The Tower

By Pat_Sagor
Pat_Co Productions
Nimble/OSR
Level 3

In the heart of a volcanic wasteland, the Tower rises amid fire and ash, a slender edifice of stone. Its citizens never leave the Tower, and keep their mysterious traditions out of sight from the outside world. But they have gained immense wealth trading wondrous artifacts extracted from the depths below the Tower… Outside the Tower, Baron Hugues DeMort’s massive army has been laying siege for over a month. Unable to breach its impervious gates, frustrated and desperate, he has devised a plan to infiltrate the Tower, and he just heard of a group of adventurers that are brave, capable, and … expendable. The perfect team to send on a probably suicidal mission!

Greetins Green Level adventurers! Friend baron has a new, fun, and exciting adventure for you! This fifty page adventure describes about twelve scenes inside a gigantic tower/city that is under siege. The party travels through a rigid caste-based society that really be in a 70’s social commentary scifi movie instead. Follow the script, stab the bosses and then … win?

Ok, so, Baron von Evil is laying siege to the massive tower city and sends the party in through some lower cave/tunnels to get to the city gates and blow them up with the bombs he’s devised for you to carry. You get in and find a massively caste-based society. The tower/city has four levels. The lowest, black are the workers, then the level above has the red managers, then the golden enforcers and judges above that, and then the white intelligentsia above that. We’ll let you decide if Black=Worst and White=Best has any meaning here. Anyway, it’s right out of a scifi movie and, in fact, this probably should have been a Gamma World adventure but, then, of course, it wouldn’t sell any copies at all. Ok, so, anyway, you’re in this city on the lowest levels. You gotta get ahold of some levitation bands to Ascend through the central shaft. Along the way you meet rebels, learns about the rape of an 8 year old by a cop, and find out that hte whites are not white, they are all really just one lich in charge of everything. 

The designer kind of knows they’ve written a railroad and has some words on advice on how to make it not a railroad and more interactive. There are some very basic maps of the city regions, but, ultimately, the adventure comes down to the twelve or so scenes/events that make up the plot here. You’re in the tunnels and then watch some cops kill a couple of citizens just minding their own business. You watch an Ascension, where citizens are promoted to the next color up. You meet a rebel and then get arrested by the ol “four more show up every turn” trick. Youre in the middle of the Barons army invading the tower, you boss fight Golden Centurion Marigold 1 (that’s one of the tower peoples names. Like I said, SciFi) who covered up the rape of the little girl. Let’s see, one of the lich’s victims telepathics you, and then you fight the lich. Let’s see … have I bitched about rape yet? Of a child? Why are people putting this shit in their adventures? This is supposed to be fun. You know what’s not fun? Child rape. People just seem to toss that shit around the way they toss around Hitler when arguing. Maybe give it a rest and find something else for the cops to cover up? Maybe Soylent Green is people. That’s fun. Can you  imagine? People love it. They riot over it. And it’s actually people. And, notably, not child rape. (and murder! Don’t forget the murder after the child rape.) 

The adventure gives you a list of NPC’s, a list of scenes, and a list of locations. There’s a decent number of summaries and background information as well, but, really, it is the people, places, and events that drives this.

Well, I say people drive it, but it tends to be more of a “Guest Star of the Week” kind of the thing. You get an NPC in a scene or situation and then you’ll be lucky if they continue to show up. Thus there is a relatively large number of named NPC’s, each with decently long NPC descriptions. Those descriptions are fairly well done but at some point you’ve got to ask yourself why we have so many people. You can’t possibly form a bond with any of them, not in the amount of time they are showing up. There is supposed to be this underlying theme pr regression, rebelling against order, blind adherence to order and the neutral observers to it all that is handicapped (Let’s see the judiciary enforce their decisions when enforcement power belongs to the people they are ruling against.) And then, of course, ultimately the entire system comes from corruption at the very top, the farce of the liches leadership. 

We’ve all seen a lot of liches. Party liches, grim liches. We’ve got a master manipulator here, that shows up a couple of times in public ceremonies impersonating a “white,” Possessing, really. And he has some tells. He raises his hands to his face and says “Actually …” a lot. There’s a fun little gimmick to get the party wondering, This is just slightly farcical and one of the better parts of the adventure.

Looks, it is essentially a railroaded scenebased adventure. The designer tries to help it not be that with some locations and a tad bit of free will, but that’s what it is. There’s nothing wrong with that. It is, I suspect, how the vast majority of people play D&D, some derivations of scene based with a lot of hand-waving. Not my favorite type, but I get it. If you’re gonna have scenes then lean in and write a scene based adventure. If you want your location based adventure to have events then dump those in. This adventure never fully commit to either and is the worse for it. Devo says you need to Sartre this baby up! This needed to be all events/scenes or a location based adventure with “secrets” to discover and a few events thrown in. 

This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru with a suggest price of $1. The preview is eleven pages and gives you a good cross-section of different aspects of the adventure. Good preview. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/563227/the-tower-for-nimble?1892600