Curse of Bleckdell Forest

by J Lasarde
Broken Rat Games
System Agnostic
Levels ???

The forest of Bleckdell is around a mile from the village of the same name. The forest has always been a part of village life, used for hunting, foraging, and other activities. The forest has also been the subject of rumours, stories, and dark tales, which most of the villagers either did not believe or felt were tales for children.  Now something has changed.  People who enter the forest never reappear, hunters are never seen again, and now the children of a respected farmer who went into the forest to forage for mushrooms have not returned. Something is amiss and brave adventurers are needed to help.

This sixteen page adventure uses three pages to describe about 26 ‘encounters’ in a forest. It is boring and has nothing to recommend it.

And thusly we come to another one of those “Bryce regrets all of his life choices” adventures. The adventure is generic, padded out, and poorly done. It’s not that it seems to be going out its way to be bad, as a great many do to lean in to some shitty design principal, but rather that it just doesn’t seem to want to do ANYTHING. In spite of it being in the OSR section, this has the hallmarks of the traditional Generic/Agnostic adventure, being too afraid to do anything specific.

The intro is the hook, you’ll get nothing more “People who enter the forest never reappear, hunters are never seen again, and now the children of a respected farmer who went into the forest to forage for mushrooms have not returned” I believe we call this missing white girl syndrome. If he was a poor farmer, or a hunter, or someone else we’d all just tell them to go fuck themselves, I guess. 

Anyway, the hook doesn’t matter. What’s we’re looking at here is “the heart of the forest”, meaning some trails through the forest with some clearings to have encounters in. You walk through the “normal” forest for an hour and then get to the “thicker” dungeon map forest. The map, as presented, has no scale. The encounters are practically on top of each other. It feels almost like one of those “greater area” 4e tactical maps, you know, where the entire adventure is taking place on a 200 foot by 200 foot complex? Anyway, you wander around in the first having encounters until you get to the the one where you meet some dryds and the captured children in a clearing and then you can be a pussy and talk to them or you can cut them down like the dungeon scum they are.

Yes, I understand that seems like a rather harsh analysis of the situation. But, also “should the characters decide the Dryads are evil and should not be kidnapping children and killing the villagers …” Why, yes, I think the monsters should not be kidnapping children and killing villagers. I think it would be super cool if the monsters didn’t do that. And I shall brook no cultural relativism bullshit in this discussion. Killing a rando deer and chopping down a tree does not equate to LURING in and killing a bunch of hunters and kidnapping children. So, yes, the dryads are getting fucking stabbed. Any party that does otherwise should be visited for the rest of the campaign by continuing ongoing acts of violence by the relatives and friends of the hunters and children. “the Dryads are not monsters but are powerful and do control monsters in order to protect themselves and the forest.  they will attack any human attacking them, and do it indirectly if they can, using the forest beasts, trees, plants to do so they will not harm children, though they have taken them hostage” Well, except for that whole luring people in to kill and/or kidnap them thing. Oh, and the take away others free will in order to use THEM to kill the party. Our definition of evil differs, I guess.

Ok, but, also, who gives a fuck about ll of that. Let’s stab some shit! There are random tables for “random” things, for asterisk” encounters, for “discoveries” and for “strange noises.” This is all just window dressing and doesn’t do anything. You hear a twig snap or see a dagger stuck in a tree or some shit. Yeah yeah, I got it, ambiance. “A dagger stuck in a tree” is not ambiance. 

Forward! To Adventure!  About thirteen or so of the 26ish encounters are forks in the path. “You can go north or you can go south from this location. So … not much adventure in this adventure. Also the read-aloud is in italics, which is never good, and in second person, which is never good. It’s also WRONG in more than one place. “You can go north or you can go south at this intersection” actually means, according to the map, you can go south or you can walk east for twenty more minutes and then the path turns north” Yeah, giving a shit about the adventure you write!

One of my favorite read-alouds is one of the first “The pathway twists and turns for a short while before eventually coming to a dead end. You feel watched, test Str vs a DC14 or become fearful.” That’s the read-aloud. The effect of being fearful is that you will want to turn around and go back down the path. Also, this is a dead-end to you have to turn around and go back down the path. No, there is nothing here to explore or investigate.

The read-aloud also overrevels. ”Behind the ogre resting against a tree is a greatsword made of iron.” Time and time again I’ve noted how a read-aloud that overreveals destroys the back and forth between players and DM tha is at the heart of an RPG. Not to mention telling us that this is an ogre instead of showing us that this is an ogre. But, sure, it’s a greatsword made of iron.

In one encounter you see a wounded deer. “ the deer’s meat would keep you fed for a week and it’s pelt would fetch a good price in town, or you could release and heal it.” Hmmm, what do YOU think the designer is telling us to do? Because the designer has already decided how the adventure should be played, of course. 

There’s nothing here. Overly simplistic encounters with encounter text that does little to describe the encounter environment and instead makes an overly direct appeal to mechanics or morality.

This is $3 at DriveThru. There is no preview. Sucker.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/509013/curse-of-bleckdell-forest?1892600