The Lost Garrison

By Stephen Smith
Mister Smith Design
OSE
Levels 2-4

200 years ago, Goshawk Keep was overrun. It has been mostly buried for generations—the hidden underbelly long forgotten. But deep within the darkness life goes on…some things lost…some things found!

This thirty page adventure uses about five pages to describe eighteen rooms. It is overly simple, both in description and interactivity. A minimally described dungeon turned in to thirty pages … somehow?

This adventure is boring. It’s not altogether bad. There’s not enough content for the adventure to be bad. It’s just boring. And it’s boring in a very specific way. There’s this way of describing a room. It’s a minimal description, like “12 rats in a bedroom” or something like that, something close to Vampire Queen. But, it IS given an actual description. Something like “A Victorian bedroom with a dresser and 12 rats in it.”  The description doesn’t really do anything for the room. It doesn’t add anything. It is not really evocative and doesn’t really lend itself to the actual play of the adventure. That’s not an altogether uncommon complaint of mine in an adventure, but the degree to which it pertains, the … lack of other issues? Really brings it into focus. Which kind of makes sense; if you’re not really saying anything in a description then there’s really not much room for me to complain, is there? 

Let’s look at one of the rooms in the adventure. “Dispensary: Abandoned medical storage area” Are you not inspired!?!? There is a DM notes section, the DM text. It says “Treasure: 2 potions of healing, 1 scroll of neutralize poison, 1 scroll of cure serious wounds” I mean, this IS vampire queen. The description simply defines the room name. Yes, a Dispensary is a medical storage room and, yes, we ARE in an abandoned ruin. I’m not fucking around and being hyperbolic. That IS the complete room description. Can you put in a fucking rooms that says “Empty” or something like that? Absofuckinglutly you can. It’s just the … perfunctory nature of this that offends me so much. It’s a room that COULD have something interesting in it.And, in fact, it DOES have some decent treasure in it. But that was not enough to deserve a room description. If that doesn’t deserve a room description then what exactly DOES deserve a room description?

I note that this is just an extreme example in the adventure. It’s much more likely that the room would be something like this one “A small chapel with rows of stone benches facing a raised votive alter. The walls are painted with chipped and faded landscapes.” And then the DM text ONLY tells us that you see a ghostly figure float down the hallway. It takes a lot more words than that, but it doesn’t say anything more than that. It is EXACTLY the fucking same as those fucking chess players in Dwimmermount. This is, essentially, an empty room. Can you give an empty room a description? Yes. Can you put a weird thing in the dungeon? Yes. Can your dungeon consist primarily of this? WHhy the fuck did you write the dungeon then?

I know what this is. This is essentially the same as a random dungeon. You rolled on the back of the 1e DMG tables or something and that gave you list of monsters and treasure. Then you got a list of random room names to put on each room. Then you gave each room like a one sentence description. Done! That is the closest I can come to accurately describing what this dungeon is.

Can you write a dungeon like that? Sure? I Guess so? I mean, who the fuck am I to tell you what to like? But this just seems so … I don’t know. I mean, there is a small section at the end for amping up play. It says thing like “Maybe the kobolds are bullied by the orcs.” Well then why the fuck didn’t you put that in the actual fucking adventure? I mean, that IS the value that you, as the designer, is adding to the adventure. I can roll on the fucking random tables myself and say “looks like a sea cave theme to me.” But the actual shit beyond that? That IS the value that a designer is adding. I think that’s the joy, also, in creation. Is it just drudgery to get through so you can move on to the next thing? What the fuck would the point of all that to be? A school assignment? A futile hope to generate revenue? 

In spite of the thirty pages, there is almost no content here. A simple definition description of a room. DM notes that are as minimal as are humanly possible, to the point of “12 rats.” There is almost no interactivity beyond a simple trap “Block trap: 1d10 damage” or stabbing something. I just don’t understand at all what the motivation for writing something like this would be. 

This is $5 at DriveThru. The preview shows you eleven pages of spread, so about 22 adventure pages. Good preview. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/494867/the-lost-garrison?1892600