Titan’s Throne: Infested Archives

By Mitchell Doucette
Thunder Toad Games
OSE
Levels 1-3

The Quorth are dying. Their stone bodies erode to dust by the will of their own god, and a swarm of giant ants has overrun their archives. A lone wizard sees opportunity in the chaos and seeks adventurers—whether for profit or preservation, only you can decide. Will you answer the call?

This forty page adventure presents a four level dungeon full of stabbing, fetch quests and riddles. It’s a simplistic implementation of a basic formula, with some frustrating things left out … due to editing? Anyway, far too basic for a design.

There’s an interesting interplay between RPGs and cRPGs. You’ve got D&D screaming out of the 70’s with it’s first age and transitioning in to the 80’s. Just about the same time you’ve got computers becoming more mainstream and the personal computer showing up. And this the cRPG is born. It wants to be D&D but it can’t emulate the experience, and thus we get the fetch quest. And everything and everyone is now immersed in the CRPG genre from birth. Which means that D&D is not the norm. The fetch quest is the norm. And then the cRPG folks find D&D again and move what they know in to it …

This is a giant fetch quest, in cRPG form. You need item four from location B-nine to give to npc Z in order to fulfill his “Golden Dawn” request so he will give you The Jade Falcon which you can then take to NPC RR and give to them to fulfill the “Purple Haze” quest … and do on and so on.

You get a letter. Some elf guy wants you to go this village full of rock people. It’s been cursed, is in decline, blah blah blah. Please come help me restore the village. Arriving at the base of a mountain, you find broken walls and some huts/buildings. There are, I don’t know, like six rock people in the village and the elf dude at the inn. I guess you wander in and meet some of the rock people, and then find the inn, where elf dude is trapped on top being ‘menaced’ by some giant ants. Nobody in the village seems to care. This isn’t on purpose, its just bad design. Everything in the village is within a hundred feet of a central point, with most of it being withing fifty feet of the central point. So, yeah, its not that they hate the elf, it’s just that each encounter is completely self contained in that way … only existing as either a fetch quest giver or a fetch question location, with no actual interactivity. Stonemason dude wants his tools back. Go to the collapsed walls to dig them out. Frank wants to be guard captain, Bob thinks he’s incompetent, but would soften if he knows of Franks experience. Frank has medals of military service, but they’ve gone missing … and around and around you go. The final quest is in the village also. You go up the mountain twelve hours. Halfway up three giant hawks attack you. At the peak is a giant throne with a cloud giant dude and his three giant hawks. A great glowing sphere is beside him. This is the ending boss fight. AT the end of everything you rescued the stone peoples high priest in the dungeon and he comes with you, chants, while the orb opens up and you attack the inside while the cloud giant and hawks attack. Destroying the orb nukes the curse and Yeah, everyone is happy again, I guess.

The actual encounters in the dungeon are mostly along the same lines. You need the key from the bottom of the well to open a door two. The well has an elemental who wants a diamond before they give you the key. Answer a classical riddle to open door four. This is all very, very basic interactivity on a very basic map.

There is a frustrating element to the editing. One of the small handful of buildings in town is the House of Knowledge. “A well kept marble building, The entrance to the archives within is protected by a Sand-Lock, which must have a specific symbol impressed into the sand within its basin to unlock the door. “ That’s it. Nothing else. Room one of the dungeon, though, reads: “The entrance to the dungeon is concealed behind a beautifully crafted mural of Titan’s Throne in the House of Knowledge. If the players acquired the sealed letter from Glendath they will have the proper impression to press into the Sand-lock. Imprinting the proper symbol into the Sand-lock will push the mural aside to reveal a flight of stone stairs leading down into darkness. The air is cool and damp.” Ok, so, lets go check Gleddaths entry … which is one and a half pages long … Nope. Nothing there. Good luck putting together all of the multi-step fetch quests; the information is scattered everywhere.

Another fine example is the high priest. On level two two of the three level dungeon you meet him. You need him to chant at the mountain peak so you can go all Tron/MCP on it. The rooms he’s in is a page and a half long … mostly about him. But, then, there’s this, right ta the start of the room: “Some long-dead Quorth litter the room, trapped in states of conflict. Giantspeaker Oza is here and he is excited that the party arrives. I don’t understand. They are dead? Undead? He’s dead? It sounds like he’s dead. Or maybe, it just occurred to me, he’s alive and kind of adventuring in the dungeon also? There’s not really ANY mention of him outside of this. No one in the village is like “Orza is missing!” or anything like that. I have absolutely no fucking clue what is going on.

So, three HD hawks on the way u p the mountain pass. Six HD giant ants. A twelve HD cloud giant. Six and eight HD creatures are not uncommon. I’m all for overpowered enemies. But not ones that stand in the way of the party. You have to snake, convey, ally, run, etc to manage from overpowered enemies in a good adventure. You can’t just put an eight HD enemy in the path of the first level party and make it a required part of the adventure to fight them. No bueno.

Oh, yeah, yeah, that elf dude wants you to donate 2000gp so they can repair the walls of the town. In spite of everyone in town being LITERALLY made out of rocks. And the twon having a quarry INSIDE the walls. WITH a rock dude living there who is a stonemason. Who owes you one because you found his masterwork tools. I shit you not. But you need to give the elf 2000gp. How about, instead, we get a nice coke supply for the town? Or, better, just let it die off. If they can’t be bothered to help themselves at least the smallest amount then why is it your problem?

This is $12 at DriveThru.The preview is eight pages and shows you just the first eight title pages and some brief background. Shitty preview, doing nothing to help you make a purchasing decision. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/514759/titan-s-throne-infested-archives?1892600