By Xapur
Self Published
OSE
Level: NONE
A long time ago, a legendary hunter lived in the forest near a small village. He was ruthless and cruel, and delighted in tracking and killing dangerous foes and monsters. No, you have to find a missing son. Will you dare explore the Halls of the Hell Hunter?
This six page adventure uses about two pages to describe eighteen rooms in a tomb. It relies on abstracted descriptions and a minimalism style. This causes it to come off as a rather generic and unmemorable adventure with little to recommend.
On the plus side, the entries are terse. No hunting for information here …
This is an EASL adventure, so I get to be an asshat here, making assumptions about someone whose english is far far better than any of the other languages I speak. But, also, the adventure borders on being illegible., Looking at the cover, the text on it is in white, with a black outline, on a blue background. It just looks blurry to me. And continuing inside, I’m not sure what it is, the kerning maybe? In any event it, also, looks somewhat blurry to me. Like the letters are bleeding in to each other. And then the map. We’re trying to do some fancy shit there with the grid and so on. But again it comes off small and hard to read. And the key numbers are in a light blue font with a light stroke weight. You’ll be hunting to find them on the map. Legibility is, perhaps, the very first thing on the adventure checklist. In order to run the adventure you have to actually be able to READ the adventure. I guess people think that the font they select is going to look cool. I don’t know. Maybe? But also it has to be readable and in far too many cases I see a font choice result in legibility issues and I seldom if ever think that the unusual font choice is cool, outside of a handout. I’m sure folks will argue that you can have an aesthetically pleasing thing to look at and be legible. And I’m sure that’s a correct statement. Just as I’m sure that if you’re picking a cool font you have deluded yourself in to thinking that its perfectly legible.
On to the background and intro! The setup here is that a legendary hunter lived in a forest near a small village. Hmmm, sound familiar? Yes, the marketing blurb is the intro. It’s repeated, of course, but go read it again. It is abstracted, yes? Exactly like one would expect in a marketing blurb. Except the actual background is just as abstracted. There is ZERO specificity here, even of the piss poor variety found in most adventures. “A mother for the village needs help: her young son has disappeared in the forest, searching for the famous tomb. The party has a mission: find the kid…” That’s your specificity. There is NOTHING here more specific than that in all of the background or intro. Hmmm, no, “legendary hunter” was killed by a green dragon. It’s irrelevant, but, also, I guess it is specific.
Lets hit the room keys, shall we? “The body of a young male human lies on the ground. He has been killed by a stone arrow. A mother will cry.” Well, props, I guess, for putting the pretext in the first room of the dungeon. But, how about: “A room dedicated to Dralena, the goddess of the hunt. The walls are decorated with decrepit tapestries of rural scenes and wild animals (stags, boars, foxes…).” This is not sterling writing. I’m not even sure what style to call it. Minimalistic, I guess.
There’s an almost obsessive lack of detail of detail here. “In the altar, a hidden cache contains a magical hunter’s dagger.” What kind of magic dagger/ What does it do? No idea. And no stats of ANY kind are present AT ALL. Not even Ye Old Skill Check DC 16. “Weakened stalactites can fall from the ceiling, especially if there is noise in the vicinity.”
These are all concepts. Its what you might jot down in the middle of the night, or on the drive to work, to remind you of an idea to expand upon further. But they are not expanded upon. The abstracted idea, the conceptual, barely that, is all that is described.
Specificity is the soul of the narrative. Don’t drone on in detail, but instead carefully select the important bits to be specific about. That’s what brings lifes to an adventure.
This is $1 at DriveThru. The preview is three pages and shows you the map and some room keys, so, good preview.
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/512435/halls-of-the-hell-hunter?1892600
From the preview: “I am a french GM”.
As established before, adventure written by non-native speakers normally gravitate towards an ostentatiously florid verbiage and MUCHO TEXTO. This is a rare but still noticeable minority, employing limited vocabulary and beige prose.
On a side note, *organic* diversity in the hobby is a good thing. We absolutely need more adventures written by non-Anglos. This one has promise, I kinda dig the whole “not-Artemis temple filled with hunting trophies” thing.
Thats a truly poor cover.