The Hollow Tower

By Nicole Mattos, Icaro Agostino
Angry Golem Games
OSE
Levels 1-3

In ancient times, the region was crossed by famous trade routes, and many nomadic groups passed through on their way to distant destinations. Today, the area lies mostly deserted, though it still bears traces of the once-great Anhurak. Among the sunken ruins, a few half-buried houses remain visible. At the center of the settlement rises the Hollow Tower, once home to the fabled Star Devourer.

This sixteen page adventure uses two pages to describe thirteen rooms in a tower with a one room tomb nearby. Overpowered opponents and lots of backstory detract from simple, plain rooms, also full of backstory. Worst of all, for a book telling you how to devour stars, there is no instruction on how to devour stars. 

Ok, so, there’s also a small number of hexes. The giant ant hex is a page long, with ¾ of it being backstory and explanations.  It ends with “When reaching the lair, roll 4d6 to determine how many Giant Ants are there. If the PCs find a way to explore the lair, it’s possible to find 1d10 × 1,000gp of gold nuggets, mined by the ants” That’s what you get. That’s what you get for a page. 

And that’s the story of this adventure. There are TONS of backstory and padding. The first real page of the adventure is number six, with backstory, with the tome up till then full of forwards and title pages and the like. I get it, PDF pages are free. But the actual adventure has to the focus on the writing. All of this trade dress, the seemingly deriguour of putting together an adventure, simply distracts the designer. You odn’t need it. Any of it. Put the effort in to the actual adventure.

Another hex has a simple one room tomb of The Star Devourer. Open the casket inside and you meet the 6HD AC2 dude. “He will speak to the party, pleading his case and complaining of the injustice he suffered.” I’m not sure why he is pleading. He’s already been freed by the time you speak to him. But, whatever. He sets about destroying your level ones. 

The main focus here is a small tower in a ruined city. We’re looking at four floors with about thirteen rooms. Exciting rooms such as “Kitchen: Where the servants plotted the coup. Contains three wall counters, a large central table, and flour sacks. 1d6 x 50 gp wine bottles are on the counters. The first time a bottle is taken, a Yellow Mold releases a spore cloud.” The coup being the plot to trap the dude in the tomb. Backstory. A very plain description. “ervants’ Quarters: Dusty, abandoned, and filled with simple beds.” Look, these sorts of rooms can work. Empty rooms serve a purpose in an adventure. And, certainly, an empty room doesn’t need to have the most evocative description ever written. But when the ENTIRE adventure is like that I have to wonder, where did things go wrong? What led someone to think that two pages of rooms in a sixteen page adventure was a great idea? 

We’re told in one place there are ghostly sightings in the garden. There are no ghostly sightings in the garden. There’s a room with three doors. “Right door” leads to a cold, frozen, empty region.” Huh? There’s a fucking stone golem in the tower. Level one?! Sure, sometimes a monster is actually a trap or a special, but this isn’t that. This is just a small tower with a stone golem in it. How do you do this?

The dude, the dude in the tomb, the central point of the adventure, The Star Devourer. Yup, he ate all the stars. Hope your game doesn’t have any. But, more to the point, room one has a book in it called “How to eat the stars”, detailing how to eat the stars. That’s it. Nothing more. Well, how do I eat the stars and what happens when I do? Yes, I realize we’re told the book is incomplete, but, what if I follow the instructions anyway? 

There’s no real adventure here, not really. There are some things to stab. There are some keys to find and doors to open. But it’s all in this extremely minimalistic style that provides absolutely no specificity at all. And, of course, all surrounded by lots of backstory.

I gave this one a shot because of the whole Star Devourer thing. I was wrong.

This is $5 at DriveThru. The preview is the first seven pages, which means you get to see all of the boilerplate shit and a page of backstory. Bad preview; it needs to show us what we’ll actually be playing so we can make an informed purchasing decision.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/540864/fortnightly-adventures-0-the-hollow-tower-ose?1892600