A Strange House

James Crane
Crumbling Keep
OSE
Levels ... ? Fuck off and buy it l0ser

In the middle of a deep and dark forest along a babbling stream, the PCs come upon a wide and long field. It is extremely overgrown and has become a mix of bolted plants and dead, dry, and decaying foliage. Despite this, there is somehow a completely clear, straight path through it, untouched by the growth on either side. At the end of it is a tall and warped house standing by a single tree. Each PC catches a different scent in the air that reminds them of a specific memory of their childhood …

This 42 page adventure presents eleven rooms inside of a ‘whimsical’ poi crawl house. Aimless, the writing is unfocused and it comes off as something between a museum tour and a funhouse. You simply wander about and interact with strange stuff for no other reason than to do so.

Ok, encounter one. You’re walking towards this house and you see a bird. If you feed the bird then it changes in to a small, wicked-looking six-legged three-eyed winged goat. If you attack it then the goat explodes in powder and you sneeze for a minute if you fail your save. This takes a page and a half to communicate, along with the four one sentence rumors he’s got. So, monster description? Pretty interesting! There’s something you don’t see every day! I might be more specific than “wicked” in a description … wiry brustle fur, sharp fangs and blood red eyes or some such. But, hey, three eyes and six legs with wings has got it going on! The core of the encounter though? This kind of attitude in the encounter design … where an attack causes it to party explore with no real effects. This is meaningless. It is a thing that happens. It has no real impact. It is mostly disconnected. It is meaningless. This is the normal manner for this adventure. You encounter a room and something could happen in the room, if you interact with it. But there’s no purpose to it. To any of it. As if each room were a carnival game you could play … but without reward or context or anything to tie them together in to something more than the sum of the parts. “When it sees any PC, it’ll instantly start taunting them, pausing to squawk and laugh at its own jokes. It can’t be bothered to follow the adventurers, however; that’s too much work.’ This is the Jerk Bird, a parrot nesting on top of a chimney. There’s nothing to this. You might as well say that the door is red and unlocked. This is a museum tour, where nothing matters. A funhouse where all of the encounters are bizarre and disconnected. (Yes, if you befriend the cat then it will chase off the sprites in the attack.)

“Arriving at the house, the PCs see a strange sight: the structure appears to be …” This then is the opening line of the first real room. Note the padding. Note how it doesn’t say ANYTHING. You can literally delete everything here and not impact the adventure in any way at all. And encounter after encounter does this, is like this. Near he start you face two outside doors, two ways in, side by side. A board head trophy in between asks you to sing it a song and if you do so then it tells you that the safe way to the left. My left or your left? Whatever … the point is that the OTHER door describes the kitchen that it leads to … and then we get a description of the kitchen in the kitchen. The organization is MADNESS. There’s no map, each room tells you which room you can go to next … but … can you go back? The sitting room has no exits listed. These are the absolute basics of adventure design and yet they do not exist at all here. 

What level is this for? JUST SHUT THE FUCK UP AND BUY IT. The inanity of this shit. The second half is just a bunch of random encounters, disconnected from the adventure proper, as if we just tossed in another supplement called “Interesting encounters” to the rear of the adventure. 

I don’t understand this. I don’t understand this. I don’t understand this. There is a chair in this room that you can sit in. There is a mouse in this room that curses at you. What is the point of encounters like that? TO be clear, these are not from the adventure, but they represent the vibe of the encounters in the adventure. It’s Isle of the Unknown all over again. 

This is $14 at DriveThru. There’s no preview. Because FUCK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/499909/a-strange-house?1892600