The Palace of the King Under the Water

Posted on July 4, 2018 by Bryce Lynch


By W. R. Beatty
Rosethorn Publishing
S&W
Levels …? Mid to high?

Long forgotten by the people of the Rosewood Highlands, these ruins, now called Blackfalls Hall, have become the palace of the mysterious King Under the Water. […] What does the King Under the Water want? What is he hiding? Who will brave the depths of Blackfalls Hall to discover its secrets and treasures?

This 59 page adventures describes a multi-level complex of humanoids dominated by an evil king. With about 120 rooms, it is the real deal when it comes to multi-level dungeons. Fleshed out and fully realized, it has great variety and a … continuity? to it. Also, the editor was on LSD. I want to say something like “this is a nightmare of epic proportions” but that would be a great exaggeration. It’s disorganized with the DM text being all over the place, making it hard to parse at the table. For some reason I’m reminded of Dark Tower … great, but not simple to use. Or maybe Yrchyn the Tyrant from Usherwood … fully realized.

This thing don’t fuck around. It has a short background on page four and starts the keys on page five. Page 45 ends the keys and starts with the maps, monsters, magic items, AND A MONSTER SUMMARY SHEET!!!! The entire thing might have two pages of background info; that half page at the beginning and one page at the end describing rumors, hooks, and factions. The font is small and the information DENSE. It’s been a long long time since something like this popped by.

By my count there are seven levels, with varied map styles. Dungeons, grottos, outdoor cliff dwellings with an isometric view to help you understand it … perfect. The maps are Dyson. I know a lot of people love Dyson maps but I’m cooler on them. The ones I’ve seen generally tend to be small, almost like lair maps, with varying degrees of interesting features. Some of these are larger, to the point of being full on exploratory maps with many loops. Magic items contain a decent amount of uniques, especially with swords. For example, Bitter Root, the longsword, +2 can only penetrate magical armor, useless against non-magical armor though still cuts flesh.

Multiple prisoners to rescue, factions and machinations, up to and including the False King and the True King of the halls. Garran Ocar, High Priest of the Flood makes an appearance. Who the fuck is he? Hell if I know, but that name, oh man! Well, yes, I do know, he was drowned and raised by the true king. That’s the sort of detail that just oozes flavor. An old bitter ghost has cursed the place and now long-time residents are obsessed with birds (a part of it used to be a temple to a bird god.) This opens up some bird theming for the goblins, including riding giant vultures in places … like a cave mouth overlooking a high cliff, and a shamen that may jump out of window to be at one with the bird gods. There’s a kind of interconnectedness that runs throughout the place, with multiple themes. PERFECT for D&D exploration! Players love that kind of shit, and so do I as a DM.
Now, let’s talk about why this wonderful piece of work would be a nightmare to run. Room 1:

“The path up the cliff side is winding and treacherous, following a series of switchbacks, ending at the bottom of a series of buildings clinging to the cliffs on the western side of the waterfall. The entrance is about 50’ above the great pool below. The door here is thick oak, reinforced with iron bands and painted red and blue (the royal plumage of the Birdmen).”

That’s not a bad initial description. It even establishes some mythology with the red/blue stuff. We’ll give this paragraph MOSTLY a pass, since it’s really “the outside.”

Paragraph two …

“The door is locked. Inside the 15×20 foot room are 7 Goblin Guards and a Bird Shaman, called “The Sky Watch” by the other denizens. Normally they simply sit at tables playing dice or complaining. If alerted, one will climb the spindly winding stairs to the next levels to alert the garrison guard while the remaining six stand against the wall on either side of the door to ambush anyone who comes through while the Shaman casts darkness which covers the whole room.”

I’m gonna be an ass here. The locked door sentence belongs in the first paragraph. That describes the exterior and the lock is the exterior. In fact, that entire first paragraph could/should be a preamble before the keys start, but, whatever. Anyway, locked door goes OUTSIDE, where the information on outside is. Once INSIDE The room then you can start with those details.

Room dimensions in text are almost always bullshit. That’s what the map is for. Start strong, with the first thing. “7 goblin guard and a bird shamen dice & complain at a table. If alerted the Sky Watch will …” That’s direct. It’s targeted at play.

THEN comes the third paragraph …

“Each Goblin wears leather armor with a blue waterdrop symbol crudely painted on the chest, fights with a shortsword and a dagger and has 1d4 sp and 1d10 brilliantly colored bird feathers in a leather belt pouch. The Bird Shaman is covered head to toe in blue and red feathers. In addition to his spells, he wields the Staff of the Air (Stinking Cloud 2x/day, Predict Weather 3x/day, Air Blast 4x/day). Air Blast pushes an ogre sized volume of air (3’x5’x8’) at an extremely rapid speed, pushing up to 600 pounds of weight 4d6 feet (save for half distance). Air Blast does no damage.”

It is at this point I think the description is really off the rails. There’s really two things going on here. First is the description. Blue waterdrop and covered head to toe. Very nice, Probably belongs after the “complain at a table” since it’s something the party sees immediately. The leather/shortsword stuff, as well as the Staff of Air, probably belong in the monster stats, which is paragraph four, or even putting the staff in the magic item appendix, maybe with a page number reference. “Staff of Air (p44)”

(paragraph four)
Goblin Guards (7): hp 2,2,5,7,4,8
Bird Shaman: hp 9
Spells: Fly, Feather Fall,
Bird Form (limited polymorph self)

This sort of muddling of information happens not only within room but between rooms as well. Information from one room is referenced in another, obliquely. “They will release their pet.” pet? What pet? Oh, that’s in a different keyed entry. A reference to that entry, “rm 7b”, would help immensely. This is pervasive throughout the adventure, even if it can be excused a bit in the Cliff Dwellings section because of the way the buildings kind of all run together.

This is a great multi-level dungeon. I just wish it were edited better for use at the table. It’s a hard sell to slog through things. Something like 15 adventures made my Best Of list in the last year. That’s more than one a month. Why would I suffer? It’s time like these I have No Regerts.

This is $4 at DriveThru. The preview is six pages. The last half shows the keys, with room on, the bird shamen, on page four. Check out those last three pages for a great example of what you’re getting. A great preview.https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/240471/Blackfalls-Hall-The-Palace-of-the-King-Under-the-Water?affiliate_id=1892600

Posted in Level 6, No Regerts, Reviews | 7 Comments

The Darkness Beneath Dalentown

Posted on July 2, 2018 by Bryce Lynch


By Tim & Matthew Bannock
Self Published
S&W
Levels 8-12

… Spurred by stories of restless spirits, the party soon finds themselves staring down an invading force of oozes, slimes, puddings, and jellies all in the service of demons! Worse still, the ancient dwarven lords that once protected this underground library and mining operation have been horribly transfigured by the infernal powers at work, and linger on as deadly spirits and automated guardians who are tortured by their station and forced to repel the intrepid adventurers!

This 37 page adventure has about seventeen room rooms on about eleven pages and includes a small town. Featuring sewers AND dwarf ruins, the DM text gets quite long. Pruned WAY back it would be an ok adventure.

While expanding the (very small) towns sewer system workmen break through a wall. Monsters and oozes start to appear. Adventurers were sent in and most got slaughtered. The party is sent in to clear things out and bring back the other bodies. There’s some undead, ghosts, and a Juiblex worshiper down there.

Dwarf ruins and sewers. *sigh* Once upon a time the world was full of wonder and there were ancient ruins attributed to no one .. or to cockroach people. Mystery is a good thing; it leads to a sense of wonder. Tired tropes are not a good thing.

The town provided is small, really just a village (with full sewer system …) and is Just Another Generic Fantasy Town. It’s text is expanded some to be fleshed out, just as the default hooks are. There’s nothing special going on with the town or hooks, just a little more information than usual. That little bit extra does wonders though for cementing ideas. Its right around my tolerance level in length, maybe a bit over the line. It does have a nice little events section, for what happens when the partyrests and/or takes their time. Ooze attacks and so on, with just enough detail to get the DM going. Nice length to them, short and terse with a few details, and it’s a good resource for making the place actually seem alive.

The dungeon map is mostly linear. The DM text for the encounters can be LONG. It’s full on “this used to be a …“ and “the plan was for ….” and lots of tactics, etc. But … nestled in each one there DOES tend to be a short little section that actually contains the room description. It’s not a masterpiece of evocative, but it’s a cut above the usual dreck. You just have to find it in the other text.

Here’s an example of the DM text. This is one paragrapgh in a six of seven paragrah full column room description: “The original idea was that water was stored in the cisterns, and could be heated or cooled through mechanisms that acted upon water in the shallow depression — a sort of pool or channel for water to flow through — but the exact nature is lost to time and damaged parts encased in the earth and other accessways throughout the complex that are now unreachable.”

But … here’s the first half of the first paragraph also, for comparison: “Two immense cisterns dominate this open warehouse- style room, standing in a shallow depression forming a channel that could move water through underground pipes. Iron pipes run along the length of the cisterns up into housings in the ceiling. Each cistern includes a lid”

That’s not too bad if it were standalone text. And then, of course, there’s three and half more paragraphs of text. Ug.

This is $5 at DriveThru. The preview is twelve pages. Page seven shows you the town event chart, while the last three pages start to show the adventure proper. The text just gets longer.https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/241414/The-Darkness-Beneath-Dalentown–Swords–Wizardry-Edition?affiliate_id=1892600

Posted in Reviews | 15 Comments

Pyramid of the Lost King

Posted on July 1, 2018 by Bryce Lynch


By Johua De Santo
Genius Loci games
S&W
Levels 1-5

Millions of year ago the lands of Usarm were devastated by a great Cataclysm in the final days of the war between the Gods of Usa’arm and the demonish threat of the N’zi. In the wake of a final assault by the Usa’arm the very fabric of reality was torn asunder flooding the world with arcane energies and rips that sundered other worlds and realities … and in the process sank Usarm into the dark depths of ruin. Now, Usarm is home to races and monsters dragged through those rips; refugees who now call a world ravaged by magic home. Wars between some races is common, and a dark threat rises in the North and another in the far south. A south that until now was left unexplored by the peoples of Usarm. Intrigued by the prospect of riches the Merchants Guilds of Newrk stretch their arms and money into the great southern desert of the Saragubi hoping to find new peoples and new cultures to trade with and to grow more wealthy by.

This 107 page adventure describes a desert/wasteland region with several small and a couple of larger adventures. Resembling more of a regional adventure module, such as Shadow of the Demon Wolf, it provides a base city and several adventures to pick up throughout the wasteland, including the titular Lost Pyramid. The expanded scope is good to see, and the adventure has a good mix of roleplaying, tricks, traps and fights. It gets long in places but it IS a pyramid adventure that doesn’t make me want to slit my own throat. That alone is a major accomplishment. Those with lesser standards would probably like it. I’ve tried to write this review this times and failed.

This is an EXPANSIVE adventure. It does a great job describing an intriguing small region. A great desert, divided in to two parts. The upper portion has a home base, a great chasm rift, and is generally less mysterious. The lower portion is separated by a great shield wall with a long pass in it and contains the mysteries of the dep desert/wasteland. In fact, I get more of a Badlands vibe than I do Sahara vibe … which is a joy because I don’t think I could stomach another bad desert pyramid adventure. Gus L did an adventure called Along the Road of Tombs and my ancient memory wants to draw parallels to the vibe that offered. A lot of adventures are quite small, a single small dungeon being the proto-example, maybe with a small wilderness like B2. Then on the other end of the spectrum is the megadungeon/adventure, large and in charge. Regional adventures seems few and far between. Sure, there are a lot that CLAIM to be that, but having a lot of places for the characters to go and reasons for them to go seem few and far between. Something that lets the characters breathe and fill their lungs for many sessions. Demon Wolf comes to mind.

The region, with the interesting terrain of the two halves separated by a shield wall (ATOMICS!), a great chasm, a long outpost, fallen monoliths, etc, is supported by an interesting mythology and features dotted throughout the landscape that refer back to it. And then each of the little places, supplemented by four or so medium to major locations. And then each of these places tends to have some little adventure associated with it that you can pick up at the base.

For the most part is the usual design that you would expect from an old school product. Some roleplaying available with some monsters, like gnoll hunters, and some factions … which are generally evil humans. The Save or Die mechanic is present in a few places … unwarranted at this level I think, because of the arbitrary nature of some of them. One of the random wanderers is a giant sandworm that pops up. Save or Die for someone to be swallowed whole in round one, and in round two it disappears back under the sand to not be seen again. I prefer my arbitrary save or die stuff at higher levels, at lower levels I prefer situation where they miss the clues or do something stupid.

I could take exception with other things. A puzzle door that a thief or knock spell can’t open … that smacks of gimping the players, especially at these low levels, You learn knock so you don’t have to put up the DMs bullshit … at the expense of your fireball. It’s a resource management tradeoff. The wanderers are also a bit wonky. They ARE doing things, which is great, but … there’s alike a 50% chance each day of hitting one, and there are only eleven (thats in one section, other sections have similar issues.) The frequency combined with the variety seems a little off to me. “Oh, look, another buried chest.”

There are the usual usability issues. Long-ish read-alouds that are not particularly evocative but are trying too hard to be, combined with long DM text. Evocative examples of writing include rooms that are long and large. These are boring words. Monolithic, cavernous, massive … take advantage of the language to find more evocative and descriptive words. You’re trying to conjure an image in the DM’s head when they read it. After an ok town description … a bit long for how generic it is but not massively so, it has a long section on NPC personalities that repeats the one or two essentially info from their businesses and supplements it with paragraphs more nonsense background. It doesn’t matter if he has a twin if it plays no part in the adventure or doesn’t impact the roleplay substantially. “Talks to his imaginary twin”, on the otherhand, is something to hang your hat on.

I don’t hate this, and in fact I’m intrigued by it. But I’m not going to slog through the text to run it. The imagery needs pumped up while the word count is halved. Invoke the DM’s imagination.

This is $10 at DriveThru. The preview is six pages and hows you NOTHING of the writing. Bad designer! Bad! No cheeseburger for you!https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/196455/Pyramid-of-the-Lost-King?affiliate_id=1892600

Posted in Level 1, No Regerts, Reviews | 1 Comment

(Pathfinder/5e) The Ties that Bind

Posted on June 30, 2018 by Bryce Lynch


By Michael Allen
AAW Games
Pathfinder
Level 6

Still reeling from the twin disasters of the Great Schism and the Hoyrall Wars, the halfings of Picollo are a people cast adrift from ancient traditions. A cleric of the Great Mother strives to restore four great holy sites to the goddess, and in doing so restore the bedrock of halfling society.

This 44 page adventure has the party escorting slaves on a sea voyage to a southern-style slavehold run by halflings in full Deep South plantation attire. Oh, there’s a wayward priestess you can convince to change her ways, a ruined temple she’s interested in, etc. That shit is supposed to be the focus, and not the slaves. Sorry, “indentured servants.” It tries to be a sandbox, but it seriously wall of texted and hard to figure out what is going on. And the slave shit is BADLY done.

This is not a bad adventure. It is a badly DONE adventure. The party is hired to accompany a halfling and her large lot of indentured servants on a two month sea voyage to the halfling island homeland and deliver them to a village. That’s the pretext. In reality, she’s a heretic cleric who has fallen from the true faith. Being nice people will help her see the errors of her ways. There are some encounters directly related to this, and others that are just seeds floating around to perhaps take on. It’s less of a railroad than most (well, except for the sea voyage. What ya gonna do, you’re on a boat.) The major MAJOR problems of this adventure are the abstraction of the indentured servants (both them and the press ganged sailors) and the DISASTER that is the formatting of the adventure. I can barely figure the fuck out what is going on. This thing reminds me of the Principia Mathematica; yeah, it’s got something in it, as long as you study the fuck out of it for a week. I ain’t no millionaire’s son; I Got a job, two kids, a wife, three mortgages, and other interests besides studying the fucking text of this adventure. It’s the designer and publishers job to present it logically in a format/layout/etc that is easily digested. And that they don’t fucking do.This thing is a train wreck of wall of text and subplots appearing out of nowhere and lack of meaningful section breaks. I can’t quite figure out what they are doing, but whatever it is it’s A) Consistent and B) Doesn’t fucking work at all. The ship voyage is the just the first little bit of this adventure, everything after is self-characterized as a sandbox, but the sections are so incomprehensible it’s hard to figure out what is going on, or is supposed to go on. After two readings I’m still not sure how everything in the second section ties together.

Then there’s the slavery. Oh, sorry, indentured servitude. (I’ll also include the press-ganged sailors on the ship in this category.) And the racism. The fucking halflings are full on bigots. The artwork shows one of them dressed in a deep south plantation master outfit. First, this is all a little heavy. If I want that BS I’ll go play Mountain Witch. But, ignoring that, yeah, I think it’s a topic you can cover in a traditional RPG … if you handle it right. This doesn’t do that.

The slaves & sailors have no names. They are hardly ever mentioned except as “you need to escort them.” They don’t exist as people. First, that’s ham handed from an ethical standpoint of an adventure dealing with these subjects. Second, and what I’ll concentrate on, it’s bad fucking design.

You’re gonna spend two fucking months at sea with these people. Not even a name for the slaves & sailors? Not a personality? Not a subplot? That’s the job of the designer. One page with names, personalities, maybe a subplot/goal or two. What, you think the party are going to treat them like paperweights? Ignore them or treat them like cordwood? Even if they do it’s going to be a more interesting adventure if they interact, are real people, with real goals.

But beyond that, what’s a party member to do? You’re clearly in the employ of deep south bigots and transporting slaves BY SHIP. There is absolutely no mention of a slave revolt or anything like it. I guess they are all happy slaves, singing & dancing? Sorry, indentured servants. “Hey man, you wanna be an indentured servant?” is never gonna come up during play? How about the obvious bigoted statements? How about the time the bigot bosun whips people until red welts appear on their back? At some point in this party is a party member going to say “Enough!” Me, I’m eager for a bit of the ultra violence and would engage in some stabby stabby early, in spite of my NE alignment. NONE of this is handled in the text. A page of NPC names and a some advice on the slave revolt and/or diffusing tensions would have sufficed. Ignoring this is a MAJOR oversight in assisting the DM in running the game.

On the more traditional front, it’s got the usual stat box/Pathfinder shit. The ship has ghosts, mephits, and slimes on it … quite the small space for space for such density. I’m not gonna claim to ever be on a slave ship but are there really that many unvisited places on a ship? The cross-references suck. At one point you eat some soup and get sick. It impacts the next day. But you have to get to the next day text, a long way off, to learn that. A simple reference to it would have sufficed to allow context.

This thing is a nightmare. Yes, it absolutely has an adventure in it, much more so than the usual 5e/Pathfinder dreck. But the organization is CRAP, more so than usual even. And the lack of Slave Revolt advice … it’s like putting in a kobold with a chest of gold and not giving the kobold stats or describing the treasure. Obvious oversight is obvious.

This is $10 at DriveThru. Page four of the preview shows you the page-long italics read-aloud. Joy.https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/150280/Shattered-Heart-Adventure-Path-1-The-Ties-that-Bind?affiliate_id=1892600

Posted in 5e, Pathfinder, Reviews | 11 Comments

Sacrebleu!

Posted on June 27, 2018 by Bryce Lynch


By Tito B.A.
Self Published
Sharp Swords & Sinister Spells/OSR
Levels 1-3

Discover the island of EREWHON. Fight goblins with WW1 weaponry, eat mold with analgesic properties, get eaten by man-eating black lion tamarins!

This thirteen page adventure describes a village and a few encounters on a small island. Containing both hex crawl and dungeon elements, and elements of sandbox, it’s generally terse, evocative, and a little gonzo. It’s a decent little adventure.

Let’s see if I can get this straight …

It’s a small island, maybe 6 hexes by 6 hexes with each being 6 miles. There’s a small town/village that was just raided by goblins. They splattered the wizard that rules the town during their attack. He founded the town to mine some druggy fungus on the north end of the island. The goblins are, unknown to anyone, led by the wizards father, who was turned in to a goblins by his sons. Seems the wizard left leaving his brother in charge and he was the one splattered while the wizard was just seriously wounded, fleeing to a temple he razed a few months earlier. Oh, and the goblins are lairing in a different temple and killed a squad of WW1 french soldiers that came through a time portal, eating their brains to learn how to use the machine guns, rifles, grenades, and pistols. Oh, and the dwarf CURRENTLY in charge of the town is a little shit betraying the wizard. And I see a ship in the harbor that trades in goblin slaves. And … well, I think you get the picture. The fucking place has ALOT going on. And an adventure with a lot going on is an adventure I can get behind. Add a spark of PC magic to powder keg and watch it BLOW! A small setting with a lot going on gives the party a lot of opportunity to make plans, back one side or another, and in general treat the place like a sandbox. You could kill the wounded wizard and take his shit. Or side with the goblins. Or the dwarf in town. Or yourself. Or the wizard and help him exact revenge.

The supplement supports the DM. The directions for hexes traveled are direct and to the point. As are weather. Not just trivia, but how it impacts movement and the adventure. Most of the shit is directed AT the adventure. It’s not trivia, it relates itself to the adventure proper. That’s rare. And very good. The wanders DO things. There’s even a dragon willing to parlay with the party to remove the goblins.

Did I mention the temple to time, the second temple the goblins are in, was built by the cockroach people early in their history? That’s the kind of stuff that adds flavor!

The plot develops IN the adventure, inline to the text, much in the same way G1 did. The writing is generally short and terse, evocative and easy to scan. There are orders of battle for the goblins to respond. The town has some little subplots and the shit in it is full of potential energy. The treasure is good … like a silver hairnet inlaid with elephant ivory.

The font is some weird art project typewriter thing, which, while not destroying readability, does nothing to help it. Some of the wandering monsters, in particular the ones at the beginning of the booklet, are NOT oriented towards action. They tend to the be the usual “look, you found a basket!” kind of stuff.

Things can also get a little rough. There’s a goblin ambush on the road with an MG, a rifle squad, and grenades … nine in total. That’s kind of rough at level 1. I mean, I like it, and there IS a surprise roll in D&D for that wilderness wandering monster table … but man, rough shit.

Anyway, good adventure. Creative, LOTS going on, a kind of open-ended sandbox design, good treasure … little wonder the designer credits Sholtis, Gus, and other luminaries as helping to inspire them. Easily makes the Best Of list, which can tell by now because of my shitty shotty review of it. I gotta figure out a better way or writing positive reviews.

This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru, with a current suggested price of 50 cents. The preview is a pretty good one and gives you a good idea of what to expect. Typewrite fonts, good sidebar usage and bolding, both the good and bad wandering tables.
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/243550/Sacrebleu?affiliate_id=1892600

Posted in Level 3, Reviews, The Best | 6 Comments

Jewel of the Lunar Rift

Posted on June 25, 2018 by Bryce Lynch


By Extildepo
Verisimilitude Society Press
S&W
Levels 1-3

Things are not right at Du Sharid Manor. Months ago, a deranged parish priest and his most devout followers formed a heretical cult. These self-proclaimed “Seekers of the White Heart” chose the desolate Wild Hills to practice their secret rites; but the strange goings on at the Wild Hills did not escape the prying eyes of the more pious villagers who set out to confront the cultists. Once there, the villagers witnessed something terrifying and unexpected. Since the events of that night, the cultists have vanished, but the remaining serfs of Du Sharid now live in constant paranoia. Your party has been hired by the local bishop to to learn the truth about what happened at Du Sharid Manor.

This 38 page adventure contains an eighteen room dungeon on about ten pages, with the rest of the material being appendices, support material, and a campaign journal of the initial playtest. It feels real, both the town portions and the dungeon, and has that kind of natural vibe with interesting encounters that harken back to the pre-standardized days of D&D. It’s also got some serious wall of text issues that make a highlighter a must.

There is a rich background here of a shire, four namors, and a local priest gone bad who disappears in to a chasm in the ground as a mob descends on him. The bishop wants the situation sorted, which leads to a small dungeon at the bottom of the chasm. I’m usually not a fan of these “hired job” hooks, but this goes a bit further and puts a local priest in charge of the expedition, and its he who hires the party. Again … not usually a fan of the NPC tag a long, but it goes further and gives him a slightly overly-pious personality AND has him retreat to the inn at the first sign of damage to his person. NOW I can get behind it. It’s taken a lame hook, hired, added a lame feature, DM pet, and then subverted both by making it an EXCELLENT roleplay opportunity AND putting the party in charge in a natural way. It feels real and accessible and, in spite of my description, just familiar enough for the party to enjoy without being hackneyed.

I would say that’s a common feature of the adventure, and dungeon. A gatehouse where the guards shake down people passing through. Or a deep and dark pool of water with a tentacle horror in it that awakens when someone slips in … ala Fellowship. Bodies reanimate is prodded (GREAT! That’s a push your luck element! Everyone knows what’s going to happen … do you do it anyway? I love that kind of stuff.) I would say that the themes are familiar but the encounters are not straight copies of others in every other adventure ever published.

It’s got a lot going for. Charming hand-drawm maps that are still easy to read, an NPC summary sheet, even a little bit of faction play in the dungeon with some hyper-intelligent giant ants. And there are 30 goblins down there, that will react to intrusions, making parts of this a hard slog if the party isn’t careful and/or resourceful.

But … it’s not an easy journey for the DM. It’s all in single-column format. SIngle column is a pain. Isn’t there an article someplace in the forums/blogs about columns/readability? It sounds like something I’d read from Guy Fullerton. Anyway, single column, not much/any use of whitespace and/or bolding to improve scanability. Relatively longish descriptions … or maybe they just seem that way because of the single column? There’s not much read-aloud (maybe two, both from an NCP talking to you), but what there is can be long. In one case a farmer relates his pulling down of a black & twisted tree. But just a few entries later there’s a nice little once sentence summary of the same thing that could have been used.

Further, there are a lot of little things that just rub me the wrong way. In one room pillars hold up a roof and you can knock them down. Wouldn’t DELICATE pillars holding up the roof be better? How do the players get the idea that the pillars can be knocked down? Or do your players just knock down all pillars they see? I hugged a pillar once in Tower of Gygax. That didn’t work out so well for me. And the map scales are all over the place and don’t make sense. Trivia, to be ignored, but it kind of serves the purpose of illustrating that this entire thing needed strongly a second pair of eyes to go over it deeply before it made it to PDF. Likewise the NPC summary sheet, which concentrates on stats instead of personality and WHY that NPC is useful to the party. The party is more likely to talk to the innkeep than hack her down … so maybe focus the DM resources in that area? I’d love to see a second version with the text cleaned up, more readable, etc. That would be a good, solid adventure.

Man, I really like this adventure, but it just seems like too much work to highlight it. To be sure, it IS better than most in that area, but it needs a highlighter nonetheless. I’m gonna regert this because I think it’s charming and it’s my blog and I get to be arbitrary sometimes. 🙂

This is $2 at DriveThru. The preview is five pages and shows you nothing but the beginning of the background information. Nic setting .. but it should all be in a setting book and not the adventure.https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/244309/M1-Jewel-of-the-Lunar-Rift?affiliate_id=1892600

Posted in Level 1, No Regerts, Reviews | 7 Comments

(5e) Dragontongue

Posted on June 23, 2018 by Bryce Lynch


By Matthew Maaske
Games What Games
5e
Level 1

Many have heard the songs sung by the bards about Justin the Vindicator and the heroic deeds that he performed with his magical sword, Dragontongue. But the sword once had a different name when it was forged by the dwarves and was used by their own in defense of their lands. Now the dwarves want Dragontongue returned to them. But where is the sword now?

This ten page adventure describes a twelve room tomb with bandits and an undead guy. It has a good idea or two but also has the usual 5e bloat and makes bad choices in presenting the text of the adventure.

Dwarf hires you to go find the sword, buried with a knight. Seems it was once a dwarf relic before the knight took it. Just find it, that’s all. Look around. It’s in a burial mound six miles away. The mound is guarded by a senile knight of an almost disappeared order.

That encounter is the primary bright spot of this adventure. He guards the entrance, and is lawful good. How do you reconcile that with your charge? He’s senile, so you could trick him … how does tricking a LG knight in order to grave rob/enter the tomb of a famous knight strike you? It strikes me as some good roleplay. Mostly. There’s always the possibility that the party WON’T talk themselves in to it. In which case … there’s a band of brigands that have dug a hole in the tomb on the backside. I might have suggested a few words about what to do/how to use the brigands to solve the moral issue if the party talks themselves out of it, but, whatever.

This is the primary high point of the adventure. There’s some business about trapdoors and mirrors and levers controlled by the leader, which should provide some interest, but it’s mostly just a plain old ordinary small dungeon complex. Bandits, an undead guy on a throne in the basement, the usual.

But the choices made in presentation turn it from “meh” to “pain.”

First, there’s the use of a small font AND combined with italics … it’s a pain to read through. Italics should almost NEVER be used, and certainly not for large chunks of text. Yes, I know lots of adventures do it. Italics is a pain to read in large chunks. Don’t do it.

The read-aloud, when it’s not a column long chunk of italics, engages in some dubious behaviour. We’re told that there’s dust on the floor. Then it also has “Some of the dust has been disturbed.” NO! NO NO NO! You save that shit for when the players ASK about the dust. “I examine the dust.” h, ok, then some of it looks like it has been disturbed. There’s supposed to be a back and forth between the DM and players. You don’t abstract things that contribute to play. That’s why this is ten pages and not a one sentence adventure: “You go the mound, trick an old knight, fight bandits and an undead guy and then retrieve the sword. 300xp each.”

The rooms also do weird things with the DM text. It takes three paragraphs to describe a tripwire crossbow trap. Seriously? Or, how about the single dire wolf you encounter … which then takes pains to tell us that dire wolfs get advantage if they fight in a pack. But that just means the designer copy/pasted some shit in. There’s only one wolf. Why the fuck would you include that? It all feels sloppy and not put together. AN order of battle for the bandits? No, they just wait in their rooms to get hacked down.

There’s not much interesting in this. The knight, maybe the leaders use of trap doors and mirrors and levers. That would make it just “the usual adventure” (meaning it would be better than 95% of the dreck published today.) But then it go forward with the italics, read-aloud, weird and lengthy text padding … It’s just not worth it to dig through to try and run it.

This is $2 at DriveThru. The preview is only three pages long and the only one of ANY value is the last one. It’s a good example of the italics/small font and lengthy text, but it doesn’t really show you a room and the text here is less focused than the room/key encounters.https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/243000/Dragontongue?affiliate_id=1892600

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The Caverns of Ugard

Posted on June 20, 2018 by Bryce Lynch


By Shane Ward
3 Toadstools
Labyrinth Lord
Levels 1-3 maybe?

The name Ugard is notorious with pain and fear! Thru-out the surrounding lands Ugard and his minions threaten, bully and extort money and lives. The vile Minotaur is holed up in some caves on the outskirts of town.

This ten page adventure describes a twelve room cave with goblins and a minotaur, as well as a completely separate adventure in a thief guild in the city sewers. The primary cave adventure takes up four pages with the map. It tends to the drab & dry side of the D&D adventure spectrum, but doesn’t drone on.

With twelve rooms, there’s not much room for things to go on. Some goblin guards, a wolf pen, spiders, some friendly dwarves, and the minotaur. The guard play dice, a prisoner is being held ransom, dwarves mine and want a pickaxe back. There’s a big underground lake to get past, full of piranha. (Shouldn’t ALL lakes be full of piranha in D&D? Hmmm, they will be in my next D&D campaign.)

The room text tends to be short, two or three longish sentences and its done. That makes it easy to scan. The text tends to be on the dry side, I think, but clearly an effort has been made to be evocative. Crumbling stone bridges, a strange idol on a pillar emanating a dark green light. A crude jail with sticks wedged in to holes in the ground.

It’s there. How effective it is is a subject of my nitpicking. Can a room be both utterly dark AND have an emanating green light in it? “At one time there was a stone bridge across the lake, but it has since crumbled.” Well, ok, but is there a better way to say that? “To the SE there is an exit. There is nothing in the room.” Well, yes, obviously, if there’s nothing in the text then there is nothing in the room.

The crumbling bridge is, I think, a good example. Yes, it does tell us that the remains of a bridge wareere in the room. But I think it uses a rather passive voice to get us there, with perhaps some inference required. There’s room for this in places in an adventure, but I think of it more of an aside, after the main description. “Crumbling remains of an majestic bridge litter the lakes surface.” That’s more direct, it tells us what is there now and hints at what was. I’m not the best at this, and second guessing word and sentence structure is not the point of the blog, but the avoidance of a passive voice and engaging in active voice descriptions are a much more effective way to communicate features, IMO.

I could quibble with other aspect also. Some rooms have obvious sounds, or smells, that should emanate from them. Chanting, laughter, animal sounds and latrine smells. It would have been nice to have an odor comment, for example, in adjoining rooms. Treasure also seems quite light. With just +1 weapons augmenting a few coppers and silver. There’s no level listed, so I guessed at 1-3. Most enemies are goblins, with the 6HD minotaur being the big bad. The goblins and minotaur don’t really have a response to their buddies being hacked to death.

What you’re seeing in this review is, I think, a response to an adequate dungeon that still doesn’t meet my (very) high standards. It’s basic, and there’s not much wrong with it. But there’s also not much in it that makes you excited to run it. Noth the romo text, or encounters, or anything else that would seem to fire your imagination. And thus it comes off as a bit dry & bland.

This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru, with a current suggested price of $0. The preview doesn’t work. Me can has sad.https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/128306/The-Caverns-Of-Ugard?affiliate_id=1892600

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An Overwhelming Sense of Loss

Posted on June 18, 2018 by Bryce Lynch


By Roger E Burgess III
Red Flag
OSR
Levels 1-3

Or, The Occasion Of a Visit Into The Underworld By Way of The Grand Entrance To The Ancient Dwarven Fortress of Thrumi`Zud: SOMETHING brought down the mighty civilization. The sages say it was desperate invaders from below, escaping something even more horrible. Whatever it was, Thrumi`Zud was quickly overwhelmed and sealed, forgotten except in the stories of the old. The vast riches of the fabled Dwarves must surely be hidden within its depths. Perhaps you will be the one to rediscover them. Perhaps there are secrets better left unearthed. Horror lies within. You have been warned.

This FREE 39 page adventure describes the first level of a dungeon with 82 rooms, on about eighteen actual pages. The rest are maps, patrons, new monsters, etc. It has a twerse writing style that makes it easy to run the rooms, with an effort at evocative language use. There are some window dressing issues, but, otherwise, it’s a decent dungeon adventure.

There an introduction to this adventure, a kind of designers notes, placed up front. I like those; a one-pager or less on what the designer was thinking can provide some good insight that might otherwise slip away. This time around the designer notes that the dungeon is geared toward three OSR concepts that, he asserts, don’t get much love: Fantasy Fucking Vietnam, Henchmen, and Reaction Rolls. I must say, he nails all three concepts. He’s using Henchmen as a stand in for the geometric XP charts. If you die at level five then your new level one will reach level five again by the time your fellow level fives reach level six … not leaving you too far behind. This allows for a lethal game which encourages henchmen. Horror, isolation and loss in the dungeon are the hallmarks of FFV. There’s got to be survival tension. Reaction rolls mean that there’s a good chance you can talk to and interact with the dungeon creatures in a manner other than just hacking them down. Or, as I like to say, you can always resort to a bit of ultra-violence, why not interact some first to break up the d20 rolls?

Complementing these design philosophies are the formatting decisions made. The writing style is terse, one step beyond minimal keying, with a decent attempt made at being evocative. This allows the DM is quickly scan the room during play and embellish it fr the players. It’s full on trying to implant an image in the DM’s head and leveraging that to greater effect … EXACTLY what the fuck a room description should do. The room titles are descriptive, in and of themselves, which complements the entire affair. Thus a room might looks like:

Preparation room 2.
Barrel of rancid oil, torches, barricade of columns to the north. Moldering cloth lines the walls. Light, glowing softly blue, emanates from the West.”

Not the most evocative ever, but still WAY above average. It’s focusing on giving an impression and letting the DM fill the rest in, which is what a room should do. Another room has alcoves “guarded” by faded tapestries. That’s EXACTLY the way you are supposed to use language in describing a room. You can do ANY fucking thing you want as long as its clear and jabs the vibe of that room in to the DMs head.

Sometimes, though, the writing engages in window dressing. Weird for the sake of weird. This can be ok, but I generally think its better when the weird is targeted. The opening room has some column covered in glowing glyphs, sputtering like a bad CFL. That’s it. It could have been strong if it were a warning, or clue to something deeper in the dungeon, or even even just general “protection against great evil” stuff. IF the players investigate, and they will, what’s up with them? No, you don’t have to give away every secret, but it would have been great forshadowing.

I mentioned that the writing is decent, but could be more evocative. Clearly an effort was made and it shows and IS decently effective … but could have been better. I know, that’s shitty feedback. I wouldn’t say flat, but, maybe I’m picking it apart because I see so much potential here. Anyway, I was going to compare the evocative writing to the map. It’s a decent exploration map, with a couple of loops … but it also feels like a star formation with little clusters of rooms hanging of the central point. So, decent map, better than most, but not superstar quality.

The encounters, he meat, are generally pretty good. A decent mix, you can talk to things, and a lot of neutral elements to get in to trouble with or exploit. In one room there’s a group of demons (manes) trying to figure out how to loot a temple nearby. In another, a group of warriors has another group trapped in a rooms. There are things going on, thing happening. There are effects in the dungeon that are neutral, waiting for the party to fuck with them and then maybe exploit them in the future for their own gain.

This thing is EXACTLY what you are looking for in level one of an exploratory dungeon.

It’s not rock star, but it could have been. I think I tend to pick things apart, like the wanderers not doing things or the writing not as evocative as it could be, when things are close. But, anyway, this absolutly goes in my DM toolbox.

This is free at DriveThru. The seven page preview shows you the map and the designers notes section but, alas, no rooms. That’s too bad. Every preview should give you a look at the rooms so you know what to expect.
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/127617/ZH01-An-Overwhelming-Sense-of-Loss?affiliate_id=1892600

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Svarog’s Anvil

Posted on June 16, 2018 by Bryce Lynch


By Thanasis Tsiakmakis
Geek Society
5e
Level 4

The long lost Dwarven Kindgom of Gleodemar holds a relic of the past, Svarogs’s Anvil, a magical artifact, that when used by a Dwarf it can help mass produce weapons, armor and ammunition. The Heroes are send to reclaim it, but the ancient fort is not empty and the new denizens have settled for good and seem to be also looking for some lost treasure. Will the Heroes manage to win them in a direct (and bloody) confrontation, or will the try to slip through the shadows to reach their goal? Maybe they will be captured and the “cavalry” will have to save them? In this adventure anything goes and it takes only one mistake to unravel the Heroes’ careful plans.

This fifty two page adventure (the appendices start on page 32) details a raid on a ruined keep to retrieve an ancient dwarf anvil. A decent basic premise is ruined by a lack of understanding of basic adventure structure/formatting. It’s ok, but too hard a slog to use at the table.

Conceptually, it’s a decent basic adventure. Journey to keep. Figure out how to get past monsters. Probe depths and loot quest item. Get chased on way back to town. There’s even a kind of basic sandboxy element as you see the keep from the outside and humanoid patrols and figure out a way to get inside. Force, sneaking, deception … all of which will result in The Best Layed Plans of the party … a classic part of D&D fun. There is no greater joy then a plan being devised and then the fun of watching it execute/go south. Elements of the journey to the keep, as well as being chased/followed by the humanoids you stole from, on the way home, give this a decent little third act, something most adventures miss.

There’s nothing really new or exciting about this. Or, maybe instead I should say, it seems to cover all of what you need for a decent adventure, which is in and of itself exciting since so few adventures, especially for the modern games, seem to hit these notes. Three are mercs to use/hire, and even a Casper to perhaps win over to your side and exploit. The mercs even have some personalities that are not expanded upon too much. There’s an order of battle for the humanoids responding. You could view this as a nice little sandboxy humanoid keep.

Except it’s executed like a NIGHTMARE.

MOUNTAINS of read-aloud and DM text. The writing is directed at the players. There’s no real map key or organization to the adventure. And, there’s enforced morality.

The last is first. At one point you kill an orc mother holding a an orc baby. The baby is crying. If you kill it your alignment shifts to either neutral (if good) or evil (if neutral.) This is not how alignment works and it is not fun. Yes, I know, many adventures do it. They are WRONG. This is an arbitrary DM ruling and those have not place in D&D. The ONLY way this works is if you tell the party “If you kill the baby your alignment shifts towards evil.” At that point they get to make an explicit decision: take the hit or not. That’s ok (in theory anyway.) I would still argue though that this is a bad thing. Do you really want to have a nature vs nurture discussion in your D&D game? Shall we all read some Peter Singer before or next game? Further, the proposed solution, leaving the orc baby in a crib you found in one of the rooms, is abandoning the baby to die … the same as if you’d cut its throat. Arbitrary DM’s are not fun. The trolly problem doesn’t have a solution. That’s the fucking point. It forces discussion no a hard topic. By saying it DOES have a solution (in a world in which evil gods come down and fart on you, no less) you are wrong..

There’s no map key to speak of, or creature annotations. Guards in the keep walls? It’s in the text not on the map, in spite of the map having a lot of other notes. The text is quite free form, not being in room/key format, and really just a conversation that flows. A kind of linear running text of how the adventure might go.

The read aloud contains text like “You stop to assess the situation.”

No doubt much of this was learned by copying other adventure. Other adventure suck ass. Seriously, the modern adventure is written terribly. The purpose of an adventure is to be used by the DM at the table to run a game. That means no lengthy sections of text. That means text that is easy to scan at the table, find you need, and improvise on. Do you really need the introduction? Could the NPC personality section be rewritten to make it easier to scan? This is technical writing, almost like a dictionary, more than it is a novel. Help me run the adventure. You don’t do that with mountains of text. ANd no, you don’t get to use “written for n00bs” as an excuse. A: don’t pander. B: that’s an excuse.

Too much of this seems like it was written “because you have to have to do it that way”, where the “have to” is learned from modern adventure styles. A REALLY strong edit, not a copy edit, is needed to get the designer to prune back the text to about a third of what’s offered, and formatted much much better,

This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru with a current suggested price of $.5. The preview is eleven pages, and is decently representative. The last few pages, in particular, offer a good example of the mish mash conversational writing style and lack of structure/formatting. https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/242922/Svarogs-Anvil-5e?affiliate_id=1892600

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