tenfootpole.org

By Hilander
Self Published
OSE
Level …? I guess we don’t use levels anymore? The Big Bad is 10HD.

The folk of Almsville enjoyed a quiet existence far from the worries of city life and foreign wars, but recently a strange spirit has been seen in town, a weeping woman beckoning strong folk into the Harwood, pleading with them to free her from her curse. Just last week the mayor’s son, young Constance, disappeared, stealing away in the night with a sword and shield taken from his father’s wall. The town fears the worst, and Sister Verity senses unease amongst the local spirits. She has sent word to the City, pleading for help.

This twenty page adventure presents a hex crawl with about fifty hexes and twenty-ish encounters. It can turn a phrase now and then, but it’s simplistic in its implementation, mixing plot with what should be hex situations … and not doing either.

Let us assume I have a hex crawl adventure. It’s a thousand hexes. Your starting hex is along a border. I develop a page of backstory that within it contains a plot. The essence of the plot is that the prince has gone missing while searching for a monster. I populate the hexes at some density of encounters. Then I stick the prince in the hex next to the starting hex and the monster in the hex next to the prince. The other hexes don’t really have anything special in them, no help to defeat the monster or things to save the prince or anything like that. It really is as straightforward as I just described. Yeah, the other hexes have some stuff in them, but, also, it’s not really SITUATIONS. Yeah, there are monsters and treasures and weird shit. Some of them are just scattered randomly in the hexes without roads or trails leading to them and not really “in the way of” something you can see from a distance. I think we could all say that this is a poorly designed hex crawl. It meets the definition that it has hexes that you can explore, but there’s no real reason to and a decent number of them are VERY unlikely for you to stumble across in pursuit of other hexes. And, no real situations. Not really things for the DM to riff on and explode and for the players to exploit in a more strategic sense. This would all lead to me saying that yes, it is a hex crawl but it’s not a very good hex crawl, missing what makes a hex crawl a good hex crawl. And that is this adventure. It can, at times, turn a decent phrase of description, but it also seems to miss thes of what makes an adventure an adventure. The WHY of how things are put in to an adventure to drive gameplay.  

The mayors son is missing, trying to free some ghost chicks curse. The city is on the edge of the ghost wood. There’s a haunted house one hex away, before you get to the wood proper. A hex away from that, in the woods, is the witch chick who controls the woods and knows everything going on. A hex away from that is the big bad monster. None of the other woods encounters really contribute to this ghost lady/woods/monster/son plotline. They are just things like “Frank lives here in this house and can’t get out because of the animated vines” or something like “50 albino goblins, bloodthirsty, live in a cave complex here.”  They might stretch to, say, two or three paragraphs, including a read-aloud paragraph, but there’s not really situations unfolding. This is far, far closer to Isle of the Unknown. Perhaps not quite as obviously from a generator, but also not with anything larger or more interesting going on in them. 

The town is minimally described, which is fine. It does, however, have an encounter table. Thisis one of them: “Old Farmer Dale has seven daughters whom he’d like to marry off; Patience, Prudence, Mercy, Grace, Faith, Hope, and Charity. None live up to their names. “You could do, really, but I wonder for which?” So, yeah, but, also, what’s the point? Yes, it does add a bit of local color. But I think that’s all it is, Some local color to add in to some kind of home base place, that the party is likely to return to time and again. And in that case I’m not sure I make this a random table at all. 

What’s frustrating here is that sometimes the text is decent. At the site of a drowned woman in a river: “The skies grow cloudy here, and a cold breeze blows down the river. A single tree stands beside the water, its roots reaching in to drink” We’re going to ignore the “roots reaching to drinks” purple prose, but the rest of it is decent. It sets a good melancholy mood for the site of a drowned woman. There’s a forlornness that this description invokes, helped along by the room title “The Drowned Lady.” THis is how a room title sets the stage for what’s to come. It gets you into the right frame of mind for the description to come, helping to conjure more than the sum of the words used. The adventure des this a time or two, and when it does it’s a really great description. But those are by far the exceptions.

I mentioned that haunted house a hex from town. That place has 23 rooms in it. They are described in essentially ONE COLUMN. Jesus fuck man! You get such rooms as perhaps this one: “10. Guestroom. Huge plants.” Well, that’s something right out of Vampire Queen I guess. I’m not really cherry picking. It’s almost all just a room title and one or two words, an object to be found in the room. “Robes 300gp.” Yes, the room titles are decent (although, perhaps “RUINED guestroom” or “OPULENT Guestroom” would have been better.) but that’s it. It’s an extreme minimalism. To fit in twenty pages, I guess?

IN other places there is a distinct note of information missing. One fine example is “If the hill is dug into, it will reveal a large hoard of golden coins and rare treasures” With no details of what that is … although the consequences are spelled out large. It’s baffling.

There is, I guess, a mix here of two adventure styles. The hex crawl/exploratory  where you create your own adventure and a plot adventure in which you have something explicitly to do. I guess, if I squint hard enough, i can see adding some plot to a hex crawl to get things moving … but then you put the endgame to it next to the basE? And the hex encounters are not really the sort of strategic/dynamic situations that make hex crawls thrive? And the dungeon is straight out of Tegal? Nope.

This is Pay What You Want at Drivethru with a suggested price of $3. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/500040/a-walk-in-the-harwood?1892600

By Mr Pilgrim Tomes
Self Published
OSE
"Expert Levels"

A sunken cathedral on a quiet mountain lake hides a long forgotten temple to Mathanoga, God of Knowledge and wizardry. Abandoned by Man for centuries ,  but protected by the legend of man-eating fishmen lurking in it.  Or until a few weeks ago the young wizad Elric embarked on its expedition. With help from the accademy of Greykeep he found the temple and began to explore it, hoping to uncover its ancient magical secrets. Now the wizard is missing and the accademy has put a bounty on its head: its weight in silver to whoever will find him and bring him home alive and well.

This twenty page adventure uses about eight pages to describe a temple complex with about fifteen rooms. It’s a basic adventure of this type, with basic encounters, non-evocative room descriptions and straightforward puzzles that are poorly described. I guess that means it’s inoffensive? Which is not a recommendation in any way.

Oh no! Some wizzo has gone missing! You’re sent by the guild to find him. As the intro tells us, the fishmen in the temple “have attacked Elric’s camp, fatally wounding the wizard.” To be clear, in this context, “fatally wounded” means that he’s made it through four or five of the temples rooms and then turned himself to stone. Which is a different definition of fatal then I would use, but whatever.

Let’s dig in to this, shall we! Room one is the upper lever, with the rest of the temple being underground. As yes, a room with a statue and an altar, with the altar having the inscription: “I’M KEY TO EVERY DOOR SOUGHT BY SAGES AND SEERS SINCE THE DAYS OF YORE”.” That’s it. What do you want to do? No, fucking with the statue and altar don’t do anything and there’s nothing else to find. What do you do? This is, obviously, a riddle. Answer the riddle. ANSWER THE FUCKING RIDDLE! Did you answer it? No, there are no clues. No, you cannot continue the adventure until you answer the riddle, because that’s what makes the secret door appear. At least Gandork knew there WAS a door. This, of course, a classic example of putting your adventure behind a skill roll/secret door/etc. You shouldn’t fucking do that. Yes, the DM can fudge it. Yes, the DM can also buy a different adventure, one that is actually good and doesn’t put the adventure behind a secret door. Anyway, the answer is at the bottom of this review if you’d like to play D&D tonight. 

But, hey, let’s move on to a different room, yes?  Let’s see “First Trail: The room is designed to test the intelligence of newcomers, and to remove those unfit for study.” Oh fuck me. It’s a trial dungeon. Great. I fucking hate trial dungerons. Lets are the weakest example of a pretext for an adventure. And, of course, we have the aside text telling us that the “first trial” room is a test to weed people out. No shit. Who woulda thunk it. Overly explaining and justifying rooms. Bleech.

How about another puzzle room them? This one has an orb in it. It has “the four alchemical symbols carved in it”  and on the four walls a dwarf head, a bird head, a flaming head and a fish head. So, yeah, I think pretty obvious. Except, of course, I’m not sure I know WHAT the four symbols are? If you asked me, I don’t know, I’d good the fifth element and steal from it? There’s no description of the symbols at all. The whole adventure is like this. It just seems to leave out pieces of information or hand wave past it. It’s weird as all fuck.

I don’t know, the combat encounters seem bullshitty to me also. They get stuck at the bottom of room descriptions, where they might be more appropriate in the middle IE: if there’s a statue and approaching it activates a monster then maybe we say that around the statue description instead of describing a hole bunch of other shit and then dropping the monster at the end. I think there’s another room with a statue in it with an inscription on it and if you read the inscription you get attacked by four monsters. This seems MAJORLY arbitrary and I think is the kind of shit that turns players in to bad players that are unwilling to engage with rooms .When something as simple as reading a statue inscription kills you … why read anything? Yeah yeah, explosive runes, etc. But this aint that. We WANT people interacting with the rooms, not doing some pavlov shit so they learn to not engage with them. Risk/RewardPush your luck are the goto’s, not arbitrary wandering table tables. 

I guess, ultimately, it’s inoffensive. Not bad, just not good at all. Oh, and, yeah, before I forget, PUT THE FUCKING LEVEL RANGE ON THE FUCKING ADVETURE.

This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru with a suggested price of $1. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/497244/the-sunken-temple?1892600

The Fucking riddle answer is Knowledge.

By Joseph Mohr
Old School Roleplaying
OSRIC
Levels 10-14

The sect has not been heard from now for hundreds of years. A few ruins and relics of their order can still be found for those who know where to look for them. One such place is a long forgotten cave complex once used as a temple to their order. There are a few whispers about the cult making a return. Children have gone missing. Strange symbols have been painted in prominent places across the land. Rumors of their imminent return are on the mind of many in the land today. No one knows for sure if there is any truth to any of them.

This 27 page adventure uses about eight pages to describe about 27 rooms in a simple cavern. More shovelware from Mohr, it’s poorly produced, full of errors, and consist of little more than hacking un underdescribed chambers. 

Tricked! I was tricked in to buying this! Tricked by my own incompetence in selecting adventures, anyway. Whatever qualities Mohr has, he’s a master of designing a cover and blurb that instantly draws me in and makes me buy something … without looking at the designer or publisher first. I’ve caught myself several times in last few months, before I hit the purchase button, but this one slipped through. And thus we find ourselves here. With a theme of, shall we say, not giving a shit.

The map is, at first glance, fine. It’s mostly a cave with stream and pools and several nice topology features. But then we get to play the Find The Key game. The key numbers are small and, if its possible, in the same font as the gridlines? The same line width as the gridlines? In any evet, they are disguides. You have to really hunt to find them. And I don’t like spending my time and energy just trying to figure out which rooms the party is in on the map. Or, where the next key is so I can check to see if there’s something over there that can see/hear the party and react. I prefer a little reaction note on the map, to draw my attention, but i’d settle for a number I can see, especially in a large wide open cavern type map like this. For it’s size it’s a surprisingly compact place, with the encounters almost on top of each other. I think I counted a 10HD a 20HD and another 10HD encounter almost all on top of each other at one point. The design of the encounters, their placement, is pretty shitty, with illegible keys on a map that is too open and too cramped with encounters for its openness. And, of course, there’s no order of battle for the cultists. Just stand around and get slaughtered dudes!

Speaking of those cultists. Most of them are level ten. At least the ones that are not higher than level ten. If I recall my distributions correctly, I suspect that every level ten character in the entire world is present in this cave. What is it, one in a hundred thousand or something like that? Well, there’s a dozen or so of them in this place.

The encounters are hacking. Oh, there’s a trap now and again, like a rockfall, but it’s mostly hacking. A 20HD golem. A 10HD mist. A dragon turtle. Eight ropers in a room. That’s it. Just walk in a room and stab something. Nothing more complex than that. No nuance. Just a stabfest. This is the WORST way to write a high level adventure. I’m not even sure why th Grand Druid and Master of Autumn decided to go on this adventure. 

Did I mention the green slime? It has 20HD and 2-16HP and is worth 4000xp (plus forty per hp, of course.) Nice! A typo you think?! Perish the thought! 

Ah, but what about our use of language, you ask. Here, then, is the description of room one: “The trail up the mountain leads an area just outside two entrances to the caves. A stream of water rolls down the higher reaches of the mountain and into the mouth of the cave. A pool of water gathers near the north entrance. A short set of steps has been cut into the north cave entrance. The southernmost entrance is much wider but is more difficult to climb. “ This is, literally, just a description of the map page. If you looked at the map and write a description this is what you would get. Other rooms have such magnificent descriptions as “A child’s doll has been left here on the steps.” Or, perhaps, you enjoy backstory and padding in your descriptions? Worry not, this adventure has you covered! “A large fish has swum into this area from the larger pool at area 18. That pool also connects to an underground stream and a much larger lake miles from here.” Yeah! Now you know why there is a fish here! 

High level stabbing with minimal descriptions. That’s all this is. And it’s poorly done at that.

This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru with a suggested price of $3. The preview is seven pages and show you none of the keys. Poor preview, not giving you any help in making a purchasing decision.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/498578/the-summoning?1892600

By Marco Giulio Fossati
Hellwinter Forge of Wonder
OSE
Levels 6-8

The Antrum was a temple dedicated to the chaotic god Chryzothuul, but the priests dwelling there abandoned it some years ago after a plague decimated them. The Antrum lies in a small valley amidst the Rolling Red, rugged plains and hills covered with sanguine-red grass.

In the last months, rangers and lonely travellers spotted an undead presence near the Antrum. So, the local authorities decided to send a group of adventurers there to investigate. Who or what is behind those undead?

This twenty page adventure presents an old temple dungeon with about seventeen rooms in about five pages. It is boring. Boring in interactivity. Boring in descriptions. Low effort does not begin to describe it.

Right about now I should be waxing philosophically about the measure of a man and so on. It’s traditionally, when I see a poorly designed product, to speculate why as you describe the hows, I think. But not this time. I HATE this adventure. It represents everything I loathe. It is low effort. No one seemingly cared about it during its creation. Instead a coat of paint was slapped on and it was called done. Be it to satisfy some deadline or some other reason, instead it received nothing. 

Let us begin with the original sin: the level. Levels 6-8. And the hook? “The characters are the adventurers sent to investigate the undead presence of the Antrum, and they have been hired by a reasonable law force in the area, such as a military commander, a local reeve, or the council of a nearby town” Yes. my level eight got hired by the village reeve. That’s exactly what happened. I’m currently engaged in a bloodbath in the village ala Kid Marvelman and the village Reeve walks up to me and hires me. Great. But, sure, whatever, yes, I do want to play D&D tonight. The adventure, proper? It’s full of undead. “You gotta bring a cleric!” says the designers note to the DM. Actually, no, you should NOT bring a cleric. And why is that? Room one: eight skeletons. FOr your level six through eight cleric. Or how about some zombies? Shadows? You’re just gonna blast right through each and every undead in the adventure. I don’t think there ARE any undead present that are not an automatic turn. Did you actually even ever run this for ANYONE? Now, I know that D&D-mine’s favorite hobby is changing the Turn Undead rules, but, still … I think I understand the OSE rules. It’s like an auto-turn. And most of the time it’s an auto-destory. There are new undead in the appendix, created just for the final boss fight, and they get auto-nuked also. The custom monster you created for the boss fight is an auto-nuke. And they are ALL like that. The designer made it and the editor looked at it. Or said they did. The same person did the layout, which presumably means the C00l color scheme. Maybe, instead, do the work of an editor?

But, hang on. Let’s change the levels. Let’s say its, I don’t know, level four or so?

Reven now, in the magnificence of the descriptions! “Two stairs, both going down a few steps. At the end of each stair, there’s a closed door. A small alcove lies in the south wall.” Behold now the modern wonder of the full power of this designers evocative text! “There are still some old chests in this storeroom abandoned long ago.” That’s the fucking room description. I didn’t cherry pick one sentence from it. Are you not inspired?!?! You know, you really should be. After all a good DM could … spend their money and time on something worthwhile? 

Shitting fucking descriptions. Nothing evocative about them AT ALL. And, then, that kind of writing style that I just abhor. “There are still some … “ This kind of passive voice description. Just tell us about the storeroom and the chests. The absolute best bits of this are when the designer IS getting specific. When they mention the consistent low haze of the plains on your overland journey or the pulsating shapeless blob sitting on an altar. But those may be the ONLY examples of decent text in this. There is little specificity. It’s abstraction. Our rumors read “The Antrum still contains a sacred relic of Chryzothuul. (true)” No, it does not contain a sacred relic. It contains the head of saint whatever, missing its blue tongue, or some shit like that. Specificity, not abstraction. Abstraction is boring. We’re paying for specificity. 

How about mechanics? It takes a day to get to the temple through the grasslands. You have a 2 in 6 chance each day of getting lost.. If you get lost three days in a row then you automatically find it on the fourth day. You can find some laser gemstones. They shoot out a 2d6 laser beam, continually. Well, that’s fun, anyway!

The overall effect is one of low effort. Clearly not play tested. The writing is abstracted and not evocative in the least. Boring stabbing encounters sprinkled with a few simplistic traps and not enough treasure to warrant a walk through the plains for my level eight. 

This is $2 at DriveThru. The preview is the first seven pages, which doesn’t show you any encounters. Not a very good preview of what you would be purchasing.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/499189/the-antrum-of-chryzothuul?1892600

By Jacob Densford
Illuminated Snail Press
Knave 2e

Only one of the foul creatures remains—abominations forged by the meddling hands of wizards. After generations of slaughtering us, we’ve finally driven them back to the brink. Let the final hunt commence: the hunt for the last Owl Bear.

This sixteen page adventure has seven hexes to explore as you slaughter the last living owl bear. You’ll need all of your wits to survive the monotonous boredom of hexes with nothing/close to nothing to do in them. 

Sixteen fucking pages my ass. I’ve been noticing a lot of Knave adventures pop on DriveThru all at once. Looks like there was a contest and this thing was the third place winner. Which seems to mean the public voted on it being the third place winner, so you know, the unwashed masses and all that jazz. 

Ok, so, there’s one owlbear left. You’ve just arrived incountry at some white colonizer camp in the jungle. There are two hunting parties going out tomorrow. You want to join the big game hunter and her quisling local businessman sponsor or you want to join the white savior environmentalist and his smiling caricature of a local? Or maybe go your own way?

But first, the news. You wander around those seven hexes, notably NOT going south. IE: you start on a hex border at the six o clock position with nothing else shown on the map but the rest of the surrounding dial from the centerpoint of the hands. And from there you wander from hex to hex with little initial direction in finding the owlbear. Eventually you’ll find something. A village of locals who have all been grisly slaughtered by the owlbear with some ghosts playing a flute.. Or a bunch of monkeys in a tree banging on a drum. Or a wizards hut with nothing to do in it. 

I really really can’t emphasize enough how shitty the encounters are. There is this thing that designers sometimes do where they are SO resistant to actually putting anything concrete down on paper. Maybe, if you squint really hard, you can get what they are going for. But, the wizard hut. It takes a fucking page, like all of the encounters do. And it’s nothing. It’s a dude living in a hut. He’s not fucking histile. He doesn’t really even have anything. You CAN get a spell component from him, for some project later, but it’s just so empty. He’s got no real personality other than “likes flowers.” The entire thing is pointless. I get it, you want a place to get the spell component. So, put some interactivity there. Likewise the monkeys in the trees. They’ve got a drum they bang on. That’s it. I guess you are motivated to get the drum because you se ethe monkeys have it? And I truly am guessing; I don’t see any reason to do anything here other than yawn. You’ve got to lead the party on, give them something to follow up on, give them SOME kind of bone to get them going an interested. We’re not talking spoon feeding them, but, something. ANYTHING to get the going. “Monkeys in the trees” ain’t it. 

You know what else isn’t it? If you pick up the drum then you hear in your head “Rebuild my shrine and I will reward you!” Likewise if you pick up the ghosts flute or the other thing. LIterally a voice in your fucking head. This is not roleplaying. There is no subtly here. Telling someone directly what to do is not embracing the joy of player discovery. But, in the rumours, there is no specificity. “The local gods are feuding with each  other, with dangerous repercussions  for mortals—take shelter in bad  weather” Well that’s exciting. DO the local gods have names? Is there a story to go with this? No? There’s just senseless abstraction of a rumour? Got it. I am not amused.

And now to the part of the review that the fuckwits will feel the need to comment on. You know what’s a decent novel? Things Fall Apart. Not my favorite, but pretty decent. You know what’s not Things Fall Apart? A sixteen page adventure. I have no fucking idea why someone decided that a sixteen page adventure, with a contest deadline attached, was the correct medium to comment about white colonization. We  get white colonizers. We get the enviro dude with a white saviour complex. We get lots of references to white colonizers. We get a note about portraying the locals with empathy … even though we don’t get any information about them except they are all friendly. It’s fucking nuts. But, sure, dump in the smiling native caricature and the evil quisling businessman caricature. Or, the infantilized natives who can’t solve their own problems. And don’t forget to slaughter the smiling natives family so we can know for sure he’s just there as a trope. Got it. Ham fucking handed. And let’s be clear, I’m not bitching about your white colonizer shit. I’m bitching that its done is a hack fucking way.

But, also, I’m a hypocrite and can get over that. Well, I could get over that that. I mean IF THE FUCKING ADVENTURE WAS ANY GOOD. The smiling native guide has a village. If you go there everyone is slaughtered bloodily by the owlbear. There are some ghosts playing a flut. If you bury the villagers bodies then the spirits go to rest. IT TAKES A FUCKING PAGE FOR THIS. An entire page. Is there detail? None to speak of. Evocative descriptions? Not really, not to justify a page. Big fonts, a lot of white space and A LOT of extraneous padding. “IF the party picks up the flute THEN [fuckwit local god] speaks directly in to their mind: Build me a shrine and I will reward you.” Fuck off with that shit man. There’;s nothing to this village, or any of the encounters. There’s no content. There’s an ABSTRACTION of content. “You could, maybe” put in some ghosts of the villagers or something, I guess.” This is the equivalent of what is going on here. The specificity that brings an adventure life is just nt present at all. 

This is $4 at DriveThru. The preview is nine pages, a mix of intro and hexes. That’s enough to know what you’re getting. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/498863/hunt-for-the-last-owl-bear?1892600

By Roberto Marcarini
Old School Fox
OSE
Levels 2-3

The wedding of Baron Duncan was meant to be a day of celebration and joy for all his subjects, as well as for you, brave heroes, called to witness the event. During the ceremony, however, just before the fateful ‘Yes, I do,’ Xanaxarius, the bandit-sorcerer known throughout the surrounding lands, broke in with his horde of followers. You remember very little of what happened next: the cries of the almost newlyweds, the dark and arcane words of Xanaxarius, and the red flash that engulfed you and the other guests…

This forty page adventure uses about seventeen pages to describe about thirteen locations in a magic land inside of a red crystal. It’s got a conversational style, full of backstory and explanations, that are inappropriate for room descriptions, as well as a lack of specificity to bring places alive or situations to develop for interactivity. And thusly …

I don’t even know where to start with this. Room one I guess. “Among all the guards and heroes who came to the rescue of the two newlyweds, the characters were among the luckiest and appeared on the cliff that rises to the north of the magical river, which flows through the dreamlike crystal landscape” It continues. For almost half a page. That has told us almost nothing. I guess it says you can see a river? So, mabe a vista landscape descriptions, orienting the party? But, also, all that shit is on the map. And you know how I love a description that repeats obvious shit from a map. Otherwise, this is some kind of commentary. A very conversational tone in writing a room description. Unfocused, repeating information for, like, the nine hundredth time, about the red landscape and sky. And this thing is just FULL of that shit. Asides and commentary, explanations and backstory. Repeated information. There is actually very very little information present that could be of use to the DM running the game. 

Evocative text? I think not. “An old staircase carved into the rock of the cliff that descends to its base about forty feet below.” Yeah! I’m inspired! The next three sentences about the staircase do little more. How about “ A small grove nestled between the cliff and the nearby river.” How’s that? Cool? There is just SOOOOO much text here. The page count to encounter count would imply that, for sure. And yet there is almost nothing present that you could turn in to a game. The gnome couple, on the cliff, don’t really have a personality to interact with. Or a purpose other than telling the party to go south, I guess. The Crimson Toad! “As large as a medium-sized dog.” That’s your description. Great. Oh, wait, it does say, buried deep in the text, that maybe the party learned how to bypass the toad from information in room one. But, that’s in room four, not in room one. Room one doesn’t mention ANYTHING about this. Uh … we put the information where  we need it to use, not in a different room.

And yet the adventure goes on and on and on. The creatures and challenges here are expanded upon at great length. And yet they say very little about them. Nothing really evocative. Nothing really in the way of interacting interactivity. Sure, you can stab something. Yeah?

One of my favorites are some old rotting bags that say they “have become the home to some parasites and other horrid creatures.’ That’s your description. But that’s not a description. That’s some kind of meta overview. Why put this in? Why not just describe some giant grubs or water bugs or ticks of unusual size or something? Why the choice to NOT give a description but instead focus on the abstraction of the encounter? There’s no specificity here. And, in the end, you get attacked by four cockroaches. Yes describe the horrid parasites! But, no, that was not the choice chosen for me. We all need a savior to come our way.

There;s nothing really here. It wants to be a fairy tale land covered in a red tint glow from the crystal you’re trapped inside of. It comes off, though, as meta abstractions of encounters without real descriptions or interesting interactivity. A shadow of a shadow. 

This is $3 at DriveThru. The preview is seven pages. You get to see the first few encounters which should be enough to give you a feel for the writing style.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/498723/prisoners-of-the-crimson-crystal-eng-ita-version?1892600

By muv, Billman
Novis Ludis
OSE
Levels ?

The Lord and Lady Talbot are the last of their line, wealthy owners of a remote but productive silver mine. Over the past decade or so, things have changed. The Talbots have become reclusive, packs of wolves howl throughout the nights, and people have vanished without a trace.

This 25 page adventure has three encounters. With werewolves, mummies, Franenstein’s monster (fuck you!) and a vampire. And igor? A new low in 4e conversions. Or, someone’s home play style with OSE resembles the worst that 4e had to offer.

I went to see My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult once at Talbot street in Indy. So, now, yo uget a Talbot adventure.

I am disappointed. Shocking, I know. But this had a decent start! The party is in a village, a mining village, when an earthquake hits. Miners are trapped! Off to the rescue! See, now that’s something I can get behind. A great big communal rescue job. The party as a part of a bucket brigade or making a human chain to reach someone in a flood/river. This is how people act. It’s relatable. When the party, the players, can react to situations like this, situations that are real, that have that flavour of reality to them, then it sticks much more with them. The players get  motivated, and that is SOOOO much more better than the characters being motivated or resignation to the monday night hook.  So, the premise, generally, is that some miners get trapped by an earthquake.

But, also, generally is all you’re getting here. There’s no real information about the cave in, etc. To quote the adventure “Early the next morning, a small tremor rocks the village. Miners pour from the silver mine calling for help; a cave-in has trapped and possibly killed miners!” That’s it. The adventure then transitions in to encounter one. Oh, I did mention that there are only three encounters, right? In 25 pages? Oh, but it gets worse! More on that in a minute. I was looking forward to some greedy mine owners, foremen, a company store, wildflowers, crying kids, lunch pails and the whole lot. Nope. Just that little bit I copied above. 

There are mountains and mountains and mountains of text in this. Backstory, almost all of it. I think we’re told three time that “Lord Talbot’s mind shattered and he became obsessed with disturbing uses of alchemy.” At least three times. To get us to those three announcers, each of which  takes about a page to describe. In the mine you get attacked by werewolves. At the lords castle you get attacked at the gates by mummies. In the great hall you get attacked by Frankensteins Monster and a vampire. Yes, I have accidentally reviewed a halloween adventure, I guess. I try to avoid those for exactly these reasons. Anyway, there’s no castle details and no treasure in this adventure. No silver in spite of it being a silver mine. No treasure in the castle. Or magic items. Must be something inside, says El Senor Ant. Clearly no one has ever leveled in OSE before. Strange, but the adventure is FOR OSE, yes? Hmmm … Three encounters. A page for each. A map for each encounter that has multiple areas on it … I know what that means!

4e.  Look, I’m not gonna hate on 4e. I mean, sure, it’s a disgusting pile of shit, but, if you want to enjoy your tactical minis combat then you should be able to enjoy it without me dumping on it. It’s just not my cup of tea, because I don’t like a giant turd floating in my cup. To each his own, though. 

This is clearly a 4e conversion. I’m not sure how anything could be more clear. The maps here are of an area. So, encounter one is a map with like ten locations on it, each with one sentence like “two werewolves start here” and shit like that. Nothing evocative at all. Just minis combat notes. Mechanics. And the same with encounters two and three; large area maps for you to tactically move on. “Blacksmith – this shop is functional and appears to be in occasional use (Lord Talbot sometimes uses it in his work)” Just notes about the extensive bestiary. No one cares about treasure. No one cares about descriptions. No one cares about roleplaying or situations. Just tactical minis combat. 

Oh, hey, did I mention tha the opening read aloud mixes third person and second person narrative, in amazing levels of abstracted text? No? Oh,ok.

We do not do that here. A shitty shitty 4e adventure pretending to be OSE. 

This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru with a suggested price of $4. The preview lets you see encounter one. Not that I’ve seen the entire thing the 4e nature is obvious.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/498351/dark-clouds-over-castle-talbot-ose?1892600

By directsun
Self Published
Knave2
Level 2

The viscount’s son has been kidnapped. The worst is feared when a ransom paid does not return the son. But could the truth be far darker – or wilder – than anyone suspects? See what actually happens! The win, smoke and forbidden potions flow freely in a reckless spree of medieval excess. It’s a whirlwind of power, pleasure, and peril. WIll they survive the highs, or lose their souls to drug-crazed abandon!

This sixteen page adventure details about eighteen rooms in six pages inside of a cave complex that is an old cult site full of horny ghosts and hand abominations. It wants to be a frat party with monsters in the basement and a portal to elsewhere. It’s not that at all.

Ok, dudes son was kidnapped and not returned when the ransom was paid. Some drunks bought a bunch of booze at a rural bar with the ransom gems. You’re sent in to get the son back. It’s obvious, I think, that the son is behind everything, just from that summary. You track them back to a small cave system that once housed a drunken cult. Inside are the drunk and drugged up youths and a bunch of friendly spirits that are going to eat their souls.  You have to destroy the body of the high priest spirit, which you get at by going to a demiplane like place inside the mouth and over the tongue of a giant head that talks to you. Fun! 

The magic items here are pretty decent. A jar of pupae that when ate turn you in to a horsefly for a turn. A small silver gorilla status that, when shaken, hoots more and more until an irritated angry gorilla pops out. Now THATS how you write a figurine of wondrous power! The most abusable is a jade frog that turns you in to a bullfrog when you kiss it. I’m not a big fan of mechanics but that one may need some limits, although seeing Ra turn in to a bullfrog would be cute.

There’s also an encounter or two that is decent. “Shelves full of tomes and trinkets cover the east and west walls. A massive openmouthed head fills the north, saturating all in oppressive red light.” And then the tongue A thick, curvy tongue drapes limply over her chin, resting on a dark altar” There’s more. The head is alive and speaks and tells you you would be much more comfortable inside of the mouth. Walk right up on the tongue! You can see inside … a mystical realm/room awaits! That’s a nice little vignette. There’s a great piece of artwork also, of ono the monsters, a combination of many many arms and hands. It gives very creepy vibes. 

Alas, our time with the positive has come to an end …

I hate it when I have to validate the views of the prols. This is using a bullet point type format slightly reminiscent of other bullet/bolded formats. And it’s bad. It’s not bad because of the bullet format; the starting with a couple of short sentences and then expanded upon on certain things with section headings with bullets. It’s bad because it’s not very evocative at all and the choices for both language and subject, on what to expand upon are not well made. If we assume the platonic form of a format that is not going to save an adventure that implements it badly. And, in this, it’s done poorly. The initial text tends to the purple side of the spectrum. “Sounds of snores harmonize with the gentle undulations of a colossal humanoid—their over-sized limbs draped languidly over a Barrel.” I’m afraid this is a critical case of thesaurus syndrome. We must imagine a scene and then try to describe it, not just pick out words from the dictionary. And then we tend to get bullets that expand on mechanics or some slavish minutia. The major heading of Ratbird Nest then tells us, in the first indented bullet, that “?Grape-sized, veiny eggs. Silhouettes are visible throughbtranslucent shells.” and then we get another level of indentation and bullets with “? Ratbird eggs (12).” We’re engaged in post-modernism at this point, with bullets, bolding and indents just for the sake of having them, as Moe would say.

In another example we have a back entrance to the place: “On the south side of the rocky hill is a three-foot-diameter dug-out hole that tunnels through the earth. HOLE ?Handprints in the loose earth. ? Made by Pluckerfiends (p. 14). ?Speed is halved. Checks at -5. ?Leads to Escape Hole (p. 8).” You’re gonna have to imagine the indentations rather than the run on Im using. But, also, We see backstory/explanatios and this need to tell us what the map already tells us. Certainly not the worse sin, in this example, but we see this over and over again.

And this comes to the detriment of actual content. It is, for the most part, lacking. The room descriptions are not the greatest, while they are terse. They come off as boring and the expanded bullet sections to little to augment them. Combine this with an interactivity that is also somewhat lacking: doing rugs and stabbing things. The map annoys me, having page numbers on it instead of keys, but in the grand scheme of things I’ll live.

You, however, will not live. Those pluckerfiends? Remember the level range here, 2? 14 HP each, attacking at level 3. Every time you’re hit you need to make a save or your soul is plucked from your body and replaced. The last room, with the ghost last boss? That’s got twelve of them in it. You not making it there though; there;s more than enough on the wanderer table or other rooms, in threes and fours, to fuck you up before then. CHA save my ass. I THINK I know how a CHA save should work in Knave2 … maybe I’m wrong?

The formatting and bullets make this an outline, but not a great one. Things just don’t click, from an interactivity standpoint. Great magic items, ut the drug/alcoholCHA save stuff is a bit heavy handed, I think, for level 2. All for a transparent hook that is expanded enough for me and a cult ending that doesn’t have enough lead in for me.

This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru with a suggested price of $7.50. The preview is everything, as a PWYW should be.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/497712/with-the-cult-of-crimson-revelers?1892600