The Thinking Ring

By Velociryx
Self Published
Home Brew 5e
Levels 3-5

It starts with an uneasy feeling.  A Foreboding. At least one member of the adventuring party feels it.  Uneasy sleep.  Nightmares.  The feeling of being hunted.  The eyes of something powerful and predatory ever upon you… That feeling draws the party from the city of Argenia, farther north, and as they draw closer to the village of Brunvaald and its surrounding Hollers, which collectively sit in the shadow of a mountain known only as the Scarberg, that sense of unease grows stronger. Something stalks the folk of this lonely mountain.  Something is choking the life out of this isolated town, and it grows stronger by the day. Can you stop it before it becomes too powerful to be contained?  Dare you even try?

This 33 page adventure is more conceptual than an outline than an adventure. Wordy and prescriptive the like of which is seldom seen today. The local color, what there is, can’t save it from itself.

Someone was interested in this being reviewed and it was in the OSR category. It turns out that “Other OSR” now means “5e” on DriveThru. Good ol DriveThru, keeping up that garbage fire image. Anyway, someone in the party has a bad dream so you head north to a village. Once there the Mayor tries to kill you or you try and kill the mayor and/or fight a demon in a valley nearby after maybe doing some investigating. It’s all very loosy goosy, but not in a good way.

What it does do in a somewhat interesting way is present a couple of power bases in nearby valleys. Think, if you will, of an inn out in the wilderness. It might be a little fortified or walled and have maybe a stable and smith and some workers about who stay there, since there’s nothing else around. We might also think of a massive ranch, out in the middle of Nowhere Texas, with some hands around. There’s a boss and then there are some loyal workers who could act as toughs or NPCs or something, but, basically, these are little islands exerting some control on some amount of land around them. There are three here. The first is the local wise woman. Breaking trope tradition, she’s not living in a hut out in the woods. People who live alone get killed, historically. (Sorry about you isolated cabin in the woods fantasy!) She’s got almost a little compound. It doubles as a whorehouse. She got some dudes around for muscle. Maybe a few chicks that also also learning how to be wise women.  Home for wayward souls, as the adventure puts it. Or, another valley with the rancher Merle. And all his hands. 

I should note that I’m praising the concept here, not the implementation. Everything in this adventure is a nightmare.

You know how some DM’s and/or designers will put in a very special NPC that is clearly their player character, who is super powerful and all knowing blah blah blah? The DMs pet NPC? That doesn’t happen here, except the entire ADVENTURE is the Dms pet NPC. There’s a smug self-satisfied nature to this that I just find such a turn off. Not exactly a railroad but something closer to one true wayism? If you Your party needs one cleric or warlock or ranger in it. Otherwise, pick a different adventure. Even though you already bought this one. If you ignore the dreams then the adventure is over. If you X then the adventure is over. If the party is not careful, the adventure tells us a bazillion times, then the party will all die and deservedly so. If you don’t do a good job talking to the refugees on the road then the adventure should be very hard and the mayor should basically just kill the party, the adventure tells us, more than once. Dude says, straight out “As mentioned previously, there is exactly ONE right way to approach this problem.” Talk to the refugees. Talk to the valleys. Work together to bring down the mayor. Then go banish the demon. Otherwise you face the mayors thugs and demon at the same time. Oh, also, the demon is AC16 with 150HP and DR to normal weapons. That’s 50% resistance, right? Is that a challenge for level 5’s? Or threes? It’s been awhile since I 5e’d. 

And then there’s the conversational style of this. This is almost all long form paragraph style with little formatting. And little in the way of section headings. And where there are some other information gets mixed in. “This is a fun bit of role play that will give the Ranger an opportunity to shine. His group can pass the other group entirely unseen, or even ambush the Highwaymen under the Ranger’s direction if the Ranger’s player wants to take it in that direction. In any case, it won’t take up a ton of time and it’s a neat way to showcase the Ranger’s unique talents. In fact, if you, as the DM don’t feel that your ranger has been getting enough time in the spotlight, forget rolling and just make sure that one or both of these occur!” Wonderful. The adventure is full of this. I think it would be hard to grab a couple of sentences or a paragraph in this adventure and have it NOT be like that. “Or, as my last group did … “ I. Hate. My. Life.

Finally, the adventure is not an adventure. It’s not even an outline of an adventure, I’d say. It’s more of a concept of an adventure. There are pages of text about those valleys/power bases, but you’re not really going to get much of anything more than what I’ve already said. There is no specificity. Nothing going on in them. No names other than who is in charge. And the mayor doesn’t get much more than “send his dudes to lead the party in to a trap.” Seriously, that’s about all you’re gonna get. His dudes? His house? Power bases? Best buds? Not really. 

And yet this is 33 pages. Because of the conversational tone. Because of Mary Sue DM pet nature of the adventure. What A Clever Boy Am I.  I’m not a clever boy. I’m a worthless hack. But I’m a worthless hack that can spot this kind of shit from a mile away.

This is $3 at DriveThru. There’s no preview. Otherwise you wouldn’t buy it.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/510918/the-thinking-ring?1892600