By brine Self Published Yarn & Bone/Universal
A mage sits in a cemetery, sipping tea while his diggers excavate Lady Veshra’s grave. He must speak only in rhyme lest his lungs collapse. His murdered wife possesses the living to assist his ritual. The cemetery fights back with sentinel crows and grief wraiths. Veshra’s descendant wants the Soulstone inside the coffin… her last asset. Tonight he joins his true love in life or in death.
These twelve pages describe the idea for an adventure rather than adventure.
I don’t even know what’s real anymore. I don’t know how I got here. Somehow this made it on to my list. I THINK that means someone had to specifically ask me to review it. I know itch is worse than DriveThru and so I don’t go clam digging there. Maybe while I was drugged up?
It’s just twelve pages outlining the concept of an idea. A dumb ass mage who has to sip tea is digging up a grave to get some magic thing. There are undead in the cemetery, and a ghost-thing, and some other chick shows up with mercs who wants the same thing the mage is digging for. That’s the outline. And it takes twelve pages to do that.
Look, I’m not saying all of the ideas here are bad. One of the hooks has you showing up, as relatives, to rob the grave. “You arrived early to claim it before your “dear cousin” and her hired thugs “ That’s good writing and a decent hook. Or the local official sending you to deal with some chick who he thinks is batshit crazy who insists her ancestors grave is being robbed. As “hired hands” goes at least its got some life.
And, thus, some of the framings in this are fine, or more than fine. But it never does anything with them. It’s just a collection of motivations and ideas. Heavy on art and whitespace. I can’t emphasize this enough: this is not an adventure. It is a collection of ideas that one could build an adventure from.
Whoever asked me to review this must have been trolling. I see that the system, Yarn & Bone, is variously describe as world-first, conversation heavy and solo. Who knows. But it also says its compatible with all RPG systems. In the sense that this is just a collection of ideas, yes, it is certainly compatible, just as the OED is as a roleplaying adventure.
Gentle reader, why have you not shit in a box and charged $5 for it?
It’s Name Your Price at itch, with a suggested price of $5.
Seems awfully harsh to call a free 12 page adventure “shit in a box”. It’s free. And so is your review, which is also pretty substanceless?
Uhoh. This yours Jonas?
Jonas, good adventures have some specifics. I’ll select just a few areas…
You don’t really give any physical description for 3 main antagonists; the Steep Mage, the Dybbuk (yeah she’s a body hopper but suggest a tell or something) or the grief wraiths.
So it’s on the DM to riff it off the top of his head? E.g you the designer have offered nothing to help the DM here.
The locations are missing elements which would help the DM. “the Dybbuk is strongest here” great, wtf does that mean. I guess – again- the DM is supposed to make that up on the fly. E.g you the designer have done nothing to help the DM here. Heck man, just tell us what that means in YOUR system at YOUR table, that might be a guide we could use. GIVE US SOMETHING.
There’s no stats- therefore anything mechanically interesting the foes do is on the DM to come up with or relies on another system. E. g you the designer have offered nothing to the DM to make any physical confrontation or conflict interesting. Nothing there for the GM to riff off “oh I see the street tough has a garrotte, I know I’ll…” Just nothing.
Hence the criticism that this is just an idea for an adventure, which seems empty or incomplete. There are very few specifics. Everything is left for the DM to do from blank.
So it’s not helping at the table to reduce the mental load of DMing, which in turn would enable all the fab improv and description to flow because the nitty gritty is all there already and you can kind of launch from a stable base. This thing is made of straw.
Your wife fantasizes about a man who can finish a sentence without a question mark
Even something thats free can be shitty. Thats No argument imho.
Herpes is free!
This appears to be written for a very niche impromptu story based system and doesn’t translate well to traditional ttrpg without significant preparation.
Of yarn and bone:
https://brine.dev/posts/of-yarn-and-bone
So if flying by the seat of your pants is your game then this “Script / Agenda” might have some merit. Definitely a different game style from OSR gaming.
As a traditional OSR adventure -oh boy- This is NOT a Plug-and-Play Table Ready adventure. Basically, you would have to prep the shit out of this -to the point where you are writing it yourself.
You need:
Maps: The Cemetery
Monsters: relevant stat blocks
Mayhem: devise a countdown timer and plan escalating encounters, environment as the cemetery becomes “active”
What next Bryce?
“ XL double pepperoni by Dominos
This is not an OSR adventure, its some sort of bread and cheese bases edible.
The pepperoni slices might be crawl nodes but there is no key. 0/10”
Oh, there’s worse to come. I have strayed from my usual hunting grounds. No words from others can do more harm to me than what I feel inside
Some good stuff too, I hope!
You do it to yourself, you do
And that’s what really hurts
Why not cheer yourself up by filling in the EMDT gaps ?
I’d personally love to see Bryce review some actual classic TSR modules, though I know he’s gone on record as saying he won’t do it. I do think they’d make him happier though, and they’d definitely appeal to his audience, but at this point I think he’s just happier being a self-inflicted masochist.
I suspect a lot of them wouldn’t do very well. Particularly given Bryce’s focus onconcise, evocative language.
They benefit from nearly 50 years of gamers talking about them, and the stamp they put on them. I’ve had more than one conversation where somebody was talking about something great they loved from a classic module, which was not in fact in there. They forgot that it was their own idea, not Gygax’s.
It would be nice if somebody would update them using Bryce’s criteria, rather than the hit and miss Goodman versions, which IMO change the wrong things.
@Beroic I suspect you’re right, which is exactly why he should do it. Some people could stand having their rose-colored glasses removed.
Where would be the fun for Bryce with adventures you know lean from very good to perfect? ?
I actually sold all mine because I thought most of them sucked. There is a few goodies for sure, but my nostalgia was ruined when I started to reread them.
It’s fun to replay the old TSR/old school modules again, and some still have game, including Village of Hommlet (in spite the BBEG problem), Ravenloft (in spite it’s critics), and City State of the Invincible Overlord. But some surprisingly have disappointed, like Vault of the Drow. Is the post-TSR stuff better? Still kinda hit and miss for me. Honestly, I think my own unpublished stuff is widely the best after 45 years of gaming, but I’m biased, of course.
If you are going to publish napkin notes for an adventure, best just to publish a free one page dungeon.