(5e) Rats of Waterdeep

Posted on October 6, 2018 by Bryce Lynch


By Lysa Chen, Will Doyle
Self Published
5e
Levels 1

Solve a brutal crime on the mean streets of Waterdeep in this madcap companion adventure for Xanathar’s Guide to Everything!

This 29 page city adventure is fun. Modeled on a Noir novel, it doesn’t take itself too seriously, but never falls over the line in to humor or sillyness. It walks up and leans over it, waving its arms to not fall over it, but stays firmly planted while looking over its shoulder and giving the finger to the hardcare serious adventures behind it. Pretty well organized and written, I’d be happy to run this, and it’s good enough that I’ll look up the authors others works. Also: One of my vices is city adventures, so, be warned.

The docks are quarantined, there’s a plague. The watch has a message from someone inside that says they know what’s behind it. The party gets to escort the detective in … only to find the informant dead and the detectie most likely compromised.

There’s a touch of noir in this. It’s a mystery, the party escorts a detective. He’s new to the squad and wears a fedora and trenchcoat and doesn’t understand why the rest of the watch detectives just wear the city uniform. There’s a crime lord with a henchman, jilted lovers in the form of the Rat King and the Lady of Plagues, bored secretaries causing trouble … a lot of fun shit to roleplay with.

In this case the crime lord is Waterdeeps on Beholder Bob, and his lacky Mind Flayer. He meets the party after they find the first body, is bored, and sends his thugs after them while he floats away, bored and distracted, with his lacky. I bitch a lot about forced fights and so on, but, if you’re gonna do it then having your 1sts meets a behold and a mind flayer and get a chance to talk before thugging it up is absolutely one way fun way to do it. Plus, he disintegrates the detective you’re escorting if the party get lippy. NPC removed! Yeah! Fun! Yeah! This is almost a DCC aventure! Well, no, but still, closer than most!

It’s got a nice map/adventure flowchart up front explaining the area and the adventure and how the hooks and clues work together. PERFECT for a nice overview. It uses bullet points to convey information. PERFECT for scanning and locating information and breaking it up.

The elements are great. For example, at the apothecary-with-something-to-hide the secretary is trying to get rid of the players using the usual bored clerk gimmicks. The roleplaying notes for the NPC’s are good … pretty nice.

Oh, and the usual “lets explain everything in a diary?” bullshit? It’s handled through a player handout. Players LOVE handouts AND it doesn’t overstay its welcome by droning on. Great!

And, and, if you CATCH the plague you will turn in to a rat! You get features, like beady red eyes, or whiskers, for each save you miss in the adventure. FUN!

And there’s a town newspaper handout!

And on the down side …

The bullets are good, as are the NPC notes, but they do get a bit long at times. A little bolding, or a sentence or sentence and half less would be better, as would a more direct writing style. You’re conveying information to the DM who is scanning during play … it has to be terse … while remaining evocative. Cut the bs.

Certain details are abstracted. We’re told the plague goes by many names, including Rat Pox. Well, fuck, the fact that you named that one means rats are important. A few more naes mixed in would have been fun.

Finally, the two main characters are the Rat King and the Lady of Plagues. They are demihumans. B O R I N G. Think of how much more fun it would have been if they were straight out Petty Gods?!?!?! A REAL rat kind and a minor god plague?!?! FUN! And fun friends to make!

I’m clearly a fan of this. I like city adventures, this one is fun in the way I like adventures to be fun. Not humor, not silly, but with some nods to those elements. It’s not Sliced Bread quality, but it’s solid enough.

This is $5 at DriveThru. The preview is broken. I has sads.
https://www.dmsguild.com/product/240322/Rats-of-Waterdeep?affiliate_id=1892600

Posted in Level 1, Reviews, The Best | 15 Comments

Under the Temple Crypt

Posted on October 3, 2018 by Bryce Lynch


By Extildepo
Verisimilitude Society Press
Swords & Wizardry
4-7

This dungeon assumes that there is a temple somewhere with a mysterious walled-in doorframe in the basement crypt. The walled-in doorframe predates the temple itself and leads to ancient subterranean structures that hint of an older civilization as well as an expansive underworld.

This wight page dungeoncrawl has a twenty-ish room ruined city/underground area. It stands out for being mostly inoffensive, a wonder in and of itself these days. The writing is a mix of workmanlike facts and decent imagery, leading to an inconsistent vibe overall. A little polishing of the text would have elevated this quite a bit. Still, I’m not mad at it.

This one is close. It’s got a pretty decent “drop in dungeon” premise, being behind a bricked up doorway. The supporting map is ok, with lots of varied terrain, tunnels and hallways, under and over tunnels and so on, especially for its small-ish size.

This is just a basic little dungeoncrawl in a mixed dungeon, both in creatures and in setting, from caverns to mini ruined underground city portion. It’s quite successful sometimes in the writing. Overall you get themes of decay, dust, fallen stone block and crumbling ruins. This is built up through repetition and the artwork present, both of which are good techniques. Ornate pillars with stylyze reliefs of animals, large and sticky cobwebs hanging from pillar to pillar, slowing movement and obscuring vision. A green and purple luminescent glow emitting from behind a broken wall … thats room two and it’s a pretty good description. I can imagine it, and more, and because of that I can EASILY build on it for the players. There’s more than one room that reaches this great height of writing.

But it’s much more usual for the writing to be more workmanlike, and less evocative. “This crypt is typical of the times.”, “These dead priests still wear their ceremonial robes and stoles”, “This once opulent sanctuary is now a ruin.” or “The entrance to this building is open and arched.” It’s all very workmanlike, and more than a little bland. A bathhouse has pools of black liquid. BORING WORD CHOICE. Another room has a dozen large ceramic urns. Give it some life man! “This is the lair of a fearsome troll.” is not an evocative room description.

This extends to the creatures. There’s a giant spider who attacks. There are ghouls who attack. Various creatures. They just don’t have much life in them. Ghouls from a ruined city? Those should erudite ghouls, or an inquisitive spider, and so on. They need a little life to them. Not everything has to be something you can to, but it needs a adjective or adverb, some kind of descriptor to bring the thing to life.
So, it’s ok. It doesn’t overstay. It’s got a decent map and a few good descriptions along with some things to poke at that contribute to ok encounters. It tends more to the bland side, but, again, I have overly high expectations. It’s close. Some refinement, especially around word choice, would send it in very good territory.

This is $1 at DriveThru. Note that the level range is NOT in the product description, only on the cover. Boo! The preview doesn’t really show you anything more than the map.https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/252018/Under-the-Temple-Crypt?affiliate_id=1892600

Posted in Level 4, No Regerts, Reviews | 4 Comments

The Dragons Secret

Posted on October 1, 2018 by Bryce Lynch


By Jennell Jaquays
Fifth Wall Games & Miniatures
Swords & Wizardry
Levels 5-7

The Dragon’s Secret centers on a mystery from the past: villagers invited a gold dragon to bless and protect the region with her presence… for a little tribute… and a temple… and followers… and perhaps just a whole lot more tribute. When the dragon eventually went mad, she laid waste to the surrounding lands in a fiery rage, ending with her death at the hands of heroes. Except… they found almost none of her treasure. In time people forgot the cathedral’s location, but the legend of her missing treasure still inspires seekers to keep looking.

This 54 page adventure features a three level thirty room dungeon. A classic exploratory dungeon stuffed full of things, it manages to be both verbose AND scan well … generally. A few more cross-references and some rewording would push this beast in to very rare territory indeed. Also, it has the ducks/aardvarks, a featured Jaquayism, for those of you for whom D&D is serious business.

Classic Exploratory Dungeon. The rooms in this are stuffed full of things. It seems like every single room has three or four different things going on it. This isn’t the hidden depth of Kuntz, which is seldom realized, or the immediate gratification of a modern set-piece room with 12 terrain features to exploit. The rooms here remind me a bit of the classic examples from the 1e DMG … if they had more going on. You can poke and prod several different things in each room, or get poked, as the case may be. This turns each room in to a mini-adventure, with as much to do as the party cares to engage in. One small room is a square tower stairwell, opening on to a room at the top with a door that leads to the roof. Stairs count as #1 thing. The final rotation of the stairs are barricaded with thorny brush, heavy branches, fire sharpened stakes, etc. That’s thing #2. There’s also a secret door, but we’ll ignore that. The top of the stairs are rotten, that’s a “trap” and #3. Big pile of treasure in the a jumbled mess in the center of the room. That’s feature #4. And then there’s a bunch of piercers up in the rafters, that’s #5. Now, look, you could think of this as a room with a pile of treasure, a trap, and a monster. But that’s not how its WRITTEN. It’s both a cohesive room and yet it feels like there’s these separate elements to encounter and enjoy. Room after room after room does this. Secret side entrance. Gold dragon altar in the corner. Mechanical dragon if it sees you. Slide it aside to in a hole with treasure in it. But there are also centipedes in it under the treasure. And werewolves in the next room that can agro in if they hear you. It’s depth, it’s hidden, but it’s not obtuse and it’s LIKELY to be encountered. And, in both examples I cited. You can agro in creatures from the next room if you are loud. There are linkages between things. It’s a really, really good design. This is the kind of shit that I love to see. Exploratory, overloaded. It’s classic D&D at its finest.

The rooms are long. I’d say “a column” is average for a room in this, as the page count to room number would indicate. Rooms have a description, and then a backstory heading, a remarkables heading, a secrets heading, a curios heading, a denizens heading, a tactics/roleplay heading, and so on. I have theorized in the past that one could be verbose and still make something scannable. This comes about as close as you can get, I think. Th headings make it easy to locate (or skip, in the case of background …) the important sections of the room. You can the general description and relate it to the party and then, as they explore the room, your attention is drawn to the other various sections. It’s a tad mechanical, and I’ve seen terser formats that accomplish the same thing, but overall I think it works. It scans well, which means it helps the DM run the room, which is, ultimately, the purpose of all room descriptions.

Which is not to say it’s perfect.

My primary frustration is with one of the strengths, the rooms linkages. Gargoyles fly off to get help from the rest of their gagle. Yeah! Room linkage! Uh … which room is that gagle in? Or, noise from one room doesn’t really translate well in to what gets drawn in. That alter room has some werewolf treasure in it. They are in the next room. But you don’t know that. Until you come to that room entry. Thus what’s it missing are some simple cross-references. “The gargoyles fly off to get help [a8]”, for example. There ARE some attempts at cross-referencing, but this generally comes up in the case of the the adventure side quests and rumors, etc. They are GREAT there, and totally worth it and appreciated. But the rooms are missing it. There’s some great color in some of those, and more than enough to make this a pretty rich environment … if you put the work in. They are tacked on in the back and while each one references things in the adventure and adds a LOT of local/regional depth, they DON’T scan well and are, well, hooks to be developed by the DM. Prepare thy notepad! Wanted signs plastered all over for two criminals? Count me in on that color!

Finally, I’d note that the room descriptions, while good, are not great. I’m talking about the initial little description that talks each room, not the added section heading/expanded detail. The rooms don’t always start with the most important things near the top of the description and sometimes omit some things that seem important to the ‘hidden depth’ of the room. I’m not sure that knowing the werewolfs are two familiaes helps as the first room entry? There’s generally some good imagery, with light from dragon lamps, some missing and dark, illuminating a golden dragon statue, for example. But it’s also the case that some DM cues could be more obvious at the start of the room.

Wanderers are doing something (yeah!) but treasure is generally book items and boring +1’s and 150gp gems. I can has sads? I wanted more in that area. There’s also weirdly placed asides. I blame layout for this. I LIKE asides, like what makes THESE gargoyles special. But it appears deep in the adventure not near the first gargoyles. That makes you have to remember that you say it before. I don’t like membering.

Yeah, I’d pay $15 for this and I’d run it. Hyquatious Vaults, Blue Medusa, Guy’s work, Darkness Beneath/Upper Caves, and DCO all have their strengths and do things well. This falls close to Vaults and/or Guy’s work, being classic D&D exploratory, but with a FUCK TON more going on. Or, at least, FEELING like it is going on. It doesn’t feel as focused as those other adventures, which maybe is because of the room length or the overloaded nature of the rooms. I don’t know.

This is $15 at DriveThru. The preview is seven pages and TOTALLY lame. It doesn’t show any of the rooms at all. It’s important for people to understand what they are getting and showing how a typical room is written, in the preview or product blurb, is an important part of that.
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/247579/The-Dragons-Secret-Dungeons-of-Doom-edition?affiliate_id=1892600

Posted in Level 5, Reviews, The Best | 2 Comments

(5e) The Curse of the Sandoval Estate

Posted on September 29, 2018 by Bryce Lynch


By Michael Hubbard
Self Published
5e
Level 3

Many years ago a young man living outside of the Silverwood forest made a pact with Oberon, saving the Silverwood and it’s denizens. Given an estate and profitable business of woodworking Alexander Sandoval lived a blessed for twenty years. On the eve of his wedding Alexander slaughtered his family and the servants of the estate. That night a terrible curse has been laid upon the estate. Are you ready to unravel the mystery of the Curse of Sandoval Estate!?

This seventeen page adventure describes a 23 room manor house that is haunted by a past family massacre. It tries pretty hard, but is overly flowery/dramatic in its language and has issues with repetition. For the second time in a week, I’m wondering if there might be English As A Second Language issues … or else it needed an editor/copyeditor to clear up the writing. It’s almost unintelligible in places. And that’s coming from me!

This is the third or fourth adventure of this type I’ve reviewed. The basic formula is to take a site haunted by ghosts and have the party look around for important things that they need to put the ghosts to rest. There’s usually a ghost, the murderer, that shows up at certain places in certain times and acts out little vignettes, etc. You see the scenes, find the objects, put them where they are supposed to go, and lay the ghosts to rest. This time it’s dad killing his entire family and reenacting the evening every day for a week, once every thousand years (!). The idea is that you’ve got seven nights to learn from your mistakes, etc, in order to solve the mystery. [And, as an aside, as I’m doing this review two news stories have appeared in the last couple of days about fathers killing their families. The Affordable Care Act brought mental health service in to alignment with other health services. If you don’t want to read Camu then go make a fucking appointment. Geez, as if there’s a point to life anyway.]

It feels for all the world like the designer had a strong image in their head, or the adventure and the individual rooms. And then they went and fucked it up by not doing a second draft/edit. The text is in the same shape as one of my reviews, but, somehow, even worse. Weird comma placement, or lack thereof, clauses out of nowhere … it’s pretty hard to figure out what is going on. From the first rooms read-aloud comes: “Throughout the room, voices can be heard whispering and a sea shadowy figures float around the room.” Is that supposed to be a sea of shadowy figures? They are never mentioned again. Are they ghosts, or just shadows from the lanterns and statues? (see blow) Fuck if I know.

The front hall has some statues lit by sickly green light from bullseye lanterns in the corners. That’s not too bad. Likewise there’s a good ol hanging tree, a smokehouse, a bloody kitchen, and lots of other rooms that have a line or two of striking imagery in them. It’s not quite Inn of Lost Heroes territory, but it’s close enough to make you think of that adventure, and if that’s not a compliment I don’t know what is.

Plus its got a dying kid on a ghost unicorn that’s left a ghost trail as a hook. A pretty fucking literal Call to Adventure. 🙂

There’s no map of the grounds, in spite of that being pretty relevant and the adventure trying to be a sandboxy affair (and it is.) You need that map, the abstraction doesn’t really work. It also does things like “DC15 passive perception to notice the dead kids glove at the bottom of the lake.” I’m not cool with that sort of thing, you need to actively search for shit, not just walk it and notice it. CLues, scenes, players paying attention is what leads to search checks. Interactivity. Not just a walk by passive check. LAME.

The language can also get overly flowery at times. For every sickly green light there’s also a “Around the tree itself there is a faint pulse of life that rages against the fear and chaos that dominates the landscape.” This kind of overly dramatic shit is supposed to make you feel something. It does, but Apathy and Revulsion to the Text is not, I think, what the designer intended. I’m a fan of twisting words, using them freely to construct imagery, but falling over the line to flowery text and telling the players what they feel is a big bad No No. You need to provide imagery that make people THINK of fear & chaos, not tell them they think of fear and chaos.

The text is repetitive in place, like telling us about how a child died in the smokehouse three of so times in a couple of paragraphs. And for all of the bullet point organization of the hook information, it seems to fail at basic clarity for the endgame scenarios. You’d think that would be simple, but they seem to be out of order and almost stream of consciousness.

I don’t see an editor attached to this. If there was one the designer needs his money back. If there was not one then he needs one. I think most editors are shit, for adventures, but they would have caught some of the blatant language issues and, in my overly optimistic dream world I live in, even the organization and clarity issues. No, you don’t NEED an editor to do a good job, but you do need to put in the effort the editor would have.

This is $5 at Dmsguild. The preview is about six pages. Page three shows you hooks, and their bullet organization and that ghost unicorn I liked. Page five shows you the outside encounter areas that you have to piece together, and one of those passive DC checks in the brackish pool. The preview is a good example of the language issues, but doesn’t highlight the best of the imagery.
https://www.dmsguild.com/product/253155/Curse-of-the-Sandoval-Estate

Posted in Reviews | 5 Comments

(5e) Escape from Wheloon

Posted on September 29, 2018 by Bryce Lynch


By Alan Patrick
Self Published
5e
Levels 1-4

The walled city of Wheloon holds the criminal population of Cormyr. The residents
of that place are bound to it forever and cut off from the outside world. Inside, plans
are made and malcontents pool their resources – and outside, forces influence the
innocent to ensure that a dire plot can be realized without interference from the
knights and mages that guard the realm. Now you’re here with no memory of what
brought you to Wheloon, and all you can think of is finding out why!

This twenty one page town adventure sets new lows in adventure design. At the same time both railroady, taking away player action, and plot-based but with no fucking plot points. The usual issues with organizing the town incorrectly and useless detail. Lipstick on a pig indeed!

This is an Adept level DMSGuild adventure, an endorsement from WOTC of quality.

You wake up in town with no memories. You wander around, almost literally. Four scripted events happen. You somehow figure out how to get in to a smithy and have a fight. Done.

There’s nothing wrong with scripted events. They can add flavor to an adventure. There’s nothing wrong with THESE scripted events, at least in theory. In practice, just about every bad design decision that could be made WAS made. They are generally aimed at one of the members of the party and at the end of it you regain some memories and get awarded second level. Yeah, ok, I’m not going to quibble with that. But … in the very first one the PC has to make a DC 14 animal handling check. If they succeed they get the level award. All of the others just award the level. So, if, out of the blue, the party member decides to do an animal handling on a attack dog they MIGHT get a second level. I don’t mind this as a true award, but its written so you get some memories back if you do it, as well as the second level that everyone else is going to get. It’s bad design.

And in another some rando guide just has rumor dialog out of the blue. It’s just inserted and stuck in to the encounter. No intro. No NPC name. It’s a guide for fucks sake! But it’s written like … I don’t know. First it’s written as a guide. Then there’s this rando rumor dialog. Then there’s this implication that the guide just runs off. It like someone yanked out random sentences or paragraphs and those explain what’s going on.

And the railroading! It starts immediately. The DM’s announces that one of the PC”s has found the parities gear in one of the chests in the decrepit room they wake up in. WTF? Hey, that’s the parties fucking decision! Fuck the story your telling! It belongs to the players not the DM. And then when you walk outside you’re just told you’re in the city of Wheloon? And then you get to all make a CHR check and if you succeed you can bribe the guards. Again, WTF? Why the fuck are you dictating the hows and why of the parties interaction with their environment? Persuade, bribe, intimidate, there’s an near infinite number of choices … but the DC check is written out of the blue.

This happens over and over again. It’s like You’re sitting in an inn and the DM calls out “ok, everyone make a Arana check! Those of you who succeed channel the elder force and gain a level!” Wait, what? Why the fuck are we rolling? Shouldn’t the party ACT and then ROLL for success? (And that’s not even taking in to account the OD&D method of trying to succeed WITHOUT rolling.) The whole “ok, every roll for [esoteric skill] and lets act like you just used it” is nonsense, and happens repeatedly. It makes no fucking sense. In another place an NPC puts a ring on a party members finger, and then later takes it off. Uh, no, thank you very fucking much. How about you just roleplay my entire PC for me? How about you just roll a d6 at the start of the fucking night and on a 1-5 we win and on a 6 you roll again? YOU DONT TAKE AWAY THE PARTIES FREE WILL. Even for something that trivial. “Any character may attempt a wisdom check” … but why the fuck would they? You have to give the party some cue to interact. It’s like there’s no fucking roleplaying anymore.

Further, there’s no plot seeds, as far as I can tell. I guess you are supposed to remember something (when you roll a 1 on a d20, how many fucking times are you rolling the dice in this thing?) Somehow you’re supposed to figure out you go to this pond. And somehow you’re supposed to figure out you need a certain key. And somehow you need to figure out that the key is placed on a stone at the pond. There’s exactly one clue, I think, in a huge town map, that the pond is important. Third, the key you need is in building 8 with some duergar, according to the pond entry. Entry 8, though, a porter, has no mention or duergar OR the key. How the fuck did that make it by the editor? Oh, wait no, one of the scripted encounters is supposed to be there and IT has the duergar and THEY have the key. So, you mean, you meant the scripted encounter and NOT the fucking porter?

The town entries are numbered and there are 25 or so. Really? That’s the plan? That may be the shittiest way possible to organize a town. Yes, I know everyone does it that way, mom, bridge. What’s the plan with this? That somehow someone is going to want to go building 15, out of the blue? [Aside: entry #15 is labeled “Hawkmaster, a falconry.] Maybe they are looking for a falconry, and you should label it “Falconry?” Maybe you should arrange them alphabetically, by usage type? Are the party likely to go to the Bleue Beard Inn or are they likely to go to the Purple Dragon Knight HQ … which is in the inn? And the sites are almost all chosen at random … there’s no real rhyme or reason to most of them being included in the adventure. I mean, the mill? Seriously? Why the fuck would the party go there? What makes you want to include that entry over, say, the scribe?

Ok, a few good things. The big bad guy is rumored to be morbidly obese and cause people’s eyeballs to explode. THAT’S good detail. And the old mill, while useless, is rumored to grind other things at night … THATS a good bit of forboding. That’s about it. Most of the detail given, and the town entries are written in a useless meandering style. Trivia. “The identity of Lord Sarp has been lost to the decades” Perfect. Why the fuck does the party care about that? “Situated at the western end of the ferry that brings the convicted into Wheloon, the Wyvern Watch Inn serves as the receiving house for all new residents.” I FUCKING HATE THE SIBBY!

This morning while watching the Conan cartoon the voiceover said Conan battled the cruel wizard Wrath-Anon. I turned to The pretty Girl and said “don’t they mean: Warth-Anon, the wizard who sometimes does cruel things?” The designer and editor (copyeditor?) may not be bad people, but this effort is bad. VERY bad. You can tell what they wanted to do, but they fail at nearly every aspect of it.

The goal is to write something for the DM running it at the table. Terse, evocative, organized. This things needs ALOT of work to get there.

This is $5 at DriveThru. The preview is three pages and utterly useless, showing you nothing of the adventure or the writing.
https://www.dmsguild.com/product/251922/Escape-from-Wheloon

Posted in Reviews, The Worst EVAR? | 3 Comments

Mim’s Recreation Garden

Posted on September 26, 2018 by Bryce Lynch


By herror
Rowdy Kobold
OSR
Levels 1-3

The Garden is some sort of self-preserving magical botanical zoo, an attempt at avantgarde entertainment for kids – it never opened to the public, but it still works.

This twenty page adventure describes a fourteen room dungeon right out Adventure Time. Candy colored weirdness closer to Willy Wonka than the Silmarillion, it presents an interesting environment to adventure in. It’s also gota touch of the “adventure as a walk-though museum”, ala Ed Greenwood, can be confusing to decipher, and maddinley abstrated. It’s hard to recommend because of that, but it sure is interesting as all fuck.

We’ve got a wizard’s lair here, and this time a wizard interested in plants. It’s laid out in a bunch of rooms that are more garden like than dungeon like. Inside we’ve got a bunch of happy singing tree people, bumble bee people, fungus men, and so on. It’s not quite cartoonish, but does lean that way more than it does to those mean old vegapygmies of S3. That means it’s the new fresh material that was common to Psychedelic Fantasies and OD&D in general.

The common elements of “things to fuck with” is present also. The seasons can change in the rooms and/or dungeon and that impacts the things around it. Several rooms have crystals, or other things, to play with. Interactivity is a key aspect to dungeon exploring and this brings that. Doors triggered on specifical elements, and tunnels in the walls that lead to strange new, and/pr random rooms, also help bring in an element of the weird and unknown. I’m such a fan of these additional elements being tacked on. The rooms feel stuffed.

But they are actually pretty simple. Two or three bullet points generally describe the rooms, with certain exceptions being made for those long rando tables. It’s pretty easy to scan and figure out the specifics of the room. The map also helps here, color coded for floor condition (mud, wet, slime, etc) and light elements in the room.

But …

There is a fuck ton going on in this and its also hard to keep track of. While the rooms are easy to scan they also rely, heavily, on overloaded information presented in the general information before the keys begin. The slimes, fungus, seasons, trees, light, wet … it’s all a little hard to keep track of what SHOULD be going on. The single column format doesn’t ease comprehension, but I think the major problem is … English, and/or the lack therefore. I really like adventures from our foreign friends. Their takes on fantasy, influenced by their own unique cultural experiences, can lead to a freshness that still resonates like my own Brave Little Tailor upbringing. It’s generally easy to ignore or forgive any awkwardness in the language, from translation from French, Dutch, Spanish, or Hungarian. In this case though I feel like the language barrier may have contributed to the confusion. It’s not so much awkward word choices or grammar, but rather a certain … organization? I know that organization is not necessarily unique to different languages, but it FEELS like the summaries/organization of the general information was hampered by the language barrier. There’s nothing really I can point to, it just feels that way. In any event, its the organization of the general information, and the awkwardness of it, that’s an issue.

The entire thing has a touch of the Ed Greenwood Museum tour to it as well. There’s not really enough … motivation? in it. Everyone is just a little too friendly. It’s like setting a D&D adventure in a grade school … visit the classrooms and see the differences … but what do you DO? Garden of the Hag Queen had a bit of opposition to it that this just doesn’t seem to have. Long-time readers will know that I like talking to creatures in dungeons, and I like a “neutral” dungeon environment … but there has to be SOME kind of potential energy in the dungeon to drive things, and this feels weak in that area.

It can also get abstracted. “This is the treasure room, with a big pile of treasure in the middle.” Uh … great? OSR adventures also are generally aimed at Gold=XP games, and this is light in that area.

And, one more nit. Room One says “Two homunculi (programmed to “protect goblins”) wait at the bottom of the staircase, which has been covered with lard and caltrops.” I’d turn that around. The stairs are coated with lard and caltrops and two hom are at the bottom. The first thing the party will encounter is the stairs, and that should be the first thing the DM comes across in the sentence.

This is $6 at DriveThru. The preview is four pages and doesn’t really show you much. You get to the dungeon map (star shaped, with colod coding) and the wandering table, which DOES give a decent vibe for the types of encounters in the dungeon.https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/252506/Mims-Recreational-Garden?affiliate_id=1892600

Posted in Reviews | 3 Comments

The Vampire’s Tomb

Posted on September 24, 2018 by Bryce Lynch


By William Cord
Stronghold press Games
Generic/Universal

Uh ….

This four page adventure uses two pages to describe a seven room tomb, with the other two being title pages. Given how shitty I feel for paying $1 for it, I’m going to go in overdrive.

Room 1 starts with “”This area feels decrepit.” That, good sir, is a conclusion. The writing should not present conclusions. It should not tell the players what they are feeling, directly. The environment presented should make the DM feel like it is decrepit. Next up is “moss grows on the walls and the stonework is patchy.” That’s good, it generates that decrepit vibe were looking for. It then continues that there are emblems on the door that our players likely cannot recognize. Well, again, that’s shitty writing. Let’s just say it was the noble heraldry of House Darocar, and let the DM determine if the players recognize it. Instead of telling us that the players likely don’t recognize it, you could have described it. I don’t know, two red eyes on a black field or something with blood running from the eyes. That’s a bit foreboding. Finally, it tells us that there may be some thrall bandits in the room passing through. That’s ok. Calling them thralls is nice, it lends an air of how to roleplay them.

Room 2 tells us that its used as barracks for bandits turned thralls that the vampire is using as his personal slaves. Yes … that IS the definition of thrall when vampires are concerned. Better to use that text to tell us something else. Then it tells us that they act as guards and go on raids for victims and treasure for the Vampire. Yes, again, that is the definition of a bandit thrall. Again, stop repeating yourself. The stone wall is hard (a stone wall is made of stone usually a foot thick and about ten feet high.) It ends telling us that it has two sleeping thralls. Great. Maybe a personality, or what they know, or an tell the party? No? Right, all out of words, having used them all up telling us what a thrall is.

Room 3 has … ah fuck, I can’t do this anymore. There’s nothing to this adventure. Just lots of generic text defining what words mean. The last room has a vampire, which has no personality, stats, or anything else. I really can’t emphasize enough how hollow this is. Room 6, dining room, there is where people eat. Room 7 kitchen. This is where food is prepared. ARG!!!!!

I weep for the future. I feel like a grumpy old man, waving my fist at the sky. But, fuck, man, this is BAD.

This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru, with a current suggested price of $1. Which is too much. There’s no preview. Which is wise.https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/251297/The-Vampires-Tomb?affiliate_id=1892600

Posted in The Worst EVAR? | 2 Comments

Saving Saxham

Posted on September 22, 2018 by Bryce Lynch


By JR Lewis
Dungeon Ag Adventures
5e
Levels 1-3

The village of Saxham has been struck by a terrible curse! Or perhaps it’s being terrorized by demons, ghosts, and the undead? Or… was there a terrible storm? Maybe? No one seems to know exactly what happened here. But the villagers are terrified, bizarre monsters roam the forest, and strange lights strike the woods every night at midnight…

Fuck me. An eighteen page 5e adventure that doesn’t suck. Good magic, good NPC’s, good information transfer (mostly) and a setup that’s not the same as every other adventure under the sun. It’s not perfect, but it’s a damn sight better than most 5e. I’d run it.

Twice now I’ve seen .. “gentle?” 5e adventures. I’m playing in a 5e game and when confronted with an evil artifact controlling people, three kids with black eyes speaking in unison … and then when they started to crackle with blue electricity I blew out one of the kids throats, killing him. Turns out I was supposed to save the kids. IE: find a non-violent solution. This adventure is similar, with aspects of the “the dragon is actually the good guy” trope. This is a different play style. While I’m always a fan of letting people talk to monsters, the whole “ultra-violence is not the answer” 5e style is new to me. I think it’s interesting.

Here’s your spoiler, which I’ll actually warn you about for once: everyone in the village died from plague. 30 years later, the ghost of the village priest is bringing their bodies back to life, but it’s a three day process during which they _resemble_ evil treants and then evil zombies. Left alone, everything will work out ok. But we’re not leaving things along, are we? We’re adding the PC’s ….

Thus you’ve got this village with moron villagers saying things that don’t make sense, confused about their surroundings, “evil” shit walking around in the woods, and even a couple of factions. There are some elf druids ready to burn down the world, or at least the woods and village, to stop the blight, and then some faeries that would be unhappy if their woods are burnt down. There’s even some goblins to talk to. It can be a VERY social, and non-violent, adventure, if you can not blow out the throat of a small child with your magic missiles.

There’s a good summary at the beginning of what’s going on, the NPC’s get a little memorable description in a couple of sentences and then bullet point information to convey to the party, all in their own voices. The magic items are flavourful and non-standard and even tend to the non-mechanical, making them more wondrous than the usual +1 sword fare. I’m overcome by a magic ring faintly smelling of patchouli. Always. 🙂 I’ll chop off my hand for Vecna in a heartbeat, but that ring .. man … patchouli? IDK .. And THAT’S a magical fucking experience. Even the wanderers in the fort are great, from a sickly bear whose belly bursts to an rotting animal carcass covered in ants. And the fucking monsters? ONE FUCKING LINE EACH. Yup, all stats on one line. It’s like the designer actually plays D&D! And those goblins and elves? Great. Friendly goblin looking for his sons and a shit-head elf druids. Perfect! Who doesn’t love some arrogant fucking elves in their game?!

There are issues, of course. First, the nature of the village is a little light, or, rather, how the villagers are coping. It’s in there, a little, with their confusion, etc, but maybe not as much as it could be. This is going to be a major part of the parties questions and interactions with the villagers, so a little more guidance/resources in that area would be good.

Second, there’s a … disconnect? Between the map and the descriptions in the adventure. The map is nice, locations are numbered, and a little key on the map says that #2 is the weasel mound, for example. But the adventure heading (which is large and bold, Yeah!) says “Road to Saxham. Well, yes, that’s technically correct, but not quite what I was expecting to see. #2, Weasel Mounds, or some combination thereof is what I would expect to see. Then there’s an entry called “Overgrown Fields.” Well, yes, that is the next thing you would see if walking up the road to the village, and there is a field drawing on the map, unnumbered. Thus the text is laid out in a kind of “walking tour” format, if you start at one end and walk to the other. It IS an open area, so it’s not a linear adventure, but the text is laid out as it were, if that makes sense. Traditional number/key would have worked, as would maybe matching the section headings to the words on the map. There is a vague feeling of being lost in the text, which I think stems from this organization decision. But it IS close to the line, as if I’m almost there in understanding things.

But, still, it’s quiet and fresher than most and rewards the thinking player who doesn’t blow out kids throats with magic missiles at the first sign of crackling blue electricity. I’m gonna grade on a 5e curve and give this the Best tag, understanding that I may have had No Regerts if it wasn’t on a curve. It’s not the usual dungeoncrawl with weird elements and that’s nice to see also.

This is PWYW at DriveThru with a suggested price of $3. The preview is nine pages and gives you a good sense of the actual adventure and the writing style. How the NPC’s are presented, the confused villagers, the section headings/maps, and on so, although you miss most of the social stuff with the elves/goblins/ghost/etc.
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/252050/Saving-Saxham-A-Dungeon-Age-Adventure-5e?affiliate_id=1892600

Posted in Level 1, Reviews, The Best | 16 Comments

Dungeons of the Dread Wyrm

Posted on September 19, 2018 by Bryce Lynch


By R. Nelson Bailey
Dungeoneers Guild Games
1e
Levels 10-15

Rumors hint that below a barren crag in a forlorn range of hills lies the lair of the great dread wyrm, Felmurnuzza. This dragon has mercilessly terrorized and plundered the nearby civilized lands for hundreds of years. However, no one has seen her for many decades. Nonetheless, these kingdoms continue to pay the fell serpent tribute out of fear. Many now say that she sleeps that sleep of death — her legendary fabulous hoard unprotected and ripe for the taking. Of course, if the rumors of her death are not true, a grim death surely awaits those that seek to discover her treasures.

This 37 page adventure describes a linear three level dragon lair with 41 rooms. Am I the only one who groans every time I see a high level adventure? Here’s your recipe: gimp the characters, make it linear like Tomb of Horrors, stuff it full of death traps like Tomb of Horrors. This adventure follows the recipe.

I feel like there was a crucial decision to made in the design of this adventure. There’s a decision between writing a high level adventure and writing a dungeon adventure. High level adventures have to deal with the insane party abilities that high level PC’s have. Over their lives they have had to deal with a bunch of crap, and have used abilities to help survive. And I don’t mean fireball. DIvination, teleport … things to help them determine and avoid the dangers ahead and bypass and/or escape when need be. A high level adventure has to address this. Hidden facts don’t exist and walls don’t stop high level PC’s.

But note that a dungeon is pretty explicit in its use of walls to channel and guide the party and limit their movement. Further, the environment is a “close” one, allowing for lots of room for hidden information, such as traps and other secrets. This is, essentially, WHY the party has all of those abilities. The challenge for the designer then becomes creating challenges for a party whose growth path was specifically designed to thwart the environment.

It seems like this almost inevitably leads to gimping the party. In essence, the designer refuses the challenge and instead just says “fuck you.” The walls are made of lead. Everyone wears rings of mind shielding. No teleports, or stone to mud, no ethereal, no scrying, no detect/divination spells. (This adventure even goes a step further and halves the thieves find & remove traps ability.) You got a room full of human fighters? Just say they are all immune to mind-control magic that way the party has to fight them!

This is a fundamental misunderstanding of what D&D actually IS and how it works. Is D&D, fundamentally, about tactical combat? It is certainly an element, at times, but I don’t think that’s what make it appealing. (And, on the other end of the spectrum, it’s not about storytelling, especially by the DM.) There’s an ad-hoc element to D&D that, I think, makes it appealing. A back and forth between the DM & players reacting to each other. It’s a human interactive game. There’s a part of me that wants to say that the more you can computerize your adventure, or THINK you can computerize it, the worse the adventure is. Note that this covers both tactical combat play styles as well as railroad plot game styles. I don’t exactly buy 100% in to this idea, but there’s an idea buried in there somewhere that appeals to me and I DO think is true.

Yeah, Gygax gimped people in adventures. From stupid +1 turn amulets in B2 to the Tomb or Horrors. Look man, I would have wanted to explore greyhawk dungeon with him DM’ing as much as the next player, but that doesn’t mean he was infallible. Far from it.

Either this should have been an adventure for lower level players that did not have as much “bypass” magic, or it should have been rewritten as something other than a dungeon. Yeah, it’s hard. That’s why there are not a lot of high level adventures and “domain play” is a thing.

This has got another problem. There’s a style of writing that obsesses over dimensions. Room two, we are told, is “… unadorned 30’ by 40’ room. A 9’ tall, 7’ wide, 9’ long statue of a dragon sits across the room from the entryway. The dragon is constructed of bronze and sits on a 1’-tall pedestal. It sits on its haunches with wings folded, its mouth hanging open menacingly.” Or, as a better adventure would say “a massive bronze statue of a roaring statue.” Who the fuck cares that it sits on a 1’ tall pedestal? Is that trivia relevant to the actual play? (Leading the witness by using the word trivia!) This shit stems from the mistaken belief that more is more. It confuses trivia, like dimensions, with providing a good description. You can never provide enough detail to turn a description in to something good. It can be hard to grasp, but its critical to embrace the less is more philosophy. By proving less you are allowing the DM’s imagination fill in the details. THEY can provide an infinite amount of detail to the scene, if need be. This allows the designer to focus their writing. The craft that very short description in something extremely evocative. That little description will jab like an icepick in the DM’s own brain/imagination. THAT’S the goal. Plus, it’s easier for the DM to scan and use during play. A more evocative description, that lets the DM’s imagination build on it, and as a consequence is also easy to scan during play.

Hey jackasses (IE: my devoted readers), don’t confuse this with minimalism. I’m beating the terse/evocative/scanability horse because 95% of adventures fall in to this trap. When “Room 1: 12 skeletons” adventures show up I’ll instead bitch that a random number generator doesn’t provide value. There’s a middle ground, and it’s not minimalism.

One more bitch. Rube Goldberg design. Explaining effects with mechanics that already exist. Put on a crown and get “teleported without error” to the abyss. IE: the magic mouth says a word that dispels a massmorph that summons a … It’s fucking D&D. Shit happens, you don’t need to explain why.

Fuck, no, sorry, another point. I like Grimtooth. I have fond memories of pouring over it as a young teen, along with my Battletech technical readouts. But it’s not a style to be emulated. “The pit has a cone shaped bottom so thieves can’t climb walls out” is both a bit of gimping and a bit of Grimtooth and A LOT of the traps have a Grimtooth element.

It did have a couple of nice hooks, like A Throne card from A Deck giving you the ruined castle that sits on top of the lair, or a captured spy revealing they were working for the dragon, or a prophecy about a certain group of heroes slaying a dragon when a star blazes during the day … hey … what’s that flaming orb up in the sky? I was also rather fond of a room whose walls were black glass scorched, with a big urn in the middle. The urn is full of wraiths and spectres, from the dragon torching the room of workmen. I would have made it wiggle a little and smoke a bit … the best trouble is the trouble the party gets in to of their own accords. 🙂

Anyway, just another Tomb of Horrors.

This is $10 at DriveThru. The preview is the first six pages, meaning it shows you nothing except the hooks and rumors on the last page. https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/250989/Dungeons-of-the-Dread-Wyrm-DUNGEON-DELVE-2?affiliate_id=1892600

Posted in Reviews | 12 Comments

Phaunt’s Tower

Posted on September 17, 2018 by Bryce Lynch


By Jonathan Hicks
Farsight Games
Swords & Wizardry
Levels 1-3

Welcome to Wherwest! This is a town full of opportunities at every corner, adventure through every door and danger at every turn. Glory and gold awaits! That is, if you can get past your first night here.

This 22 page adventure details a nine room friendly wizards tower that has been invaded by demons. Event based, forced fights, and sloopy text detracts from the attempts to add a little sparkle to the adventure.

Well, there’s some nice wording here and there. Nice imagery (with art attached) of a small fortified village with a tower in the middle, blue light on top, acting as a kind of beacon in the wilderness. After a magical explosion there’s the smell of sulphur and rotting meat wafting through the smoke and fog around the tower.

There’s also a nice scene or three, like … “a badly damaged gelatinous cube sloshing its way down the street, falling apart with great globs splashing onto the ground …” Or people trapped inside that need escorted out. Or a cleric fighting for her life … who heals you if you save her. And … consequences. Going after the cube or saving the people slows you down; it’s a distraction from your main mission: getting to the top of the tower to stop a demon infestation. Getting distracted has consequences: an extra demon added to encounters after that.

This sort of consequence based events appeals to me. Fuck around and it gets harder. Save a villager and it gets a little easier with heals, etc.

What’s less interesting is … well … everything else. 22 pages and nine rooms means issues. In this case, single column, long read-alouds, and extensive DM text, all of which detract from the adventure. “This is the main hall where Phaunt receives guests, petitioners and dignitaries”, begins the description for room one. And then dimensional data. And then a description of a normal room. And THEN a description of the combat with demons in the room. Most important things come first people, and room purposes are not needed, nor are histories or descriptions of typical things.

The DM descriptions are expansive, with a lot of asides “so the party should be able to deal with them [demons] quickly.” says the text, adding nothing to the adventure except a conversational style that clogs things up. Text is wasted describing the detailed mechanics of an archery contest, with no hint of flavour to make it exciting, like onlookers, other contestants, the judge, etc. That’s what will make the context interesting and memorable, not the mechanics.

And, of course, there’s the forced fights. S&W level one. What’s that mean, something like 2hp each? Maybe 3? The party faces forced combat after forced combat. That’s ok though, we’re told repeatedly that if they get in trouble then the DM should send a town guardsman in to help them. Ug.

The main treasure room in the tower exemplifies the adventure. Lot’s of simple book +1 items … that you can’t use because they are locked down by the wizard. What’s the point of it all?

This is $3 at DriveThru. The preview is four pages and doesn’t show you much. But … that long read-aloud? While nothing else reaches those heights it is a good example, nonetheless, of the style.https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/251353/Phaunts-Tower?affiliate_id=1892600

Posted in Reviews | 4 Comments