Gods of the Forbidden North – Volume 1

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