By Amerlia Luke
Necrotic Gnome
OSE
Levels 2-4
When an earthquake unseals the long-buried temple of the wild god Iakos, whispers of visions and ancient treasure draw witch hunters and adventurers alike. Four royal witch hunters entered and never returned. Now the way lies open. Dare characters brave the delirium-haunted ruin, discover the witch hunters’ fate, and claim what lies within?
This sixteen page adventure uses about nine pages to describe sixteen rooms in a newly unsealed “Greek Mysteries” cave/temple/place. A decent little adventure that sprinkles in a bit of various interactives and does good enough describing things. Meh, it’s fine. And “Meh, it’s fine.” is good enough. It’s a sixteen page dungeon in a sixteen page adventure; it doesn’t need to change the world. Also, it’s OSE but doesn’t use the OSE style guide, for you haters.
We’ve got Ye Olde Mysteries Cave here. You know, all volcanic vapours and oracular visions and all that jazz. Cept it got sealed up. Cept it just got UNSEALED up by an earthquake. (“An Evil Earthquake? With frigging lasers?”) Chasing downs ome rumors, four royal witch hunters went in. And didn’t come out again. Ought oh! Inside we’ve got three Grotesques, avatar/servants of the god. And after being sealed up for a thousand years they are desperate for new things to predict, having been isolated for so long. Two of them steal secrets from each other and hate each other. The third wishes to bring fulfill a prophecy and bring out the destruction of the temple. Slight case of ennui there buddy? Tried the Camus? Some people get comfort from religion. Oh, sorry.
Already we can see a few interesting things, just from the setup. The call back to the actual Delphi is a nice one, this kind of an appeal to a cultural memory that then overloads all of whats to come in the adventure. I sometimes refer to room titles in an adventure, instead of putting in “Room 1” you instead say “1. Pristine Kitchen” This lets the mind get a kind of framing of the description to come. Everything is seen through the lens of Pristine Kitchen. And the appeal to the heritage is much the same. Ophelia comes with context. History. All the media that’s every existed that has leveraged it that the DM and the players have consumed, consciously and subconsciously. And so all of that is leveraged when an adventure makes direct or oblique references to it. It’s all about bringing more than the actual words written to the page. Big vs Cyclopean. And then also the Royal Witch Hunters. Specificity. There’s not much more information so the mind naturally races to fill in the gaps, wondering. Not “adventurers.” Or the better “Mercenaries.” Or the better “Murder hobos.” But the better still “Royal Witch Hunters.” One still lives, inside the cave/temple. “Mu freely volunteers that this is the witch hunter Crawe, who was set upon by Empties when Mu tired of him. Mu is able to reverse the process but sees no reason to.” Nicely done. Except, also, I don’t give a shit about the witch hunter, Crawe or not. No reputation for good or ill, no connection. The royal witch hunters don’t really get enough for anyone to really care about their fate. I guess the various prisoners in the OG adventures don’t really either. “Elf. Will join party for one year.” But, also, it’s clearly meant to be a kind of motivation since they Do get the title “royal witch hunter” instead of “elf.” Ahhh, I’m not really bitching here, I’m just pointing out the disconnect.
Monsters noted on the map, which is the OSE style. The keywords style isn’t really present here. These are more like a traditional read-aloud and extra information format. Here’s a screencap:
I don’t mind the old keyword style, but I do know it gets under the skin of the traditionists. I do like a more sentence like structure, but, that’s just personal preference. Whatever works and the old OSE style works as does this one. Nice little offset in a color box, some bolding. Not the biggest fan of “see area one”, but whatever. Soggy Earth. Silver Pool. Murmuring. Nice descriptive words. It doesn’t always follow through like that. “Ornate stone table” “honeycombed shelves” and the like. But it’s clearly trying in both instances.
Oh, also:
From that read-aloud I think we can tell that, maybe, it’s not read-aloud. If it IS read-aloud then it over-reveals. So, then … it’s a DM summary? That we riff on to players? I’m not actually sure it’s either. And I think it shows in my feelings towards this thing. I’m not sure it knows what it wants to do with that text. That kind of muddiness is what is influencing my “meh” attitude toward this. It can’t lean in. And so I can’t. As a read-aloud it over-reveals. As a DM summary it is no summary. So … ?
Monsters get some ok descriptions. “A giant, bloated maggot, 20? long,
armoured in a shimmering, polychromatic exoskeleton. Six 10? long tentacles ring its small, toothless maw” Or how about “pity”, “Pity 5? tall, female water spirit with fey, elf-like features. Nearly skeletal, tousled hair, feral eyes. Clad in a spectral, tattered gown.” Nice appeal to what one would normally expect of a water spirit … after a thousand years. These are not winning any awards but they are so much better than one would normally see. [Also, as an aside, the artwork in this adventure compliments the descriptions quite well. The entrance illustration in the first screencap, for example. And the water spirit brings the kind of emaciated horror without going overboard. Simon Underwood, with Gavin as “Art Direction”, whatever that is. He told Simon what to draw?] Anyway, the monster descriptions are up front in their text and focus on what they look like, act like, interact as. Which is what the fuck they should do.
And, thus, interactivity. We’ve got some “steal the loot without busting the tree pustule” stuff. (Which, I note, doesn’t really come out in that summary description, explicitly or implicitly.) We’ve got the three Grotesques, who want to talk until they get bored with you. (Always good advice in every situation: don’t be boring.) Maybe they want you to go steal something. Pity, who wants to eat two people. A prisoner. And the whole “fulfill the prophecy” thing. There’s some stabbing and talking. I don’t know. It feels a little lacking. Then again, I might just be bitching about the small size. Four or five different things going on in sixteen rooms is a little cramped, yes? Anyway, not many mysteries to discover here. But, also, a nice little “push” on what to do if the party fucks up the prophecy, as well as some decent consequences for fulfilling them that doesn’t fuck shit up too much but still provides something meaningful. And, nice magic item. This is the kind of non-generic shit that really gets me going. escalate in villainy. Make those asshats Grotesques do some shit for you. 100′ caldera. Nice job!
I’m not mad, not at all. I think it’s one of those cases where you see potential and its not really attained. I suspect its the smaller size of this place. A little more expansive complex, more space to breathe, to match the scope. Anyway, good effort here, just not quite enough.
This is $5 at DriveThru. The preview is twelves pages. More than enough to make an informed purchasing decision. Necrotic Gnome hitting that production pipeline checklist!
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/547110/quick-delve-2-the-grotesques-grotto?1892600