By Realm Diver
Self Published
BECMI
Levels 4-6
You opened the chest? You shouldn’t have opened the chest! You are magically transported to a ruined temple surrounded by vast desert. A dragon, driven mad by the slaying of her mate and brood, lies between you and a wish-granting treasure that could mean your salvation, or spell your doom…
This 24 page adventure uses about thirteen pages to describe a dungeon with about 35 rooms. It’s got a rather complex situation going on in it that seems inconsistent with its size and difficulty. I’m not a fan of the long-winded and writing to be slogged though, but, also, there’s something going on here. Just not enough for me to to deal with it.
I’m having a hard time with this one. I think I can tell that there is something going on here, but I’m so off-put by the presentation and writing that I want to throw up a little in my mouth. WHich does seem overly harsh. But, there it is. Anyway, I said there was a lot going on …
We’re going to ignore the premise. You find a treasure chest and open it and find a jewel buried in some sand and if you touch it then the sand swirls around you and you’re all transported to this place in the desert. There’s an abandoned campsite and a mesa with a couple of giant statues standing in front of a crack in the mesa wall. So, right, we’re ignoring that. Yes, treasure chest adventure, living room, blah blah blah, hook. Let’s instead focus on some on the weirdly high number of things going on here for a dungeon with 35 rooms. We’ve got the lizardmen-like tribe in this temple complex. Then we’ve got the EHP lizardman shaman, who is raising humanoids from the dead with her magic staff. We’ve got the former leader of the tribe, under house arrest and looking to regain power, pretty please Mr adventurer. Let’s see, we’ve got a thief raiding the temple. We’ve got the undead former high priest of the temple who really thinks the lesser evil here is getting the party to cleanse the temple of most of those folks. ANOTHER undead dude seems to be full of ennui. The Azure Guard, the undead dudes raised by the EHP, are bopping about. And then there’s the crazy dragon whose mate and hatchlings are dead, in the final room. Azure? Yup. Worshiped by the lizardman dudes? Yup. Stuck in that room? Yup.
While there is bit of an order of battle for the evil lizardman faction, and the house-arrest queen has some deets, mostly the people with plans are just sitting in their rooms waiting. Including the dragon. This is kind of disappointing. In addition to everyone listed there are also a few other things going here, ghosts to talk to and so on, almost all of which give you some kind of clue as to SOMETHING in the adventure. What’s a little off putting here, though, is the relative size of the adventure. It’s only 35 rooms, and in a typical dungeon room format. And that’s A LOT of intrigue for 35 rooms. The tightness of space isn’t going to allow for a lot of room to sneak about, infiltrate and so on, I think. There IS a secondary entrance to the tomb, that takes you to quite a few of the lizardman people to interact with, so, maybe thats the “correct” way to play? It’s just hard. There are a lot of high HD enemies here and we’re playing BASIC. Like a bunch of 3HD lizardmen riding 5HD firebreathing (3d6) firedrakes. It’s just rough, in such a compressed area. I guess your going to have to really sneak about.
Up until now, in the review, you might be thinking this is a relatively decent adventure. And it might actually be one. And then I touch on the writing. I hate it. It’s got a format its using and its own style and I fucking hate both of them. It’s probably just me. But I don’t know that I care; it was also my money. We’re going to ignore that the read-aoud is in some fucked up font that you can’t actually read. There’s only, like, two sections of read-aloud in the adventure anyway. Still, I hate it.
I’ve taken another long break. I still hate it and I still don’t really know. The writing style is not particularly evocative, at all. And I don’t think it’s trying to be, at all. I guess, it’s fact based? And I don’t like that? A typical description might read: “This room has a 5’ pit in it to house giant oil beetles the Sandscales farm for their oil and meat. The beetles are fed on whatever dead or rotting matter the Sandscales accumulate, and are quite content to stay in the pit. They will certainly see anything that enters the pit as fair game to eat, however. There is a 40% chance there is a Sandscale male in here on the raised floor, dumping slop into the pit.” That room description isn’t really saying anything. There’s a lot of explaining why things are the way they are, but it’s not really anything other tan a 5’ pit with beetles in it and maybe a lizardman. But it’s long, isn’t it? And that’s pretty typical. A lot of the rooms, most, I’d guess, run to half a column of text. It’s got this bullet point style and I think the first one is usually a general overview of the room with the rest following up on that. But, also, this means a lot of the rooms are four or more paragraphs. And padded out, wordy, verbose, mostly for no reason at all. It if could take a sentence then it takes three. I feel, continually, like I’m fighting the text to get something out of it. “Prison Cells: Whatever these rooms used to be, the Sandscales have repurposed them as a prison” Yup, that’s why the room name is Prison Cells.That first sentence does nothing but repeat that this is a prison. That’s the purpose of the room title, to frame what’s to come. And then you frame it again. I think we all know by now that I’m not looking for an ultra minimal room description, but, also, I fucking HATE the padded out shit. This isn’t an ethnographic exploration of the lizardman takeover of a desert temple. We’re playing fucking D&D tonight and I’m not using a highlighter to do the work that the editor should have done. Oh, wait, no editor. Not that the fucking copyeditor shit that passes for editing would have helped anyway. Man, I AM grumpy this morning. “This room has the appearance of a barracks.” No. Never. It IS a barracks or is not. That goes for the DM text and that goes for players text. You’re just padding the fucking thing out.
There’s a 9HD undead philosopher in this. He summons four 1 HD blobs to defend himself. “He will not defend himself, but will cackle madly and disappear if destroyed.” A commentary on the futility of modernism since the death of God? I didn’t expect to see that in a BECMI adventure.
I don’t like this. I accept that there could be an adventure in here. I think it needs a larger map and a reworking of the various areas in to something that might be more supportive of faction play. In terms of design, that’s the flaw here. But, also, this thing needs a complete reworking of the text. There is no evocative writing to cement the room for a DM to effectively riff from. And they are padded out to hell and back, making digging though the text a chore.
This is $5 at DriveThru. The preview is eight pages and shows you mostly padding. The last two pages describe the outside of the temple complex and part f the first two rooms. Those last two are what you can expect from the text, especially that last one.
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/494473/madness-of-the-azure-queen-becmi?1892600