The Lost Amulet of the Lizardmen

By Tarcisio Lucas
TLHP Games
OSR
Levels 1-4 (Seriously?)

High hopes dashed again. I know, I know. I’m a dreamer.

An ancient Zigurat hidden in the midst of a distant Swamp. A lost civilization of lizardmen, long gone. A mystical amulet with arcane powers. A mysterious stranger in a Tavern.

A 43 page dungeon with six rooms taking up six pages. With garbage room descriptions. This is what my life has become.

It’s hard, really, to describe just how bad some of these adventures are. And yet, this is the task before me. 

The format here is digest, I think? Or maybe full page. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter, I guess. Each page is, essentially, a full color illustration. In full dazzling colours. And on each a bright yellow scroll with the next of the adventure. This combination, alone, makes the test hard to read,. The eye is distracted by the BLAZING gaudy colours. No bolding. No real effort at formatting or organization beyond this. The monsters and hazards are just mixed up in this text with no effort to call them out. It is the definition of cognitively difficult to absorb.

I believe that the purpose of an adventure is to assist the DM in running it. It is therefore the job of the designer to help bring the adventure to life, to provide the DM with a little snippet that helps them run the thing, bringing it to life in the DMs head so they can riff off of it and run t he encounter well. To do this, this adventure provides, at times, a little footnote like thing here and there. Footnotes like “For the GM: How does the figure behave? Does he speak softly? Hastily?

Does he have a distant lands accent? Is he wearing an exotic perfume? Does

he have a vulgar vocabulary?” I fucking HATE this. This is the EXACT opposite of what an adventure should be doing. This is the kind of shit you are supposed to build in to your descriptions. This is the exact sort of thing that SHOULD be provided so the DM can get a mental image and then riff on it. What he fuck is the purpose of this? Why not just say “figure out an encounter and present it ot the players. Maybe the goal is to introduce them to the adventure?” What the fuck man? Why bother even writing at all if yo’re not going to say anything concrete about something?

Oh, oh, and the traps and hazards? “Consider the most logical narrative consequences as a result of the PCs actions. Assume 1d6 damage as the standard consequence for something

going wrong.” That’s fucking wonderful. It says NOTHING. The individual encounters have NO detail about hazards. Just that little snippet. Look, I’m not the most mechanically minded DM. I love it when things are more free form. But, seriously, if you can’t describe an encounter, mechanically, in any way other than this then you’re not doing ANYTHING to assist the DM in running the adventure.

Oh, oh, how about this for one of those SIX FUCKING ROOMS that the dungeon consists of? “ they discover a hidden alcove housing a dusty tome, its pages filled with cryptic prophecies and riddles that may hold the key to the ziggurat’s mysteries.” That’s it. That’s the description of the book that holds the dungeons secrets . I’m supposed to run this fucking thing with THAT as a description? Go fuck yourself.

This is nothing. It’s a collection of ideas. I’m pretty sure it’s quite low on enemies. Maybe a giant snake in the temple and that’s it? Otherwise it’s all just “heres a list of monsters they encounter in the swamp on the way.”  Those six rooms take four pages to describe. Four pages. “The air is

thick with an otherworldly stillness, broken only by soft echoes that seem to emanate from the very walls. Intricate murals depicting ancient rituals and sacrifices adorn the chamber, their faded colors hinting at a time long past.” Thats a little purpose, but it does get an image across. Mostly ineffectually, for the amount of text. 

Fucking christ. I get that people want to play with format and shit. That’s fine. But you’ve lost track of the goal. If you need 43 pages to describe six rooms then you’ve failed. Completely. And, to have NOTHING concrete in the rooms at all? To force the DM through permutations to go find encounters and the like? Go find a page with some stats on it, somewhere. Fuck off man.

This is $6.50 at DriveThru. The preview is thirteen pages. Go click on it and enjoy the formatting and full colour illustrations. They looks like blacklight paintings.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/441529/The-Lost-Amulet-of-the-Lizardmen–An-OSR-Adventure?1892600