By Jean-Claude Tremblay Le Paysagiste de l’Imaginaire Cairn Low Levels
The village of Termiluth is the largest producer of giant blueberries, also called ”Varanox berries” from the name of the famous wizard-botanist who created this variety of small fruits. Unfortunately this season, no flowers appeared in the fruit bushes. Strangely, the water in the pond used to water the plants turned yellow just before flowering, which may have prevented the flowers from appearing? One of the villagers was sent to bring offerings to the water fairy at the shrine in the forest, but the water fairy had disappeared. Panic begins to invade the population. Will the adventurers be able to help the village? Only them can tell…
This 28 page digest adventure has a cave with eight rooms and two wilderness encounters. It contains the phrase “they attack!” over 183 times, with no interactivity beyond that. Also, it’s written at a first grade level. Also, I fucking hate this fucking shit.
I do love an adventure by our foreign friends. [Where foreign is defined as not the cultural center of the universe. ‘Merica! Fuck Yeah!] I tend to enjoy the freshness they bring to their adventures and the reliance on a different cultural heritage to bring something new to the table. This is, of course, a romanticized view of the situation. In reality our foreign friends produce crap, just like everyone else does. On to todays review of an adventure which is published in both English and French!
You roll up in town, find out the blueberries are not flowering, and get hired on to go find out why and get the local water nymph to bless the suddenly yellow water in town. Ohs nos! Mushroom people at the fairy pond! They attack! Let’s follow their trail. Look, it cross a bridge with a troll. It attacks! We then continue to a cave, full of mushroom people. They attack! Yeah, we saved the princess from Bowser and can go home. I assure you, this is the entirety of the adventure.
How does it take 28 pages to do this Well, pages eight through eleven describe the town of eleven locations. We get boring mundane descriptions written for a first grade reading level. “What would become of all the farmers in the village if Aldir the blacksmith wasn’t there to make and repair the tools needed to grow giant blueberries? He’s also good at repairing weapons and armor!” Seriously. That’s the entry for the blacksmith. The entire entry. No embellishment or cherry picking of phrasings from me. That’s it. I don’t even know what style that is … Joycian? Entry after entry of shit like that. Nothing to add to the adventure.
There is one good entry. “Upon arriving at the shrine, strange fungal creatures (6) jump and dance around the central pond that served as the water fairy’s refuge.” Not enough jumping and dancing of mushroom people in adventures, so that’s good to see. But EVERYTHING else is just simplistic wording that ends with a “They attack!” Nothing else. No exploration. No decisions. Just fighting mushroom people … and one troll. “The bridge troll is colluding with the mushroom people. His goal is to not let anyone cross the bridge.”
Your reward for defeating a troll? A sword, a helmet, a shield, two days of rations and 67gp. Rejoice D&D players, everywhere, you have hit the mother load!
Why people write this sort of thing I will never know, I guess. Watching the paint dry or playing a story game seems more enjoyable. Also, there is no elixir. 🙁
This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru with a suggested price of $1. There’s no preview, but hey, download it and see.
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/442732/The-Elixir—LElixir?1892600
‘Also, there is no elixir.’
Astounding.
Perhaps the text as a whole is to ‘taken’ as a metaphorical elixir. But what ailment does it cure?
The elixir is the friends we made along the way
Hahah! If that were *literally* the case as part of the module, would have been epic hilarity!
Lmao came here to post this
Ennui? I doubt it works.
~Diegetic advancement
I see that and think “yep, couldn’t be arsed to design an advancement system.”
But don’t forget the Cairn scars system as well. Briefly: when a PC drops to exactly zero HP, they gain a permanent “scar” that serves as a character boon. Functionally, it’s a level up, often increasing HP and/or attributes.
Game Design 101: “you get more of what you incentivize.” Scars incentivize dangerous-but-not-lethal combat. Should we then be surprised that Cairn adventures are “They Attack!”? Because subconsciously this is what is being pushed – other actions have no similar incentive other than the hand-waved diegetic advancement non-system.
I think it helps to think of Cairn as something that is not so much designed as put together from other sources so it can provide the surface appearance of a game system. There is nothing really there. Intelligence is not applied to solve a problem or emulate anything. Elements are included reflexively. A sort of reverse Turing test for the OSR.
Is this the standard Cairn adventure? I’ve reviewed exactly one Cairn adventure and yet this seems identical in its issues.
As if an entire class of literacy below that of ‘illiterate’ were suddenly and terribly revealed.
Bryce may not like it, but I found great utility in this adventure, and the Cairn system in general. In fact, it was just after discovering there was actually no Elixir in this specific module that my rich great uncle drove three hours to Toronto to apply for MAID. Thank you Cairn/The Elixir, from Tahiti!
My old group would have had a field day with “yellow water.” Aggravating at the time, but now I almost wish I could run this for them. Lean into it, yet play it straight. “Yes, it just turned yellow suddenly. None of the villagers admits to knowing why.”
My current group would have exactly the same reaction. It was my first thought when I read it. If they jumped to that conclusion I would happily play along.
Hispanic D&Der here. Bad English style is easily explained as an EASL issue. Adventures written by non-Anglos tend to be wordy and florid, written in a mixture of Low Gygaxian, Victorian purple prose, and contemporary lingo. But sometimes the reverse is true, as demonstrated here.
The rest is, as duly noted in the review, pure merde.
It certainly looks that way to me. To be fair, while my spoken French is okay, if I tried writing an adventure in French it would be pretty basic!
language is not to be an excuse. release in the tongue of your ancestors or be ready to roar as the tigeress