By Tim Snider Savage AfterWorld DCC Level 1
Well, I swan…this season’s been a rough ‘un, what with alluva crops gone sour with that corn blight what’s been runnin’ wild through the county. But enough of our miseries! I cain’t wait to git to the Addersbrook fair and relax fer a spell! Get me some good eatin’ and listen to a tune or two. And if’n we’re lucky, maybe Junebug’ll be there with some of his pa’s hootch!
This eighteen page single-column adventure contains five scenes in a small farming village. It’s the kind of adventure that contributes to a certain malaise one finds in a one-shot or con game.
This is a rural village themed adventure, from a request that I review it. And, I generally agree that the Country Crawl Classic/Shudder Mountain adventures can be used, to a great degree, in a wide variety of games, from fantasy to Gamma World. Horror, in general, I think transcends genres well and is relatively easy to translate from system to system. And thus, we come to this review.
A rural area. You come upon some smoke. A farmer and his daughter are burning a portion of their fields of corn. They rush about, now and again, to keep it from spreading to the nearby woods. A part of their crop has a blight and they are handling it. (ObFact: Farmers & Adventurers: Brothers in “Fire Will Fix It!” arms …) This is quite the nice little scene. An introduction, perhaps, to rural life and a time honoured way of fixing stuff. It also introduces some blue corn, that the farmer shows off if the party asks about the blight. This is all a little too on the nose for me, revealing up front what is going on. As if the farmers statement that “a bunch of it went missing.” At this point I think the adventure writes itself if you’re a player. A little scene where the party helps stop some minor fires … and if they miss a luck roll they get attacked by a rapid “blue mouthed” animal. And the farmer invites them to the county fair this afternoon. Is there ANYONE who now DOESN”T know what is going to happen? I recently saw a discussion on metagaming in which, I believe, the majority of respondents would get upset if the party acted on this information, but, come the fuck on … they’re not idiots!
You get to the fair. You participate in a greased pig contest, or a wrestling match. The imagery is pretty light here and there could have been more, especially when it comes to bonding moments with the villagers/townfolk. If you make a DC20 check you see a hulking ogre-like man “with dead eyes”, but loose him in the crowd. Uh huh. This is going swimmingly. A meaningless roll. If you’re gonna let them not catch him then just have everyone see him.
The inevitable occurs and the townsfolks start drinking tainted moonshine, made from the infected corn. They die. Then they get back up again, now zombies, and attack people and try to get THEM to drink the moonshine. This is one of those “throw more 3d6HD zombies at them until you are satisfied” things. Which I hate. Just do an encounter man. It’s all written pretty lifelessly, with not much to riff on in the town and no little vignettes to enjoy. Just “They attack.” Then the surviving townfolk ask you to go talk to the moonshiner so he knows his liquor is infected.
You set off through the woods. You get attacked. Didn’t see that coming. There’s a table of four or five encounters that you roll on, once, to see what happens/who attacks you. And make no mistake, they are all “they attack” moments. The table makes no sense here. Why detail four or five encounters if only ONE is ever going to be used? Just put some effort in to ONE of the encounters. You got to understand this is not a wandering monster table. This is a set scene. And if you’re gonna have a scene then have a scene. Fleshed out. In to something that it interesting, or evocative, or interactive. And not just some infected bobcats dropping on to you to attack, or some zombie villagers attacking.
At the shack you meet the moonshiner. He’s evil, and controlling the shine zombies. You fight him and the zombies in a pretty uninteresting fight. At some point the still gets kicked over in to his skinning guts pit and they come to life as an organ zombie that you fight.
You win the fight. You go back to the village. They celebrate, and continue their fair … unconcerned, I guess, that a bunch of locals have fucking died. Not too interesting or realistic, that.
So, everything is telegraphed..
And, all of the fights are relatively simple affairs, with almost nothing to riff on.
And, there’s no real bonding scenes with the community. Or help doing that. Or evocative writing..
And, there are meaningless rolls of the dice..
I’m not down on scene-based adventures, man. I’m down on BAD scene-based adventures. No, not even bad. But, just, ladventures that seem to lack effort. Like there’s not really much goin in to them except a few random rolls to create it and then some scenes that just are not very memorable. Which is my definition of a bad con game/one-shot. I was there. It took up time. But it wasn’t good, but neither was it laughably bad.
This is $2 at DriveThru. There’s no preview. 🙁
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/404355/Country-MeatGrinder-Classics-Wasted?1892600
Shine on crazy zombie. Shine on
If there is a country fair, festival, parade, or, heavens forbid, a CARNIVAL going on in D&D, shit WILL go down there. Which is both a huge cliché and, sadly, Truth in Television, as large gatherings of people attract all sorts of evildoers in the real world.
Speaking of which, I’m actually writing a lo-level adventure around this trope.
I’m not down on shit reviews, just shit reviewers
Keep beating that drum chief. What stellar work you’re doing.
Troll gotta troll
Telegraphing things can work with the right group. If the players are there for a horror or Cthulhu game to begin with, then feeding the right player(s) the setup can let them start playing to genre, or making ironic quips that are certain to come back to bite them. I’ve seen it work – occasionally.
Not so much a thing in D&D normally. Maybe a little bit of leeway in a funnel, if you know you’re only playing one character at 1st level and you expect some to die either way.
Separately, you’ve got the same competition problem with funnels as you do with adventures generally. A lot of good ones already, so yours needs to stand out in some way to run it. If I could come up with it myself I’m not going to run it from a publisher. So yeah, I agree with Bryce, give us a couple good set pieces.
“If there is a country fair, festival, parade, or, heavens forbid, a CARNIVAL going on in D&D, shit WILL go down there”
The problem is it’s not a good game session if nothing happens. I think they need to be in the background and on the calendar more. Just mention one happened during downtime, or that a market fair is coming up and it’ll be easier to find stuff to buy during, but still don’t spend a session on it. Then if you want to run an adventure during one, the players still know there’s something up, but it doesn’t feel forced in the sense of “this is the only festival we’ve ever seen, what are the odds?” But this is on a campaign’s GM, not an adventure writer.
The setup is fine for me, nice start scene- players don’t know if something (monster) wants to eat the corn, or the corn is evil etc. They’ve got the clue, but need to look into it.
Ideally you’d ramp up the tension- horses at the edge of the fair shying (I dunno, some big galoot shambled past)…
– glaze eyed locals totally munted on moonshine still but swaying (investigate reveals corn hooch, but these guys are just drunk on regular)…
-people saying BBEG’s “Blue Moon” is the best this year, sure to win…” IF they start asking about the local corn hooch
-a sensation at the cockfights (maybe a brawl or dispute about “winnings”) when Old Macs bird “all pecked to damnnear pieces it was” just gets right back up and keeps going! You can find old Mac, behind the tannery axe in hand, eyeballing his prize rooster, torn between more winnings the disturbing sight of his bird, one eye hanging out, bloody and bedraggled, killing worm after worm in the yard but not eating a single one…
Seems like enough there for a fun little side trek/one shot. The adventure itself may not execute but something about it got my imagination going.
I love those ideas! Great vibe.
1.) have infected crows turn undead from eating tainted corn.
2.) have shine zombies explode spreading alchemical fire throughput fair
3.) undead animals, like Mac’s rooster
A) ankehg
B) plague rats
C) the vorpal rabbit (Quest for the Holy Grail)
D) the moonshiner is the dread wizard Tim
E) undead sheep, cattle, horse herds
So much here to build upon
>If you make a DC20 check you see a hulking ogre-like man ‘with dead eyes,’ but
>loose him in the crowd. Uh huh. This is going swimmingly. A meaningless roll. If
>you’re gonna let them not catch him then just have everyone see him.”
>There’s a table of four or five encounters that you roll on, once, to see what
>happens/who attacks you. And make no mistake, they are all “they attack”
>moments. The table makes no sense here. Why detail four or five encounters if only
>ONE is ever going to be used? Just put some effort in to ONE of the encounters.
If we could solve these two things—not knowing how, why and when *checks* and *tables* are used in the OSR—I think we could achieve world peace.
I get you.
Those two errors tell me the person fundamentally does not understand old school play (OSR play?). But I see them so often, I know how to fix them.
Whether I _want_ to or not, to take the trouble of doing it needs a whole lot else to be right about the adventure.