Paths of the Mountain Queen

By Allen Nelson
Self Published
System Neutral/5e?
Level ?

A wealthy merchant is desperate to retrieve a valuable sword that has been stolen from his family’s collection. The thief is rumored to have fled to the Threshing Mountains. The missing blade is no trinket… The Manic Blade contains a curse of unspeakable terror which will befall whosoever wields it. The merchant offers the players a generous reward to retrieve the sword and lift the curse if possible. But as they set out on their quest, they soon realize that a madness has taken over the mountain side. It will take wits, luck, and skill to uncover the thief’s identity, without falling prey to the madness lurking between the rocky craigs.

This twelve page adventure has four “encounters”, one of which is a six room observatory. I loathe humanity. It says generic, but the HP totals, 120hp for a stone giant, make me think its actually meant to be 5e. Blech.

There is no meaning anymore. God is dead. We are in a full on post-consumer society, pandemic or no. You! Yes, you! Jot down notes from your last game and shove it on to DriveThru for $2! Do this after every game. If you have any idea at all in the middle of the night then spend one hour writing it up and throw it up online for purchase. The God Emperor’s vision has been fulfilled and adventures, in all of their forms, have been scattered to the stars to live on forever. In its various forms. 95% of which is crap. To be generous.

Twelve pages. Supposedly two sessions. Four wilderness locations, one of which is a small observatory complex with six rooms. Not a wilderness journey, just scenes. And, none of the titular Paths. You are encouraged to give the party the wilderness map and let them decide, based on icons, where to go. Since the observatory is the end, they have a one in four chance of skipping the other encounters. Which is fine, but, also, why? And, I’m being generous in the usage of the term “map.” It’s four artsy fartsy icons on an empty page, with no semblance of being a map at all. Whatever.

Wilderness one is a group of kids in a treehouse who killed a fisherman that went mad. Enjoy that. This is probably the most interesting, conceptually, idea in the adventure and yet is essentially ignored. Given maybe a column of text. There was a possibility of innocence and brutality to be mixed in. Realism. The way the world actually works. But, it’s not explored at all. 

Encounter two is with some mutant cranes at a lake. I wish I could tell you how many. One, maybe? Or maybe two more? “Out of the bushes come mutant cranes” says the text. The read-aloud says that “you are dazed as it knocks you down with immense force. Blah blah blah (two more of these birds can be heard calling to each other through the trees, closing fast)” So, first person read-aloud. Designer fiat in knocking people down for dramatic effect. And, putting something in parens in read-aloud? What the fuck is that about? This encounter shows the fundamental flaw of this designer: they don’t know what an adventure is. The simplest thing. Something that they got right in 1976: How many fucking monsters are in the god damn motherfucking encounter? If you can’t even be bothered to do this then why the fuck are you even trying? 

Formatting is terrible. I think there’s an encounter summary, and then a boxed text. Maybe. It’s not clear to me that the boxed text is read-aloud. Or that the summary is a summary. They frequently clash with each other. Sections headings are split between columns, a major fucking nono. Just hit the fucking return key one more time, man. Guy Fullerton has a nice list of things to watch out for like this. Anyway, no one cares anymore anyway so why bother? Just slap the price on it and publish.

That observatory at the end? The read-aloud says you open the door and see the mountain witch. Except she’s in rooms five. Room fours magnificent text reads: “A bed chamber. A journal can be found here detailing The Mountain Queen’s slow loss of sanity. She has developed agoraphobia and has become to terrified to leave the observatory. She is working on a solution.” ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?! Magnificently eloquent description there. Evocative in all the ways I love. And, with a journal. Cause that’s the absolute best way to monologue at the players. Fucking worthless. Creatively bankrupt. 

Let it not be said that I am not generous with my praise: “Inside of Room One is a mangled corpse of a gigantic deer. Its head has been removed and rests in the middle of a fountain, continuously pouring blood into the pool. (The fountain is likely elixir of life or some such). The head is still alive. The eyes and mouth are able to move, but the creature is unable to answer

questions verbally.” Not bad that. Even good. I mean, it’s just fucking window dressing with no effect. A museum tour. How about that elixir of life … gonna tell us about that? No? Ok. 

The continual stream of dreck raises some interesting issues. First, you have to write to get better.I wouldn’t want to discourage that. Particularly someones creative output. And, yet, you’re shoving it out without any seeming effort made to put something out that is good. You expect a car to start and roll on wheels. Shouldn’t you feel an obligation to meet that minimum of criteria? To put a modicum of effort in to figure out what exists, what good is, and have some idea of how to build a house before building them for other people? Second, the pathetic results of the efforts of someones labour are … pathetic. And we, the public, are faced with them. They clog up the system, obscuring the works of someone who might have actually tried. We turn to curation and reviews to help us sort through this. And, yet, that market also is saturated with dreck. Is this reviewer fake? Did they get some payoff in product or cash to laud the thing? Are they pushing their own snake oil? Just finding decent curation these days is seemingly impossible. 

A dystopia of freedom and the choices that come from it. Would that God were not dead and someone would just tell us what to do. What can men do against such reckless hate? There can be but one solution: a lifestyle of fucking, drinking and playing D&D. It’s ok though, it was an informed choice.

This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru with a suggested price of $2.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/425643/Paths-of-The-Mountain-Queen?1892600