Ferric Resonance

By Petras Vaznelis
Archon Games
Generic/Universal
Level 0?

Though the omens chime of certain doom, there are those that seek these nodes for their own gain. Cults of all sizes rise and rally around the confluence of arcana found in these treasures, locations, and abominations. Heralds to the onset of Armageddon, the conclaves muster and channel arcane power from beyond the veil. All the while, the reach of the fabled ‘Dark One’ lengthens across the Accursed Realm.

This 56 page adventure is a great steaming pile of shit with no redeeming qualities. It is a narrative railroad consisting of the third read aloud and one third backstory. 

How the fuck something like this can exists in 2025 is fucking beyond me. I’m not sure if I am abhored by the ignorance or impressed by the bravado of publishing something like this. Remember my fucking pad thai analogy? You know, you’ve never had pad thai. People tell you its good. You have some and its pretty good. Then, one day, you have actual GOOD pad thai and your mind is fucking blown. Yes, you can see how all that crap you ate before called its self pad thai, but, also, fuck that shit because you just had mind shatteringly good pad thai. The real deal. There are people walking around in the world today who think that his is a D&D adventure. That the form here, and the play it generates, are what fucking D&D is. Yeah yeah yeah, we’re all on our fucking journey. Whatever, Look man, I know the score. Life has no meaning, it’s the search of meaning, blah blah blah. But FUCK. Sometimes the shit is a little too real and your face is just ground in to the reality of life and its too fucking much. I am genuinely baffled. THIS is what D&D means to you? Ok, sure, I guess so.

Blah blah blah, yet another apocalypse is happening. Evil cultists getting killed by an over zealous inquisition. And the party are some zero level peasants that are out at the villages work camp harvesting bog iron fro mthe mire. Which means wandering through it with a long pole looking for solid stuff to pull out hoping it is boog iron. We know all of this because of the read-aloud. 

The read-aloud, I am … man. Ok, so, there’s two types of text in this adventure, there is read-aloud and there is DM text. The read-aloud consist of about two thirds of the pages in the adventure. Yes, Two thirds of the pages. At a minimum, I’d guess And, yes, this IS a 56 page adventure. And it’s all in second person. You’re tired. You’re hungry. All of the sins of writing read-aloud are on full display here, except for italics. Thankfully, there’s no italics. But everything else. Telling the players what their characters think and feel and what they do. I don’t know that I’ve EVER seen an adventure with this much read-aloud before. EVAR. The sheer audacity of it. Just absolutely going for it. I’m not ever sure it’s physically POSSIBLE to read this much text out loud to people. I mean, do you strain your larynx? Do they all just walk out?

Did I mention it’s purple? Oh, sorry. It’s purple. “As winter yields to the slow thaw of spring, the Mire’s southern shore falls beneath the righteous intent of the burgeoning Inquisition.” or “Time crawls onward during the sluggish hike to your destination.” You enjoy that, ya hear?

The DM text is no better. It is just a mountain of backstory, explaining motivations and history. It has almost NOTHING to do with actual play at the table. 

There’s nothing else. I’m serious. You can have read-aloud or you can have Storyteller Notes backstory. That’s it. It’s fucking wiilllld!

The adventure? You wander around. Read aloud is read. ,The entire first half is being bored to death by mundane things like breakfast and the entire second half is read-aloud telling you where you go and what you do as people chase you. I guess you get to fight at the end. Oh, oh. That’s good. If you get in to a fight before the last encounter then you die. The text tells us that, that a single soldier can and will kill everyone. Then, at the end, there are six of them AND a giant fungus monster. But, you’re supposed to fight. You gotta be consistent with your own framings! But, I guess I’m worrying for nothing. The read-aloud tells us what were doing.

(As a personal aside, the giant fungus monster is immune to fire. I disagree, it has ont seen yet how motivated I am to set it alight.)

The audacity. The ignoring of every good piece of advice. Having lived a life in which, seemingly, the designer has never seen another adventure and yet has produced an adventure of their own. It is like discovering a people who have not yet made contact with the rest of the world and have their own culture with some bizarre rules of normalcy, like, eating newborns is a good act. How did you get here, you wonder? 

This is $10 at DriveThru. The preview is five pages. The fourth page, page eight, has what I think is the start of the adventure. From here on is read-aloud and background.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/523715/ferric-resonance?1892600