Reign of Ruin

Posted on January 8, 2018 by Bryce Lynch


By Skeeter Green & Richard Moore
Jon Brazer Enterprises
S&W (ha!)
Level 6

Rumors of death move like a plague through the Crannogtowns of the Great Swamp — of ranger patrols mysteriously disappearing on routine scouting missions, of a winged shadow that blots out the midday sun, and of entire villages slaughtered, their homes left burning and the victims’ flesh melted from their bones. All evidence gathered from the sites of these massacres points to the heart of the Great Swamp, where an ancient and primitive tribe of lizardmen have ruled from an abandoned human temple for centuries on end. The Crannogtowns’ protectors, the Stormhammer Rangers, warn that horrid half-dragon monstrosities still stalk the bogs and travelers would do well to stay away from the inner swamp. Yet the killing and the carnage continue, and the people of the Crannogs plead for heroes to aid them now as they did in days long forgotten. Are you up to the challenge?

To paraphrase: Stupid, worthless, no good, goddamn, freeloading son of a bitch. Retarded, big mouth, know-it-all, asshole, jerk. “You forgot ugly, lazy and disrespectful.” Yes, yes I did. Thank you for reminding me.

This 34 page piece of absolute garbage detail a “five level” temple with about twenty rooms where lairs a black dragon. 5e/PF conversion piece of shit, wall of text, combat/set piece fuck fest and historical descriptions all contribute to the most worthless piece of garbage I have reviewed in a long time. Everyone involved should be ashamed. I’m going to try hard to criticize ideas and effort, not the people involved, but fuck, man, how does your life get to the point where you care so little about the crap you put out and attach your name to?

This little thing is a conversion. How do we know that? Well, there are versions available for 5e, Pathfinder, 13th Age and Swords & Wizardry. But, even if you don’t know that, let me suggest that the presence of monster called a “Ixtupi dragonblood brute” is pretty much a dead give away. Conversions don’t have to be bad but almost always are. Different systems tend to have a different vibe to them and its hard to convert that vibe, especially, I would suggest, between something like 13th Age and Swords & Wizardry. There are mechanical aspects as well such as, say, XP. The adventure proudly states that 6 characters should get enough XP to gain two levels, each. A fighter going from level six to eight will require about 100,000xp. For quickness, let’s say it’s 600,000 for a party of six. The dragons hoard contains 10,000gp of treasure, that being the major source of XP for S&W characters. It’s fucking absurd for a S&W character to gain two levels in an adventure. Even simple things like stat conversion can be hard. At one point early on some baddies attack a village. A bunch of 2hd dudes and a couple of 4hd ones. “Its a hard fight” says the adventure, “so four 3hd guards join in to help.” Sixth level S&W characters are badasses. There is a fundamental lack of knowledge about S&W shown, the mistake almost every conversion makes. Skeeter did the conversion while Richard was responsible for the bulk of the crapfest, I believe.

The writing and formatting is fucking atrocious. It starts with a two page backstory. I know I’m being genter about backstory these days but FUCK I hate having this failed novelist shit passed off on me. I don’t know if this is pay per word but it sure as fuck feels that way. Or, worse, maybe a vanity thing with being too attached to your own headspace. Anyway, the sin of backstory is always “Do I have to fucking read your failed novel in order to run this thing?” In this case, yes, you do. The hook is mixed in. The adventure has tendency to suddenly present a place name and start talking about it. You are left wondering how the fuck you got there. Well, gentle reader, it is always the case that it’s mixed in somewhere to the wall of fucking text that comprises the writing. Right in the middle of a page of fucking wall of fucking text will be something saying “the village of Mistleshit is the next target.” It’s just fucking relentless text. Droning on and on. Burying anything of value in it.

Ah, and the read-aloud. LONG read alouds. A quarter of half a page of long drawn out droning boring read-aloud, overwrought prose that is worthy of spoon gagging. THREE FUCKING SENTENCES. That’s what you fucking get. THREE. No one fucking cares beyond that. People don’t pay the fuck attention, and for good fucking reason.

Oh, and our DM text. Full of such wonderful phrases such as “Once a sacred place of worship.” FUCK YOU. HOW THE FUCK DOES THAT CONTRIBUTE TO ACTUAL FUCKING PLAY? ITS FUCKING PADDING YOU GIT! You’re fucking goal is not to paint a fucking picture russian fucking novel style. It’s to help the fucking DM run the game. Bombarding the DM with useless trivia, like “once a sacred place of worship” does not fucking do that. It does the fucking opposite. It clogs up the text and makes it fucking useless to actually find the meaningful text in the fucking adventure.

The fucking maps are impossible to read and find exits, etc. The wanderers are just presented on a table “8 itlixy and 2 sorceresses” Ok. And? Doing what? Friendly? Want to talk? The actual fucking encounters are little more than “Enter room. Fight. Next room.” This is a fucking grind not an adventure.

Look, fuckwitees …er … I mean “individuals who produced a fuckwit product”, I applaud the fact you created and printed something. It sucked ass. People telling you otherwise either have no standards or are being polite to you. This thing sucks shit for a living. Keep writing & creating but, for the love of all that is fucking good in life PLEASE do a MODICUM of research on how to format your shit for better comprehension. Start there, and then we can move on to “actually creating good content for an adventure.”

This utter piece of garbage is $10 on DriveThru. Page four of the preview is a great example of literal wall of text you face as a DM. No formatting to help you out. Bolding, clue outline, whitespace … none of it. Just a wall of fucking text.https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/224526/Deadly-Delves-Reign-of-Ruin-Swords-and-Wizardry?affiliate_id=1892600

I am fortunes fool.
Posted in Reviews, The Worst EVAR? | 11 Comments

(5e) The Tree of Blight

Posted on January 6, 2018 by Bryce Lynch


By Glen Cooper
Dreadful Dungeons
5e
Levels 1-5

Deep in the wilderness, and only a few short hours travel from a remote human settlement; a passing druid tending to the forestry came upon a beautiful glade. In it’s centre a solitary majestic tree topping a lush grassy mound, bearing irresistibly ripe fruit. The druid sat for a moments rest to eat a piece of the fruit, and fell asleep under the shade of its cool leafy canopy.

This is a 22 page adventure that has six pages describing a small nine room complex under an evil tree. It lacks a motivating element and uses a conversation writing style that is heavy on mechanics. An edit, Usul, the likes that even god has never seen, as well as a shift from CONTROL to GUIDANCE for the DM would help make the horror elements stand out more.

Oh, where to start. This was to be a horror adventure, or, at a minimum, a creepy horror elemnt adventure. Most of the hooks are generic throw-away “sent on a mission” or “please help us” nonsense, but the first has a nice little horror theme. You stumble across a deserted camp, it’s overcast and about to storm, and then you hear a scream in the distance. It’s a classic creepy set up. It works well because the text of the hook is short. It’s not full of mechanics or overly wordy, it’s just pure refined theme. The adventure tries to bring the horror in other elements. There’s the big old creepy tree on the hill. Muddy ground, a tangle of roots at your feet and/or hanging down in your face when you get underground. But the impact is lost because the vision is hidden behind a writing style that is … unfocused? unedited? Conversational? Not to the point. And because of that you have to fight the text to get to the creepiness and then its watered down through the effort to uncover it.

This comes from several different sins, almost all a form of padding. The first is drawing conclusions. The read-aloud at one point, in the middle of a paragraph of it, tells us “Centered in the glade is a ghastly sight.” This sentence is a conclusion. You See A Ghastly Sight. This is TELLING the players to be afraid. This is not a good thing. Instead we should be SHOWING the players and, hopefully, we do it in such a manner that they say to themselves “Man, what a ghastly sight! I’m freaked out!” So, sin one, we’re told what to think instead of being shown something for us to draw our own conclusions. To be fair, the text does then describe what we see. Which means that the entire sentence quoted is also redundant. It serves no purpose other than to clog up the text. The read-alouds can get long, also. Our WOTC friends published that famous article noting that no one pays attention after three sentences, and yet we get long sections that take up almost an entire column. Worse, it’s written in a first person style, so there’s a lot of “you push through the roots” and “you see a “ text. I’m NOT a fan of that style of read-aloud, the kind of assumed action dialog.

The DM notes do not fare much better. Long and full of both repetitive elements and overly descriptive mechanics. The “you approach the hill/tree” encounter has four paragraphs. The first two completely duplicate the information on the map, describing where the next room is, textually, and giving dimensions. Almost all of it is unneeded. A pool is described as “… appears to become very swamp-like …” No. It does not “appear.” It is. And swamp-like is more of an overly abstract term. Bog? Peat? Watery with trees sticking out? But, the mechanics are what I really want to focus on. “From either side of the pool or even standing above the mound the entrance door is incredibly well camouflaged.” This is a sentence justifying what is to come in the next one. It’s not really need. “The door is well camouflaged” would do the same thing. But then, you need to be within a maximum of 10 feet and make a DC25 check to find the door, increasing to DC30 with subsequent rolls as disbelief sets in. Thats a lot of words for something very simple. (Plus, its a roll to continue. What happens if we don’t find the door? I guess the adventure is over?) Finally, there’s a lot of if/then statements. IF the adventurers do X THEN this thing happens. Again, that’s just padding begging to be rewritten in a more direct fashion.

[And, as a nitpick, it uses boring words in places. Tall, heavy, long, big … these are all words that should be replaced with more descriptive ones,]

There’s a lot of maps provided, and I especially like the cross-section ones and the way they help communicate the room flow. I wish, though, that more information would have been on them. There’s a column or so o text near the beginning that describes a lot of terrain features, in the rain, in root rooms, etc. Those could have been placed on the map, making them less confusing and easier to find than continually flipping back to the terrain section at the beginning.

I note, also, that the adventure suffers from a “Why do that?” problem. Why go inside the tree? Creepy tree. Creepy setting. Tree clearly evil. Burn/chop it down. Yes, it’s raining. Yes, if you chop it down the evil dudes come out. But, still, seems much safer than going inside. And yet the premise is that the party goes inside. And past a big trapped front door at that. A little more incitement to explore would have been nice to see.

There’s some creepy stuff lurking in this, but its all obfuscated by the over-use of mechanics and padding/ineffective text.

Also, let’s all welcome Glen to the blog. He sent me a note saying how much he was enjoying reading it, and noting he had written this adventure. I repaid his kindness with this review.And here I am claiming that the only meaning to life is our interactions with others. Bah!

This is $2 on dmsguild. The preview shows you some stats and the terrain features … Which makes it seem more like a 4e adventure than a 5e one. Showing the meat of the adventure, so we can get an idea what to expect, would have been better.
http://www.dmsguild.com/product/190617/The-Tree-of-Blight

Posted in Reviews | 1 Comment

Caverns of the Fish-folk

Posted on January 3, 2018 by Bryce Lynch


By Casey Hoekstra
Self Published
OSR/S&W/DCC? Probably 5e
Levels 1-3

The players begin by meeting Tomen, a shipwrecked halfling, whose brother has been abducted by Kuo-Toa living off the coast. Tomen washed ashore on this forlorn coast thirteen years ago, and will do anything to escape, but first he must save Silvus, his younger brother, from the sacrificial fanaticism of the fish-folk. In addition, Kertol, Prince of the sprites has a bone to pick with the halfling brothers over the destruction of his summer court.

This fifteen page adventure details nine rooms in a kua-toa cavern. A real shit show of an adventure, it is as close to incomprehensible as I’ve ever seen, rivaling the efforts of the dear departed Injured Mage of old. Single column, no stats, confusing as fuck map, linear combat crap fests … everything present but Yul Brynner. Earner of a coveted Bryce Lynch ‘Worst EVAR’ award.

I bought this because the DriveThru page said S&W, OSR, DCC. The adventure proper doesn’t say what system it is for, but I suspect it’s 5e … there’s no evidence of OSR type stats while it does have ascending AC and DC checks. Bryce doesn’t like it when he feels like he’s been misled in to buying something. It brings back the trauma of Castle Greyhawk. What kind of person would do that to me, Casey? Do I not suffer enough, universe? Everything falling apart around me, grinding my nose in to the fact that I am powerless, I turn to D&D for a spark of joy and am confronted with this thing. Why, Casey? Why?

Some halfling shit lives in a hut on the beach. His brother has gone missing ad he’s a piece of shit, leading us to that famous situation: fight for the hook. The little fuck needs the party to do something for him. The DM needs the players to take the hook and to go on the adventure so we can all play D&D tonight And yet our designer has made the halfing an unlikable fellow who you have to convince to talk to you and receive the hook. This is the opposite of good design. You want the players excited about going on the adventure. You want them motivated. Putting them through a grinder just to start play puts everyone in a bad mood. I’d just kill the little fuck and move on with my adventuring life. Even the more traditional definitions of HERO, if that’s your play style, doesn’t mean DOORMAT. This is nothing more than the DM torturing the players and abusing the social contract of accepting the hook.

It is, at this point, that an optional encounter shows up, the best part of the adventure. A noble delegation of sprites show up, demanding that the halfling move. Seems he’s been cutting down their forest and devastating the communities of sprites living in the trees. The well mannered and noble sprites send a delegation to present their demands. They are about one million times more likable than the halfling … again suggesting that the dude should just be killed. “But I’m attached to my little beach hut!” Great, he’s also a fucking whiner. Anyway, the sprites are presented as the bad guys, but a more nuanced interpretation would make this a decent encounter. Social encounters add life to an adventure, they present choices.

Anyway, the kua-toa caverns are literally 45 feet from the halflings hut. No fucking shit your brother got kidnapped. The map of the caverns is hand drawn. I usually like that, but this one is a blurry confusing mess that also has no room numbers on it. You can’t tell what connects to what of which room is which. That whole “make life easier on the DM” thing that I push? FAIL.

The fish-men have no order of battle, they just wait in their rooms to die. The monsters have no stats presented, just references to page number in a monster manual … I guess the 5e one? Again, not making life easier for the DM. It’s all straight up combat encounters with nothing much interesting going on in the rooms. And since when did kua-toa and a giant octopus become a first level encounter? I know unbalanced encounters and “run away” are time honored OSR traditions, but, still, there should be SOME hand waving to character level. “Welcome to D&D, you are all first level. The dungeon we will be playing tonight is full of vampire lords and balrogs. It’s all combat and STFU its the adventure we’re playing tonight.” Wow. Fun times. The room descriptions/text are nigh incomprehensible.

This is $10 at DriveThru. Ten fucking dollars for a single column crap fest. The preview doesn’t really show you anything. You DO get to see the sprite encounter, on the last page of the preview, that’s worth checking out. The rest is just overview and wall of stat bloat text.https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/228321/Caverns-of-the-FishFolk?affiliate_id=1892600

Happy fucking new year!

Posted in Reviews, The Worst EVAR? | 6 Comments

The Hyqueous Vaults

Posted on January 1, 2018 by Bryce Lynch


By [Various]
OSRIC
Level 3

A centuries-old map leads to a mysterious cliffside complex, rumored to be flooded, and supposedly holding a dead necromancer’s fortune. Sages believe the arm-length metal implement accompanying the map must be some sort of key. The complex stands ripe for exploration by a party sufficiently strong and sneaky to wrest any treasures from the depths within.

Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
But he’ll remember, with advantages,
What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,
Familiar in his mouth as household words—
Fullerton, Dettmann, Grohe, Johnson, Riedel, Zisch, Redmond
Be in their flowing cups freshly rememb’red.
This story shall the good DM teach his players;

This is a 20 page adventure detailing a one level 67 room dungeon, and old necromancer’s lair. A group effort to celebrate the 10th anniversary of OSRIC, it has no faults.

This thing doesn’t fuck around with backstory or introductions or other padding that doesn’t’ contribute to the adventure. You get one paragraph of background and one to start the party: you found a treasure map wrapped around a metal rod. Sages point you to a wilderness location. GO! More than enough for a one shot. More than enough to integrate in to an ongoing campaign. Magnificent in both its brevity and usefulness. And wanderers! Broken up by sections of the dungeon, the table is short, efficient, and a great example of incorporating action in to the encounter. Goblins nervously fishing or on an errand for [NPC.] Shadows lurking to ambush the rearmost member of a group. Trogs searching for an escape path. This is not a mindless and boring table copied from the DMG but abstracted encounters in their own right. Just enough detail to get the DMs head working without boring them or making it hard to grasp the encounter immediately. They are perfect.

Speaking of perfection, let me talk about the map. The dungeon features a river” flowing through it. It has multiple entrances. It makes great use of color. It has little annotations on it to help their DM understand what is going on. There are a lot of “same level: terrain changes, like same level stairs, ledges, rises, and so on. It’s got loops to allow ambushes and ambushing. There is enough conventional cartography present to make the map immediately accessible to a DM and yet it does not let itself be bound to a corner by being forced to follow convention mindlessly. It presents a GREAT adventuring environment (loops, terrain, features) while still understanding that its purpose is to be an aid for the DM. I fucking love it,.

Speaking of loops and ambushes … Room three has some bodies in it. Room four has some eel-men, prepared to ambush a group. And they can run through room 3, or a nearby hallway, to get behind the party. A dynamic fucking environment in a dungeon?!?!?! Holy Cow, these people must understand dungeons! It’s one of the reasons for loops and why they can help make play interesting.

That one little section has so much representative of good design. A hint in room 3 that bad shit is nearby, in the form of the bodies/previous ambush site. Other areas of the dungeon have deep scar marks on the floor (oh shit! I wonder what’s nearby!) and other hints that something is nearby. It both builds tension and provides hints for the with-it player. The dungeon does this to great effect over and over again.

Oh, and eel-men, you got that right? Eel-man is a GREAT monster name. It is both magnificently descriptive and magnificently vague at the same time. Enough description to get your juices. your mind races to fill in the details. Koa-toa? What the hell is that? FIsh man? Meh, a little vague. Trout-man.” Perfect! I know what they look like! And yet there’s enough vaugery to allow me to fill in their culture and specifics. I fucking love it.

Room 1’s, the outdoor entrance, has a name of “Clearing.” It says “animal prints near the creeks edge. Two long-unused fire rings.” That’s it. That’s the description. The first two sentences. I know it’s a clearing, I know what’s there. It’s perfect. There a couple of short offset sections (offset with paragraph breaks/whitespace) that describe what you find if you search. IE: more information. It’s a great format. It communicates immediate information to the DM and then expands upon it … but in a terse and easily understood manner. It’s easy to scan. “Ruined Bedchamber” is another room title. You know immediately what it looks like just from that. The description tells us it has a smashed open door, broken 4-poster bed, musty clothes. PERFECT.

I haven’t even touched on the actual fucking content of this thing yet. Great tricks, traps and encounters. Not the arbitrary bullshit of other dungeons but well thought out encounters that are still easy to understand and run. Doorways/archways that do things … but, I will cover one in particular.

There’s a giant troll in the dungeon. He’s a fucking asshole, extorting people, including, almost certainly, the PC’s. I don’t know where to start with him. He’s presented as an NPC, so you can talk to him. That’s almost always a great idea. You can always resort to stabbing someone, but by adding a social element the encounter becomes so much richer. There’s also this aspect to motivating the PLAYER instead of the character. An asshole monster extorting the party should do that, in spades. The PLAYERS will fucking HATE the guy, and from that great D&D moments are born. I’m in LUV.

Offsets and white space are used to great effect. There’s a monster reference sheet, with all stats on it. I could go on and on. IF I had a complaint it would be that some of the (ahalanhum) rooms at the end get a little longer. But “every room isn’t perfect” is a pretty petty thing to bitch about.

This is free at Lulu.
http://www.lulu.com/shop/guy-fullerton-and-rebecca-dettmann-and-allan-grohe-and-jimm-johnson/the-hyqueous-vaults/ebook/product-23455816.html

Posted in Level 3, Reviews, The Best | 14 Comments

(5e) Cryptic Entry

Posted on December 30, 2017 by Bryce Lynch


By Dan Coleman
Dan Coleman Productions
5e
Level 1

The intrepid Reslin Kine spent many of his years as an adventurer. A life of exploring ruins and fighting monsters garnered Reslin a modest reputation and a modest fortune, enough so that he could retire young from the dangerous career to live out the rest of his life on his plunder. Unfortunately, the rest of his life would come too soon. It was only a week after he learned his wife was with child that Reslin fell ill to the malady which would ultimately lead to his death. He’d be denied the chance at being a father, but he’d be damned if anyone could deny his son his inheritance.

You know that withering sigh that Sideshow Bob has? Yeah.

This twenty three page adventure is a linear exploration of nine rooms, a 2016 Free RPG Day adventure. At a page per room … well, I guess that means all the information you need for the room is on one page? Bad read-aloud, filler, useless DM advice, backstory, journal entries … it’s all here. And it’s boring as all fuck.

We start with a full page of detailed and in-depth backstory, followed by a page of hooks and … I don’t know what to call it. Filler? Crap? Absolutely and completely totally useless to the adventure. Look, I know I’m kinder and gentler lately when it comes to backstory, I mean, just don’t read the fucking shit and skip it, right? It still fucking annoys me. It feels like someone spent a bunch of time jerking off on a backstory instead of actually paying attention to the core of the adventure. The crap filler explains how detect magic works. “You can detect magic in the room you are in.” Uh .. great. “There is no light. The characters will need a light source if they want to see.” What happens when I breathe? If I have to pee what do I do? I CANT FUCKING STAND THIS SHIT!!!!!! Oh! Oh! And the journal entries! There’s are journal entries! “It has “clues” to the rooms. Zoh boy! And you did it via journal entries! You know, the stupidest fucking way possible to communicate information to the players. Put in a mother fucking magic mouth. Put in a fucking booming voice. Jesus fucking Christ shows up and tells you the fucking secret. ANYTHING but a fucking journal!

Oh, and the advice! Like the detect magic and light shit? Oh, it gets better! “The adventure is set in the Fucktard Mountain Range. You can change the name of the mountain range to fit your own game.” This is in an offset section called “Customize” and it takes three fucking sentences to get out. 1. You can change it. 2. What it is called in this adventure. 3 Why it is called that. I know I’m starting to sound redundant, but Jesus H Fucking Christ this is bad. I mean BAD bad.

Our linear map? Ohhh, another special joy. On the plus side we get little mini-maps in the text to show us the room in question. It also has icons on it to show us that there is a monster in the room, or a puzzle, or trap, or a clue. I like this idea, in theory. I fucking hate the way its implemented here. The little fucking icons don’t actually help you. They don’t depict a sound range, or detection range, or anything like that. It’s just a little icon. The room might have bats, or an animated sword, or a an elite tribe of hobgoblin ninjas (it doesn’t.) The icons are just mechanically implemented without any thought as to if they are useful to the DM. Do you need to know that there is a monster in the room if its an animated sword that only animates if you do a certain thing? I would assert No. The purpose is not to note where the monsters are. The purpose is to help the DM run the adventure and if it’s IMPORTANT to know that a monster is there then you put it on the map. The hobgoblins might hear combat in the next room, etc. It’s a cue to a scope larger than the room you are running. But generically putting icons on the map without thinking about it doesnt help the DM at all.

All of this leads in to the rooms proper. A full page each. You know, Kuntz could write a long room description, but his hidden depths at least had something the fuck going on in them. This is GARBAGE. The first room is a cave. It has a bat swarm and an illusory back wall that asks for a password. An entire fucking page for this. And on and on, for each room. An entire fucking page for the most meaningless and trivial of shit.

I hope I fucking die before I forget about this publisher and accidentally review another product from them. And let me say this in advance: “You are correct, it’s not my cup of tea. Because I don’t like a big floating pile of turd in my tea.” Thanks Aziz!

This piece of shit is PWYW at DriveThru with a suggested price of $4. The preview is six pages long and shows you nothing of use. You get to see shitty backstory and the map. Joy.https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/185231/Cryptic-Entry-Level-1-PCs?affiliate_id=1892600

Posted in Reviews | 3 Comments

Necromancer’s Bane

Posted on December 27, 2017 by Bryce Lynch


By Simon Todd
MontiDots
OSRIC
Level 2-5

The valley of Highcliff Gard has had a tradition of burying its dead in the south caverns. But guards have heard disquieting noises behind the catacomb doors of late. It may be a trifling matter though another group of guard have not returned from their investigations.

This fifty two page adventure details a two level dungeon with about seventy rooms in it. There’s only about seven pages of appendix and five or so of background, so it’s mostly keyed entries. It’s got a good map and interesting encounters, but could use better organization of the actual keyed rooms. Droning on in places, a key aspect to writing is to know when to NOT add words.

This is part of an interlinked series of adventures. From that standpoint, you need to enter the crypts of a noble and cursed family to retrieve a bone. From that they can make a flute to help remove a curse on the male lineage of the family. But … the guards sent in to get it didn’t come out and there are strange noises coming from inside. They’ve barred the doors and send you in. The whole “curse on male line” thing is a classic and it appeals greatly to me. There’s also a nice little scene before entering: you have to go get the keys from the gravedigger. There you find out he won’t let you in, he’s wearing a bloody apron “cutting meat for the dogs”, the kitchen is full of blood with bloody footprints … etc. His dead wife is in the basement, reanimated as a ghoul, and he’s feeding her already dead villagers. She’s ranting about “the master” … seems An Evil One is back in town in the crypts and his influence has raised her. There’s also a clue or two about the dangers in the crypts, like a giant black and yellow furry spiders leg. This entire section is done quite well. Simon does a good job of communicating a horrible scene. Long knives, fresh and old bloodstains on the floor. Bones of sheep in a bucket under the table. Fresh bloody footprints leading to the cellar. Guttural growling from below. It builds tension well, and, ultimately, pity on the gravedigger results in clues for the party … a great reason to not gack him.

The dungeon, proper, is quite good. The maps are complex, with a variety of room sizes and shapes, some loops, some use of color and terrain features. It’s a Real Deal dungeon map. It’s not exactly Many Gates of the Gann or WG5, but it IS in the neighborhood.

More important, though, are the encounters. The first actual room (the doors being encounter one) has some slender column topped with small angelic faces. Whose eyes are wet and red. They are crying blood. Small droplets eventually splash on the floor, contributing to a red mist. After awhile the mist coalesces in to a Sanguide Fiend. Wowsers! Great imagery! Great “get your fucking ass in gear!” timer to push the party along. Hey man, any statues crying blood that turns in to a red mist is ok in my book!

This is not an isolated incident. There’s a survivor of the previous entry, traumatized and injured. There’s a cave with 300+ zombies in it, shambling towards the party, many more disintegrating as they emerge from the watery depths. (nice imagery!) Tracks of blood to crypt doors. Heads whose eyes open to stare at the party. And, of course, the ever popular “room with three thrones. Who wants to sit on one?” (I ALWAYS sit!) There’s a great horror vibe in this adventure and some decent interactivity. It FEELS like a crawl through a horror environment, full of suspense.

But …

Man this thing is a mess. If I were to consider there to be three elements to a successful adventure: evocative writing, interesting interactivity, and organized text, then this thing is, well. Missing the mark. It’s got some decently evocative writing in places, but not everywhere. The interactivity is there in a hit or miss way. And the text needs some MAJOR help in being organized. There will be a paragraph describing something in the room and then another one, later down, describing some other major feature. What it’s lacking is a kind of orientation to the room. It looks a lot like: “there’s a table. Here’s two paragraphs about the table. Also there’s a 40’ tall statues of zeus, here’s two paragraphs about it” instead of “there’s this black table and 40’ tall statue of zeus dripping blood.” and THEN going on to describe those things. Effective writing for a DM scanning the room to run it for the players. It also goes on at length sometimes about the trivial, leading to some rooms taking up a full page. And then other rooms, typically individual crypts, get long-ish write ups with little (fight monster!) or no (empty) interactivity. Barrowmaze found a way to get these sorts of encounters in without them dragging on and that’s something this adventure could have learned from.

Frankly, I find the text hard to get through, hard enough that I’m not even sure that a highlighter would help. A column per room, or a page per room in places, makes it hard to figure out what is going on with the descriptive style being used. This needs a good edit to clean it up A LOT.

This is $5.5 at DriveThru. The preview is six pages. The last two detail the gravediggers house. Rooms one and two show that horror element I was referring to. You can get a decent sense of the … mixed? Writing style from these, but the actual rooms in the catacombs are much worse, from an organizational standpoint, than these few initial gravedigger rooms. https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/192982/Necromancers-Bane?affiliate_id=1892600

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Witches of Hagswallow

Posted on December 25, 2017 by Bryce Lynch


By Anthony Hunter
Sleeping Griffon Productions
Battleaxes & Beasties/OSR
Levels 2-4

People and livestock are going missing again in the areas that border the Hagswallow Bog. The locals think the Witches are to blame. It is said that they are found near an old, ruined tower near the far edge of the bog. Will the Adventurers save the missing people and put an end to the menace of the mysterious Witches of Hagswallow, or will they disappear into the bog as well, never to be heard from again?

This 46 page adventure details the exploration of a ruined manor tower and it’s dungeon. 37 rooms come in on 24 pages, with the rest being maps, pregens, and appendices. A simple & direct writing style is quite evocative with great use of showing instead of telling, even if it wastes space with explaining WHY things are. It’s a good, basic D&D adventure.

The intro & background are nothing special, but for one reason. Reading it, and the title, I thought for sure it was another hag adventure. Then there’s the background, describing very generally what a bog is, and some shitty hooks like “you see a tower in the distance” or “a relative goes missing.” This entire intro section is perfunctory and you could almost remove the entire thing without losing anything. Except … the locals give an account of the hags. Tall. Sing-songy voices. Oh, so unusual hags then? No. Harpies! TOTALLY had me fooled. Like I said, the entire intro is just garbage, except for the bit about the descriptions. There’s not even an investigation or a village, just some very abstracted notes about background and the general description.

Looks, that’s all shit anyway, what I really want to talk about are the room descriptions in this thing. It’s one of the best examples of showing instead of telling that I’ve ever seen. It its all of the notes that SHOWING gives you. This starts, I think, with a description of the prisoners of the harpies, that comes before the keyed entries. The teenage boy Yar lives in the bog and can find his own way home but thanks for the rescue. The teenage Girl Peneolpe Hazzar, father=merchant, who argues with her father and he probably thinks she ran away. The large mentally challenged fellow karl, who heard the pretty music from the angels and was hauling shiny rocks from past big mountain to horse people. That’s all great; short and it gets their personalities and goals across immediately.

But then, in the keys, it gets even better. The smell of mold, rotten wood and decay with fungi growing of many surfaces of the stable, skeletal remains strewn in the hay. Damp, mold-covered and cracked stone steps leading up to a door. A floor in the tower thick with harpy droppings and feathers floating in the air. Not enough? How about a prisoner who’s had strips and bits eaten off of her while she’s shackled to the wall? No? How about a room , a nesting area, decorated with the remains of her favorite snack, children. EVIL. That’s difference between saying the harpies are evil and showing the harpies are evil.

I’m also fond of the maps, but not in a gushing way. Simple black & white, they look done of a computer. They are easy to read and do a decent job of showing holes in roofs and walls. 37 rooms in six levels (three above and three below) means that the maps are not the most complex. The treasure, mundane and magical is above average, if a bit long winded. A 14” tall ebony statue of a rattoid, very heavy for its size. And then another two sentences explaining it has a gold covering, which is in turn covering lead. Ora small leather pouch, tied shut with braided blonde hair. Inside is a withered finger with a gold ring set with four small turquoise stone. (Aside: “Small” and “heavy” are boring words, try to use better words.) A little long, being about a paragraph each, but certainly richly developed.

I would note, however, that the writing isn’t exactly tight. This brings up the spectre of locating information. It is the Old Wound My King. Room ten on page elevent is a GREAT example. The room takes a column. About a third is a generous monster stat block. The last section is the treasure/what you find if searching, laid out in bullet points. This sort of organization is really good. You know where to scan for what information. But it’s the first section that’s an issue. Here’s the description:
“The harpy Lyvyne nests in this room. She is the second most senior harpy in the aviary and wants to be the Harpy Queen. Although she has the largest area of this level of the tower, most of it it open to the sky and elements. An especially vile specimen of her species, Lyvyne has decorated her nesting area with the remains of children, who she nds particularly tasty. In the straw on the western side of the room is Lyvyne’s pet Bogsnake, Grilla.”

Most of this is padding. The first, second, and most of the third sentence could go away, as could the “an especially vile specimen of her species” clause. There’s not really any factions within the harpy clan, or NPC interaction, so the whole second most senior, etc is just wasted space. The net impact of all of this is the obfuscation of the critical parts of the room, the most excellent SHOW of the tasty little child tidbits.

I find this adventure charming. A good solid basic adventure. It needs a highlighter. It’s a great example of showing instead of telling, with most of the intro being worthless.

This is $3 on DriveThru. The preview is six pages and just shows you the worthless intro portions. You can see, however, on the last paragraph of the left column on page 5, the witch rumors I fell for.https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/204302/Witches-of-Hagswallow-Adventure-OG01?affiliate_id=1892600

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Night at Fausen’s Manor

Posted on December 23, 2017 by Bryce Lynch


By Ben Gibson
Coldlight Press
5e/Pathfinder
Level 3

Up here in the mountains, the sun sets fast. The path has narrowed yet again as it diverts into this small slot valley. A gentle stream parallels the path; it’s pretty, but the smell of rotting vegetation dissuades from lingering long. In the lengthening shadows, birdsong seems oddly muted. As the forest clears a bit up ahead, a small manor upon a little pond comes into view. The birds have gone completely still.

This 24 page adventure (with 17 additional pages of maps) is a “missing persons” investigation at a remote manor, targeted at “zero prep.” I can quibble a lot with atmosphere and order or pages, but it largely accomplishes what it should.

First things first: this adventure claims to be everything you need for a night of fun. Even a brief expose to the cesspool of adventures will reveal that MANY adventures make this claim. This thing gets very close, so close I’m willing to say the marketing is truthful. If you print this out and spend about 5-10 minutes reading it then you can play D&D tonight as soon as the players show up.. This is a non-trivial accomplishment. It’s success revolves around two points: the support materials and the making the adventure clear to the DM. First the support materials, which make up most of the adventure page count, like, 15 pages worth. Pregens. A brief one-page overview of d20 rules, some little paper minis. Maps. What’s in your backpack.

The adventure, proper, is about four pages. It is, essentially, a one-page dungeon, or at least maybe a four page dungeon? One page DM map with notes on it, and then a second page with a relationship mind-map and room key and two pages of overview. Thus it accomplishes it’s “two page dungeon” in the same way Stonehell did, by providing a reference page to use during play and then a couple of pages to look over and read that you almost certainly DONT use during play. It’s an effective format. The background/supplemental information pages get you in to the vibe of the adventure, giving you the broad strokes of the adventure so you can get the core ideas and concepts going on. The “one page” (or two, in this case) then act as your DM notes for actually running the adventure.

I find this very interesting because I think it both matches the way most people create their home adventures and it tries to address head on the issue with communicating vision in a product. I suspect many people, when creating an adventure at home for use in their games, get an idea and maybe sketch out a VERY rough map and do some kind of VERY minimal key, just to jog their memories. They kind of know what they want to do in their head and then the reference map/key is just some very brief notes. But the vibe, all that really makes the adventure come alive, is in their head. It’s that aspect that separates a good writer from a bad one. Can you get the vibe out of your head and and down on the page so the DM reading it can understand it, really understand what you’re trying to do. Then, the references pages, the map and room keys, are just again the simple notes that we all use during play. And that’s fucking hard to do.

This adventure, proper, is an investigation. An old man summons you to his manor because his butler is missing. There are two servants and his daughter in the isolated manor. You talk to people and poke around. Investigations don’t work in D&D unless they are at a low level, which this is. At higher levels there’s too much magic available that destroys mystery. THis makes sense in a deathtrap exploratory dungeon but doesn’t transfer well on other types of adventures … except at lower levels. There’s a mind map present which summarize the personalities and how the people relate to each other. This is PERFECT for a social adventure like an investigation. The NPC’s, and how they come alive, are a major part of these things and mind maps do a good job of summarizing that information in a way that’s easy to reference.

It could be better in a couple of areas. The descriptions could be quite a bit more evocative, to help with at horror vibe. Likewise the NPC’s could use a little more in the events category to drag out play a bit more. The setup is a kind of gothic romance horror, but the gothic horror vibe doesn’t come through very well in the “two page” notes. Some names on the map, in addition to or instead of numbers, would have been helpful. “Masters bedroom” is more informative than “room 6” for these small locations. And I’m NOT a fan of italics on the character sheets. My eyes are old.

This is PWYW at DriveThru, with a suggest price of $0. This is a decent low-prep adventure with an interesting format that I think others could build upon. With a little DM provided atmosphere it would be very good.https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/228129/One-Session-Kit-K1-Night-at-Fausens-Manor?affiliate_id=1892600

Posted in Level 3, No Regerts, Reviews | 2 Comments

Grave of the Heartless

Posted on December 20, 2017 by Bryce Lynch


by M. Greis
Greis Games
Labyrinth Lord
Level 3-4

A curse is upon the land. In the old barrow long forgotten a forgotten general awaits trying to confront death, and until heroes can guide his way, the land suffers.

This seventeen page adventure details a haunted burial mound/barrow with about a dozen rooms over five levels. The evocative text and interesting rooms drift to the long side, while the map is both interesting and drifts towards confusing to understand in places. I tend to like a good barrow adventure, and I like this one spite of some flaws.

The adventure doesn’t fuck around, giving us just a short little overview and background before launching in to the hooks. The “normal” ones involve a burial item being stolen from the barrow and needing to be returned, with a couple of variations. Hero hooks include finding a bloody and grisly trail and an “adventure path” hook involving invading humanoids and the arrow of a once famous general. What’s nice here is the variety and in particular the adventure path hook. Tangentially related to a couple of other Greis Games adventures, the “invading army” and preparing for it are now something I find interesting enough that I may run these as an alternative path over Winter Fantasy weekend instead of subjecting myself to that torture.

With maybe three pages of monsters and magic items in the appendix, most of the pas count is devoted to the adventure. There are two small barrows next to each other, one with an entrance, and the adventure proper has the party exploring the dozen or so rooms between them. The map is three dimensional and reminds me of an ant nest, with circular chambers and sloping dirt tunnels running up and down between them. Thus most of the chamber are actually under the barrows instead of inside of them. Hobo’s gonna Hobo, and the adventure correctly provides advice for parties digging in to the barrows. (And it’s the correct advice also: let them do it.) There’s also a chimney and a well that cut through several of the levels, providing alternate routes.Laid out two dimensional the map wouldn’t be that stellar, but adding the sloping passages up and down as well as the “cut through” well/chimney both really elevate it,

It is here we will pause and relate some house rules and design philosophy spelled out for us via offsets in the adventure. First, you can talk to almost everything. From hobgoblins lost in the barrow to an undead dude, most of the intelligent creatures are not immediately hostile. Stabbing things is but one way to achieve your goals in this thing. That’s something I wish more designers did. Yo can ALWAYS fall to stabbing someone, usually out of frustration with them, but adding a social element really adds depth to the adventure. You can get to KNOW the creative prior to stabbing it. Or, maybe even note stab it and get valuable information!

Greis does something else that I like also: give XP for each room explored. This adds a kind of explicit Push Your Luck mechanism to the game. With GOLD=XP games being about resources management and treasure extraction, it’s nice to see this other element added as well. My platonic example is an ogre wearing a jeweled crown. Get that crown and you’re leveling up … but the ogre is powerful AND friendly. Want that level? How much do you want it? Enough to do something stupid … like backstab the ore or explore the room up ahead with the wailing?Playing with resource management and push your luck mechanisms results in tension and tension means a good time at the table.

But, back to the adventure. This is a conversation from the Danish and, some dropped words aside, does a MUCH better job than most native english speakers in creating an evocative environment. Shadows seep out, darkness swallows sound, the cold weather bids no one welcome and no birds sing and no insects buzz. Methinks someone got their moneys worth out of their minor in Beowulf! But, seriously, both the boxed text and the DM text does a GREAT job of being evocative. You really get a FEELING of what the scene is. This ranges from the blood and viscera of slaughtered game outside the barrow to a good low/cold expanse that the barrow sits on, as mournful as an classically described barrow plain. The dungeon vibe, with darkness swallowing sound and shadows seeping out, only reluctantly dispersing when light approaches … I can fucking use that. It both builds the vibe in your mind AND provides gamble content to scare the shit out the players. Your DM just told you the shadows linger in your light and then kind of snap back all at once in your lantern light … H O L Y F U C K thats gonna put me on edge as a player! Mythic underword and all that indeed! You know you are in a place where the normal rules don’t apply.

There’s lots to do in the rooms and lots to explore, including a passage to the lands of the dead deep in the barrow, and an undead hero who doesn’t want to pass on. Treasure is well described, with silver belt buckles shaped like a pouncing lion with sparkling red gem eyes, ring and bracelets decorated in geometric pattens, and a gleaming green glass drinking cup with a wolf paw silver foot, a brass quiver lined with fur etched with people hunting boars … the effort it takes to describe treasure well is minimal and it adds SO much to the adventure, early giving the players the sense that they have found something. “You find a treasure parcel.” Fuck you. Why not just roll a die, on a 1-5 you win the adventure and on a 6 you rereoll? The journey IS the destination.

The adventure does have a few problems. The mini-maps, inline with the text, do a good job of showing where the various room passages lead. The “big map” in the appendix is a FUCKING SHIT SHOW. It’s trying to do something with letters to show how the passages link up, but I am fucking confused to all hell and back. Maybe drawing some lines between things would have helped, or explicitly putting room numbers on it, like the mini-maps have. Maybe a nice isometrics or side view also? I don’t know what would help but I do know that the main map is terrible. The minima’s solve all of the problems with it though.

I could quibble a bit with some of the monsters descriptions also, and/or lack thereof. The fire beetles and hobgoblins both get a decent physical description, for example, with a 3-foot long armored better with high mandibles and a fiery glow from smoldering chemicals. Or grey-red skin with gleaming yellow eyes and clothed in the skins and leather of heated animals and worthy foes … those are great descriptions. They are also prominently displayed i the creature description, you don’t have to fight through a bunch of cultural of history shit to get to what you need RIGHT. NOW: what the party sees. But then, when it comes to the undead (which play a big part in the adventure)we get almost no description at all. Corporeal undead, “they cannot move on to the afterlife.” “Remnants of the dead existing only as shadows and memories.” Yes, but what do the fucking players SEE, or experience? “Sliding along walls as shadows with monstrous long claws and fearsome jaws gained from the nightmares of children.” Fuck yes! THATS’s what I want to see! Monster descriptions should be high up in their entry, and you better have a pretty good fucking reason to not put it first. Those shadows with claws and jaws are a great example, while “incorporeal undead who can’t move on” is a great example of a shit description. Help me, and through me the players, experience the creature.

The descriptions can get long, running a column or so for a room. Read-aloud, at four or five sentences each, is VERY good if a bit long. The DM text stretches for the rest of the column. It does a good job of using bold to highlight sections to help the DM find things, but does on too long in places. Evocative, but you could rip out about a third, padding, and not loose much. This is absolutely NOT a shit show of wall of text, it just needs a little help to go from “Very good” to that once Bryce standard: perfect. I suspect the non-english nature of the source text results in a this a bit, the mechanics taking a bit longer to get out than a native english speaker?

This is a good adventure, and I recall liking the previous offering from Geis Games also. I want to know more about the Hinterlands settings and the adventure path-is thing these are a part of. It reminds me a bit of those early chapters of the Mere of Dead Men adventures in Dungeon. The bleakness of the wilderness, people hanging on, and shit about to GO. Down.

This is $2.50 at DriveThru. The preview is good, with it, starting at page three, showing you the dungeon proper. I like the page 3 “general dungeon text” in the right column, especially, to set the mood.
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/227738/Grave-of-the-Heartless?affiliate_id=1892600

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Of Beasts and Men

Posted on December 18, 2017 by Bryce Lynch


By Jon Bertani
The Merciless Merchants
2e/Gold & Glory
Levels 3-6

Your party has been roaming through the Dunderro Wilderness, following a treasure map that you hope leads to a great treasure. But the howl of a wolf quickly changes the plan and a choice must be made to continue onward to potentially great treasures, or to help the residents of Oakvale against the Great Hunt.

This fifty page adventure details a wilderness area that houses a band of marauders called “The Pack.” About twenty encounter areas, including five or so dungeon-ish areas, fleshes out the adventure giving a very luch/rich area to adventure in. Quintessentially 2e, it drowns itself in prose that would be more appropriate in a novel or Middle Earth atlas … and it desperately needs a summary.

While following a treasure map is an old elf ruin, a guy runs out of the forest being chased by wolves and a couple of dudes. He needs to go to [village] and let them know about [thing.] There the old dude in charge wats you to go get [spear] to kill the [bad dudes.] I’m being a little overly harsh, but you get the idea. Also, I did NOT get the idea, not until reading the entire thing. The adventure starts with the guy being chased through your camp and then just goes through the keyed wilderness encounters, one after another. There’s no summary of what’s going on anywhere to get you prepped. Literally, one of the wilderness encounters says something like “if you tell the NPC you are looking for the spear he tells you that it is here.” This is the first time that point pops up. The plot/adventure unfolds through the keys, and they are not exactly in order, with the larger sections (dungeons & town) being located in an appendix in order to not clog the flow of the main text. That’s GREAT! Except … that those appendices contain the actual info you need to irent yourself the first time around. I think I’ve figured out that the marauders are wolf dudes and, moreso, their main camp is not where their leader lives. He lives in a cave in a separate keyed entry. It was REALLY hard to put together what was going in this thing, and I’m still not sure I get everything.

Fuck. I started negative. I apologize, I drank a lot at lunch. This adventure is the real deal. It’s not some fucking mini-adventure or mini-dungeon. It’s a full region with stuff going on and a full town at the center to support the play. Fifty pages and almost all of it is “Real” adventure, and not new spells, monsters, pregens, etc. You get almost fifty pages of adventure and that’s unusual for a product these days. This is the real deal. There’s content in this, and not a bunch of generic supporting data. If you imagine the Tharizdun adventure, but with each site expanded a bit then you’ve got some idea of what to expect. A large wilderness with a lot of encounters in it, surrounded by your initial quest (find/loot elven temple) and the two regional quests to recover a magic spear and kill the pack lord, ala 13th Warrior, in a cave past a bad guy camp. It’s almost like a simpler version of Scourge of the Demon Wolf, in a more traditional format.

This being 2e, it has decent magic items and treasure, well described, with the magic weapons and armor having a little bit of legend lore behind them and non-traditional bonus effects that both work to bring the items the life. The mundane treasure, gems and jewelry, go the extra mile also with the little bit of additional detail that make them more than just a treasure parcel. Wandering monsters and town wanderers get enough, an extra sentence or so, to make the encounter more than just a roll on a table that results in a hack. Likewise, the main enemy camp gets an order of battle/reaction description as does the bad guy cave lair. All of these are great elements.

But … it tends towards a kind of novelization style for text descriptions that results in them being hard to understand. A kid of mix between read-aloud and a … strained? text style that is overly arty and focuses on soft edges. Almost all of the text, and I’m not exaggerating much here, is in a flowery format that more out of a novelization. And then it’s also written and presented in a way that makes it seem like boxed text. It’s not offset, or differentiated in any way, by the tense and tone makes it seem like read-aloud. Here’s the “DM text” for wilderness area B:

B. The Pass: The gurgling river noises quickly get swallowed up by the dense vegetation and thick trees that surround the trail creating an eerie silence. However, the silence is broken by the occasional abrupt noise emerging from the brush from hidden birds fluttering to the safety of the towering branches and from an irregular-timed, lone wolf howl. The trail begins to twist its way through the somber forest as the terrain forces a gain in elevation. A weak mist still wraps its tendrils within the branches of the trees, creating perplexing shapes against the vegetated hillside as it swirls through the forest from a light wind. The wolf howl is finally answered by another, and both seem closer than before.

I can’t make sense of it. Some of the individual elements are not bad: weak misty tendrils, birds fluttering, somber forest … but there’s some kind of “programmed event” thing going on. In other words, it not just read-aloud, it’s read-aloud that assumes things and has a timeline/first-person element to it, and then on top of THAT it puts in this forced diction and sentence structure. I don’t know what I’m looking at. Read-aloud? DM text? Evocative setting? The end result is a confusing mass of text that’s VERY difficult to pick out data from. This is not an isolated example; most of the encounter text is in this format. And it can be LONG. The opening event NPC soliloquy is almost a full page long. Add the old “Masturbatory NPC fighter chick that joins your party” and throw in a lot of meaningless history in the description (“the river Arno gets it’s name from an old adventurer that passed through long ago.”) and you get some REALLY long entries. What the fuck bearing on the adventure does the naming of the river have?

Here’s another example, from a bridge in a village:
8. Bridge: This rope and wood planked bridge spans a narrow, deep tributary of the River Uurden. There are some marred, knotty logs stored nearby, perhaps to block passage in times of defense.
? Teenage boys hang out here and bully other kids who are trying to cross the bridge.

I’m not opposed to the teenage boy stuff, it adds some color even if I WOULD prefer the color someone was more directly related to the adventure. But the rest of it … what’s the fucking point?

I want to emphasize: this is a real fucking adventure. It’s not one of those cheap ass no-effort mini-dungeon things that’s so prevalent, in the OSR and elsewhere. But it is SO hard for me to dig through the text, I feel like I’m fighting against it to get out information in order to run the game.

This is $3 at DriveThru. The preview is eight pages and is EXCELLENT. You can see the little additions in the wanderers tables, as well as the initiating event and monster read-aloud on pages two and three. The last few pages show the wilderness map and several of the encounters. Great preview; it shows you exactly the sort of thing you are buying. https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/228005/Of-Beasts-and-Men?affiliate_id=1892600

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