The Greydeep Marches

By Peter Schweighofer
Griffon Publishing Studio
Generic/Universal

Three hundred years ago adventurers from the Vilburg Kingdom forayed into the untamed border region and quickly drove away isolated, unorganized bands of humanoids. Many settled here under the watchful eye of the Sentinel Knights and have prospered in their enterprises. But dark powers left from a wicked empire 2,000 years earlier still lurk in dark forests, forlorn ruins, and subterranean labyrinths…and a growing threat in the Ostmaur Peaks to the east threatens to overrun the apparent peace and prosperity in the Greydeep Marches.

This 34 page regional guide has three adventures in it. It’s quite wordy, full of things that don’t matter, and has nothing interesting in it. I don’t understand what the value here is.

This is a regional setting. That can mean one of two things: either it’s a fluff piece with some mini-adventures or it’s a sandboxy area. I tend to avoid fluff and love sandboxy things, which leaves me in a pickle when it comes to those that pop up in my potential review list. This one turned out to be of the mostly fluff variety.

And what fluff it is! Oh, no, I mean, not in a good way. It’s long and boring and drawn out. What, a page I think, on the Hammer & Tun, a tavern. A page that regals the mighty oak beams and jovial atmosphere … without actually saying anything of use to run the adventure or, I would assert, even creating an evocative environment. WHich is interesting. It’s clear that the designer is trying to invoke an evocative atmosphere in the inn, but it’s so generic and so long-winded that I just didn’t care. It was completely ineffective in what it was trying to do. And this happens time and time again in the fluff portions of the adventure, the descriptions of the regions, the places and the people. It’s long-winded and boring, even through its clearly trying to evoke imagery. But, man, it’s all the same shit, time and time again in these things. It’s generic fantasy land with generic fantasy taverns. We’ve got monsters with an evil forced behind them making incursions from the mountains. Duke McDickhead is collecting artifacts and some Sentinel Knights run around bumbling. These are the divergences from typical fantasy world. And this is what twenty pages of overwrought text tells us … the description of the typical fantasy place without those brain spikes that make them memorable. 

This is supplemented by a wandering table that is mostly nonsense. A dude sitting in a tree warns you about the forest. Great. Bob is in the woods taking a leak. This doesn’t fulfill the purpose of a wandering table. The purpose of a wandering table is to make the party GO FORWARD and take Foy. Cause if you don’t then something is coming out to get you. So move your fucking asses. 

And this lack of understanding extends to many other places. There are three mini adventures in the supplement, and in one the reward you are offered from the villager is determined by rolling a d6. This is not the point of randomness in an adventure. Rather than a table, the space could have been used to really work that portion and come up with a couple of sentences to really bring it alive for the DM, and thus the party.

The adventures are unremarkable little things, with two being small six room complexes and one being just slightly longer. Inside you’re mostly going to find hacking. I must say, though, that there are times in which the writing really does get better. “Water drips down the moist walls of this dank cave into a small pool, eventually running out the cave entrance into the puddle beyond” That’s not too shabby. I like it, for evoking the imagery that a designer should be trying to imbue in to a place.  It’s terse, and really gives you a sense of the place. Now, I can quibble that the pool of water being outside the cave, really should have come before, but the overall effect is still there. Likewise there’s a monster description that goes “Something lurking in the far shadows breathes heavily, then emits a growling croak. A large toad – three feet tall with green on top and a speckled red underbelly” Lurking. Heavy breathing. Growling croak. Green and speckled. Not the greatest of all time but certainly far far better than is usually seen. 

And then we get a long backstory for a common pig that is the inciting event for the adventure. ARGGGGGG!!!!!!!!

The region setting is unremarkable and the mini dungeons not great. 

This is $7 at DriveThru. The preview is five pages. You should be able to get the gist of whats going on, in tone, with it, in the region.

https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/242741/the-greydeep-marches?1892600