The Serpent Cult

Sebastian Grabne
Dawnfist Games
Generic
Level 1

We’re doing something different today. Here’s a lin to the preview of the adventure. Go to the last page. That’s the town description. That’s the ENTIRE description. ALL of the locations in the adventure are described in this format with the same tone, tenor, descriptive style. Or lack thereof. SO, loko at he preview page. Then try to review it. You’ll do a better job than I did.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/384870/The-Serpent-Cult?1892600

The adventure takes place on The Windswept Coast, where a newly formed cult has awakened a sleeping hydra which has wreaked havoc along the coast, creating trouble for the peaceful fishing village of Haven. The adventurers are now tasked with making the coast safe again.

This fifteen page digest  adventure describes an eight room dungeon. It does the BARE minimum, creating a work that is notable only for its blandness.Generic Adventure number 187,482,456.

Digest adventure. Fifteen pages. Pretty short then, right? With GIANT font’s and large margins and lots of whitespace. Which means even less text. Frankly, I’m surprised that there’s as much content as their is, given the formatting and layout choices. So, good job I guess?

You get four wilderness location. That’s a lot, so, two of the locations are numbered the same: C, even though there’s a D on the map. Seriously? You only had FOUR LOCATIONS and you fucked up labeling one of them? Ok, so, anyway. You get the twon. You get a shipwreck site on the coast. You get “The old Altar” and you get a spider cave. The town contains such exciting locales as The Tavern: “Warm and inviting tavern, visited by everyone in Haven on a regular basis” Soooo…. It’s a fantasy tavern. And everything in this adventure is going to fall in the same descriptive style. The docks in town are described as “Three fishing boats lay docked at

the southern pier. The northern pier is rotten and not in use.“ That’s it. Nothing else. A completely useless waste of words. A kind of aggressive genericism. Out front of the tavern is an elf selling blue eggs. They are supposed to be hydra eggs. He picked them up on the shore of the coast. This is absolutely meaningless and contributes nothing to the adventure. It has no meaning at all. I guess, not everything has to, though, right? But in an adventure with such few locations and an aggressive genericism, I would expect a little more? 

The dungeon, one of the four locations, has eight rooms. It contains such descriptions as “A large stone hall with door in all four directions and a burning brazier in the southwestern corner.” The rest of the description tells you where each of the four doors goes. Like “The east door goes to room 7” the prayer room.” The same information contained on the map. The main baddie rooms essentially says “there are 20 cultists and their leader in this room.” and nothing else. The most interesting description in the entire thing, by a longshot, is “A hallway knee-deep in murky water.” Knee-deep. Murky. Those are good.

Clearly, I just do not have it the fuck in me tonight. The absolute lack of any type of content in this is depressing. The way a simple one page (half page?) adventure is dragged out in to fifteen pages. The lack of ANYTHING going on at all in the adventure. There’s a room with a hydra in it. That’s it. And that’s about the extent of the hydra room description. 

Why?

Why does this exist?

Why do I bother?

I mean, maybe I should justsee how many crayons I can shove up my nose? That would be more useful then this adventure or me reviewing this adventure. 

THERE”S NOTHING HERE!!!!!

It’s essentially just a hollow shell of an adventure. 

I could say something like “Maybe there’s an elf here or something” and it would be about as useful as the content delivered in this.

It’s $2 at Drivethru. The preview is four pages. I invite you to examine the last page of the preview, the town description. This tells you everything you need to know about the adventure. This IS the town description. There is nothing more. ALL of the descriptions, encounters, etc in the adventure are just like this. In fact, my entire review should just be this page. Hmmm, I’m gonna go do that.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/384870/The-Serpent-Cult?1892600