by Vasili Kaliman
Necrotic Gnome
OSE
Levels 2-4
IN THE CAVERNOUS DEPTHS of a mountain lies a lake of pure milk, inhabited by a tribe of peaceful merfolk. Their king and queen, aided by dwarf servants, use the milk to manufacture the most exquisite chocolate truffles in existence. The truffles are said to be so delicious as to soften even the most hardened of hearts. People from all over the world visit the lake to buy these irresistible creations. Recently, truffle production has mysteriously ceased, the dwarves have disappeared, and in nearby cities, scores of disreputable merchants have begun hawking
This sixteen page adventure features seventeen rooms in a merfolk chocolate factory where candy and chocolate golems are made by dwarves. That has been taken over by Willy Wonka. And her skeleton servants and apprentices. A simple stabby adventure, easy to run, with an odious premise.
I guess I start with the Castle Greyhawk warning. I hate Castle Greyhawk. It is, perhaps, the first real betrayal in my life. Anything resembling Castle Greyhawk is going to not be met favorably by me. Independent of that, I don’t think comedy works in D&D. Or, perhaps, if you write for comedy its going to come off badly, while certain situations can get a pass. The comedy inherent in the way, say Gamma World 1/2e was run vs the way Gamma World 4e was presented. Front and Center doesn’t work.
Merfolk live in a mountain that produces milk. They use the milk to make delicious chocolate truffles. With the aid of their dwarf friends, which have “Orange skin, green hair, and white eyebrows.” Not the only time there will be an appeal to Wonka in this adventure. Augustus Gloop shows up and takes the place over, there are chocolate golems and her apprentices and her skeletons who sing and dance and, most of all, now the chocolate is bad. (And by bad I’m sure the designer means that while they are cost optimized for a certain quality level and yet the pricing does not reflect this. Otherwise is to suggest that only the rich and powerful get access to chocolate, except, perhaps, when the merfolk dole out a bit to the general populace on the charity day they use to assuage their consciousness to tell themselves they are good people? A McDonald’s Cheeseburger is good at $.59 and bad at $6.) So, it’s a Willy Wonka adventure with merfolk, oompa-loompa dwarves, singing and dancing skeletons, and that kind of shit. I find this tone enormously offputting, but, I know (and have suffered through) many a local game in which the DM/friends loved it. Easier to play off a bad game as ‘just for fun!’, is my theory.
Map is fine. The monsters are on it. The formatting is clear. It’s not the standard OSE ultra-terse keyword style, so, haters of that format will need to find something else to hate. “Library: A humid and stuffy cave with a 20? ceiling hung with long, jagged stalactites. Bookcases line much of the western wall. A hefty tome sits on a polished wooden lectern near the doorway.” A room name to start to frame whats to come, a decent but short description (which I wish were more evocative, but, it’s fine) and then some bolded keywords that are followed up in sections below. Good format. Appropriate bolding to highlight things. It doesn’t look at all like a rigorous railroad format, but that what needs to be done in the moment is done to bring clarity … in a generally consistent way. Which is perhaps the highest praise one can give with regard to formatting and layout and organization. ‘I follow some standards but I break them when it doesn’t make sense. Monsters all get descriptions right up front, instead of backstory and ecology and shit. This is how it should be. If I’m running the fuckign adventure I need to know what the things looks like RIGHT NOW. “Human magic-users clad in purple robes embroidered with a symbol of the Chocolatier’s trading house. Carry lanterns for light.” We’re not winning awards here, but, also, you don’t need to win an award with your evocative writing it just needs to be good enough.
The adventure is mostly fighting. The first five rooms are “public” and you can nose your way through them. Then we switch to “you’re not supposed to be here!” with some occasional freeing of prisoners or talking to the merfolk king or freeing the merfolk queen. A couple of traps, maybe you eat some magic chocolate, but, mostly, you are fighting things. “Lit by chocolate candles in iron candelabras, flickering with a warm glow. 5 skeletons are engaged in a musical performance, merrily singing and playing instruments around an 8? solid chocolate mermaid statue.” So, stab some skeletons, stab some dwarves, stab some apprentices, stab some golems, stab Wonka. It’s a lair adventure except it has seventeen rooms.
I’m not enthused about this one. Yeah, the tone is a turn off for me, so, maybe thats coloring my opinion too much. But the thing is a little too straight forward for me. The writing just not decent enough, the situations (if anything could be called a situation …) not interesting enough. No real order of battle for the apprentices. Yeah, formatting is great, but, in 2025, I’m gonna need just a little bit more. So, it gets a 6.99999999999999. It’s fine, and if you’re ok with the tone and just want stabbing then it doesn’t offend. Bleh. It’s bland. Bland with, perhaps, a veneer of trying to hard.
.This is $5 at DriveThru. The preview is twelve pages. It shows you the intro and about eight dungeon rooms. More than enough to make a judgement call on the adventure, so, great preview.
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/530085/quick-delve-1-milk?1892600
I picked this up and ran it at GenCon, and the players really enjoyed it. A good beer and pretzels one shot, nothing too complicated about it. The whole “milk” thing fit the whimsical nature of a late night convention game well.
What event was this? I looked for OSE events in the schedule and could not find any.
I ran it for my friends at the JW Wednesday evening, it wasn’t a scheduled thing. I’ll probably run OsE at the con next year.
Well then you are lost!
Another Willy Wonka adventure? Hasn’t the “OSR” suffered enough already with the last one?
Watch your mouth when you’re talking about the future ENNIE winner adventure!
EF is just destroying the OSE brand. At least Gavin is now rich. It was probably worth it.
Such a bullshit comment, spoken with the arrogance of the type of guy who likes to get into fights with strangers on the internet.
Kek. You wish.
Spoken like a true cunt.
Use of the word cunt indicates either a refusal to submit to now defunct political correctness or simple irishness, either way, pretty good.
Having some disdain for online slapfights is probably a sign of healthy priorities but at the same time, you do know which blog you are frequenting yeah?
My disappointment with these quirky whimsical adventures is the amount of fighting in them – “A giant tomato monster attacks! Roll initiative!” The action/solution does not match well with the challenges presented. Shouldn’t the action/solution be quirky and whimsical too? For example, instead of having to bring the giant lettuce, bacon, and bread together with the giant tomato to make a peaceful BLT sandwich, it often just becomes slice/squash the tomato with weapons/spells. And this happens again and again with more puns added. And having to stab the beating raisin heart on the giant regenerating gingerbread man attacking you to slay it is not interesting.
Don’t mention that gingerbread man! You’ll give Bryce flashbacks!
The Heretic
I actually didn’t mind the gingerbread golems (technically, gingerbread golem encrusted would-be suitors) in the Dolmenwood scenario, it was whimsical without being heavy-handedly slapstick.
I’d have to go back to look, but I believe this was the main guardian on one of the early levels of WG5 Castle Greyhawk. If you backstabbed it in the pulsing raisin with the magical bread knife it died instantly (or at least took an extra x8 damage).
The Heretic
Bryce, did you intentionally turn off replies on older reviews?
Based on what happened with ‘Reality Unbound: Reclamation’ I’m sure the answer is yes.
“No real order of battle for the apprentices. Yeah, formatting is great, but, in 2025, I’m gonna need just a little bit more.”
You are welcome.
Looks like shit, smells like shit, tastes like shit. Maybe is it milk?
Ah – not really into comedic D&D – that being said I would definitely plagiarize Futurama’s Fry and the Slurm Factory (S-1, Episode 13). Slurm – it’s refreshingly addictive.
Slurms McKenzie: Whimmy-wham-wham-wazzle
I would base the chocolate golems on Michelle Trachtenberg’s “Screaming Gummy Bear” as seen in Robot Chicken
I completely agree on the Castle Greyhawk hate. I have never been so disappointed in a gaming product. And then T$R seemed to think that they had writers and artists whose comedic chops exceeded Mel Brooks and Zucker-Abrams-Zucker, when in fact Holloway was middling amusing at his best, and the writers thought that orc drill sergeants and f*cking “tinker gnomes” or “kender” were sidesplitting enough to bear constant repetition. Dear reader, they were not. Not really even “funny once”. Frankly, the second-rate “comedy” in ’80s-’90s T$R had more to do with me finding other game companies to follow than nearly any other factor.
Care to elaborate about CG? What was disappointing about it? I’ve never read it.
Since we can no longer post on older reviews, I’ll put this here for ‘Turn It Off’.
“This is Pay What You Want at itch.io, with a suggested price of $2.”
It’s also on drivethru as PWYW, apparently since Sept ’24.
RE: “Turn it Off”
Author also addressed the turn it off rug pull twist (light the beacon- summon the monster) on page 15 – Heroic Alternative.
Really nice job. Sorry I missed that when posting concern.