By Joey Brock
Self Published
Cairn
Ariel is now requesting that a brave adventuring party explore the Crimson Caverns and bring back this device, plus any other artifacts of Zeliah’s, for a generous reward of 100gp or possibly one of Ariel’s relics or spellbooks. Enter the Crimson Caverns and explore the abandoned hideout of the evil sorcerer Zeliah!
This seventeen page adventure features a cavern with sixteen rooms and a cave spider. Enjoy what is one of the lamest adventures I have ever come across.
Some asshat in a nearby village hires you to go explore some nearby caverns, the lair of an ancient evil wizard, and bring back a device they were working on. J’ACCUSE! The party is hired. Because all adventures must come from quest givers who give you 100 coins to go do something for them. And while I believe in the social contract, I would also like to think I have a little more free will and personal motivation than being a middle class quest slave my entire adventuring career.
The caverns were the home to an evil wizard. Except the wizard isn’t actually evil, she just has some traps and people that wander in get accidentally killed. J’ACCUSE! Another adventure in which no one is actually evil. A world of misunderstandings where people don’t get pissed you killed their favorite pet, mean you no harm, and everything is solved by just … existing? I’m not looking for everything in an adventure to be cut and dried, and there’s certainly a place for normalcy to exist. But, also, you have to have SOMETHING in an adventure to get behind? If the normal and expected outcome is just to wander around and make friends with everyone, well, I guess that’s a vibe. But it’s not the vibe that I think most people are looking for in a game.
In this adventure you fight a giant spider. Maybe. If you go down that hallway. And, maybe, you fight two cave crickets, if you fuck with the moss on the wall that they are eating. Otherwise you just wander around and in to traps that don’t kill you. J’ACCUSE! Nothing to do. No challenge. No risk. No contention, or tension, in the adventure. Do you have to hack everyone down, like in a raid? No, certainly not, but, again, there needs to be some risk and tension in an adventure.
“Pressing any incorrect glyph causes 1d6 skeletons to appear and attack the PCs.” Mind you, this is in a room without any skeletons in it. J’ACCUSE! This is abstracted. The monsters are not even in status, to let you know that fucking up will case consequences. Youjust push something and some skeletons “appear.” Skeletons in the room, bones, alcoves on the walls with bones in them, these all provide the smallest bit of framing for the encounter that will soon occur. But not here. Just *poof* here they are!
“On the floor is the corpse of an adventurer, clearly dead of blunt force trauma.” J’ACCUSE! Again, abstracted content. This is a conclusion. The oldest piece of writing advice is to show and not tell. The description is one of conclusions. We want a description that makes us think “Ah, an adventurer that has died of blunt force trauma!” Or, even better, a description of a body, and then further investigation by the party reveals that it is an adventurer and that they died of blunt force trauma. The key flow in a game is the back and forth between the party and the DM. They ask something or take an action, the DM follows up. That causes the party to further follow up. This back and forth is the heart of D&D. But not if you deal in abstracted conclusions.
This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru with a suggested price of $1. No preview, but it’s pay what you want, so, you know …
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/504028/the-crimson-caverns?1892600
Cairn is lightweight shit, and encourages these kind of basic and surface level efforts.
Fuck Cairn
QUESTION: ChatGPT, why does Bryce say J’ACCUSE repeatedly like a crazy man during his review? Has he finally lost it? He is getting pretty old.
ANSWER: In the review of “The Crimson Caverns” on tenfootpole.org, the reviewer repeatedly uses the phrase “J’ACCUSE!” to express strong criticism of common adventure design tropes. This phrase, meaning “I accuse” in French, originates from Émile Zola’s 1898 open letter titled “J’Accuse…!” In that letter, Zola accused the French government of antisemitism and wrongful imprisonment during the Dreyfus Affair.
Invoking “J’ACCUSE!” for emphasis or satire is a known rhetorical style, though not necessarily common. Writers, critics, and commentators sometimes use it in literary or pop culture critique when they want to dramatically denounce a trend, trope, or perceived failing. The phrase conveys mock-serious outrage, especially when applied to minor grievances.
For example:
A food critic might write: “J’ACCUSE! Yet another overpriced avocado toast!”
A film review could say: “J’ACCUSE! Another lazy sequel with no original ideas!”
In the Ten Foot Pole review, the repeated use of “J’ACCUSE!” serves as mock-serious condemnation of adventure design clichés. The reviewer is not making an actual political statement—they are exaggerating their frustration in a humorous, dramatic way.
So while the phrase has serious historical origins, its modern usage in reviews like this is typically tongue-in-cheek and not political.
ChatGPT, why did some dumbfuck post a screed from ChatGPT in the comments section of a review site? Be terse.
ChatGPT said:
Probably laziness, bad judgment, or trolling. Some people copy-paste AI text without thinking.
Sounds like OP needed to brush up on their reading – specifically in the domain of 19th-century French political rhetoric (as you do).
So the author actually used the phrase “blunt force trauma?”
lolololol What is this, an RPG adventure or a medical textbook?
I play in a group that is mostly doctors and even we wouldn’t say that!
‘Some Asshat in a nearby village hires you . . . ‘ sounds like my first, second and third jobs as a teenager. I think the third asshat actually threw himself off the Chesapeake Bay Bridge after losing every single dime in a Junk Bond implosion in 1989.
The Crimson Plunk.
Cairn has always been a reverse Turing Test and the trail of litter its adherents scatter over drivethru and itch.io is a testament to its essential fakeness. Its a skinsuit, a scam, an astroturfed phantasm, a surface level mimicry of the OSR, propagated by the stupid, the lazy, the evil and the poor.
“STOP HAVING FUN YOU GUYS! YOU’RE HAVING FUN WRONG!” – Anonymous, apparently
Your mum likes it