By Tim Duncan
CritHeads Gaming
Castles & Crusades
Level 9?
150 years ago, each continent was ruled by its own Kings or Queens, with the exception of Athel, which was a true wildland and sparsely populated. King Bisdain of Othellis, a primarily human continent, set his eyes on Athel. He wasn’t the only one. In the west, the orcs of Undgar had several settlements established, and in the East, the elves of Vewul had built a magnificent frontier city, Mulvic, and had designs for another one. King Bisdain began his bloody conquest in the west, while secretly building the Eld Bridge to the east. The human steel was far superior to the orcish iron, and they managed to drive the orcs entirely from the land and into seclusion on Undgar. The King and his troops wasted no time moving east, converging with reinforcements from across the newly finished Eld Bridge, and laid siege to Mulvic. While the elves had far fewer numbers, their tactics and techniques kept the invaders at bay for nearly 20 years. As the years past, the elves’ numbers slowly dwindled, and the capital City of Isvewul across the sea was getting desperate to liberate their surrounded people. It was in this desperation that the elves created the Sentinels, mechanical humanoid constructs built to be controlled by the implanted brains of volunteer soldiers
This 104 page linear adventure uses roughly ninety pages to describe twelve scenes. There are no specifics, but there are a lot of motivations and backstory. It’s abstracted nonsense about the fallout from some political thing with elf kingdom manipulation or some shit like that. Boring crap.
Sometimes I just wish I could say “It sucks” and move on with my life. There’s this category of adventures that really are disasters, in the most amateurish way. Hubris, I guess. I can get behind some hubris. But, also, Pathetic earthlings. Hurling your bodies out into the void, without the slightest inkling of who or what is out here. If you had known anything about the true nature of the universe, anything at all, you would’ve hidden from it in terror. I admire someone’s ability to just go out and do it. And I absolutely loathe the result, everything that led up to it, and the fact that I get to pay, literally and figuratively, for the hubris of others.
That’s the opening page. Well, after the table of contents which is in the same style except all of the text is in that blue underlined font, making it even harder to read than a page of fancy font italics on a “fun” tan background image. Did you look at it? Did you look at it and say “Yup, that’s easy to read!”
Great. A column of read-aloud to kick things off. Ingenuity of its people. Got it. Time for a city adventure. I love me a city adventure! It’s one of my favorites! The adventure immediately transitions from that read-aloud to you waking up on an airship.
I don’t know. You’re on your way to another city. That’s like all you get. There’s no adventure between that meaningless starting read-aloud and that “night two” start of the adventure. No boarding of the airship or reasons or anything like that. I guess this will have to do, as well as being told the food is expensive and bad: “The first two days aboard the Airship is rather uneventful! The captain is friendly and more than happy to chat with the passengers. The crew are respectful, but in a hurry, as their duties keep them pretty busy while underway. Addison Buchard and CPT Greene keep to themselves as much as possible, trying to keep out of sight. Addison is shy if approached, and CPT Greene is standoffish, but not hostile or rude.” Abrupt transitions from scene to scene. Overwrought text. And a massive railroad. I guess you’re taking the fucking parachutes, ey?
This one scene, of the twelve, is a good example of the text and playstyle. You have a rather abrupt read-aloud to begin things. Then there’s a very general description of the scene, the number of bandits and their objectives, etc. You are essentially seeing all of that in the screencap above. Then there are like five pages of maps of the ship, one of which is a small keyed map with a very general overview of each section. “Main Foyer: This connects the Crew Quarters, the stair to the Passenger Quarters, and the Mess Deck together. The Door to the Crew Quarters is kept locked at all times. DC 18 DEX will unlock it.” It’s not really a keyed encounter map, and, for the play style envisioned, it’s probably the right amount of detail. About a page for everything and a brief enough overview to get the feel. But the ACTUAL encounter is not specific at all and, i think, is essentially just an idea padded out to a column of text. There are bandits. They want to capture the chick and will destroy the ship if it looks like the characters are fighting instead of fleeing. I mean, that’s the basic scene, just expanded. That’s seven pages to describe “the principals jump out with a parachute during a bandit attack.”
Everything is this very loose description of a situation surrounded by a very strict railroad so you can get from point a to point twelve. I’m normally down for a situation, but in this case it doesn’t feel like a situation. Or, perhaps, it doesn’t feel like the text supports the situation. It’s just TOO loose. I recall one of the early 4e adventures that had a complex of cave rooms and a monster in it with the party negotiating the entire area with its difficult terrain and so on. Like a traditional cavern map but with a only one creature. The minotaur in his maze or one of those “trick” levels, like the mirror maze level with a robot and laser beams. Not a room as a set piece but rather the level as a set piece. Except this isn’t a set piece. It’s too loose for that. And it’s not a sandbox, it’s too constrained for that. Here’s a genericish map of an airship. There are twice as many bandits as characters. Go! “It’s entirely up to the GM how many Terravore
occupy each mound, and if any mounds are vacant.” Well, good thing I bought an adventure And, yet, there is tons of backstory. And motivations. And NPC description details that don’t really matter.
Leaving aside the plot based/scenes/chapters issue, it’s the situations here that are frustrating. I get situations. I love them. And open-ended play and a sandbox. Great. If I squint hard I can tell that the designer is TRYING to support the DM. There’s an attempt to explain what is going on so the DM can improvise and adapt. But the emphasis is on the wrong spots. Those motivation and background parts should be shorter and the encounters/situations more specific. It’s too open-ended where it needs specificity and too wordy in the parts that are to support “off the rails” play. The formatting also doesn’t contribute to locating information easily for the off the rails portion.
This is $25 at DriveThru. The preview is the first six pages. That’s really just a table of contents and some background information, the first six pages. It should show a chapter, from start to finish, to give a potential buyer an idea of what they will be handling.