Graveyard Dirt

Seba G.M.
Dados Tostados
Knave2
"Low Levels"

Apollo and his son, two masters together, Wouldn’t know how to mend me; their craft has failed me, Goodbye, pleasant Sun! My eyes are stuffed, My body descends where everything is disassembled. ~Sonnet posthumes, Pierre de Ronsard~

This forty page booklet about skeletons uses twenty pages to present an adventure with three scenes that takes about four pages to describe, generously. There’s nothing here.

This is a supplement that deals with skeletons. New spells about skeletons. Some new skeleton variants. A dude that really likes skeletons. And a skeleton based adventure. Or, rather, “adventure.” Someone has been digging up graveyards in the region. Duke Lotto sends you over to the this town of ropemakers to guard their graveyard. Scene one is arriving at town, fucking around with the townfolk, etc. Scene two is a group of skeletons digging up the graveyard that night. Scene three is the party fighting a wight, back at the skeletons home base, which the party needs to track the skeletons back to. 

That’s your adventure. Three scenes. All of which are completely straightforward. And describes, I must say, in few words. I’m gonna give you the scene two descriptions. Skeletons come marching out of the forest in to the graveyard. They have tools to dig it up. One skeleton seems to be in charge. I am NOT fucking around when I say that the detail, beyond that, is not really present. That’s your fucking scene. Fight them. Follow them back, it’s up to you. 

The whole execution of the adventure is not really an adventure, at least not by my taxonomy. “Hey man, I had this idea last night that some skeletons could dig up a graveyard!” That’s all this is, some VERY general ideas of what could happen. And by “what could happen” I mean “go to town, dig up a graveyard, fight a wight in charge.” Because there’s nothing more to be done other than that. 

There’s a map! Of the village! It doesn’t make sense! There are, if I recall correctly, eight locations on the map. The legend says things like “the bridge (over the river)” or “the hunters lodge” or “the westward road” or “the hemp farm”. (No doubt the villagers talk incessantly about how Lord Jefferon grew hemp …) None of the locations are described, so, it’s not that kind of map. I guess you could ad lib some shit about people working in the hemp fields, or something like that. I’m not morally opposed to this. I’m also not especially thrilled for an adventure to take this approach when there is absolutely no content at all for the main part of the adventure. It feels like some amount of effort could be spent on the rest of the fucking adventure instead of this watercolor-like map of a village with locations. Similarly, the valley that the weight lives in has a map, but it no keys on it. And some textual mentions of a kind of underground abandoned city that the wight lives in. No other detail/maps/etc described. I think, perhaps, even worse though, is how the map actually seems to conflict with the text in a few places. The graveyard is on the western side of a river. The village hugs the eastern shore. The skeletons march out of the eastern wood. So … they march through town? Or, do I have my directions mixed up? There is no compass on the map, so, … maybe the skeletons march out of the woods right next to the graveyard? Also, the weights lair isn’t on the village map, not even with an arrow or something. It’s like all of this shit is just an afterthought. 

I don’t know what else to say here. There’s no real text imagery to speak of. It does use skill checks. Tracking the skeletons back through the forest “deals d4 damage unless the characters pass a Constitution Check (TN 16.” I hate that shit. First, haven’t there been abot fifty bajillion articles on this kind of shit and why its bad, thanks to disaster that was third edition skills? You know, every one in the party has a +50 to spot hidden, and shit like that, which leads to an arms race in checks vs ability, and the min/maxxing that a decent portion of the population these days  thinks D&D is? Hmm, that was a long sentence. I must really dislike that. Not to mention perhaps an even more egregious sin: the abstraction of fun. Why have the skill check instead of just having a scene that the party can work to overcome? Why just abstract away the fun to a die roll? If you’re ok with this then why not just have each party member roll a d6 at the start of the game session. 1-3 you live and 4-6 you died on the adventure. Then at least you could all go drinking or something. It’s the same fucking thing. The game is what happens before those die rolls, the journey through the forest, the obstacles overcome, the wacky plans, etc. That IS the game of D&D.

This bullshit abstraction makes me feel cheated, Mr Lydon.

This is $6 at DriveThru. The preview is seven pages. All title pages and shit like that, with one page of backstory for the wight. Shitty preview.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/492386/graveyard-dirt?1892600