By Marco Giulio Fossati
Hellwinter Forge of Wonder
OSE
Levels 6-8
The Antrum was a temple dedicated to the chaotic god Chryzothuul, but the priests dwelling there abandoned it some years ago after a plague decimated them. The Antrum lies in a small valley amidst the Rolling Red, rugged plains and hills covered with sanguine-red grass.
In the last months, rangers and lonely travellers spotted an undead presence near the Antrum. So, the local authorities decided to send a group of adventurers there to investigate. Who or what is behind those undead?
This twenty page adventure presents an old temple dungeon with about seventeen rooms in about five pages. It is boring. Boring in interactivity. Boring in descriptions. Low effort does not begin to describe it.
Right about now I should be waxing philosophically about the measure of a man and so on. It’s traditionally, when I see a poorly designed product, to speculate why as you describe the hows, I think. But not this time. I HATE this adventure. It represents everything I loathe. It is low effort. No one seemingly cared about it during its creation. Instead a coat of paint was slapped on and it was called done. Be it to satisfy some deadline or some other reason, instead it received nothing.
Let us begin with the original sin: the level. Levels 6-8. And the hook? “The characters are the adventurers sent to investigate the undead presence of the Antrum, and they have been hired by a reasonable law force in the area, such as a military commander, a local reeve, or the council of a nearby town” Yes. my level eight got hired by the village reeve. That’s exactly what happened. I’m currently engaged in a bloodbath in the village ala Kid Marvelman and the village Reeve walks up to me and hires me. Great. But, sure, whatever, yes, I do want to play D&D tonight. The adventure, proper? It’s full of undead. “You gotta bring a cleric!” says the designers note to the DM. Actually, no, you should NOT bring a cleric. And why is that? Room one: eight skeletons. FOr your level six through eight cleric. Or how about some zombies? Shadows? You’re just gonna blast right through each and every undead in the adventure. I don’t think there ARE any undead present that are not an automatic turn. Did you actually even ever run this for ANYONE? Now, I know that D&D-mine’s favorite hobby is changing the Turn Undead rules, but, still … I think I understand the OSE rules. It’s like an auto-turn. And most of the time it’s an auto-destory. There are new undead in the appendix, created just for the final boss fight, and they get auto-nuked also. The custom monster you created for the boss fight is an auto-nuke. And they are ALL like that. The designer made it and the editor looked at it. Or said they did. The same person did the layout, which presumably means the C00l color scheme. Maybe, instead, do the work of an editor?
But, hang on. Let’s change the levels. Let’s say its, I don’t know, level four or so?
Reven now, in the magnificence of the descriptions! “Two stairs, both going down a few steps. At the end of each stair, there’s a closed door. A small alcove lies in the south wall.” Behold now the modern wonder of the full power of this designers evocative text! “There are still some old chests in this storeroom abandoned long ago.” That’s the fucking room description. I didn’t cherry pick one sentence from it. Are you not inspired?!?! You know, you really should be. After all a good DM could … spend their money and time on something worthwhile?
Shitting fucking descriptions. Nothing evocative about them AT ALL. And, then, that kind of writing style that I just abhor. “There are still some … “ This kind of passive voice description. Just tell us about the storeroom and the chests. The absolute best bits of this are when the designer IS getting specific. When they mention the consistent low haze of the plains on your overland journey or the pulsating shapeless blob sitting on an altar. But those may be the ONLY examples of decent text in this. There is little specificity. It’s abstraction. Our rumors read “The Antrum still contains a sacred relic of Chryzothuul. (true)” No, it does not contain a sacred relic. It contains the head of saint whatever, missing its blue tongue, or some shit like that. Specificity, not abstraction. Abstraction is boring. We’re paying for specificity.
How about mechanics? It takes a day to get to the temple through the grasslands. You have a 2 in 6 chance each day of getting lost.. If you get lost three days in a row then you automatically find it on the fourth day. You can find some laser gemstones. They shoot out a 2d6 laser beam, continually. Well, that’s fun, anyway!
The overall effect is one of low effort. Clearly not play tested. The writing is abstracted and not evocative in the least. Boring stabbing encounters sprinkled with a few simplistic traps and not enough treasure to warrant a walk through the plains for my level eight.
This is $2 at DriveThru. The preview is the first seven pages, which doesn’t show you any encounters. Not a very good preview of what you would be purchasing.
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/499189/the-antrum-of-chryzothuul?1892600
Ah, just give all the ghosties and ghoulies anti-turn-undead medallions, problem solved.
Or, know the rules on turning undead before writing an adventure featuring undead. This is an item that we’ve seen popping up in reviews over the last year or so. I seem to recall we had an adventure where the Big Bad Guy (by his lonesome with no support) was turned on a roll of 7 or so by PCs in the module’s adventure (on that note, having the BBG alone is also the hallmark of an inexperienced DM/author – never underestimate what a team of PCs can unleash when they all focus on one target).
This isn’t difficult if one knows the system one is writing for: either have level-appropriate undead, have mixed groups of undead (turn efforts go against the weakest kind first) and, of course, recognize that non-zombie undead can attack from surprise or just take the effortless route and use shadows which functionally attack from surprise virtually every encounter.