Faces of Clay

By James S. Austin
Tacitus Publishing
OSE
Level 9

After a house fire tragically took the lives of a young family, their farm found itself left to the devices of the pasture’s fae inhabitants, a band of ruddy brownies. The capricious creatures quickly deduced that absent their human counterparts, the morning deliveries of cream would cease. After a heartfelt moment of loss, they realized that the cow penned in the barn afforded the answer to their problem. Making a new home in the barn’s hayloft, the brownies settled in and learned to utilize the farm’s clay golem. The creature now handles the manual chores and keeps out intruders while they enjoy their sudden good fortune, rubbing their swollen bellies.

This seventeen page adventure has one encounter. A new record in shovelware, I do believe! Yesirree! Seventeen pages! And one whole encounter in that! We’re lucky, I guess, it’s not forty.

There’s an abandoned farmhouse. It’s got a barn. There’s a paragraph of read-aloud that describes the farmhouse, and nothing more. There’s nothing that describes the fame, as a whole. There is, though, separate read-aloud for if you’re looking at the east or west side of the barn. So here’s that. I guess. I mean, it’s not really all that different and contributes nothing to the game. So.

What am I supposed to do here? What am I supposed to review? You fight one clay golem and, like, eight brownies. Maybe. If you don’t roleplay it out. That’s it. You go in to the barn and see a bunch of clay masks hanging from the ceiling. That’s a nice touch. And if you fight the brownies they could, at some point, let loose some chickens to run around at your feet. Yeah! That’s it.

You can roleplay your way out of this, making friends with the brownies. The golem only gets involved if you fight the brownies. Otherwise, you just listen to a WHOLE lots of read-aloud text, in italics of course.

I’m not fucking around here. There’s nothing in this. A level nine adventure with a clay golem. That’s it. “The first and second-floor ceilings are ribbed with arches to handle the heavier snowfalls during winter.” Woooa! The height of play, that little bit of description! TO keep the winter snowfall off the roof! I mean, it’s not winter, so.

I don’t know what to say here. The barn, outside and in, has over a page of read-aloud. None of which is very pertinent to the encounter. None of which is very evocative. The DM text tells us, like eight different times, that the brownies made/make the clay masks. What do you do here? How do you review this? “It sure does have a lots of skill checks to role play with those brownies!” You walk in, look at a mask scene, the brownies fuck with you, and maybe fight and maybe talk to them. That’s, what, two sentences in another adventure? Maybe three? What am I supposed to review? Every word written? “Well, I don’t know, maybe use the subjunctive clause here …”

One encounter. One. Maybe. Seventeen pages. The effort here is astounding. Theoden, King, what is man to do with such cruel fate? Courage Merry! Courage for our friends!

This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru with a suggested price of $1.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/481752/faces-of-clay-ose?1892600

Belvedere’s Books of Unusual Encounters

I also checked this out. It has 300 little encounter ideas. Each is about a paragraph long, so about two or three per page. The unusual part holds true. One of them has a religious procession chanting and ringing bells, with a ten year old boy being carried around who never ages. He’s a doppelganger who fund a good gig. Or the village where everyone ends every sentence with “Long live Duke Fluxion, long may his kind and benevolent rule guide and protect us all!” No sir, nothing unusual there. Slightly absurdist, or in some cases heightened reality, but not really over the top. I liked it enough to save it as a resource for my game.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/344388/belvedere-s-book-of-unusual-encounters?1892600