By Daniel Collins
mxplusb
OSE
Level 1
Aeranor is a land of scattered small communities trying to carve a stable life for themselves. Petty Lords squabble over land as neither the crown or the head they sit upon last long for any King. Darkness festers in the deep wilderness. Evil stirs in the dark dungeons below. Rumors of silver and glory stir about. The adventurers are a few of the many who have grown tired of the simple life. They yearn for more than what their father did before them. Barrow elves, witches, dragons, and more await the adventures in the wilderness of Aeranor. Oaths will be tested, the Gods will send forth Omens, but it is up to the party to forge their own destiny.
This 64 page adventure describes about thirteen mini-locations in a small region. It wants to build intrigue. It wants to be a teaching adventure for DMs. It is dull, unimaginative, and needs to learn how to write an adventure before telling others how to write an adventure.
I am fond of a few things in adventure. Town adventures. Barrows. Gonzo. Generation ships. I try to disclose these at the start of a review. I also have an unnatural hated for at least one thing: the teaching adventure. Specifically, the ones that try to teach the DM. Specifically, the ones that try to teach the DM how to write an adventure. I loathe them. I think this comes from all of the reviews I’ve done, and seeing people follow all of the bad advice. Time and time again a magazine, or published product, has had an article about How To Write An Adventure and its almost always full of shitty ass advice. And then I get to see the fallout from that, as others write to those standards or learns to write an adventure from the looking at the adventures that were written to those standards. I fucking LOATHE it. Hence my descent in to hookers and blow. “For this, we need to make a table. When you make your own, you want enough to be able to run an interesting encounter without having to think about too much during play. Give each a little prompt instead of just the monster.” You learn, instead, the way everyone else has fucking learned: by looking at good adventures that speak to you. Having to be told how to create a wandering monster table is wiiiilllldd. And in a conversational tone as well, no less. This then is the doom of man.
To its credit this product is trying to weave a larger narrative. It’s trying to tie the thirteen populated hexes in to a larger narrative about a stay-at-home-lord, a newly married couple set to inherit the crown and blah blah blah. That’s the right thing to do. You’ve got all of these hexes and you make a handful of them related to the “plot” and the others complications or just things to do. Correct. It also doesn’t really takes sides, allowing the party to do what they will, although it seems that one of the choices it played out more. I’m generally ok with this. We don’t force things down the parties throat, but also, we support the options the most that are the most likely to be taken.
Hey, did I mention that the Table of Contents has no page numbers? No, it’s not hyperlinked either. Good luck locating any information on those thirteen adventure sites that you need during play! Obviously, there were no instructions to put in page numbers.
And what kind of adventure can we look forward to? Well, “Lord Eowald has posted a notice asking for any men-at-arms to take care of this elusive “Barrow Elf” who lives near the river to the East. There is a total reward of 50 sp for its head.” Wunderbar! It’s one of THOSE adventures.
The first adventure ,with the Barrow Elf, is generally typical of everything you’ll find in here. It’s got a small Dyson map of ten or so rooms. (Quoting some Sly Flourish advice mahed up with the designers own: “dont worry about finding the perfect map, just grab the first one that looks good enough.” and “go find a free Dyson map.” Both oof which i might take … if I were using this in my home game. And neither of which is good advice for something that you are going to publish and charge fucking money for.
Anyway, on to the rooms. I’m going to do something here I don’t usually do. Yes, I quote room text frequently. But this time I thought I would just include the first six rooms wholesale, so you can get a good look at the context in which the critique is going to happen:
1. 3 Corpses of unlucky victims (Zombies) are scattered on the stairs. They stir if anyone walks past.
2. Still, putrid smelling water. The water will rot away any flesh.
3. Empty, and eerily clean.
4. Zombies shambling around the room where they once rested eternally. Each stone coffin holds 1 keepsake and 1d4 silver pieces.
5. Empty
6. Ulsylmor’s wondrous lyre lay discarded in a stone coffin along with a set of silver plates (25 hacksilver worth). 1 XP
How’s that? You loving your fucking life? Maybe a little less effort in to the bullshit advice part of the booklet and more effort, A FUCKING LOT more effort, on the actual adventure, eh? Unlucky is padding. Once rested eternally is padding. These are backstories that don’t impact he actual play. The designer has confused “backstory” with “useful to play. You could have made them do something. You could have given then a word or two of evocative description. Nope. Backstory. And those rooms, proper! The majesty of them! The lack of evocative description! The lack of interactivity! Look, ok, I’m not morally opposed to room twos still putrid water that rots away flesh. I think it could use a little more. You had, obviously from the comparison to the lines above and below it, a few more words you could have thrown in there, but, not a bad thing. The rest though? Low effort descriptions of low effort room concepts. Shit. And I’m not cherry picking here. Most of the adventure locale keys in this resemble those above. Which kind of makes you wonder what the designer was thinking, devoting, generously, thirty pages to keys and thirty four to padding outside of the adventure.
The general store, in the starting town: “Talbrak’s Goods: Talbrak’s is the one stop shop for anyone traveling looking to restock supplies.” A boring town, with a sentence per, and nothing unusual or fun or intriguing going on. The local roc lair: “While they do mate for life, the father went off to the mountains to the East to protect his family from another aerial intruder – a dragon!” Sir Not-Appearing-in-this-Film has been a fixture for a long time now. It’s systemic, it’s everywhere.
Hey, that barrow elf? It’s a wight. That’s the first thing you’re gonna fight. A fucking fight. It’s explicit. Well, there’s those four zombies, but the only other thing is the wight in the tomb. 3HD: THAC0 of 17. Energy Drain. Hit by magic and silver only. That kind of wight. I’m not sure if that’s a TPK at level one or not. Hmmmm … And you start, right after the garbage Session 0 advice crap, in media res, right on the journey to his mound.
This is hard because I generally separate the creator from their work. In this case those, because its to be a learning adventure, they seem inherently linked to me. The advice within is simplistic and the adventure itself not good in the most basic ways, except for the overarching concept behind it.
This is $5 at DriveThru. The preview is nineteen pages and you get to see the first couple of adventuring locales as well as some of the “teaching.” So, good preview anyway.
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/524071/adventure-kit-1-the-lover-s-folly?1892600