple. And it tells us there are goblins instead of describing them. But, also, massive skull, looking above, mangy wolf. Sharp and cruel laughs. Bone charms that clatter. Quick, Robin! To the thesaurus-mobile! A little too much in places but the designer has the right idea and I’ll take this over a thousand other worse examples. It does feel forced, or perhaps a little ‘novelized’ in places, but he’s on the right path for sure in using the power of language to paint a picture.  

There’s also some decent foreshadowing going on in places. There’s that hint of a giant skull in the read-aloud above, and that shows up in a couple of the rooms. Then there’s also some pretty explicit foreshadowing: “Foreshadowing: A sickly prisoner mutters about a ritual “in the skull’s brain, ” planting dread for Area 4.” So… uh, ok. Yeah, the foreshadowing is good. I’m not sure we need it hammered in three times, by listing it as Foreshadowing, by doing the foreshadowing proper, and then by explaining what foreshadowing is, but, again, dude tried. 

The designed also included some explicit conclusions to the adventure if you fail then then the goblins ravage the and there are rumors of a goblin warband. I’d like a little more specificity in what was mentioned; refugees on the road speaking of atrocities or some such, but, again, at least he tried. The victory conditions are much less interesting or specific than even the loss ones. At best some prisoners (GENERIC unnamed ‘prisoners’ might stay with the party and offer their services. If would be funny if there were, like, a thousand of these, but only like five or so around at any one time for one reason or another. It’s like a wand of five magic missiles; how can be best use these five before they are used up and the wand recharges tomorrow? 

So, the designer has tried, more so than most. That read-aloud is from the entrance room and it gives you options for sneaking in through a garbage pit under a barricade. And you can meet a goblin deserter, maybe. The designer has tried to paint a decent picture of an environment, from the read-aloud to the potential for interactivity through stabbing, sneakin, and talking. 

But, also, this is a five room dungeon. It looks like the entire series, Delves, are going to be five room dungeons. As is so painstakingly, and repeatedly, explained to us in the introduction pages, that means an entrance, a puzzle/roleplay room. A setback, a climax, and a treasure/reveal. Hark! The enemy at the gates! Five room fucking dungeon. This is one of the worst trends to ever grace the RPG industry. Fucking pay per word blog/magazine crap. Sure, you want to five room up your home game? Have at thee! I still think it sucks but I can at least understand how it might be useful. But, as a paid product? Jesus Christ. It’s absurd. It’s like going to a Michelin starred restaurant and getting a generic brand Kraft Mac & Cheeses from a box. I think you misunderstood the assignment. This is a place for shit you can’t do at home. Something with some depth to it? Something more? Adding value? No? *sigh* Formulaic. That’s what I want to pay for. Formulaic. 

This is a five room dungeon. The entire purchase is twenty pages. The five rooms take up about nine of those pages. And how can this be? No worm juice here, just the usual crap. “Grashnak Bone-Eye, Shaman of the Gnawbone Tribe. Grashnak was born small, even for a goblin. His tribe — the Gnawbones — had always been weak and fractured …” and on and on and on the background information goes Irrelevant. Padding. Not useful at the table. “But Bryce, I like …” I don’t care that you like shit. It’s shit. T’s fucking padding. It distracts. It distracts both the DM at the table who is trying to run the fucking adventure, making it harder for them to locate what they need to run the fucking thing. And it distracted the fucking designer. They concentrated on that kind of shit instead of concentrating on making their fucking adventure better. Hey, here’s a fucking idea. How about making the actual five fucking rooms better?

YOU COULD START WITH INCLUDING A FUCKING MAP. 

Yeah, yeah. Not everything needs a map. It’s not clear that one is absolutely required here. But, you know, the relationship to the entrance, the garbage pit, the canyon, the crawly hole to bypass the entrance and so on would have been MUCH clearer. It would have added an extra element of play. 

You know what we get instead?

Twenty fucking pages and the designer can’t be bothered to put in a battlemap? That kind of shit is how you get twenty pages. That kind of shit is how you get almost two pages per room for the most simple of encounters. What happens is all goes according to plan is a section that tells you … how each room works. In a five room dungeon. Then there’s a “Planned Path” outcomes. Which is kind of like the same thing. Fuck me man. Maybe a good rule of thumb is to consider what you’d put in the adventure if it were fifty or a hundred rooms? Would you describe each and every room to us three times? As is, there’s ALSO an intro to each room for the DM, that’s not read-aloud, that sounds a lot like read-aloud, but THEN the read-aloud follows. It explains the room. “The Gnawbone tribe has thrown up a rough barricade across the canyon path leading to their camp. It’s a ramshackle palisade of sharp- ened logs, lashed together with rope and hide. Bone charms dangle from the gate — crude runes carved into skull fragments and tied with sinew. A watch fire burns in front of the barri- cade, where goblin sentries lounge.” That’s the section for the entrance room, with the read-aloud I threw up in the review earlier. It says the same thing! I think that’s four times now that essentially the same thing has been said? Sometimes you just wonder what the fuck s going on in peoples heads. Work the fucking room!

And it’s Generic/Universal, so you know it sucks. I wish I didn’t have to say that. I wish that a generic/Universal adventure could be good. I believe, deep down in my heart, that they COULD be good. But in practice they never are. Why? Because for some fucking reason when someone writes one up they seem incapable of putting anything concrete down on the page. The fact that something is generic/universal seems to mean that the adventure must be one full of ideas instead of one that puts something in front of a DM to help them.  Here’s an optional reward. Here’s something that could happen. Here’s something else that could happen. Come on man, do something concrete with the fucking adventure. And use that concrete thing to springboard to something else. You’re the designer. Design. That’s what the fuck we’re paying you for.

It’s clear, I guess, that they want that sweet sweet lucre from both Pathfinder and 5e. Just do a separate version. People do it all the fucking time. I think it’s a filthy money grab, but, also, that’s why you made it generic/universal in the first place. 

Let’s see … goblins are always running to raise the alarm, but there’s no guidance on what happens then. Who comes? How do they react? Nothing. The entire place is in a canyon. Narrow enough, as that battlemap screencap tells us, for the party to feel penned in. Nothing about the top of the canyon though. If the fucking idiots walk straight in then they deserve their deaths. Get on top, divert the river, sort it out later. Who the fuck camps in bottom of a ravine? I’m mystified why, given all of the words, there’s nothing about being on top. Or reactions. Oh, no, I’m not. Because it’s not imagined. Or played. Because, in spite of the page count, word count, etc, not much actual worthwhile effort was put in to it. *sigh* 

This is $3 at DriveThru. There’s no preview. Just fork over the money and prais ethe fact you were allowed to consume.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/533699/delves-the-gnawbone-encampment-issue-1?1892600