Cult in the Empire of Decadence

By P.E. “beef” Larsen
Bovidae Studios
OSE
Level ? 1?

Experience temptation and greed in the luxurious Empire of Decadence as you uncover the true motives of the man behind the Cult of Austerity…

This 24 page digest adventure uses seven pages to describe six rooms in a cult temple. Or, you can use the one page summary to run it. It is exactly what you would think from the description; lame.

I had some hopes here. One of the hooks is being hired by the heir to a nobleman. Seems that dad ran off to join a temple … and donated all of his worldly wealth to it. Kiddo wants you to look in to it. I can dig some of that French detective Porot, so I can get in to that!

Too bad it don’t amount to nothing. You get 3 ½ HD humans, a 3HD MU (the cult leader) and a band of 1d6+1 kobolds. In six rooms. On seven pages. That’s a page per room. And not a full featured room with a bunch of shit going on. Just a bunch of trivia, and a trap or hidden thing in each room. So, padded. So much so that the entire adventure is summarized in HALF A PAGE at the end of the adventure, so you can run from it. Which, makes sense, because six rooms should just about fucking fit on half a fucking page. 

The actual adventure text is a mess. It’s divided in to Sights/Smells section and a Contents section. Except the contents are in the sights/smells. And the division makes no sense anyway. I don’t give a fuck about sights/sounds when the fucking monster in the COntents section is descending down upon the party. One room hides, at the end of a section “two stalls are occupied”. Well fuck me. I missed it the first time through the adventure. Perfect. You write an adventure with a minimal number of opponents in it, which is fine, in which you managed to almost hide the fact that there were two people in a room, which is not fine. It’s fucking insane. 

And, in one room, we get some sights/sounds, then a bunch of detail about secret doors and so on … and then, at hte end, a note about the floor being crumpled and replaced with wood planks in places. Jesus H Christ, put the fucking obvious shit first, man. How. Many. Fucking. Times. Put the obvious fucking shit fist/up high. THEN you put the secret shit in.  

I don’t know. The baddies room has the line “Gems and gold are piled up in a heap on the floor in the corner of the room.” A) “in the corner of the room” is redundant, but, also, B) HOW MUCH FUCKING LOOT IS THERE?!?!?!?!!?!?!?!?!?!?!!?!/? It doesn’t tell us.. IT DOESNT TELL US. Hang on, let me go check the summary. WHich is necessary because THE SUMMARY HAS INFORMATION THE PAGE LONG ROOMS DO NOT!!!!! Nope, not there either, though. 

It’s all fucking bullshit. Lots of trivia. Lots of trap and door porn. And almost no emphasis on the shit in an adventure that actually mater in play. That nobleman parent? Gets a sentence. Which is “A fallen noble and the parent to the noble mentioned in the hook “ Yeah. ENjoy running that fucking NPC. 

Fucking useless waste of electronic bits, this one.

This is $8 at DriveThru. The preview is three pages, showing you nothing of note, and therefore a useless fucking preview. And no level range noted anywhere on the adventure. But, a trigger warning about “People getting scammed.” Perfect. Fucking useless pile of fucking shit. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/419693/Cult-in-the-Empire-of-Decadence?1892600