The Lost Temple

By Simone Zambruno
Classic Dungeon Adventures
OSE? No.
Levels 0-1

The History of Neraka Valley is a tetralogy of adventures revolving around a singular narrative. Each one weaves a fragment of the epic of an ancient temple nestled in a small, secluded mountain valley, from the present times to the days of yore.

This 25 page adventure uses about eight pages to describe thirteen rooms in a dungeon. Ponderous text and low interactivity. You know the drill by now, and are bored of it.

I see this web thing about a new place in town that advertises the best hamburger in Indiana. I drive there. There’s a giant sign that says “Best Burger in Indiana”  It’s in a great building and the decor is wonderful. The staff are great. Drinks (vodka gimlet, of course) are dirt cheap with a generous pour. I order the burger, medium, for $12.95. About a minute later they bring out a McDonalds hamburger, still in the wrapper. It’s cold. “Yeah, we been working on the decor and bar; didn’t have time to work on the burger.” 

This adventure has a musical soundtrack to go along with it. For each room there’s a note on which track to play for the party. It’s also got this super fun presentation where the pages are all black and a white font is used. A fancy one at that. And, of course, all of those background pages and notes for the DM and appendices and pregens and such. Those make up at least, what, two thirds of the text here? I suppose folks are excited about things other than the main text. Or, if they are me, they are sick of looking at the main text. But the main text IS the most important part of the adventure. The main thing is the main thing. That’s what the vast majority of your time should bespent on, to the exclusion of almost everything else. Yeah, I’d like an easy to use format. But the fucking formatting isn’t the adventure. The text of the room keys. The interactivity of the encounters. I can, and will, sometimes tell people to go get a highlighter for this one, because it’s worth it. But I’m never going to say “oh boy! This is a super shitty/average adventure and the room keys suck, but look at that colour scheme used! Totally get it for that!” Dazzle in the page ong backstory of the dungeon that tells us there is an earthquake and worms tunneling collapsing things. Multiple times. This is not the main thing. You need to focus on the main thing.

There is read-aloud. It describes things in second person. This is never a good thing. “You descend the stone steps.” The read-aloud over-reveals. It destroys the back and forth between DM and player. The text, read-aloud and DM text is full of overwrought prose. “The luminous switch, if touched by a soul of benign alignment …” or “… survived  the ravages of time. Mayhaps they were crafted from special materials or magically treated.”  You can also see an example of if/then writing in that. Background data: “This room, erstwhile intended as a waiting room or a modest study, now lies in disarray.” No shit it’s a fucking room. Thats what the fucking key says. And we don’t care what it was, I care about whats going on now. “Along the right wall you may discern a sizeable circular aperture.” “They appear frightfully ravenous.” This is not how one writes. We write to convey a vibe to the DM, who can convey it to the players and riff off of it. We don’t use this kind of overwrought text.

Interactivity is stabbing things. There’s a room where you can fall in a pit “Escaping is easy if you have a rope.” But, but, what if I have a ladder instead? Is it still easy? Anything else to be pedantic about? Anyway, stabbing, a pit trap, a room that heals you. 

It’s a generic/universal adventure in spite of it being labeled as OSE.

This is $1.00 at DriveThru. There’s no fucking preview.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/491366/the-lost-temple?1892600