Categories: Level 6ReviewsThe Best

Eyrie of the Dread Eye

By Courtney Campbell
Autarch
ACKs/BX
Levels 6-8

… Now the Awakening is near, the Spheres are coming into alignment, and the Oculus is beginning to open. The dark power is reaching out and for the first time in an age the Eyrie of the Dread Eye is accessible again. As the Eye opens, reality itself comes under further and further  strain. And as rumors of a new valley containing an underground forgotten city filled with untold riches spread out from the Dark Wall, the Oculus continues to open ever wider.

This 59 page adventure describes a ruined city. There are about sixteen encounter areas prior to the city, and about eight “faction headquarters” in the city. This description, though, trivializes the emergent play sections of the city, a major part of the adventure, as well as the ever-present danger of the “minigames” that the locale proper provides. One of the better Lost Cities adventures, combined with a great example of pull-no-punches DM’ing that DOESN’T feel adversarial. Its complexity is its downfall and it could be organized better, going a little too far over the line of emergent play. But that don’t mean it ain’t a treasure, cause it is.

This isn’t a dungeon. It’s not even an adventure. It’s an adventure site location. The title, EofDE, makes it sound like a dungeon or adventure. It says “site-based adventure” somewhere in some description, but that shit gets thrown around like a marketing term. But this thing ain’t fucking around: it’s a site-based adventure location. And it’s gonna fuck up every party that meets it in a non-adversarial DM’ing manner, unless they are EXPERT players making multiple forays.

Rappan Athuk did something interesting: it highlighted threats outside of the dungeon. Bandit groups, with hundreds of members, preyed on you. This sort of thing is generally abstracted ot skipped over in adventures. What if, in X1, you came back to find your ship destroyed because it was continually attacked by large monster groups? And how many adventures deal with the consequences of the wandering monster table with respect to the hirelings & henchmen & horses you leave camped outside of the dungeon? This is an adventure for levels 6-8, which Courtney describes as “high level.” And that’s been my experience as well; Level 6+ B/X characters can be monsters. Lots of magic, both in spell and item form. A player with any sort of creativity can overcome A LOT. As a high-level adventure it does not abstract.

So you’ve got the 20 on a lost city rumored to be full of loot and off you head. Getting close you encounter the Argonath, in the form of a giant snake man statues, broken, behind it the path to the lost city. [IE: you are entering the mythic underworld and shit is about to get real.] From this point on wyverns are a constant threat. There’s a lot of wyverns in the cliffs and if you wipe them all out then more will show up eventually, in restocking the dungeon format. Thus we have an ever-present environmental danger to the party in the form of wyverns. Who are guaranteed to show up and assault stragglers and whenever the party is weakened or vulnerable. Like during a partial cave in. Or while climbing cliffs. And they HATE flyers. And thus the designer takes care of both “why fly spell doesn’t work” as well as causing trouble for Ye Olde high level party.

It’s a constant threat. Rappen kind of did something similar with that bandit/wilderness stuff, and a couple of adventures have tried to intimate something similar, but not like this. This is the sort of difficulty modifier that high level play should expect. It’s not those bullshit cold/heat/humidity rules that lots of “exotic” adventures turn to that cause so much logistical trouble and get in the way of fun. Of no, the party knows about this threat, will be aware of it, and will have to deal with it. They can always nuke the wyverns to buy some time (yeah! Party choice!) but they WILL come back.

It’s hard for me to write this review. I like to focus on the positives before moving to the negatives, but this adventure feels different. The encounters tend to be interactive. The boxed text, what there is, is short and evocative. But unlike most adventures, the traditional format is left behind. All adventures are emergent play adventures but this one is more so than others. Sandboxy? Emergent Play focused? Toolkit? There’s some element of truth to all of those descriptions, but never in a bad way. “Toolkit” doesn’t even go over the line the way it usually does.

There’s a cliff face 400’ with some caves/edifices that the party will confront after the giant snake-man statue. It has about eight locations, three of which lead to an dinner chamber which leads to the lost city. You need to get up the cliffside and explore the holes. Also, don’t forget the ever-present wyverns to deal with. Once inside the inner-chamber there are, again, about eight more things described, including the centerpiece giant multi-armed statue who’s hands/arms can act like an elevator. Cool! Then, you reach the lost city …

It’s large. It has several groups within it. There are eight locations described in about a half page to page each. There’s a wandering monster chart in which each monster is given a number of different things they could be doing/engaged in, as well as a “random ruins generator” for exploring the various ruined buildings around town.

You made it all the way to this point in the review. Do you know yet what the adventure is about? It’s about that last part, the random ruins. Courtney never explicitly states it, I think, but the goal of every page of this adventure is to focus on the play around the looting the ruins. Stealing every fucking thing you can. Explore every nook and loot every last dime. (ok, it could be “make a daring dash in and steal some shit without getting gacked, but it’s the same thing in my mind, just different degrees of willpower and success.) “Hey, giant lost city form a fallen civ full of gold and magic. Lots of monsters also. Want some loot/xp? Go get it!” That’s the adventure.

Now the wyverns make a lot more sense. Now the cliff makes more sense. It’s all there to make looting that fucking city more complicated.

The emergent play is looting the rando sites in the city. While dealing with the wanderers. While dealing with the factions inside the city. While dealing with getting it out/down the cliff. While dealing with those fucking wyverns outside.  

To a certain extent this is the same thing that happens in all OSR adventures. The difference is that those have a more finite environment, representing the dungeon, with an abstracted “outside.” This doesn’t. Hence the description of it being pull no punches DM’ing. The DM has set up a series of harsh game-world rules and put the potential of a FUCKTON of treasure in front of you. It’s up to you, high level adventurers, to figure out how to extract it, and to what degree.

Courtney understand this and the adventure is focused on it, almost every choice in the design being oriented towards that. But, given the rarity of this sort of thing and the degree to which Courtney is focused on it, it could have used a one paragraph designers note section explicitly stating that’s what it is and how it works together.

Fuck if I know what else to say about this. Good rumors, good wanderers doing things. The wanderers are also VERY opportunistic, almost every last one of them, picking off strays and wounded and running away. There’s a section in which you can encounter an NPC party, but you’re told to roll one up on your own; a half page of pre-rolled ones would have been nice.

There’s a couple of party gimps with spell levels and undead turning and scry scrolls. They mostly feel out of place. I get the undead thing, lost cities should have undead and undead should be a threat but high level clerics fuck off with undead. The options to just make them tougher seeming to be its own issue. I don’t understand the spell level gimps the other prohibition against scrying, it doesn’t make sense to me. Calling the main opponents “the optics” I guess you could make the case that it fits in that, as well as the usual pretext of “a place of great evil.” I’d probably just not mess with the spell levels or the scrying thing. The undead thing is a major old school issue, but again I’d probably just let it be without a gimp. The turn rules in older D&D need to be better without the BS in modern D&D. Then it becomes closer to a resource game mechanic.

I have trouble with one of the main maps, the cliff map. I can’t make out some of the features on it, or what they are supposed to represent. Stairs? Just art to spruce up the map? The “climb the cliffs” minigame also takes up a little more than column and could be better organized as well. It feels a little free-form and could use better organization, bolding, headings, etc. Climbing information feels buried in a wall of text of rules dictating climbing that seems hard to follow during play. The city map though, being isometric, is great, allowing the DM to describe landmarks seen at a distance, etc.

The factions are not what I would consider factions. They are more “the major people/organizations present in the city.” While not all hostile and the designer mentions to ensure reaction rolls and even hostile doesn’t mean combat, , they don’t seem to have needs & wants, at least in a traditional way that you can bargain with. Even the “enemy of my enemy” stuff is not really present. This is a miss. It doesn’t feel like there’s a place/way to find common ground, because they have no ground mentioned.

What is not said is that this adventure will dominate play for several months for expert PLAYERS. This isn’t a quick in and out, probabally. The party will go back, to a location 70 miles away, several times. They’ll get their asses kicked. They organize logistics. Hire mercenaries. Hunters to feed the merc. Elite guards to watch the loot they bring out and protect it from the mercs and hunters they brought out. There’s a “loot extraction logistics” mini-game implicit in this adventure, that will take a long time, game time, to execute. You could write a page or two of NPC’s and adventure/complications ideas and include it in this adventure and it would only make it stronger. (Good advice. Should have been done.)

This is a good example of high level play and one of the few “loot extraction” adventures written. It could be better with organization in several parts, and some summaries of how thing works, better faction play, and maybe some logistics help. But that don’t mean it’s not good enough to be centerpiece of a campaign for months.

This is $5 at DriveThru. The preview doesn’t work. Not that I think any preview of this could relate the adventure.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/268206/Eyrie-of-the-Dread-Eye?1892600

I see a 5e version is available. I have no idea how that would work in this environment.

Bryce Lynch

View Comments

  • Funny how the comment section blows up for bad adventures and good one leaves nothing to say.

    I already had this in pdf and hadn't even got around to looking at it. Bought off author's name alone since I read the blog. Skimming now it does look good. But considered purely as reading material it's drier than many worse adventures - another piece of evidence too many adventures are written to be read more than played.

    • Dave R said - "Funny how the comment section blows up for bad adventures and good one leaves nothing to say."

      You were saying? ;)

  • From this review, I'm getting a 'Dwellers of the Forbidden City' vibe from this adventure. Even the wyverns seem like a callback to the giant wasps that would attack fliers in the Forbidden City.

    Hard pass on anything by Autarch, though. I don't feel like spending five bucks to help Macadoo dig himself out of the hole that Milo Yabbadabbadoopolous put him into.

  • Boo... This sounds really good. If my money would go to any other company, I would buy this.

    • Agreed Yora, unfortunate, but yeah Autarch and Campbell aren't people I'll give money to.

        • This isn't the place to discuss it - given the nature of this community, but let's just say Autarch and it's fans are a reason I support burning the OSR and scattering the ashes so no one can venerate them in the future.

          • Hi, it's Thursday, and I've had a few beers and I am an outside observer to this whole 'OSR' scene, but I would like to share my thoughts with you.

            I can totally relate to why you wouldn't spend money on products written by these people. I wouldn't either.

            But you seemed to have soured on this whole 'OSR' thing and that is a bit of a shame, since this is where so much great RPG material is currently being produced, even if it is, in some cases, being produced by people who aren't the greatest in the world.

            In the grand scheme of things, the RPG hobby has made huge steps toward being more inclusive and I think it continues to move in that direction.

            If you look carefully, you can tell that a portion of the early purveyors of this hobby were misogynistic and probably racist men. A lot of the early material has a weird lurking misogynistic edge. See Dragon number 3, for wonderfully idiotic female characters. See Dragon 39 for the most comically idiotic article on women in role-playing games ever written. Also, I've only read a little bit of the Judge's Guild stuff (and it's really quite great,) but the female NPCs in that material seem to be one of three things: Whores, slaves or completely insufferable nags (much like the alt-right depiction of women). Also, apparently everyone in 70s fantasy was white.

            If the people who were writing this material in the olden-days had the exposure that people have today, many of them would be completely insufferable, I am sure. RPG games and the world in general have definitely moved on since those olden-days though.

            With that said,
            The OSR scene is pretty much the lunatic fringe of RPGs. It's like the punk rock of the goblin-game world. It's loud, simple and in your face. It's the corpse of Bob Bledsaw with acid poured on it. It's the RPG nerds who said 'fuck you' to mainstream commercial bullshit. It's raw, wild and got no rules at all. That's all great. However, it also draws a lot of unpleasant folk who may not be welcome elsewhere.

            You shouldn't let that get you down, though. Even though there is a camp filled will alt-right weirdos, you really shouldn't let them own this whole thing. Melan seems like a bit of a Arrow Cross bootlicker, but as far as I can tell, he is not actively supporting hate-mongers like 'Milo Fabulous' other than maybe a few paltry dollars from his less-than-spectacular post-soviet income. (that was probably some serious shots fired, but fuck it, this is the internet and I am being intentionally bombastic. I'll still buy your shit, Melan, I have no problem with you, you seem like a descent person from your blog and the very few tidbits I have read about you.)

            This alt-right camp has obviously has opinions that differ from people like us, but as a whole though, I think the 'OSR' is working towards being more inclusive, even if it is at a much slower rate than the rest of RPG games in general. Abusive crybabies in the OSR are regularly black-balled. People get called out of their fucking bullshit. What seems to piss you off so much is the wave of childish, racist, self-victimizing right-wing insanity that is washing over the whole world right now, not just the 'OSR' scene. These particular assholes just inhabit the same space as you do.

            The point I am trying to make here is that a lot of us who consume this OSR material don't agree with the alt-right bullshit either. I really like the material I've found on your now-defunct blog. If you had to stop updating your blog because you were sick of writing about DnD, then that's fair, but if it is because a bunch of man-children are occupying your space, then fuck that, don't let them define you.

            Happy Thursday everybody

        • They’re not. Some confused and very angry people like to follow around any whiff of a product released by Autarch and try to sabotage its sales. Some people are sad no-lifers that need a hobby. Not sure why this posted at the bottom the first time...

        • ACKS is bad because Macris is a LITERAL ALT-RIGHT NAZI
          And Campbell, despite being part of the Mongrel Breakfast Club, the SJW OSR Illuminati that chased of Greg Gorgonmilk for daring to say that it is not okay to punch people based on their politics, is also a LITERAL ALT-RIGHT NAZI

    • Thanks for the info, and to Gus L for the additions. I like to know where my money is going.

      Seriously, would you people get so offended if some guy was like "why buy something written by [insufferable soyboy beta cucklord SJW goes here]" about another adventure? Are you going to pretend you'd be all "um why bring up his left leaning opinions? I don't know why everything has to be made political :/ learn to separate the art from the artist"? For real? Don't make me laugh.

      Anyway, excellent review. This looks great. I might still buy a copy if it goes on sale one of these days, or find some other legitimate way to grab it. In the end despite politics we're all getting fucked over by capitalism and I don't want to punch down and spit in the face of good third party content creators. God-fucking-speed.

  • This sounds truly interesting. In practice, even most "OSR" people hand-wave adventure logistics, while they can add tremendously to play. I have even played in a 3.5 game that was mostly a solid "Meh", but gained immensely from scrupulously following encumbrance and spell component rules. Suddenly, going the supply train rolling, scaling a tall rock or swimming a river with a giant crocodile on the bottom became a problem, and solving these problems made the victories feel well-earned indeed. So an adventure which capitalises on these aspects of the game and plays to D&D's traditions in this area is a major win, and I think the review outlines rather well why that is so. Goes right on my wishlist.

    BTW, just because Autarch guy had once worked for Milo Fabulous, does not mean the adventure will give you The Gay. Come on.

    • Alexander Macris the owner of Autarch was the CEO of Milo Yinnapolis's media company during the period that it was most active and hateful - not simply an office drone. Likewise he's was an early supporter and booster of Gamergate through The Escapist. He is also linked with and appears to support Vox Day/Theodore Robert Beale - the white supremacist sci-fi publisher/gadfly. So it's not so much a concern about being "give[en] the Gay" - but points for typical 8-Chan style deflection with a side of homophobic bullshit there Melan.

      Campbell I've known for quite a while, used to play online with and let's just say interactions in the dying months of G+ lead me to believe he's in the same camp as Macris and friends.

        • So sensitive Melan. Why can't I refuse to spend my money on Alt-Right creeps' game stuff? Why do you hate freedom?

          Bryce - your blog has a case of the Nazis again...

          • Nazis? Really? I find that statement ridiculous and intellectually dishonest.

            It’s bad enough when people insist on parading their politics in places there’s no call for but branding people with one of the worst evils of the 20th century (when there is no reasonable basis for comparison) is disgusting.

          • You lose, Gus. You called people Nazis, denigrating the lives lost to real ones. Especially in regards to Melan, who possibly had family to live through their predations.

    • Ew, ew, ew, ew, ew. Don't do this, Melan. Don't take a legitimate grievance against an alt-right figure and paint people with it as homophobic. That's gross.There are a million reasons to hate Milo besides homophobia.

      Because Gus is right, that kind of twisting of reality is right out of the alt-right playbook. Eventually the joking lies become facts if they're repeated enough, and we've seen that repeated over and over the past three years.

      Don't be that kind of person. Don't give shitheads that sort of cover.

      • And to be clear, the rhetorical technique used here is called "Gaslighting" if it was intentional. I'm not sure Melan was actually intentionally gaslighting, but still.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaslighting

        There's the wikipedia link, for the various commenters who are confused as to why Gus seemed to overreact to that comment. Gaslighting is bad. Don't do it.

  • Note Fiasco & Melan's comments - typical of the tactics used by internet 8Chan/Alt-Rightest trolls. First Melan, rather then addressing the claims as to why someone woulldn't want to support Autarch makes a 'joke' that's both a lie about Autarch's founder's activities and implies that the only reason one might object to him is that the product would turn one gay.

    Then when offered a list of the ways that Autarch and it's owner are linked to and involved with misogynist and white supremacist causes Melan doesn't dispute the claims or even say something like "These shouldn't matter to purchasing a game product" - likely because he knows that the claims are true and understands that they aren't frivolous.

    Then faced with snide hyperbole in response to Melan's, an unknown and previously uninvolved 3rd party shows up to make a bad faith claim that the use of the word 'Nazi' to describe the support of misogynist and white supremacist causes is disgusting. Nazi itself becomes a slur for describing the views that are typical of Nazis. Fiasco doesn't find Melan's calling me the Grand Inquisitor offensive - despite it being a reference to religious inquisition, likely the Catholic inquisition as lampooned by Dostoevsky - arguably "one of the worst evils of the [13th century]." He's obviously not simply a sensitive soul who takes his historical crimes seriously - rather his outrage is fake, aimed not at recognizing the seriousness of the holocaust but delegitimizing the use of the word "Nazi" to describe white supremacists. It's all entirely predictable. It's all blatantly transparent.

    All this is precisely why I didn't want to discuss why I wouldn't buy Macris, Campbell and Autarch shit. But hey, I really hate the way this hobby is heading the direction of videogame fandom towards being a engine for online hate - so despite the fact that I'd rather talk about games it looks like I have to be one of the only people willing to call out the "Nazis" around here again. If you find it fucking tiresome, imagine how I feel?

    • I knew the stuff about Autarch. What's this about Courtney Campbell being a nazi?

    • There are no Nazis in this forum.

      “Does not agree with Gus L’s politics” doesn’t equate to “is a Nazi”.

      Bry

      • Really, cause you sure seem to be using their talking points and techniques of argument. I mean maybe I called a mallard a duck, but that's hardly a crime.

        • No, being wrong on the internet is not a crime. Deliberately sabotaging someone else's well-being with lies... might be? I'm not a lawyer. Even if it's not a crime it's certainly wrong.

        • Lets cut the shit. Courtney's crime is being willing to take money from a piece of shit to make rent, something you also do with your day job except its not a niche industry so no one cares.

          Don't go egging the houses of Amazon workers even though their labor is directly giving Bezos money to be an asshole with. If you wanna be brave, go throw eggs at Bezos directly and get shot by his private security, just leave the working stiffs alone.

    • Then maybe... just don't buy it & let others buy or it or not based on their own priorities in games.

      No-one enjoys watching two tribes of jerks fight culture wars all over the elf game spaces in their internet.

      • That's precisely what I did - I said I wouldn't buy this crap - Melan had to lie about my stance to try to score some cheap fascist talking point and then get snippy when I clarified.

        So you need to come get your boys Fiasco and Melan.

        • Wew there bud, nobody forced you to jump in the comment section and vaguebook about how noble you are for not wanting to buy this product. You knew exactly what you were starting. Please don't act like you're the exhausted victim here. It's pathetic and insincere. And you're not some hero holding the line against the reborn Wehrmacht because you're shitposting on a blog that reviews obscure, niche RPG products. My dude, if you really despise the OSR so much you should completely disengage. Otherwise you're going to turn into Kent 2.0.

      • "Alexander Macris the owner of Autarch was the CEO of Milo Yinnapolis’s media company during the period that it was most active and hateful – not simply an office drone. Likewise he’s was an early supporter and booster of Gamergate through The Escapist. He is also linked with and appears to support Vox Day/Theodore Robert Beale – the white supremacist sci-fi publisher/gadfly.

        "However, please don't call him a Nazi."

        Does that work better for you?

        I am not an American. I know little or nothing about the people mentioned above. If you think anything Gus L posted above is factually inaccurate I'd be happy to read a correction.

    • Alright, Gus, from one liberal to another, you are full of crap.

      First, I am a longtime player and backer of ACKs, been playing it since at least 2012, long before the Vox day or Milo controversy.

      I am also a card carrying member of Planned Parenthood: https://imgur.com/ISPLkil
      I have also donated
      to RAICES: https://imgur.com/N1TLdOf
      in support of Immigrants: https://imgur.com/a/tsROQLW
      in support of trans rights: https://imgur.com/hRm9z4x
      to Elizabeth Warren's 2020 campaign: https://imgur.com/2YRTz3R

      When Donald Trump was inaugurated, I joined the Women's March: https://imgur.com/eZd0xCU
      and later the student led "March for our Lives" (no pictures of that)

      For a while I joined up with my local chapter of Indivisible in the early days of the Trump administration to do anything I could to curtail the damage of his admin. In all of my pursuits and searches for way to protect marginalized communities, I have found one constant, and it's that keyboard warriors like you are a waste of oxygen.

      Alex Macris is not a nazi. I have discussed all manner of politics and philosophy with him at length. We have disagreed on many, if not most, issues. He's a conservative libertarian, and from my vantage point as a lifelong democrat and liberal, he has exactly the kind of blind spots and ignorance I would expect. It's not just me, either. The ACKs community is full of all manner of political persuasions, including die-hard unionists and socialists. Alex has a penchant that I personally find questionable, to be willing to hear out idiots like Milo and Vox, but he is not a nazi, white supremacist, or white nationalist. The fact that you and folks like you are still out here peddling this crap over a couple hundred book sales is an absolute disgrace.

      Alex Macris is an independant games publisher with opinions that people on the internet don't like, who took a job with a guy people on the internet don't like for a whole YEAR out of the 7 I've been playing ACKs. He is also trying to support and care for his disabled wife.

      Courtney Campell isn't a nazi either. he's a single dad trying to make a break in an incredibly punishing indie RPG scene, and you are coming after him over less than 500 sales of a PDF that costs $5 each. That's barely enough money to pay rent and food, and you show up in somebody else's blog to convince people that if they can keep Eyrie from selling another dozen copies and keep Courtney in the poor house, it will help all the marginalized people who are victimized by the actual alt-right. BS. It's a waste of everyone's time.

      And as if we needed more proof, you deleted your blog, what, about a year ago? You deleted in a huff because you can't tell the difference between someone who disagrees with you and a nazi. And yet here you are, blog deleted, because nobody took your hissy fit seriously, so you're still out here throwing shade to satisfy your own ego. You're a disgrace to the ideals of liberalism and charity, and you're useless to the marginalized groups you claim to care so much about.

  • "Wait, 20 comments already? I thought Kent got banned?"

    >ACKS

    Hahaha I fucking knew it

      • Do you not see the irony of ridiculing someone's internet syntax while using lame, overused slang like "yikes" and "my dude"? Truly pathetic.

        • Goodnight OSRAMANIACS and jabronie marks like Slick that don't know it a work when you work a work and work yourself into a shoot,marks

  • Hi! I'm the author!

    My name is Courtney Campbell. I vote democrat, have donated to both Yang and Warren so far in the coming election. I'm a veteran of the USMC. I've spent 20 years doing social work with disadvantaged youth, including 5 years in alaska working with native youth.

    I'm an independent creator. I'm sad that people feel the need to harass me and punch down at people who struggle with mental illness (I have a class A personality disorder that causes me significant issues with, well, life). I've spent my whole life working at near minimum wage to help disadvantaged youth, mostly of color. When I worked downstates it was mostly adolescents who were victims of family abuse.

    I'm horrified there's people who show up wherever I am being discussed to spread lies about me. I honestly don't have any idea what to do about it.

    I'm shocked an honored brice took the time to review my module and considered it one of the best. I worked very hard on it, and as noted, it isn't designed to be read, it's designed to be played.

    I am certain if you read my blog or check out my twitch channel or come on to my discord, you'll find a welcoming inclusive place where we talk about gaming, support other low income people who suffer from mental illness, and share support for each other.

    I'm incredibly thankful I can eek out an existence publishing game materials. The fact that someone I respect as much as Bryce likes my work makes me feel like perhaps I can continue to be of service to society.

    I don't have any hate in my heart, and I'm sad people choose to engage in this campaign of hateful attacks.

    Bryce, Thank you. To answer your question, I rewrote the 5th edition version of the adventure extensively to fit the style of superheroic play that 5th edition expects. It should work for 5th edition the same way it works for the best version of Basic/Expert in print, Adventure, Conqueror, King.

    • Yeah, for some reason I thought the whole "Universal Positive Regard" thing and social work didn't really square with being a nazi. Gus apparently has a history of this sort of thing.

      • There are literally millions of words and hundreds of hours of video of me online. The accusations are so sooo far out of touch with easily verifiable facts about who I am as a person, I don’t understand why people who are supposed to be increasing inclusivity are engaged in a campaign of harassment and hate against me.

        I hope they find there way to some sort of peace with their anger. I don’t hold it against them, and continue to support their work and love them as people and creators. I know from the horrible things people have said directly to me that they are carrying real anger and pain, and I hope, at least, that their hate directed towards me is part of whatever process they need to pass through to heal,

    • Thanks and congratulations! A couple questions about your product if you have time . . .

      1. Bryce describes a focus on "loot extraction" presumably beyond standard D&D/OSR. Was that your intention? And does ACK have rules for encumbrance and such that facilitate that kind of game?

      2. Someone mentioned Dwellers of the Forbidden City. I was also thinking of Cynidicea/The Lost City. Are these meaningful comparisons? Lots of edible fungus?

      3. Anything to say about the factions? Personally, murderhobo has limited appeal, and my players actually respond well to "these people need our help!" I guess what I'm asking is whether there are any semi-sympathetic factions or even individuals?

      Again, congratulations on having a vision and seeing it through.

      • 1. Yes. And encumbrance for mules, wagons etc. even elephants (if you have Lairs & Encounters any creature listed in the book + any creature you make up in the rules).

      • 1. Yes, and Yes! ACKS is super suited for encumberance and that style of play.

        2. The adventure was written as an intentional and deliberate homage to the Forbidden City.

        3. I have no preconceived outcome when I write an adventure-there are no “good” or “bad” factions, just groups with competing agendas. It’s super-unlikely that a murderhobo approach of “kill them all” will have much success. All of the factions “need help” and often have divergent goals. It’s a place ripe for *your* emergent adventure,

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Bryce Lynch
5 years ago

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