tenfootpole.org

By Dougal Cochrane
Self Published
Shadowdark
Level 4

A Lost Ruin – The Quiet Shrine lies half-buried and half-broken. Its holy places are desecrated, its defenses cracked, its silence disturbed not by reverence, but by the echoing burrow of chitin claws. Yet the dwarven wards endure in part, and within the hidden tomb, Ord’s sacred charge still sleeps undisturbed… …until now.

This sixteen page adventure describes a dwarf temple with twelve rooms. It has some simplistic mini-quests in it that are combined with a “which puzzle does this fresco solve” instruction set. I’m not angry, there’s just little reason to go with this. Sometimes it’s just hard to summon enthusiasm for an adventure, positive or negative, and this is one of those. 

Each room starts with an italics read-aloud, a few sentences long. As per the usual complaint italics is bad to use in long sections of text because it’s harder to read. The text then gets purple and, in fact, the very first read-aloud of the adventure is “Framed by roots and the bones of the mountain” … and .. end with “The world holds its breath. No birds sing here.” Don’t go purple in your descriptions. And, you also want to avoid things like “the world holds its breath.” A good description will make the PLAYERS the impression that the world holds its breathe, be it in anticipation or in melancholy, but you want to avoid outright TELLING the characters what they feel. I will note, however, that the “No birds sing here” line is pretty good. Better, I think, to use it in the description of the doorway, as a carving or runes for the players to read. The text goes on, roof after room, trying hard to give this impression of a massive emptiness and the silence (hence the title) but it comes off purple in most cases. The writing of a terse but evocative description IS the hardest part of an adventure, I think and thus I am somewhat sympathetic at clumsy attempts to evoke a vibe. But, purple is purple.

The text then goes on, the read-aloud, to over-reveal in many cases. “Cold air hangs heavy in this tiled chamber, where black and white stones alternate beneath your feet. Ancient murals adorn the walls. The silence is broken only by the whisper of dust and the faint scent of rust. Two goblin skeletons lie slumped near the far wall, riddled with iron darts.” The goblin bodies is an iver-reveal. The iron darts are an over-reveal. I would suggest that perhaps even the black and white stones are an over-reveal. There is the concept in RPG’s, the core cycle between the DM providing information and then the players taking that an asking follow ups questions/interacting with the environment. Thet core cycle is CRUCIAL for rpgs/ When the rea-dlaoud text over-reveals this then that cycle is broken. You don’t need to investigate the bodies to see what they are. Or to see the iron darts. The black and white floor tiles here, are indicative of a trap, along with the darts, of course, giving some warning to players who pay attention. But its being obviously telegraphed. You want to hint at things, and then let the inquisitive players follow up. You’re cutting to just the end of the room by over=revealing the information. 

A different room tells us, through read-aloud that there is large creature in the water. Ok, sure, but then it has a section of text called “Clue” that reads “A slow, rhythmic chufng sound is heard—the matriarch’s breath as she drinks. Deep gouges and claw marks line the walls.” Well, sure, I can see the fucking thing in the water man! This sort of sloppiness in editing, in the core concepts of the rooms, is evident throughout. Am I figuring out theres a creature in the room or am I seeing that there’s a large creature in the room? Both are valid encounters in D&D, figuring something out or avoiding something obvious that you cannot, perhaps, take on directly. But you have to pick one in your editing. 

This is a meh adventure. It’s a basic map layout, with rooms and a few caverns. It’s got a few simple puzzles, that almost all revolve around “look, that fresco has a dude dropping a gemstone in to a well and THIS room has a well!” I’m not angry that those puzzles, but they are so very basic as implemented. Kill some umber hulks, move on with your life. 

This is Pay What You Want on DriveThru with a suggested price of $2. The preview is five pages, mostly intro, with one room shown. Not a very good preview

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/521855/the-quiet-shrine?1892600

By Will Flora
Prop Cor Games
OSE
Levels 1-3

The magic of Diathea sits in disarray! The Emerald Emperor and the Archmage of the Realms need a party of adventurers to uncover the secrets that lie within the Tomb of the Ancient Hero! Those who dare to wander into this mausoleum will find that it holds much more than bones…

THis 44 page adventure uses about fifteen pages to describe about fifteen rooms in a small two level dungeon. Loose text and wordiness, uneven enemy distribution. We’re on the Epic Adventure train here, but, hey, the weirdness in this is nice.

The Emerald Emperor had his magic sceptre stolen by The Evil Kingdom and now magic is falling apart. Elminster (who is called Twane in this adventure, for some reason)  sends you to the Emperor (AC4 HP14 … prime for stabbing. You keep what you kill, right?) who sends you to the tomb to “find out more information.” This is going to amount to a tablet with like six words on it, something like “Rock and Stone, Tree and Hill” or some nonsense. Oh, also, Elminster shows up on your way to the tomb to warn you about The Duke and give you healing potions and then disappear in classic Elminster fashion in a puff of smoke. 

This adventure has exactly one thing going for it: it is fucking WEIRD in places. It also has some classic elements that harken back to classic design, but it is those weird elements that stick out. I’m talking Dungeon of the Bear ‘Swallow the gem to turn in to a badger’ kind of shit. It is that classic “Imagine first, then design it” kind of philosophy that I think a lot of great adventures clearly come from. We’ve got a Hydra in this adventure … but it’s a Plant Hydra … which means a Giant Venus Flytrap. AC 6, 6HD, 6 Attacks … at level one? But, still nicely imagined! And then the trippiest of all things, in any adventure EVAR. I want you to think of every time you’ve seen mushrooms in an adventure. Eat a mushroom for an effect. Those classic art pieces of mushroom caverns with adventurers in them. The Vegipygmies or mushroom people of 5e. And then there’s this,  The Entirety of the Room 4 Description – “This room is separated in two by a large chasm. There are glowing fungi on the far side like in the crack in room 1. If the party manages to make it across the chasm, the mushrooms willall group up and move towards the boulder. If a party member offers them rations, they will eat the rations and hop onto their shoulders and travel with them. While the Fungi are with a character, they gain +5 feet to their battle movement. They will stay with the character indefinitely, but have a 5% chance of dying at the beginning of every day.” Have you no soul, gentle reader? And this is the artwork from the room, and I swear I did not edit it. This is magnificent.

Alas, though, these moments will be few and far between. For every pit trap that leads to a rushing river below, we get far more generic and uninteresting encounters. Which seldom make sense. Or, maybe, in a jr. high kind of way? On the way to the tomb, about fourteen six mile hexes away, is a wilderness wandering table. In which you can meet six cros. Are you living through that?! Or, better yet, a 1 in 6 chance of meeting a fucking dragon! There’s even a four entry dragon subtype table. I’m not super sure what the terrain type column is for. The terrain is on the hex map … the wandering monster table doesn’t care about terrain. But if you roll a 6 on the wandering table you get a dragon and then the dragon subtype table both has a terrain type AND a random roll? We need to take this not for what it is, as an isolated example, but rather indicative of the type of issues that plague the adventure.

You arrive outside the tomb after your croc and dragon wilderness crawl. You meet your Level four elves who won’t let you in. They guard the entrance. No worries, you got a ring that lets you pass. Except these fuck wit elves, who take their jobs soooo seriously (with,like fifteen more backup elves nearby, all level four) have let everybody and their uncle in to the fucking tomb. LIzard men wandering monsters. A fucking ogre who got in somehow. 

Oh, oh, those level four elves? And that 6 HD plant hydra? There’s also a fucking mummy in your final room that you need to defeat to get the fucking treasure. Levels 1-3. I’m not the biggest critic of power levels in adventure EXCEPT when they block your path and you’re railroaded in to the encounters. This is clearly not tested, at all.

I could talk about page long room descriptions. I could talk about the page and half of opening dialog, that comes in italics form. I think long term readers understand why this is bad, the lack of player focus for long read-aloud and the difficulty in reading long sections of italics. (Shade the fucking thing!) But, actually, I am going to talk about those room descriptions. 

I am going to pick on them. This is both nitpicking AND an example of a larger problem. You need to remember that the rooms do stretch to a page. The cumulative effect here is large. The room two description is: “Area 2 is the entry way hall. There are 2 torches on the wall illuminating the room enough to see clearly. There is nothing of note in this room.” The first and third sentences say nothing. Instead of “Room 2”, the same effect can be gained by saying “ 2 – Entry Hall – There are 2 torches illuminating the room enough to see clearly.” And I might even not be cool with that “enough to see clearly” clause. Writing that is padded out is hard to scan, and the ref NEEDS to be able to scan a room during play. They have to be able to see what’s going on in the room quickly so they can run it for the players. Another example is room three “This room connects the entry way to the rest of the upper complex. There are no torches lighting this room […]  If the players light a torch in this room and pay close attention to the floor, they will notice”. Again, telling us what is NOT  in the room would result in a very large room description indeed. 😉  But then, also, we see the classic if/then statement. IF you light a torch and IF you pay attention to the floor. NO! Beyond the hilarity of the quantum event here, it is far far better to just note that the description of the thing on the floor. 

And then theres room four, the first of the VERY long rooms: “Area 4 holds a great many secrets. There is a reflection pool along the southern wall that can grant a permanent increase to one stat of the characters choice. They must throw in a coin and make an audible wish for this to happen.” Obviously that first line is padding, but note the next sentences. It’s almost like they are in reverse order. And this sort of padding combined with an unusual illogical order of things in rooms follows for every room in the dungeon.

This does show some promise in imagination in areas. But the room descriptions are atrocious and not evocative at all. You have to suffer through the Epic Adventure nonsense, and that’s if you are, say, level 3-5? 

This is $5 at DriveThru. The preview is nine pages of padding. You get nothing of the rooms, and thus have no way to tell what the adventure is actually like. Poor preview.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/515075/tomb-of-the-ancient-hero?1892600

By Josh Yoder
Crimson Adder Curiosities
Weird Heroes of Public Access

It’s time to hang ten, heroes—we have a mystery to solve. Tiki Tony was found dead at the Mahalo Tiki Bar. Police ruled that the 45 stab wounds in his chest were self-inflicted, claiming he was alone and that no other evidence was found at the scene. However, anyone who knew Tony swears he was in an exceptionally good mood that week, excited about a new “centerpiece” he had just added to the establishment. His niece is hosting a wake for him at the bar tonight. Go there and ask around—I feel something fishy is afoot.

This fifteen page adventure presents a couple of NPCs in a bar for the party to talk to. While organized well, there’s just little here beyond the NPC’s to run an adventure with.

Tiki bars are the best bars, after dive bars. And I’m rather fond of murder mysteries. And that Hawaii episode of The Brady Bunch was ok. Besides, people are always trying to do mysteries in D&D and they all suck because of divinations spells, so let’s see one where the spells don’t exist, ey?

This adventure has a page with six entries for “pushing the adventure forward”. It has a page with six weird things that can happen, like your drink turning red. It has a page of “ritual ideas” (more on that later) and five pages of NPC’s, two to a page. It is from this, and an overview page, that you are to run an adventure. I suspect that this could happen, in some possible world in which an adventure supports itself, but it doesn’t really happen here. 

Tiki Tony is dead, you go to the wake in his tiki bar. There are ten people there for you to talk to. They each have an initial description, on an overview page, or something like “The grizzled old man is in a leather jacket, and his eyes seem tired.” This is good. A brief quick hit, glancing around the room, not over revealing things, but communicating some vibe from the initial impression. Great way to present a room full of NPC’s. Perhaps just a little static, the googly eyes and hateful stares (that are to come) are missing from this quick hit, and I do believe that the INTERACTIONS between people is what can drive a lot of great social situations in games. Anyway, we then move on to the actual NPC descriptions, two to a page, in a kind of index card format with bullets. Each starts off with their name and something like “Drama Teacher, Former Girlfriend of Tony,.” Again, very good. A concrete grounding of both who they are and their relationship to the murdered party. Then we move to some bullets, which starts with he same description we got in the overview: “Women in her mid-50s wearing loosefitted hippyish night clothes.” So far so good. Then five or six bullets of things they know and/or do. 

These are generally ok. Well, better than ok. We’re missing any interesting quirks, and the characters come off a little dry, even though they have some batshit stuff, like the biker who is the only survivor of his former gang. The descriptions, while good at facts, just don’t come off as very colorful. Or, perhaps … just don’t spark the DM to really run with them. The counterpart to an evocative room description, perhaps, that puts an idea in to the DMs head that they can expand upon? Anyway, beyond this point, the interactions between them are not handled well, i think. We get things in these descriptions like “Giving death stares to Betty” or “Flirting with Bob” as well as “Loudly calling to Tony from beyond the grave.” What I’m looking for, in a group scene like this, is for a page of this stuff, front he various NPC’s, to be pulled out. I want, in essence, a summary page. Not of what they know, that works well, theoretically anyway, as bullets in an NPC description. What I’m looking for is for that summary page to have the interactive information as well. That we see X making eyes at Y, or drinking heavily, or yelling out to Tony for his spirit to talk to him. This is, in essence, the same as my “Vista Overview” points: When you arrive at the top of the hill you want a brief overview of what the party can see down below: the bright lights, fires, large structures, mobs, and so forth. You don’t want to them have to dig through forty different locations descriptions to check to see if any of them have something that the party might see from atop the hill. The goal, as always, is to assist the DM in running the adventure. 

The more pressing issue with this, though, is the lack of anything going on. There is a page of “weird shit that can happen to you”, which is generally something like some object in the tiki bar talking to you. Other than that, there’s a page of “Moving the adventure” things to roll for, six in all. You see a clean spot on the counter where something recently sat. In the bathroom mirror you see a tiki idol staring back at you with glowing red eyes. Yeah, ok, sure. The result, I think, is that you perform some ritual to exorcise the demon of the idol. What is the ritual? It’s a random table, roll three times and that’s what the ritual is. I’m not a fan. There’s no real way to discover this, you’re just told to roll. Actually, you’re told to go with whatever reasonable plan the party has for a ritual. I’m actually a fan of THAT. The random use of Bless, in D&D, to solve a problem is an under-utliized tool. But, then, the random table, disconnected from the adventure? No way to discover a ritual? Nope. This is the misuse of randomness in an adventure and I’ll have none of it. 

There’s this whole “He went to a carnival and make a deal a dude to get the idol” (that was going to save the bar business) that is really never explored. Maybe it’s a series and that’s the next adventure? It just feels like there’s not much going on here. This is one scene, the “go to the wake at the bar” scene, in a larger adventure, it feels like. There’s not much in the way of investigation. Just talking to the NPC’s. Which, yes, IS investigation, but there’s not much beyond that. 

I guess, what do you want out of a one room play? No Exit?

This is $6 at DriveThru. The preview is four pages, showing you the overview and the NPC summary page, such that it is. You don’t really get a sense as to what the adventure IS though. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/517383/whpa-13-murder-at-the-mahalo?1892600

By Aaron Gustwiller
Aaron's Gaming Stuff
S&W
Levels 1-5

As long as anyone can remember, Griffon Keep has been in ruins, with only vague rumors of strange rites performed in the dungeon below the keep giving any hint as to what may have occurred there and a possible reason for why the castle was eventually abandoned. But for anyone who lives near the ruins, it is believed to be a cursed place that is best avoided. There are other rumors though, that say the castle was once the home of a wealthy king and that his riches are still hidden away beneath the keep. 

This seventeen page adventure uses about eight pages to describe about 120 rooms across three levels of classic dungeon maps. Minimally described and with a seemingly random assortment of creatures and treasure, there are fewer specials than I would prefer, and thus not much going on other than stabbing and finding keys. 

As I wade through the filth in my kingdom of shit, there is a special place in my heart for the minimally described dungeon. I don’t particularly like them, but I do prefer them over the ones that drone on and on and on about a single room. There’s a balance, between the verbose monstrosities and the minimally described … and this dungeon isn’t it.

There’s not much lead-in here. Really just that intro text and a wandering monster table. There’s a small blurb about the dungeon walls being irregular fieldstone and the upper ruins, what there is of them,  and then off we go! I appreciate the context provided by the upper ruin … though it really falls down in practice, not hinting at all of the horrors that lay beneath through footprints and the ilk. And, of course, the wanderers don’t do anything. I can has sadz.

Inside the dungeon room are, in fact, quite minimal. “There are two chests in the room.” or “A stone pillar is located at each of the rooms four corners.” While the treasure room goes on to list treasure, both have nothing more to them. Nor do almost none of the rooms here. “There are ten zombies in this room.”  Vampire Queen at least saved the ink by just saying “10 zombies.” There is, quite rarely, just a hint of something more. Locked doors waiting on you to find the levels key to open them, for the treasures beyond. “Hanging from a peg on the wall is an Iron Key, which will unlock the doors at: … “ So, to it’s credit it tells you, at a locked door, where the key is and in the key room which doors the key unlocks. But it all feels more than a little crpg. We have a medium here, the written word, which is not limited to the coding rules of 1979. It’s a shame that is not taken advantage of. 

It’s trying, sometimes. “There are 3 Orcs in this room; one is wearing part of the tapestry from room 1 as a cape.” But, alas, this is just trivia. This is nothing special and leads to nothing. No knowledge to be gained. In fact, the roome one tapestry is “… and along the south wall hangs a tattered and faded tapestry.” So, not even a design to tell that the tapestry is FROM room one. 

In other places the little effort is counter-productive. A room with pillars (again) we are told has one “2 Ghouls hiding behind one of them; they gain surprise when they attack.” Well, yes, that might be the case. I think, perhaps, though, tha the wiser move is to take in account the parties alertness, their actions and so on before determining surprise, yes? Especially for such a mundane hiding spot?

The maps here, I’ll briefly mention, are by Tim Hardin, one of my favorites. Tim tens to do larger dungeon level maps and that’s on display here, with thirty or so rooms per level. There are some fine dungeon features on the maps, like all those pillars, as well as same level stairs, for confounding the parties, and hallways running under others. Porculli and statues and pits, oh my! These are excellent foundational elements that could have been exploited much better.

“Sniffing around the room is a Hell Hound.” is the entirety of one description. And this is quite the interesting little thing, the power levels here. Wraiths on level one (although they only attack if you fuck with a body.) and it would not be unusual to find 5 HD creatures about. I am leaning, hard, toward this being a randomly generated dungeon. The monsters and treasure and traps being placed at die roll. Which makes me wonder about the appearance of a Hell Hound. In 1e that would be monster level four, which technically CAN appear on level three of a dungeon. But, more to the word, it just feels really disconnected. The creatures, rooms, traps, and so on don’t really make sense together. As if all we did was take the random roll and let it stand. And, of course you CAN key a dungeon that way. But, then again, there are tons of online generators that will do that also. So what makes a dungeon stand out? It’s the ability of the designer to take those random rolls and put the thing together into something more than that. I know I harp on evocative descriptions, but, also, making the dungeon make SENSE. A slide trap on stairs with spikes at the end? Perfect. A book that causes you to forget your memorized spells? Great! (Although, i believe it’s traditional to give it a dumb name.) These are both examples of specials/traps in this dungeon, but, also, they are very few and far between.

I suppose that makes this a true throw-back. And shows you how far the hobby has come from Vampire Queen. There IS a happy medium between minimally descriptions and the reams of text wasted on some keys in some adventures. And this is closer than the verbose ones, but lacks anything to it to single it out as something other than Randomly Keyed.

This is free at DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/519650/beneath-the-ruins-of-griffon-keep?1892600

By Play The Pulp Productions
Generic/Universal

A quick minidungeon, visit a few floors of the mad wizards tower. OSR-system neutral. My first dungeon, made mostly to practice Dungeondraft and dungeon design.

This thirteen page adventure presents thirteen floors of a wizards tower, one per page. It’s one set-piece/mystery per simple floor in this, with the focus appearing to be on the dungeon map rather than the encounter proper. And, the usual abstracted problem with the Generic/Universal crowd. 

I’m still bitter about the Nystul thing, so I’m reviewing this. Plus, our nameless designer wanted to practice dungeon design, so, maybe we can catch this one before more mistakes are made. This has twelve pages with a dungeon level on each page. Most of the levels are a single room or perhaps one main room with a couple of closet-like rooms on it. 

The wizards tower has about a hundred levels above ground. One the top two and the first floor are described (as three of the ten thousand) with the rest being noted as looted and full of junk. TThen the rest of the levels presented are underground. A few are connected to each other with stairs, but other are reachable only by major portal, with the ever popular “put the magic jem in the portal to go through the magic gate” thing going on. Each level/room is, essentially, a set-piece. You’re going to be doing one thing on that level/room, generally. 

We can start with the most obvious of things: the pdf proper. It’s thirteen pages long. And it’s 171mb. It runs/pages like frozen molasses on my PC. This shouldn’t happen. You’ve got to get the page resolution down to an appropriate level. Nothing here requires an overly large resolution. It’s a very simple background, a paragraph or two of text on page, and a very simple dungeon map. The map does have some features on it, like a bed or a piano or such, but it’s nothing that would require the 171mb tha the PDF is. Which make navigating the PDF a major pain in the ass.

This is also a generic/universal adventure, and it shows. It’s seems a truth, universally acknowledged, that a generic/universal adventure will be afraid of its own shadow. SPecifically, it will abstract descriptions and content. I don’t know why this is. If someone writes one then they immediately seem to switch in to some mode where they are afraid to actually describe something. “There is a treasure behind the bookcase.” What is the treasure? It’s up to you to put it in. There is a monster in the shed. What does the monster look like? It’s a beast. And yet specificity is the soul of the narrative. But there is little here. You have to fucking describe shit. You need to be concrete. You can still be generic/universal, that’s just the stats. But put int the fucking treasure. Describe the monsters. Make us see and visualize them in our minds eye. 

I note, also, that we DO get stats for the beasties, so, not generic/universal after all. It would be far, far better to stat something for OSE or Labyrinth Lord and then label it generic universal than to just make up some system. T$R is dead. Long live Dancey and the OGL.

The overall adventure design seems to be derided from the crpg market. There is a lot of “find the green gem to activate the green portal” sort of thing. It’s based on linear design principals. You are blocked and can go no further up/down, until you can activate the glowing COLOR portal. And, then, on each level, some sort of challenge to overcome. Oh no! Spinning blades! Oh no, living statues! Oh, no, an indescribable beast! Defest the obstacle, get the gem, go to the next floor through the portal. This is then combined with a weird power level thing. You’ll fight some 1HD skeletons. After you fight the 66HP Indescribable Beast. The power levels of the critters are just all over place, with little progression. And, of course, it’s all linear. 

This is, perhaps, the best written of the rooms “The memory of death looms heavily on this floor, the screams still echoing through the walls.Taunts and threats can be heard from the guillotine.If approached, he will mockingly introduce himself as Murray, ordering the players to return him to his body,so he can continue his evil conquest.” We’ll ignore the Memory of death nonsense. The screams and taunts of the guillotine remind you, I’m sure, of every french revolution scene you’ve ever seen. Thats good. This reference helps brings to bear more than the written word can convey alone. And, that’s about it. Otherwise, the descriptions are pretty padded out, what there is of them, with little evocative text.

You got maps made and text attached to them and got it listed on DriveThru. That’s all a great accomplishment in the mechanics ot dungeon design and publishing. Now, for the art of writing and design …

This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru with a suggested price of $2.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/521517/the-tower-of-10-000-floors?1892600

By Wes Stroud

Self Published

Cairn 2e

[…] Now, the once-mighty fortress lies in ruins, the steel and iron that once shined over the valley now tarnished and rusty. The spires that had greeted visitors and new residents now lie fallen and twisted. The spirits of the fallen citizens of Boccol, the mages, the guards, all roam the crushed and twisted hallways, seeking that which will let them finally cross over. Creatures have made their homes in the remains. Some venture here to retrieve the mythical treasure. Few come back, and those that do speak of stranger things still.

This thirteen page adventure presents a small ruined complex with about fourteen rooms. Dragons and ghosts and abstracted treasure compliment descriptions that are an absolute mess to wade through. Whatever was supposed to be going on here, the vision did not come through.

I am overwhelmingly confused by this. There was some vision for the vibe of this place but I don’t think it comes through at all. It is supposed to be a ruined palace/fortress type thing. A dragon shows up and wrecks the place and now there are a lot of ghosts/spirits running around. The ghosts show up in several rooms. I think we’re supposed to get a sense of melancholy, of them doing their daily tasks, and of horror. And they are everywhere. But they come off very perfunctory. It’s hard to really communicate that, but the vibe from the wandering table perhaps best relates the issues. “Skeletons, animated by Kuyyin” or “Wight, animated by a rune when Boccol was destroyed.” This is a reason WHY the undead exists. It doesn’t really communicate what they do, or hoor, or melancholy, or anything else. You just get the sense that they are illusions (and not very evocative ones at all) doing things that don’t really matter to the adventure. 

And then there’s the map. This is a pointcrawl, so a kind of flowcharty block diagram of rooms with lines connecting them. This loses a lot of the vibe that a real map would bring and, I think, sows confusion how things are connected. I know it should be si,plier, it’s just a line, right? But any sense of verticality or space is just lost via that block diagram map. At one point, the very start, we get “Stream – the stream runs some 30 yards under the earth before the cistern pool. 2:6 to find an air pocket. The water is cold.” I THINK cisterns usually have a top? They are like wells, right? I’m just left confused. I guess it could be an underground aquifer? I’m open to the cistern issue being a lack of understanding on my part, but then there are other places. Like “Spire – a massive chunk of metal pierces through the ceiling, nearly touching the visible

center of the lake. A door can be seen that, when entered, leads to (6) after a while.” A door, in the spire? Is this a tower that has collapsed? I just don’t get it. And this happens over and over again. Another room has “Pulleys, cables, and platforms are frozen across the span of this room. The East wall has a number of hatch-doors, small enough to squeeze a person through. A set of levers & cranks line the North wall. The South wall is a maze of gears and springs” Is this a chasm? Are we supposed to leap from one to another? I just don’t get the intent of the room from the description. Or the main throne room which says “As large as this space is, the vault below the floor is equally large” Can we see it? I’m not really sure what is going on.

I’m not hating on this. I do think that the map abstraction just doesn’t work. And that the ghosts thing just isn’t hitting the way that perhaps the designer intended. These work together, I think, to help sow some confusion with the actual room descriptions … it’s hard to figure out what the designers intent was for each room. You can get the basic here, that there IS something in the room, but, more than the vast majority of what I see, you can’t really figure out what the vibe of the room is supposed to be. It’s like many of the things need just one more sentence … which probably means that the existing text needs to be reworked, or framed in such a way to bring additional context to them (re: the map, for example.) 

This is free at Itch. 

https://alfalcon.itch.io/the-spires-of-kuyyin

By Ian Hickey
Gravity Realms
2e
Levels 1-2

Crashing into an unfamiliar world, the adventurers begin to uncover past events between two warring factions and a hunger that led to their downfall: a hidden cult dedicated to the return of the Great Toad, Father of Death and Rebirth, an ancient being responsible for birthing the universe! For many decades, the cult has been in hibernation. But now, a wandering tribe of ogres has awakened the cult, becoming its servants and capturing tributes to feed the Great Toad in preparation for an ancient prophecy. The stars are in alignment, and the hottest of summers is upon us; the way to RA’hala will soon open, and the father of death will consume everything!

This 117 page adventure uses about seventy pages to describe sevenish scenes, some of which are mini-dungeon and some full blown, in an interconnected set of adventures that don’t mean anything. Mostly stabbing, the great set up is marred by overly lengthy text, as usual, and problems with the encounters. It’s not a disaster, but not worth running. Except for that set up …

So I’m taking my first run through this and I get to the section on weather on page elevent and it says “Clean, fresh water will be hard to find as dead bodies fill the lakes and rivers.” What’s that all about, I think to myself. Then, I get further in: “The day of the falling, thirty thousand people fell from the sky. Screams and thuds broke the silence of the summer heat.” OHHHHHH! That’s fun! This is a whole Dungeons and Dragons ride at the amusement park, except thirty thousand people get transported to the sky WAY above the new realm. Bloody splats! A friendly wizard zips by to give you a levitation potion, so, you know, you’re safe. And others survive also. You come together, only to find that you are revolving in to neanderthals AND your metal is rusting fast. Oh, also, there’s disease everywhere because of all the bodies. And, also, it’s super hot and dry, so you need extra water. (That fucking shit is not my favorite. I assume there’s some game trauma buried in my past when some asshole DM took away all of our shit because of it.) Anyway, you see a tower nearby and fight the small group of cavemen goblins in it. You get a hint to the curse, and follow that to a manor, and then meet a paladin, and then that leads to a village thats been raided, and then to an old dwarf mine, and then to the titular Ogre Caves, and then to an extradimensional space where thousands of high priests of the toad god from thousands of planets are all sacrificing people to bring the toad goad, avatar of universal destruction, back so he will destroy the universe. There’s nothing you can do, so you save the paladin from YOUR evil high priest (which is not as great as it might seem) and then run through a portal to another world. As the adventure says, “without the adventurers entering RA’hala, Imhullu [the paladin] dies, and the Great Toad God, father of destruction and rebirth, returns and consumes the cosmos. Can the adventurers stop the coming of the Great Toad if they enter RA’hala? No! They can only save Imhullu.” 

So, congrats, Friendship was the goal the entire time. I guess, maybe, you leveled? It feels wrong. I’m down with meaningless adventuring. I may even be down with a plot. But to have the goal of the adventure be a plot and then not be able to impact things in any way?  I mean you collect things along the way in your mini-adventures/scenes in this adventure, but, if you don’t collect them, not to worry, the evil high priest has them all collected for you. The lack of any free will, of your choices matterring, is just nonsense. This is the bullshit of one of those adventure paths, except all in one adventure package.

Looking at the read-aloud, it follows through on the railroad theme, along with over-reveals. “By the sound of it, the tower is infested with goblins; their shaman leader stands on top of a pile of stone blocks in the tower’s centre. Waving primitive stone weapons and covered in fur they prepare for your attack” or “ Two large palisades flank the entrance outlined by the campfires. From behind the palisades, a hail of poisonous toads rains down on you.” It doesn’t matter what you were doing, the designer has deigned that you must now be attacked. Nerfing any of the parties actions. You have no free will, you are but a pawn. This is not fun. This is the kind of shit that causes players to disengage. Don’t fucking do this! We can also see in places an over-reveal in the read-aloud. The RA telling the party things that they should only really be aware of after a deeper examination of the rooms. Not to mention, some of the re-adloud is just confusing. “A faint glow of light spills in a doorway at the far end of the room.” … uh, that room has no doors? I guess maybe a hallway?

This all extends to the DM text where things are padded out through some sloppy writing. “This large kitchen has an entrance into the dining hall and pantry and, a corridor connecting it to the reception and ballroom.” It’s the old wound, my lord.  Which is frustrating because in places there ARE hints of things being done correctly. “The large wooden dance floor, once polished and intact, now warped and buckled, covers the room. A large wooden piano dominates the southwest corner of the room” Getting near the piano can cause the floor to collapse. And we’re told that, or its hinted at anyway, by the warped and buckled floor. That’s the way you telegraph a graph in read-aloud. 

There is a disconnect in this adventure in places. We’ll get mounds of text but then that whole “falling through the air” air just comes out of nowhere eleven pages in. Likewise, there’s this paladin that things hinge on, supposedly the only reason you exist in this adventure, and yet here’s what we get “Shortly after the adventurers clear out the Duke’s Manor and attain 2nd level, they will encounter Imhullu in the wilderness, possibly near the kitchen gardens. Alternatively, she can show up near the adventurer’s camp. Imhullu is with a handful of survivors. They are being attacked by an ogre raiding party riding giant toads. Shouts for help attract the adventurer’s attention.” That’s the ENTIRE adventure section. Mountains and mountains of text, and then this. That fucking paladin gets almost nothing in the adventure. And yet thats who were supposed to be focused on saving at the end. (Again, for no fucking reason other than doing it.)  Tonally, this follows as well with things like “The Shamen of the Crow and Chief Mayor Randy Adams.” Uh … ok, it is 2025, I guess. If I’m not mistaken, he runs the inn that “The inn has turned into a hub for drunken Neanderthals” Sure thing man. It’s just got some weird tone to it in places. More of a Gamma World vibe, but in a weird way. 

Did I mention the challenge levels here? Level one? AT the dukes ruined manor, the second location? It’s got a garden. Want to check it out? “The adventurers will be randomly attacked by ankhegs if they wander around the garden” Uh. Sure. I don’t know. Doesn’t feel kosher. Hydras in the wilderness table? Ok, I guess. Maybe. But, also, you WANT the party wandering in the wilderness. It feels like punishment for playing the level one adventure instead of real world verisimilitude. I’m up for high level shit, but not being FORCED on the party. It’s as if the level one party must travel through Tarrasqueland for two weeks where every 30 minutes a tarrasque shows up on a 1-2. Uh. Ok. You TOLD them to do that! In another place there’s forty ogres. As enemies you are supposed to kill. I’m not even sure this is kosher in a 5e adventure? And, on that front, almost ALL of the interactivity in this is just stabbing things.

So, I went on a lot about hating this. And I don’t like it. But, also, it’s not as bad as most things. If you wanted a plot based adventure where most of what you do is stab things then this would be ok. You can see hints of decent things. Yeah, it’s padded out. And I hate the RA. But it does manage to do a plot based multi-location adventure in a less cringy way than most. Plus, you know, it starts with all those splats and that ending where no matter what you do the toad god shows up to start consuming the universe. There’s something you don’t see every day …

This is $14 at DriveThru. Fourteen dollars and no fucking preview. Great. Sucker

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/513622/ogre-caves-of-the-toad-god?1892600