By Joseph R. Lewis Dungeon Age Adventures OSE Levels 5-10
Far out in the void, an ancient city of vampires endures. Welcome to Araveshti, a city of a thousand towers floating safely in the shadow of the world, glittering with starlight, thrumming with ancient magics, and crawling with vicious immortals. Will you seek to destroy these bloodthirsty aristocrats? Or will you help them pursue their bizarre alchemical experiments in immortality? Or will you simply seek a way to escape their twisted and crumbling paradise?
This 77 page adventure describes about fourty one locations in a city full of vampires. Nominally, in space. Great adventure, with locations full of interesting situations, and the Dungeon Age format gets the job done. The city, proper, the spaces between locations, lacks the context, though, to bring things alive.
It’s a Dungeon Age pointcrawl! Well no. Except, yes. What was that other one, the one on the battlefield right after the eye of suaron exploded in the middle in the tower? That thing was like a pointcrawl also. You travel along from pace to place, in a bit of an abstracted “roll for an encounter as you travel between locations” kind of mechanic. Get to the new place and do your thing/encounter your situation. This adventure reminds me of that former one in many ways. Which is both a good thing and a bad thing. I hate recognizing patterns, but, also, it kind of works.
And what makes it work is the focus on situations. This is one of the great strengths of the Dungeon Age. That and the descriptions. And the format. Oh, wait, I just said that interactivity, evocative writing and format were all great strengths of Dungeon Age. You know, my three primary criteria?
Anyway, situations. We’ve got several factions. Vampire Lords. Vampire Thralls. Vampire heratics working against the vampire Lords … but are still vampires. Alien vampires. Aliens. And a group of human vampire hunter zealots that, from my limited knowledge of it, come right out Warhammer. So, lots of people running around with a lot of needs/wants/goals and we dump in the party … with the ability to talk to most of the folks. Sometimes, at least.
And, lots to do beyond that. Shit to play with, new unique magic items, good branding of “normal’ magic items and treasure scattered throughout. Healing ichor pools … there’s just a lot of shit to fuck with. Some of it good, som,e of it bad, and a decent amount that party could use as a resource to accomplish something else … neither good nor bad, I guess. Dungeon age does this over and over and over again. It’s what a hex crawl should be … and since this is, as a pointcrawl, essentially a hex crawl … right on!
Format is the standard Dungeon Age three column. Good sized font, clear and easy to read. Use of bolding and underlines and boxes and so on to bring attention to areas the DM needs to reference quickly. What’s important, here, is that Lewis is not a slave to his format. He uses how he needs to to being clarity. You don’t bring clarity by blindly marking down the bullet point path. You do what you need to to bring clarity and the bullets, formatting, whatever … they are all just tools to help you accomplish that. He’s a master of his own format, to be sure.
And the descriptions are pretty good. Each section, location, has a little descriptive overview. Essentialyu read-aloud. “Beyond a low iron fence and a dead grassy lawn stands a circular domed building of white marble. A steady trickle of blood oozes under the door and into the swampy yard. Cat-sized mosquitoes suck greedily at the red puddles. A cruel chuckle echoes from within the rotunda.” Pretty good description! You can get a good solid mental image of whats going on. … and yet your mind races to fill in the gaps. You WANT to explore this location … or not explore it. But, it makes you feel something about the location, one way r another. Which is what a good description should do.
I think, though, there is an issue with this one. And it’s the context in which the adventure is run. Our name is “Orbital Vampire City.” But, there’s not really much about the city. Sure, we’ve got forty-ish locations. And there’s a random location generator and a wanderer table. But, we lack the “orbital” and we we lack the “city” context. There’s no real description of the city. Or the orbital aspect. It might as well be in the desert, essentially. And there’s no real description of the city. What do you see when you arrive? When are on the streets whats the vibe? Whats the feeling? It needed another, maybe, two paragraphs to bring this to life. I really, really wish it were there. You need to BREATHE ruined orbital vampire city. Right now, the sites feel disconnected from each other … in the way that a pointcrawl or hexcrawl frequently does. You need to feel it in your bones … and that ain’t there.
Still, quite a nice little thing.
This is $10 at DriveThru. Preview is twenty pages … more than enough to get a sense of the product, the format, the descriptions, and the situations.
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/421036/Orbital-Vampire-City?1892600
Battle for Carrion Vale: https://tenfootpole.org/ironspike/?p=8117
Everybody wants to make hardcore vampire adventures but nobody wants to lift no heavy-ass level requirements.
To be fair, I wasn’t aiming for hardcore so much as making references to my favorite scifi horror movies, like The Thing, Akira, Predator, Alien, etc. Your mileage will always vary!
I can’t tell from the preview; are there any maps? Whatever the answer, this is something you might have considered mentioning in your review.
Yes, there is an overview map of the city, with all of the encounters marked.
Space Vampires is a fine concept. It does sound like Lewis needed to or could have thought bigger.
Thanks Bryce! This looks awesome – bought 🙂
Meh. It certainly ticks many of the Bryce review criteria boxes but as far as theme? Pass. Hard pass. Has Dungeon Age produced what we might term as a more classic dungeon type adventure? Something with some length to it, not a small linear affair that seems all the rage these days. If anyone knows, please point me to that. If not, then they need to give it a try. Seems like most of their stuff, while produced, written and formatted well, are given too much to strange, different, and even gonzo locations. Sometimes that’s what you want. Sometimes it isn’t.
Does Dungeon Age convert pretty trivially to old-school-type systems? I.e., can I do it at the table with little thought, or are the scales in play such that I actually have to think a lot, which I to avoid?
The OSE version contains converted monsters, and some other other adjusted stats. It should be pretty easy to adjust to whatever specific system you are using. But I would love to hear from other tables to learn how well it goes, and what I can do to make that easier and better.