The Herbomancer

By Silvio Navaretti, Alberto Iamone, Julien Fenoglio
Forgia Storie
OSE
Levels 3-5

At the end of his long life, the wealthy herbalist Cavillo Spiga required his descendants to tend to the Botanical Cemetery’s garden where he would be buried, under penalty of forfeiting the family’s immense wealth. For decades his heirs have sent a large number of gardeners every month to keep the Botanical Cemetery in perfect order.  But this month no gardeners have returned and the wealth of the Spiga family is in danger! Can you prevent it from falling into the hands of ruthless probate lawyers?

This 54 page adventure details a small cemetery and tomb, with about twenty locations overall. It is meant to be a light heater farce, I think. In the end though it is just wordy for what it is, as a walking tour of a cemetery with a What A Clever Designer Am I vibe.

I don’t like salmon. Or tuna, for that matter. Specifically, I don’t like them in their “steak” forms. Cod or halibut? Sure. But generally I loathe steak fish cuts. The rest of you can enjoy them while I silently judge you. And the same goes for these farce adventures. It’s some kind of tone thing or something. I can’t stand it. It’s not just farce though. I can get behind some farce, and absurdity. It has something to do with the comedic elements. I think they are supposed to be comedic? They aren’t. They are lame. It’s this pastiche. . You’re supposed to think its farce, or supposed to think it’s funny. But it’s neither; it’s just Try Harding.

Ok, so, cemetery with a dude buried in it. He’s relatives got his money as long as they planted a specific garden in the cemetery and kept it well maintained over the years. He’s back to unlife and, in the words of the adventure “The Herbomancer is working on the recipe for the perfect herbal tea”

See! See! Ohhhh boy! Isn’t that great! Guffaw guffaw guffaw. You’re supposed to think it’s funny. I don’t know, maybe you think it is funny. I don’t. I don’t think comedy works well at all in D&D. Sure, you can stick elements, but the suspension of disbelief required means that, at best, I think you can push things to a magical realism type of thing, with brief steps over the line. You know what I have a problem with though? “d. Bee-drawn: Tens of thousands of bees pull the wagon each with its own tiny harness tied to the front of the wagon. It moves 9′ per round.” That’s the werebee queens wagon. No? How about? “All goblins crossing The Botanical Cemetery tie a twig to their head. This silly accessory makes it so the zombie gardeners mistake them for plants, watering them, covering them in manure and shearing their hair. Cunning PCs might imitate the goblins to stay safe from gardeners.” This is, perhaps, as close as I’m willing to go. It is stepping on another trope, of the moronic humanoids, but, also, the party putting sticks on their heads is fun. This is my kind of farce, with a deadly edge to it. Alas, this is few and far between in this adventure, with most of it being the loathsome kind. But, then again, maybe you like that loathsome stuff? What I’m looking for may not be what you’re looking for, in tone.

There’s more than enough for me to not like without droning on about the tone. In the first area of the cemetery you meet some zombie gardeners. If you question them then the DM is instructed to ignore the questions and have the zombies recommend that te party don’t step on the flowerbeds. Again, not my kind of zombies, but, whatever. (In fact, I find the range of zombie vibes in published adventures wild. Mostly just generic undead, sometimes the hordes of flesh eaters, sometimes the horror of the living dead, and sometimes you can talk to them. I guess everyone has their own private Idaho?) 

Oh, also, that first room has the key you’re looking for and you’d have to be an idiot to not find it. You’re told that you hear the zombies hoes striking something metallic. Whatever. This is what counts for the heights of interactivity here. Oh, there’s shit to do. But, again, it’s just a pastiche. There’s no reason to really do anything. Stumble about, grab the key and the other part of it. Maybe talk to a couple of people. Turn some undead (zombies. At levels 3-5?!) Anyway, stumble about and interact with a bunch of ZannAAyYY creatures. Yeah you 

Oh, you get to travel through a body. FLATULENCES • Every 5 rounds: Muscular contractions in the walls create waves of explosive gas that are forcefully expelled toward the exit” That’s right man, never miss an opportunity. 

Oh, the format? Mostly facing pages. Which means two pages per room. Ug! And it’s trying to to the necrotic gnome type formatting. But it doesn’t understand what the purpose of that is or how to use it. Bolding leading to subject headings? Forget that shit, how about just bolding and subject headings not connected to it? The necrotic formatting works because it all works together. You have to understand the why of it to understand how to use it effectively. Otherwise it’s not bringing the clarity that the format is famous for, it’s just, again, putting on a pastiche. It looks like it should be chill but it’s actually worse than if it wasn’t used at all. What if I made a dictionary, and it KIND of looked like it was alphabetical order, but, turns out, it wasn’t? I mean, it DOES still have word definitions, right? It’s just a major pain in the ass to use.

Oh, one encounter has an amphitheater with a bunch of skulls in it, screaming at each other. Are you going to hear this before you get there? Yes, of course! Well, I mean, not in this adventure. Oh, no, no! The map! It’s fucking unnumbered! It’s just a fucking art piece that you get to follow along with because each room has something like “Northwest door: Leads back to

CAVILLO’S TOMB ENTRANCE. • Northeast door: Opens onto VICTOR’S WALKWAY. • Southwest door: Swinging panels. Leads to THE TASTING ROOM.” What the fuck? JUST PUT A FUCKING NUMBER ON THE FUCKING MAP! Why would you not do this? Why would you not put the dictionary in alphabetical order? It takes, what, five seconds? Maybe a minute, total, if I do it REALLY well and legible and number the text also? Also, almost every other adventure on earth does this, so you decided not to it? And, where is the level range?! Not on the fucking cover. Not in the text description on DriveThru. I guess I’m buying this because i just love the publisher and/or designers so much. Fuck that. I’m looking for a level 3-5. 

I loathe this sort of thing. More than the tone. The idea that wandering around and interacting with a bunch of skulls in an amphitheater is fun. I mean, it is. But it’s not interactive play. It doesn’t really lead to anything. It’s just another example of one of those museum tour adventures. In those, you get to wander, look, but touching brings you no reward and only danger. In this, there’s no reason to interact with anything. I guess you need a key part, so you’re fucking around looking for it, but, also, this is like writing a two page description of the mundane flower shop in town, along with the little flower girl that runs it, all so you can pass on a rumor to the party. And you can smell a flower! Roll on the table below … That’s not interactivity. NPC’s get a couple of lines to communicate their vibe and a couple of bullets for what they know, and a couple of sentences for the environment they are on. Much more than that and you’re just Such A Clever Designer. Look, I’m not saying it’s not possible, but I am saying it’s improbable.

This is $2 at DriveThru. The preview is seven pages. You get to see the unnumbered map, and a bunch of meaningless text. Nothing of the actual adventure keys, so as to help you make a purchasing decision. Thus, bad preview.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/517605/the-herbomancer?1892600