By Andrew Sammler Self Published 5e Level 8
With the continual darkness still overhead, adventurers embark on a journey to deliver Good Mead supplies to some of the Ten-Towns to lighten the mood and allow people to blow off steam. On the journey, the characters will be providing joy, light, hope, celebrations, competition, honey wine, and baked goods.
This 35 page adventure uses about fifteen pages to describe a couple of combats (three?) and a few skill challenges, the rest of the page count being the appendix monster stats. It strikes me as a 4e AL adventure: a pretext and then a [fight or skill challenge.] With logical inconsistencies that tear at suspension of disbelief, I guess it’s fine if all you want to do is roll-play.
Your level eight characters get to escort a wagon full of mead barrels to two towns. Escort mission. Of beer. As level eight’s. It’s not magic beer or anything. It’s just mead. Because the two towns haven’t had any for awhile and it will make them happy. I don’t know man, maybe it’s a thing in this setting that level eights deliver beer. Oh, and the quest giver is an asshole, f you ask questions he starts to get rude and impatient and berate you. I’ve never understood this. “Ok, fuckface, how about you deliver your own beer? Maybe you haul it in your asshole since I’m about to start shoving these barrels up yours!” Yes, I do want to play D&D tonight, why do you ask? Ok, yes, I suck it up “we will deliver your beer Mr ungrateful asswipe. Please, pretty please, allow me to go on this adventure and play D&D tonight.”
On the way to the first town a blizzard starts. This if course means that you are about to be ambushed. And you are, by undead. Who form ranks with the rear rank shooting arrows at your mead barrels while the front rank protects them. I must say, this pretty much robs the undead of any wonder or mystery, treating them like the robots in the prequels. Nothing really undead about them, they just act like die rollers, which is what everyone in this adventure is. Flavorless die rolling. Oh, and, there’s a dude sneaking up behind you. Afterwards you can track him. Even though there’s a blizzard. I don’t know. Hang on, I’ve got a call from my wife, I have to go home. What? Why, yes, I am divorced for a couple of years now. Oh, I misspoke, I meant to say it’s a spam call and I can keep playing D&D.
When you get to both towns you are given some busy work. “Were gonna have a party tonight, I need your help.” Trovus suggests that first thing in the morning the characters clean up and prepare the warehouse space for the battle of wits tomorrow, which would include dusting, straightening tables, lighting the torches, preparing the dragonchess sets, etc. Slow news day I guess. Then starts the party and our friendly D&D players get to make a series of skill checks. Want to play dragonchess? Make a series of skill checks. Want to do the riddle contest? Make some skill checks. Want to participate in the handstand contest? Make some skill checks.
The issue is not the festival. This sort of party participation shit has been around forever. The issue us the abstraction of the game. There is NO detail to the contests. Just make some skill checks. No “And Frenkie performs the Rubinate hook moving his platinum dragon to Huma-well 4!” No drama or local colour. No favour of any type. Just make some skill checks. This is the worst sort of things. Roll dice. *YAWN*
Oh! Oh! I forgot! The dude who sabotages your mead barrels in the ambush? If captured, he won’t give up his employer. Because, I guess, “sabotaging some mead barrels” is the crime of the century even when compared to the fire & toture that the party will bring down on him. Th real reason is, of course, tha the designer wants to have a climactic battle with the bad bad, complete with reveal, at he end of the adventure and finding out sooner would spoil that.
Did I mention that there’s an assassin in a little hut you visit, trying to kill the person inside, and the MASSIVE FORCE OF UNDEAD waits out back, because, that’s what you do as the big bad; when you have a massive force of undead 10’ away from your victim you instead send one lowly human to do the job. For that matter, the entire adventure revolves around a necromancer wanting to make the town unhappy, and thus sabotaging the mead delivery. A necromancer that seemingly has a bajillion undead at their disposal. Why not just fucking kill people and burn their crops, houses etc? Why fuck around with “sabotage the beer delivery?”
Because that’s the adventure. A pretext. Written for the wrong level. A pretext. An excuse to roll a bunch of dice in combats that make little sense. A pretext to have some abstracted skill challenges. It reminds me, for all the world, of those terrible 4e RPGA games I used to play up at Winter Fantasy in Fort Wayne.
Sure, it’s formatted nicely enough. But at some point you have to recognize that you’re playing Warhammer and not D&D. What does it even mean anymore to say “I like playing D&D? What does that mean?
It’s 11:11am and it’s time to drink.
This is $5 at DriveThru. The preview is fourteen pages; more than enough to get a sense of the writing style, formatting, and what you are buying.
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/368489/DCPoATLOH01-The-Light-of-Hope?1892600
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Nothing says epic adventure for 8th level PCs like caravan duty for beer barrels. They should have drank all the beer and then gone on a bender in a local town not unlike rowdy cowboys in some old black & white western. This is seriously what passes for the type of game modern D&D players actually want to play? No tomb raider/indiana jones type exploration/looting? No bloody sword & sorcery carnage? No delving in that forgotten underground delve filled with ancient magic and gold? No evil cultists to slay, or join if that's your thing? Not even a little bugbear/ogre/giant bashing in a local lair? YAWN!
And just what the F exactly is "The Light Of Hope?" How does the title relate at all to the...
Never mind.
Sometimes, Bryce, I feel...oh, I don't know...I guess "sorry for you" is what I want to say. Sorry that you are subjected to this misery. Then I remember that you're reading these so that we don't have to, and I feel a sense of gratitude.
Have that drink pal. You more than deserve it.
Maybe Hope is the brewery and the PCs are escorting a few barrels if their Hope Lite? (With a hoplite carved on the barrel, obviously)
Should have been titled, The Light of Hops
"Your level eight characters get to escort a wagon full of mead barrels to two towns. Escort mission. Of beer. " Full of mead barrels, or beer barrels? Not that it matters which it is for the quality of the adventure ...
The equivalent of 8th level D+D characters in a warhammer fantasy roleplay game would be near the top of the power ladder, and would own the caravan (and more besides). And the adventure would be about trying to pass off coloured spring water (or something worse) as a new refreshing beer, and possibly doing a deal with the necromancer to provide victims, whilst selling him out to the authorities at the same time.
Wow…was this a WFRP adventure? I completely missed that! Now it totally makes sense!
; )
For that matter, the entire adventure revolves around a necromancer wanting to make the town unhappy, and thus sabotaging the mead delivery.
Sounds like the villain of a Rankin/Bass holiday special. Was the Burgomeister Meisterburger unavailable?
Oh I know how this can be improved. Nazlgruss is a lazy drunkard who also happens to be a necromancer. He sends the undead after the booze, not to make the town 'unhappy' but because he wants to drink it all. So now they'll all be skeletons and zombies that he sent, and we'll get rid of the assassins. I'd like my $5 now.
YES! I am the terrible and ghastly necromancer. Tremble in terror as I reanimate your dead loved ones!! errr, no. I did that last week.
Bask in my dread presence as I conduct wretched experiments on townfolk!!! errr, nah, too predictable.
.......uh, how 'bout I.... uh.......uh......I got it! I will use my appalling and horrible rights that are an abomination to all that is good and decent to RUIN YOUR MEAD SUPPLY!!!!!!! That's it!
[evil laugh] muhahahahahahahahahaha! [/evil laugh] followed by crashing thunderclaps and lightning
While I love reading Bryce burn this offal into a smoldering cinder, when it's 5e, I just don't care. It's like going to an insane asylum and pointing at a drooling imbecile writing in excrement on the wall and saying, "No, no, ol' chap! You've got it all wrong!"
The review is wonderfully written. Gives great advice. It's entertaining. Informative. If this were for OSR, it would be why I'm a Patreon—but it's for 5e. It's a different sport. It's a like a soccer coach telling a baseball player to kick the pitch.
It's like telling a five-year-old that shark song (Baby Shark?) isn't good music.
All they want to do is play a video game with paper and pencil. Let 'em, I say.
The instant they bill this chum as OSR, fire up the ol' rage furnace. Nuke 'em from orbit. Fire and brimstone. Until then, leave this trash in the dump where it belongs.
Just my two farthings.
(I know OSR is slim pickings. And, I'm not really all that serious. Review 5e all you want. It just feels like I'm reading Mike Tyson is picking on a sixth grader. However, I do usually skip the 5e reviews.)
Bryce has given several 5E adventures 'The Best' ratings. Being for a non-OSR system is no excuse for selling a crap adventure.
There's crap and there's *crap*. And *crap* is bad whether it's 5e or whatever. There's universal aspects of design that apply to 5e as much as they apply to OSR, Warhammer Fantasy or whatever.
Discarding this as "Ofc it's bad it's 5e" undermines why it's bad.
I personally don't care about what edition this is for - because I don't need to. This book sucks ass and what game it is for is the least of our concerns (all that does is provide us perspective on "level 8", which leads to the amusign idea of level 8s protecting mead).
OSR is a mindset, not a rules set.
I didn't say "Of course it's bad." You missed the point of my comment. To paraphrase, I said, "Of course it's not OSR."
5e does not precipitate the OSR mindset (e.g., "Rulings not rules." "Play worlds not rules." "The answer isn't on the character sheet," etc.).
Thus, when it's bad—by OSR standards—I don't care to read about it. 5e *isn't* OSR and it's not trying to be. Pointing out its faults is like pointing out the sky is blue or the water is wet.
That's why I skip 5e reviews. I don't care. Not because it's 5e—because it's not OSR.
I've read all the 5e reviews that have gotten "the best" (and every other review Bryce has written since '19 and most back to '17) because they were good—by OSR standards. Again, OSR isn't a rules set. It's a mind set. If an adventure has the right mind set in spite of the rules it uses, good for it!
100% this! The culture has promoted bad adventure design or at least said this was good when its crap. NO EXCUSE KEEP RECIEWING WHATEVER BRYCE
Look at Oswald thats 5e. Tomb of the black sand, Kelsey dionee and dungeon age
5e IS NO EXCUSE
WRITE BETTER ADVENTURES
WE WILL BE THERE IN SUPPORT OF YOU
THE AUTHORS
TAKE MY ENERGY
That's some awesome grammar right there.
TH UHASKJDHOIW KNSF AHSDLKAHLDHASDJ:H KJH ASDLKH
;)