By Robert Alderman
Pulp Hummock Press
OSE
Level 1
On the arctic frontier, at the border between the mountains and the wastes beyond, looms Castle Thar-Gannon. For centuries, the Skull God ruled his domain from his blackened throne. But 20 years have passed since the routing of his armies, and now the castle lies abandoned with riches unclaimed. Yet, death still lurks in the shadows of the ruins. An ancient doom arises from the depths of this place…
This 482 work of hubris describes a city, wilderness hex crawl, and five dungeons in the frozen north, all working towards an end-of-the-world adventure path. Excellent worldbuilding, pretty decent hexes, and absolutely no understanding beyond a 3e level of what an adventure is, in design or formatting.
I’ve been reading this and ruminating on it for a week now [ed: a week and a half now.] I’m not sure what to think. Well, no, I do know what to think: there’s no way in fucking hell I’d ever run this and only a masochist would read this for fun. But the worldbuilding is there and it’s got some interesting parts to it.
We’re gonna ignore the lengthy backstory for the most part. There’s this void-worm thing devouring the world, evil sorcerer king who rules the land goes away, settlers move in. Ultimately this appears to be a kind of adventure path. The adventures all kind of lead to each other and its all leading to this sorcerer king reappearing and the void worm thingy in volume three, I suspect. To that end we’ve got a city homebase described, a bunch of wilderness rules/tables, a hex crawl, and about six interconnected dungeons that get to level four or five by the end. And that’s all gonna take FIVE. HUNDRED. PAGES.
I don’t know these people. But they put out FIVE HUNDRED PAGES. I could never do that. They put it out in a way that looks like an adventure. For some definition of “layout” and “editing”. Those things were done to a level that, at first glance, seems chill. I’m going to be very critical of this thing. But, the folks involved did a professional job on it, for some definition of that word. Just not the “Adventure” definition of it.
The worldbuilding here is great. I mostly ignored the lengthy backstory, so I didn’t pick it up from there. But the individual locations and encounters, those do have a way of building on each other. There are elements of mystery and hinting at things in them that is excellent. It leads to wonder and be excited. (This is complimented, in places, by the art. There are some pieces, at times, that do a great job at giving a sense of scale. Cyclopean, the way you imagine Moria but few can capture. It’s a small percentage of the art, but those pieces are GREAT.)
This penchant for worldbuilding is interesting. I wondered frequently if this was an over-investment in, perhaps, a home campaign. Whatever the case, the worldbuilding and the hex crawl combine to produce some stellar outcomes. If you think about it a bit, the qualities overlap a lot. You’re trying to build something interesting, a citation, in a hex crawl encounter. And yet you need to keep it somewhat short; you’re doing scores of them in a typical hex crawl, at a minimum. And the hex crawl here is memorable because of that, the combination of worldbuilding, and its associated flavor for real and hinted at, and the quickness of the hit and ability of the DM to then riff off of it.
“The domed Shrine of Taggarik looms over the desolate mountain wastes like a tomb. This structure of ice and stone is carved into the side of a windswept peak. Its entrance archway has been marked with two square pillars etched in swirling symbols.” Inside is a giant ice throne with a cyclopean figure seated on it, surrounded by trophies. “They are both a source of incredible pride and agonizing shame.” Saumen Kar. So, demon, pride and shame, goes on benders sometimes and terrorizes the countryside till he chills out. Talks to the party a bit probably.Some of the trophies are malnourished young children frozen in ice.It seems one of this favorite pasttmie is tormenting a nearby village full of orphans. He killed at their parents. They worship him for food and sacrifice of their number to him. It’s all they know, there is no other worldview for them (I’m describing two hexes here, the demon shrine dome and the orphan village.) Escape? The wilderness outside has the 12 Black Wolves of the Garngat. Do I know what that is? No, but it sounds fucking awesome, yeah?! And I’m leaving a decent amount of awesome shit out!
Also, the demon is fifteen hit dice. Also, JUST the demon dome, and it’s one room, go on for two pages. His stat block takes up a column. Did I mentioned the three eight HD golems? Levels 1-4! The demon, the nearby village, there are situation here. And that’s what a hex crawl should be. And they are flavourful as all fuck. But the designer CANNOT shut his fucking mouth. This is one of the more critical flaws in the adventure. Dude will NOT shut up. I am not wading through three pages of text to run a fucking encounter. NO ONE is going to do that. This this five hundred page adventure is something that get read, and might get purchased, but will not get played. Is that what the designer really wanted? Adventure writing is technical writing. You need to communicate just enough. You need to inspire the DM to take what you’ve written and run with it. But it needs to be terse, so they can scan it at the table and run it. You can’t run a fucking encounter if you have to stop the game for ten minutes to read it first. The phone come out. The players lose interest. Write terse. Write evocatively. Leverage the fact you’re got a DM to riff on what you’ve them. Specificity, not detail. Hint at backstory. Leave room for wonder. That adds so much to mystery and the flavour of a game. But this ENDLESS droning on and on … Man, a quick hit on how to run an NPC that the party meets can last a column.
The books credits imply that a lengthy cutting of text was involved. It wasn’t enough. And the layout and formatting were NOT up to the task of managing such a huge word count. Our starting city a fucking mess. It is close to being a generic-ville (and, in fact, I’d say the theme of the Northlands is generally lost, in spite of lengthy sections on terrain, weather, and the natives. It just doesn’t come through.) There are some brief moments in the town that are ok. The gate guards of the “wealthy” gate turning people away to other gates. A weird obsession with hookers appearing throughout. (I think maybe every word on that 1e DMG table was used here?) But there IS the kind of specificity, in places, that cement a locale and help bring it to life. It’s just surrounded by a MASSIVE glut of words that obfuscates anything interesting. And forget about finding anything during play. Your ability to locate a specific tavern or, say, a tavern in general, is going to be close to nill. It’s just a stream of text with very little overriding organization behind it and WAY too many words for each item.
As for the first adventure, “An innovative feature of this mega-adventure is the step-by-step character creation process packed into the starter quest’s beginning.” *GROAN* Ok, sure, but I can live with that. WHat’s harder to live with the generic “throw in every trope possible” for this first adventure. A pickpocket chase?! A guard captain with a job?! A LONG ass tavern section? “The heroes awaken next morning, eat breakfast at the inn—eggs, goat’s milk, and a hot helping of caribou sausages—and get ready to explore. It is an overcast day outside without rain” *groan* “When ready to continue, read or paraphrase the following text aloud to your players:” The designer, editor, and layout never saw a word or turn of phrase they didn’t think to include in the adventure. This first one is just tropes and has none of the characteristic flavour found in other sections. You do get to tell the guard captain to put a homeless kid to death though. Also, kid has 95gp and a full weeks worth of food costs 5gp, so …
Anyway, in the middle fof this mess of a third adventure, here’s some typical text “Second Wave. Zarcand expends his word of bones ability to summon 4 loam gauntsA. The gaunts burst out from under the muddy road pavers and rise from the earth. This creates muddy groundC hazards in their wake. The battlefield is getting treacherous! Zarcand directs the undead to attack the amulet wearer and his allies. The gaunts claw at heroes locked in melee and loam lob everyone else” The battlefield is getting treacherous! And you can see from this an emphasis on these battlefield tactics. Terrain restrictions. Long stat blocks. MOSTLY combat. This is 3e. More than a few of the rooms have “It attacks!”, as the dungeon exists only for combat, it seems.
The first dungeon is this weird death trap puzzle. It’s got a nigh unstoppable enemy and poison gas at the end, so you work your way through this tomb and then run for freedom. Then there’s this raid on a slavers stronghold, with two islands and “The Guzzler”, a literally unkillable enemy on the second one. The monster as a muzzle, so to speak, or obstacle. There’s a barrow that’s pretty simple and then a lighthouse like thing, a tower. The first, in particular, is pretty overwrought with text with things settling down a bit in the others, but, still, I don’t know how I would run slavers island assault as written. There’s some REALLY good details in places, like grasping hands coming out of a door, but it ALL runs on for far too long. And, to no good end. It’s not the worldbuilding, its the conversational tone. Almost every undead is a generic one with no soul to them. That’s really too bad. It’s just there to stab.
This is clearly a heartbreaker. I suspect volume two, already out, is more of the same. EXCELLENT worldbuilding. But a 3e style of dungeon and, more than that, the dungeon AS a puzzle, as a whole. That’s a little too perfunctory for me. There’s a slavish devotion to format/layout even where it doesn’t make sense. WAY too many words, three paragraphs are used when two sentences would be much better. This IS a real adventure, but I don’t see how you can run it without a stupid amount of prep. And I can buy something else, far cheaper, that will be far easier to run and even more fun.
This is $35 at DriveThru. The preview is nineteen pages. It shows you nothing of the dungeons, or the town, so you’ll have no way of figuring out if the content is for you. Just that someone paid for layout.
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/451792/gods-of-the-forbidden-north-volume-1?1892600
This sounds like a freaking phenomenal Pathfinder Adventure Path that some poor misled soul decided to release for B/X with zero understanding of the differences between those systems and those playerbases.
Yeah I actually hope the author does a PF/5e conversion. Any DM who’s successfully run an AP or one of WotC’s big adventures will know exactly what to do with this and probably love it.
“Leverage the fact you’re got a DM to riff on what you’ve them. ”
One for the ages!
20 pounds of crap in a 10 pound bag.
I knew this had no chance of getting a Best due to Mucho Texto but thought it might squeak into No Regerts based on the quality of the writing & design.
Absolutely this is a 3e adventure. A GOOD one, shooting for the Elder Scrolls model of main quest in a sandbox with everything linked together, gradually revealing the setting. I actually enjoyed the backstory of Space Angels battling & imprisoning the world-eating worm from another dimension. That was pretty dope! Like 1970s Silver Surfer written by a Catholic.
This is most similar to Lost City of Barakus & Vault of Larin Karr. Of course it will take prep. The scope is something like those two linked together, plus a Forgotten Realms region sourcebook. Reading this is a lot easier than cobbling that together from separate products.
I think Bryce didn’t give enough praise to how well this is all organized and presented. Maybe he was turned off by it feeling too polished/corporate — “someone paid for layout” (hair flip). Fuck that, something this big needs to be as pretty and easily digested as possible.
Every adventure starts with a summary and ends with a breakdown of what was learned/revealed and all sources of XP. The main quest has enough to get a fighter to level 5, and the entire sandbox level 9, with ~70% coming from treasure (perfect). The PDF is bookmarked, there’s a glossary and index. All maps are provided in DM and unlabeled Player versions. The hexcrawl is just the right size & density. All hexes with entries in the key are noted on the map.
Also it’s not as lengthy as it looks! The layout is a lot less cramped than a typical RPG book. This is probably 300 pages with typical layout.
Word count comparison of a random full-text page:
Gods of the Forbidden North – 760 words
Lost City of Barakus (S&W) – 1329 words
Arden Vul – 1144 words
I am a sucker for good world building books. Ones that I can open a random page and get inspiration for a side quest. One of my favorite books of all time is the 3.5e manual of the planes. I may be buying this for this aspect. However, as Bryce said, I’ll never run it. And it’s sad that I know this even before buying it.
I’ve been working through this myself (reading half a dozen pages on each leg of the commute) and had similar thoughts to our host here – too many words, not enough editing. The character creation scheme straight outta Morrowind _sounds_ cool but has an awful lot of read-aloud and padding between the phases, not something I’d expect my gaming groups to be patient for, to recognise, or to find real payoff from. The opening adventure is a railroad and the first forced combat doesn’t seem survivable? The author would like it to function as either an adventure path or a sandbox once you’re through that deadly ambush; there’s been some nice work done interconnecting hexes, but it feels like I’d have to read everything to run it. Oh, and, even if volume 3 is the end-dungeon, volume 2 is the underworld, which ties into the overland hexcrawl at many (?) points, so I’d have to buy & familiarise myself with another 400-ish page book before starting.
There are six playtesters credited, which I assume means one house campaign DM’d by the author. Which means no feedback on usability from other DMs…
“volume 2 is the underworld, which ties into the overland hexcrawl at many (?) points”
FYI all underworld connections are noted on the hexcrawl map (the inverted U symbol)
Yes, the preview is 19 pages… 7 are title pages and acknowledgements, 3 are full-page art, 5 are table of contents (somewhat helpful), 4 are “how to use this book” pages. Why even bother?
Not one to like too much text, but isn’t Arden Vul even wordier and more unwieldy but there seems to be lots of people running it?
Having looked inside that book I don’t see how there could be.
I mean, it appears most of megadungeons/hexcrawls suffer from it. Arden Vul, this one, Rappan Athuk, Nod etc. Only exception seems to be Stonehell… perhaps Hotspring Island if you count purely the hex/dungeon writing.
What makes these other, older, runnable and this one not… is a really good question. My gut tells me it’s simply because they got famous years ago, so people are willing to go through the text just to run that famous Rappan Athuk dungeon. Perhaps forbidden north’s only sin is that it came late to the party.
I wonder if our over-saturated multi-media induced ADHD has contributed to our lower tolerance for walls of text. I used to read RPG books cover-to-cover; these days, I have trouble staying seated for 5 pages. That supports your theory that the timing for Forbidden North’s release contributing to our fatigued reactions.
Not that I think it’s acceptable to sell a 400+ page campaign a decade ago either; Rappan Athuk is another megadungeon I can’t bring myself to try to run – at least not as a whole. There needs to be a law where adventure writing learns from the likes of Arcane Library, Necrotic Gnome, and Ben Milton. Heck, someone managed to condense Keep on the Borderlands to 2 sides of 1 page + map. If everyone provided that kind of usable tool with their adventure, I could forgive a lot more of the verbal diarrhea.
The entire G3 series, seven levels of high-level dungeons with factions, strategy, memorable set-pieces and NPCs and The Weird, clock in at 32 pages including large chunks of art and new monsters
Module writing became afflicted with word bloat right around the shift to 2E. Short, punchy, useful paragraphs are gone. Let’s be quite clear: professional editors are gone.
Now, I do think some of Necrotic Gnomes latest publications (Holy Mountain Shaker, Halls of the Vampire King), actually swung the pendulum too far back the other way; they’re almost outlines of modules. But, to be clear, even the bloatastic 2E megadungeons (looking at you Ruins of Greyhawk) came in at 128 pages. The bloat is real.
Nah. Bloated 3e era style descriptions are not desirable, but the ultra-minimalism has led to a massive reduction of adventure quality and complexity, to say nothing of OSE machine code bullet point descriptions. Instead of using the tool to condense writing, they reduce the writing to fit the tool.
Look to Gabor Lux, Anthony Huso or Michael Curtis for how to properly do it.
That’s fair. Though if picking a poison, I’d definitely prefer bullet-pointed adventure outlines for me to fill in the details, over bloated detail to expel that forces me to essentially rewrite the adventure anyway in order to run it.
I want to reflexively disagree but this is probably an artifact of how a brain processes information and how you approach running sessions from prepared materials and it should depend on the material in question.
In the first situation you have insufficient information and you have to infer or make a judgement call.
In the second you actually have sufficient information but you expend more cognitive effort processing all the extraneous material.
I think as the adventure becomes more complex, my preference would go towards two. With simple adventures inferral is relatively straightforward and if you screw something up, its easy to re-adjust. With complex adventures with plentiful moving parts, a superabundance of information might make a dense adventure even more dense (I had to grapple with this while writing Slyth Hive), but since the DM is already going to study it, isolating the relevant portions might be straightforward.
I often remark on the irony of the OSR that the best laid out adventures often tend to be so simple they do not need the elaborate layout wizardry, and the most complex adventures tend to be under-laid-out or lack meta-information or whatever. There’s exceptions like AX2 which is just very dense and Huso’s high level material which is as easy to use as possible.
It’s an interesting comparison. I think folks are just more comfortable running megadungeons than hexcrawls. It feels like the party’s path is more predictable and easier to prep for, even though it depends entirely on the particular dungeon how true that is.
E.g. in Arden Vul, the cliff face at the start has entrances to the ruins, level 3, 4, sub-level 8 and sub-level 13. From there, if the party takes the right path they could get to level 1, 2, 5 or 6 in the same session. Yet nobody seems to think all that needs to be prepped before starting.
In Gods the underworld entrances are NOT easily accessible; they’re at the bottom of dungeons or at the back of high-level monster lairs. The PCs would have to be very lucky/motivated to get there in the first several sessions. Yet Tom H. above feels he needs to read the entire underworld before starting.
So, I think it’s partly the adventure type causing people to overestimate prep for this (and underestimate AV prep).
Another point in comparison: in AV no attempt is made to organize the dungeon room data in a playable order. It’s total stream of consciousness, usually starting with history that wouldn’t be apparent to PCs. Gods DOES generally present data in the right order: first impressions, then interactions, then history. It does use full sentences rather than fragments in bullet points, which some people seem to prefer.
This will be run, will just take time for people to absorb & warm up to it. Just like it took a couple years before AV play reports started to show up. This is a major work that has a good chance of being considered a classic in the future, IMO.
As someone who has been running Arden Vul successfully (~50 sessions in) for a year, yes, it would benefit from some better formatting. But, I wouldn’t want it to be less wordy than it is , just better organized. It is definitely a challenge to prep for. I am always asking my players, now that they are theoretically capable of visiting 10 or so different 100 room levels in any given session, ‘Where are you thinking about going next?’ But it’s scale combined with its interconnectedness (in multiple ways, it is quite common for my PCs to find the second half of a clue that they first encountered 10 adventures earlier, for example) make it an adventure with IMO no peers.
Actually, as someone who’s read both this and Arden Vul in their bombastic entirety, this is far better and easier to run because it’s explicitly designed as a setting/adventure path/dungeon/megadungeon combo. Is it verbose and overly detailed at times? Yes. But there are so many cool ideas in here that I can overlook that and it does become much easier to comprehend with repeated readings. I’m a professional academic and my books always exceed the word count suggested by the publisher, so I don’t care that much about length. And while I like OSE, some of the published adventures for it, are essentially outlines. If I’m paying good money, give me the content. I’ll do what I want with it. We’ll be running this for the next couple years so far as I can tell, as I’m about to receive my hard copy of volume two.