The Painted Wastelands

By Christopher Willett
Agamemnon Press
OSE
Level 1?

Prepare your trembling synapses to enter the Painted Wastelands, the ENnie award winning tabletop roleplaying adventure designed for Old School Essentials. Dive headfirst into a strange hexcrawl set in a bizarre world teeming with desert weirdos, ravenous ghouls, and teeth-stealing dream-beasts. The land is a vibrant kaleidoscope of rainbow-colored sand and crumbling ruins.Wander from place to place, skipping across reality like a stone tossed along the surface of a pool of ectoplasm. You’ll encounter the unspeakable entities of the desert, sweaty pilgrims desperate for absolution, and strange sorcerers meditating in a haze of ectoplasmic smoke. You’ll plumb the depths of ruins forgotten by untold millenia and hopefully survive the wrath of vengeful nightmares given life. 

This 152 page adventure uses about 88 pages to describe 36 hexes in a gonzo land. It answers the question of what happens when you mash up Jorune, Tekumel, and non-laser rifle gamma world and then turns up the tentacle-faced cigar smoking crap-shooting wizards to eleven. Beyond the setting, though, it feels like it’s weird for the sake of being weird, with page long hexes not providing a few connected experience that one would expect. 

At first glance there is a lot to like here. And we can start with that Tim Molly art style. It’s got a Moebius vibe going on that I just totally dig. I don’t know, I’m not an art dude. The color pa;ette, the style, the imagery of a weird land with some slight anachronisms. It does a pretty decent job of just GOING THERE and does what art in an adventure should do: get you in the mood for it and add more than to the written word. Rebecca Curran has done the layout and, aside from a raised eyebrow about the choice of purple/magenta for section headings, it’s clean and clear. There’s adequate use of whitespace and section headings and various bolding, etc, to help things stand out and call attention during play. It does start to fall down a bit when the text runs on for, say, three paragraphs that fill most of a column, but for a work this large I guess we can expect things to fall down occasionally. It’s generally Good Enough. 

I can be an ass about page count, as a ratio to encounters/situations. This being a more in-depth hex crawl in a weird new world, I can acknowledge that providing a lot of new monsters, environmental shit and so on for a new land is going to take some space. The core hexes, though, are about two pages here, give or take. This raises the question of what a hex crawl is and, in particular, what a hex crawl is in the context of page or two page long hexes. 

The traditional standard for a hex crawl was set some time ago back in the olden days. I’m not married to it, but it does provide a baseline for expectations and how those might change. Wilderlands being the classic example, a large hex map with certain of the hexes having a description, maybe a paragraph or a couple of sentences, describing what is going on in the hex. In a perfect world its something like a situation. A halfling village under the heel of the barbarian lod ragnar the wicked. There is not much in the way of plot, although a few hexes may be directly connected in some way. The party wanders around, exploiting what they can and getting in to trouble, interacting with whats around. Let’s get those giant beavers we helped a few days ago to bust up that dam in that one hex and flood those orc caves in that hex over there! There’s no real purpose to the exploration and adventuring, other than what builds organically through play. Another type of hex based adventure is the wilderness journey. You want to get to The Hidden Fortress but you don’t know exactly where it is, so you wander around the hexes looking it, for clues, and having adventures along the way. There is more of a purpose, built in to the hexes/adventure, by the designer. If you squint a little then Dread is an early example, with its secret volcano lair. 

This, though, is something different. The framing is that you’re tossed in to this world somehow. Drunked bender, etc. I’m not sure I need a framing for SOMEPLACE ELSE, but there you are. And there are no real connections between the hexss. You’re not trying to go somewhere, the secret volcano lair, or anything like that. And yet, at a page or two per hex, this isn’t the quick hit ‘expanded by the DM’ free-ranging scope of the Wilderlands standard. It IS aimless, as Wilderlands is, in that it doesn’t tell you to do anything. (Well, except perhaps for a thread of a Void cult that reappears in several places. But that seems like just some background noise.) We have long hexes, meaning that they are essentially standalone things. 

This is where the Weird for the sake of Weird comes in to play. The hexes themselves seem … useless? Not in the way that the Carcosa -like hexes were. “There is a giant bird here with red legs.” It’s more that they are are individual little encounters where nothing much happens. Do you smoke weed with the weirdo? “A group of gutter wizards hide behind an outcropping. They’ve noticed you. They wave you over to join them. They try to shush you and speak in hushed whispers. Danger is close. They are hunting sky jellies so that they can pickle them and sell them at the Sorcerer’s Marketplace.” Ok. Sure. Kill the giant sky jelly and harvest its meat and maybe eat it. Or the lair of some Albino Bat Demons? That’s a page. (Well a column, with the other being art.) It’s just some monsters to kill and loot. It’s just all so disconnected. Or, I’m shallow and am not falling in love with the anachronisms as a contrivance for adventuring. 

The forgotten king nailed to a cross. If you will kill him he will tell you of his secret treasure room, off of his abandoned throne room, that contains his greatest treasure. Going there you find a bunch of music tapes. Oh, and he had a jam band. Again and again and again and again this hits. And it’s just too much for me. Having said that, I know a lot of people who run a casual pick up game now and again who would just eat this shit up. But that’s not what I’m doing and I can’t use this. It’s like saying that the party found some kjdfdhfg and now they get to use their imaginations to find a way for the oiweru people to use the kjdfdhfg. Yeah, I recognize the form. “But Bryce, this is a hidden gem!” No, it’s not. It’s just random stoner stuff. (Hmmm, now that I think of it, those people I know running those pick up games …)  

My notes say “Nonsense goals and how you leverage them.” And this is true. You see the pattern, yes? It’s ALL D&D in the end. Elves farting fireballs and you leveraging that to your characters own end. How is that different than The Gamma World stopsigns for shields? How is that different from the Skyrealms or Subways in the undercity? How is that different from the forgotten kings 8-track collection for this jam band? All I know is that Gamma World can go too far, and it sucks when played for laughs. Perhaps there is no gravitas? Not quite the fiat of deus ex, but a parallel view where nothing REALLY matters. If you can leverage dhgfjhsdgf to sell to the kjsdhfdk, then you can also a handful of pebbles to a passing farmer. Somehow I’m yanked out of the game when I can see behind the curtain; I have to buy in. This was my issue with Lacuna/Blue City. If anything can happen then I’ve no buy in. If a death star and gallactus show up, then the fucking game had better sell me on it. And i just don’t see how that’s possible in a series of disconnected hexes. I’m not slamming Algol. But the continuity seems off here. I know, I know, I’m all over the place here. But at least its’ something new to talk about.

There is an art to writing a sentence for a game world. A way of writing a sentence that implies more than is on the written page. I usually use this when refer to evocative writing and using cultural subtexts to conjure and leverage imagery. But there’s another way it’s used. Rarely, but sometimes. Something where the writing implies things about the game world. I think it came up last in the discussion about cubic sand. Back in the Mana Meltdown review? I wish I knew how to describe this more. “You’re stranded upon the ragged edge of the infinite worlds of dreaming.”, “The various denizens of the Lower Ethereal speak Dreamtongue, also known as “The Language of the Dead” by certain gutter wizards. It is a complex language based on telepathic thoughts and metaphors.” There are things implied here, things that cannot be articulated. I think it shifts the DMin to a certain mindset, helping them to riff on situations that arise. This is, I think, related to the principal of Not Explaining. There should be mystery. The imagination thrives on that, on the unknown, as the brain races and tries to fill in the gaps. We’re not talking about who killed Mrs McGivens, or even “No one knows who built these ancient monoliths”, although that gets closer to the subject. When its done badly it’s clumsy and obvious and when done well it melds in effortlessly to the sentence and the background. When this adventure is at its very best it’s doing things like that, although its very inconsistent.

You’re much more likely to get “The albino bat demon leaves behind a plastic toy shaped like a golden baby worth 125 ectos. It is a restaurant promotional tie-in for Legend of thenGolden Child.” or “Swarm of Imago Sprites: Self-Loathing Gaze: Anyone meeting an imago sprite’s gaze must save vs spells or take 1d4 CHA damage as they succumb to self-loathing and imposter syndrome. The character realizes they are garbage and no one will ever love them. Love is worthless anyway.” This is so reminiscent of the worst of 4e character abilities. “Absolute Annihilation Curse of the World Devourer. Take 1d2 damage.” 

It’s disconnected. It drags you out of gameplay and immersion. Im not saying I’m looking for some kind of Joyce shit here, but I need a pretext to hang on to. I’ve go to have a little buy in for what I’m doing or I just don’t give a fuck. It becomes an activity instead of a game, and I’m looking for a game.

Oh, that zany skull Mort shows up in the starting hex and offers little asides in a lot of places as you carry him with you. Yeah. I can’t decide if this is meant to be real or just a framing for DM notes. I guess we can all tell I’ve had a lot of bad experiences with DM pets in the past.

We can take a look at one of the more standard hex encounters that has few of the gonzo hallmarks. This is a full page encounter, although half of it is taken up by artwork. At its core it’s just a ghoul attack with maybe someone going berserk … all for 250gp … and all as the central feature of a hex. I think we can all determine, from the page, what the designer is trying to go for here. Creepy dig vibes. Maybe a little horror, the stumbling zombie, an eerie skeleton. “Quartermass! What’s going on in the subway!” There is a disconnect though. The vibe that I think we can recognize is not really supported by the text. There’s little there to actually help you run a creep encounter. Some tension is necessary … and that’s not supported. And, of course, it IS just a simple encounter padded out to a page/column. Delicious bone marrow. The Mort shit. Even the “Ghoula can camouflage themselves” paragraph. Great. Is THIS one camouflaging itself? Because it looks to me, from the text, like the intent is that it just stumbles up. It is the worst of 3e habits, printing long stat block shit. I get MAYBE the immune to crits/disease/poison shit. That seems relevant. But the camo/rest/eat/drink stuff is dumb to include. Fuck me, I think maybe the Ready Refs just aid “undead immunity” or something like that. I don’t know, what do YOU the actual fucking DM, think should happen when you poison a skeleton/ Maybe make that Ruling instead of relying on Rule? (sorry, my OD&D is showing again.) I guess it doesn’t matter. It’s just a ghoul attack. It’s not like something complicated is going on. I guess it annoys me because something more in depth COULD be going on. The wasted space COULD be used to add some tension. Expectations and possibilities as dream killers, I guess. The death of all possible futures when this one is realized. The Mort bit and the self-referential comic are the only hints of the wackiness inherent in the adventure. 

The Capsule Machine, another example. A full page. Note the “let’s Smash It!” paragraph. Almost all padding. From the Smash it title, to the “Players will obviously …” clauses, it’s just padding. You can absolutely bring some liveliness to your writing. You can add asides. You can insert from designer-to-dm snark and commentary. But when it becomes the norm, when it overtakes the actual adventure writing, this is where things go wrong. The fucking adventure is the main thing. I know, it seems obvious. And yet, it also seems a very high barrier, to actual concentrate ones efforts on the situation and the characters role in it. Everything else in the hex? Again, taking up too much space for what it is. But, man, it sure does look pretty … (To be clear, there are multi-location hexes as well, with several subareas to a hex.)

Look, I’m clearly not happy with the tone here. I think a major part of the project was to connect an adventure to existing artwork, or at least the vibe of it. And that influences the tone, so much of my ranting is a bit unfair. Well, at least the tone is disclosed so you can gravitate that way or not, depending on your predilections, needs and wants. But the more serious criticism is the disconnection from a hex crawl, the purplessness of it all, the disconnection of the “Forge your own way” hexcrawl gameplay and the “hex as wilderness to an end” gameplay. The disconnection of the hexes from each other, combined with the length of the hexes. This, I think, leaves the adventure firmly in the realm of the casual/pick up game. The Mork Borgs of the world, with weed games in the basement and no real opportunities, other than the fever dreams of a hopeful DM, of continuing a game past a few sessions, if that. I just don’t see how this is conducive to a longer gameplay mode. I can recognize that people play this way, and wish them well, but I am fundamentally tied in to more of a longer running GAME. I don’t want to sound mean by this statement, because I don’t think there was ill intent here, but if you take a minimally keyed adventure, expand the encounters to a page each, change the monsters to something new, with appendices, and do some top notch art and layout. But, in the end, it’s still a minimally keyed zany adventure, with little beyond what is right in front of you,  with all that implies.  Focus on the adventure.

This is $35 at DriveThru. The preview is the first thirteen pages. There’s a “Strange Encounters” table that, I think, embodies the hollowness. You really need to see a standalone hex to understand, though.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/498797/the-painted-wastelands?1892600