Into the Elder Worm

By Jeff Simpson
Buddyscott Entertainment Group
B/X
Level 14

The Elder Worm, a purple worm of galactic size, has been released from its cosmic prison and is on the loose! Dare you crawl inside its guts to find out what dreadful creatures make homes in its bones and swim in its stomach? Are you tough enough to journey Into the Elder Worm?

This nineteen page adventure uses four pages to describe 46 rooms inside of a purple room. Yes, the page count/room count is correct. No, it is not anything other than drudgery. Enjoy, fuckwit.

I thought, perhaps, we were done with this sort of thing. But, no. There is still at least one person producing adventures in which you move from room to room and just stab shit. No descriptions to speak of. No interactivity to speak of. Just walk from room to room and stab shit. At level fourteen. In a dungeon that is the inside of a purple worm. I am incredulous. Let us examine this trainwreck.

There’s a REALLY big purple worm running around. You describe to go inside to … look around? See what’s up? Anyway, in through the mouth or butt. Inside you find a bunch of monsters, like fire and frost giants and minotaurs, and then a mind flayer in the brain controlling the thing. Don’t worry, it’s not done with anything of interest.

There are no descriptions here, per se, of the environment you are exploring. The very first room, in the butt, gives you this: “This assembly area is full of troops preparing to move out of the worm to conquer. There are 3 cyclopes, 2 bugbears each handling a basilisk, and 6 minotaurs. They carry no treasure of note and will fight to the death” This is a fairly typical room description. An assembly area. That’s it. Nothing more. Enjoy your worlds of wonder, sucker! And then a list of monsters to fight.That’s fun, right?! Here’s a description of a church, found inside the worm: “This church contains a shrine to Grimbus, God of Worms, Flukes, and Maggots which weeps an icy blue cloud of vapours from pores in the stone.” At least we get icy blue vapours, I guess. So, there’s absolutely no descriptions here, at all. You are a fucking fool to expect some, I guess.

And there is no interactivity. You get to go in to a room and stab something. No one cares about whoever is in the next room. Your only respites from just entering a room and having a DM yell INITIATIVE is the occasional secret door. I guess there is a little city in the intestines, but “the innkeep is a specter” is not exactly what I would interactive. I guess “does not immediately attack” could be see as an interactive encounter? At least in this adventure?

46 rooms in four pages. That’s a pretty decent spread. Too good to be true, as the examples from the text prove. Instead, though, we get fifteen pages that are NOT keys. Fifteen pages of wasted effort. All of the time and effort spend on those fifteen pages SHOULD have gone in to those fucking room keys. THAT’S the adventure here. Why pay attention to all of the other shit, the appendices and explanations and intro and all that bullshit? Why not just put that effort in to the keys? Because you think they are good enough? Here’s a tip for every adventure writer ever: Your keys suck shit. I don’t give a shit who you are. Your keys suck. Put some effort in to them. Yeah, sure, real artists ship. At some point you have to call it done and move on. But until then you should be working on your fucking keys. All of that other shit you’re typing the fuck up? That’s a distraction. Work on your keys some more. Then work on them some more. If you don’t hate the thing you’ve created, yet, and are not disgusted by looking at it another day, then you’re not done yet. I don’t get why people don’t get this. Work on your fucking keys. THAT’S the adventure. And it’s not perfect, yet. 

This adventure, though, is just pure drudgery. ENter room. Have a fight. Next room. I loathe

This is free at DriveThru, and thus, no preview.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/447570/Into-the-Elder-Worm?1892600