tenfootpole.org

By Michael Hubbard
Self Published
5e
Level 3

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By herror
Rowdy Kobold
OSR
Levels 1-3

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

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

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

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

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

But …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anyway, just another Tomb of Horrors.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By M.T. Black
Self Published
5e
Level 1

A tribe of goblins are raiding travelers on the Long Road, and our heroes decide to help. After a dangerous overland journey, they enter a mysterious abandoned temple where they encounter terrifying monsters, deadly traps, dark magic and a shocking secret. Will they survive the Temple of the Nightbringers?

This eleven page adventure feature a twelve page dungeon and is not a terrible 5e adventure. It’s not particularly good, either. Given the dreadful state of 5e adventures I think you can understand how excited I was to see this one. You should even be able to run it without having read it. I know! It’s like the designer gave a shit!

Dude gets in and get out with his DM text. The innkeeper is Seth Grimhill and he is a bit short tempered. The elven hunter happily tells the party what she knows. There’s enough NPC detail to roleplay them without us having to hear their entire life stories. Thanks. Fucking. God. Further, and get this, elf chick lives with the butchers family and won’t unlock the damn door after nightfall. One sentence. That’s all it fucking takes. One sentence. “If the adventurers try to see her that night, the butcher will tell them to come back the next day and refuse to unlock the door.” That scene builds in your head as you read it. Not a page or a column or a paragraph. A fuckton of designers could learn from this example. Sure, it could be better. The NPC’s could have two aspects, or the butcher a personality, etc, but I’d sure the fuck wish people err on this side of the terseness spectrum; at least it’s still usable as an adventure when they do.

The dungeon shows some similar thought. There’s a bit of read-aloud (more on that later) and then a small DM notes section. If there’s something important then it appears BEFORE The read-aloud. Room noisy? Door spiked shut? That’s the sort of shit you need to know before you get to the read-aloud and it’s actually placed before the read-aloud. It’s as if someone thought “what information will a DM generally need first?” and then they went ahead and put that information first. I know it sounds obvious, but the vast majority of writers don’t do that. The DM text tends to be short as well, just a couple of sentences. PERFECT! Give me the TOOLS to run the room rather than obfuscating the room by hand holding.

As far as the content, proper, it’s trying pretty hard and DOES use several aspects of good encounter design. First, you can talk to a few things. That adds IMMENSELY to adventures. After all, it’s a roleplaying game, and that doesn’t mean we take turns hamming it up. You can always stab something, talk to it first, have some fun. Throw those worgs some wagyu and bribe that bugbear.

There’s also this thing in better dungeons where you can fuck with things. Glowing pool of water … wanna fuck with it? That risk-taking OUTSIDE of combat is one of the hallmarks of good D&D. Yeah, yeah, the dungeons dangerous and bad DM’s put in pit traps, but FUCKINGwith something. That’s tension baby. The players debate. They conspire. They come up with stupid plans. That’s D&D.

There’s also a nice magic item, a mask. Wearing it gives you a +1 bonus to a few things and lets you take a short rest immediately. And the effects last an hour … minus one minute for each time you use it. And it slowly shifts your alignment. That’s a decent magic item. Maybe a little too mechanical, but it is still 5e after all. It’s not just a +1 sword

The read-aloud is also too long. Three sentences, that’s all you get. And putting in the room dimensions and where the doors are is lame. Let the players ask. Remember, that WOTC study showed that no one pays attention after 2-3 sentences.

I also noted that I have a REAL problem with “storyteller” style text. “You know the mud from your boots as your cross the threshold” makes me want to retch in my mouth. The story belongs to the players, just be a neutral judge.

There’s also a level of abstraction I’m uncomfortable with. We’re told that this is a particularly savage goblin tribe. B O R I N G. Details. Heads on pikes and blood angels made of entrails. That’s still short and NOT abstract. Likewise the rumor data is abstracted. The key is to make it flavorful while still being terse. That’s powerful writing. That’s what we should be paying for.

I can quibble with a few more things. ‘How many goblins are there’ is a natural question for the players to ask while investigating, but there’s none of that information provided anywhere by the NPC’s, or easily by the adventure, for the Dm to look up. The ELven Hunters information would be better in bullet form, as the rumor table is. It makes it far easier to find information.

There’s some bullshit skill checks also. DC10 to be let in to town. Some Religion roll to know something is related to some god. Neither of them actually have an impact. The Religion stuff is trivia (and besides, I think the party is told the goddess straight off? Weird that a statue to Shar in the temple of Shar, right?) Who did that/those article on good vs bad skill rolls? Hack n Slash or Finch maybe? It should be required reading for designers AND editors.

Finally, it engages in history in a few places, why zombies are in a room or the EHP backstory. Stick it in an appendix if you must, but keep the damn shit out of the main text where it clogs up running the adventure.

I’d say this one is on the low end of what I might find tolerable. It’s got nothing much special going for it, content wise. It IS one of the few traditionally formatted adventures that you could run 5 minutes after buying. That’s not a trivial accomplishment. Compared to most 5e adventures this thing kicks ass.

This is $2 at DriveThru. Ye Ole Previewe doesn’t seem to work?https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/171272/Temple-of-the-Nightbringers–Adventure?affiliate_id=1892600