Fever-Dreaming Marlinko

Posted on June 15, 2016 by Bryce Lynch

marl
By Chris Kutalik
Hydra Cooperative

Visit Marlinko, a borderlands city where life takes a strange fever-dream cast …

I suck at describing good things. This thing is Goooooood!

At its core this is a city supplement. It describes a city. It describes a city in which EVERY. SINGLE. THING. Is something that the party can interact/have and adventure with. It is PACKED FULL of adventure seeds. Of quick hit text that strikes in a sentence or two and then moves on. It is one of the clearest examples of excellent writing that is appropriate and directly useful to the GM.

There are these things we know generically as “adventures.” Some of them are traditional plot based things. Some of them are more neutral locations that can be used in your own campaign arcs. Some of them are event based. Some of them are investigations, or mysteries. Some of them are hex crawls. This thing is …. Hmmmm. It’s some combination of a hex crawl and one of those neutral “module” (the old definition of module) locations. Except it’s in a city. And it’s one of the best city supplements every produced, if not the best. If you’ve seen Towers of Kryshal, or the city section of ASE1 then you’re on the right track. But this isn’t Kryshal or ASE1, it’s something different. It’s a all about the city. More, it’s all about DOING things in the city. Not static. Not a shopkeep with lanterns. It’s dynamic. Things are going on. I could be wrong, but I think EVERYTHING in this place can be interacted with, or, rather, has something going on that that can directly impact the characters. It’s not abstracted. It’s not mundane. It’s not interactivity like “you can buy a lantern” or “she’s a fortune teller.” That’s not interactivity, at least not in the way I use the word in these reviews. I use Interactivity in a way that means driving the fun forward. This product is ALL that definition.

I talk about this a lot in dungeons and other place descriptions. Inevitably there’s some a room description that goes something like “10. This is a bedroom. It has a bed. There is a wardrobe. It has clothes in it. There are sheets, blankets and pillows on the bed. There is a lantern on a side table next to the bed.” That is a shitty fucking description. (It’s also the soul of tercity compared to some of the descriptions I’ve seen.) It describes a normal bedroom. I know what a bedroom looks like. You know what a bedroom looks like. More to the point, the bedroom and its contents are irrelevant to the adventure. It is doing nothing to advance the adventure, or for the party to interact with or get into trouble with, or anything like that. Understand, I’m not complaining that’s there is, essentially, an empty room. That kind of shit can sometimes have a purpose. I’m complaining that the adventure was taken up with a bunch of useless text for the DM to wade through. If you’re going to write something then write something that advances the adventure, or the fun, in some way. Similarly, in a town supplement, the entries are full of inn descriptions, or shops, or other stuff that is boringly described. The price of food. Price lists. Boring normal fantasy stuff that is nothing more than window dressing in a B-Movie.

Not. This. Everything in this contributes to the fun. Everything is a hook. Everything is interactive. No boring old descriptions here. The town government building gets a two line description. Here’s the second sentence: “While technically sitting in Golden Swine territory, the structure is open and available to the bribery and graft needs of all citizens.” That pretty much tells you everything to know, in one sentence, and is focused on HOW the party, and/or adventure, will interact with the council. The plaza, outside, has a one sentence description. Here’s the second half: “[the plaza is] filled with clusters of citizens, eccentrics and grifters (though that may be a redundant set of distinctions).” Again, this immediately gives you the feel for the place. You now know, instinctively, how to run the place and what color to add. You mind flies with the possibilities. And it’s clear HOW they will interact with the party and how, possibly, the party will interact with them. Time after time, Place after place. NPC after NPC, this sort of thing takes place. The hiring hall, how they treat scab hirelings, and how they could picket/protest. Complications! Fun! There are a couple of townhome/dungeons provided for two of the major NPC’s/sites, but most of this is directly targeted at the sort of quick hit things that parties get into trouble with, or are looking for, in town. Buying a house? It’s in there! Temples & unguents? Lots of places to go! … with lots of creepiness and/or hooks!

I love cities like this. They directly enhance play, providing a diversion from the dungeons and wilderness with none of the dullness usually associated with Boringtown of BoringLand.

A perfect home base for your party.

This is available at DriveThru,https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/151165/FeverDreaming-Marlinko?affiliate_id=1892600

Posted in Level 3, Reviews, The Best | 11 Comments

Come To Daddy

Posted on June 13, 2016 by Bryce Lynch

c2d
By Anders Lager
Lazy Sod Press
OSR
Levels 4-6

“The battle with the barrow-draugr had taken the most of our energy, and we barely escaped with our lives. The gnome was sorely injured in the leg and everyone was frozen to the bone. The horses and most of our supplies were still left in the draugr cave, where we had to abandon it to save our hides. Times looked bleak and despair had set in for real when Halross shouted: “-Hey, I see a farm over there” A farm out here in the outback? Strange, but in our current situation the prospect of a warm fire and some hot soup seemed like a gift from heaven. Slowly, we started our descent alone the snow filled slopes towards the cosy farm.”

Do you like Texas Chainsaw Massacre? Do you want to play it as an adventure? This is decent. Not great, but certainly better than average. It’s also REALLY not my style. I’m suspicious about my review because of that.

This is a small “survive the night” type adventure set in a rural cabin/farm. It’s decent for what it is, and could be used in any horror type game, including CoC or even planetside. 86 pages for something this short means a loose description style and a lot of support material. It could use a little shoring up in the treasure department.

You’ve seen this sort of thing before, in numerous movies. There’s a cabin in the Woods, the hills have eyes as well as having chainsaws made in Texas. Cannibal murder family meets travellers. Mayhem ensues. This is good and bad. If you’ve ever seen one of these movies then you immediately have the vibe the designer is going for. There’s a line here, too close and you are emulating instead of leveraging. Too far away and you can’t leverage the source material to inspire the DM. This preys on those same sort of memories that my love of folklore in adventures does, this kind of appeal to some deeper psychology found in the soul. Both the DM and the players get to leverage this as they play. The DM is inspired and the players are preloaded with whatever (in this case fear of being hunted and dreamlike powerlessness?) and all of that leveraged for the adventure.

The end result of all of this, in this case, is that the adventure can very nearly be run with just the maps and maybe a monster stat block reference. There’s even some nice maps on the designer’s site for you to print out. Read the adventure once, print out the maps, make a couple of notations, write up a monster ref sheet (which the designers really should have done, considering all of the other reference data provided) and maybe chuck the trap and wandering tables on to it. You could then just about the run the thing without the book after a single read through. That’s … good and bad.Good because, as I mentioned above, the DM grks the adventure immediately. Bad because … well … where the value?

Oh sure … tentacle monsters, horrible aberrations, mutilated prisoners … the little touches of horror here and there build the tension well. Finding any one of them pretty much tips off the party and they are scattered around pretty thick. (More on this later.) But … +3 short sword. Silver necklace. Silver brooch. +1 battle axe. Wand of fear. The treasure is boring and very little of it is themed to the setting/adventure. That’s a pretty major miss.

The entire adventure pretty much relies on one thing: the party staying in the cabin with the family and not catching on till dark. Almost any poking around at all will reveal some kind of horror that will set off the alarm bells in the parties head. I have NO idea how to introduce this thing and make it work. Maybe just a “Sure, you find a little farmhouse and the family is willing to put you up for the night,” ANYTHING else and the party will know something is up. Maybe it’s just me and my courageous group of Murderhobos, but a DM that says ANYTHING is called into question fast. “You have a nice dinner …” ‘NO! No I don’t! I don’t eat ANYTHING! Or drink ANYTHING! I triple lock the door, we all sleep in the same room and post a double guard! Also, I start working on the floorboards and ceiling in case we need a fast escape!’ The adventure encourages you to get the party to trust the hick family. Not. Gonna. Happen.

There’s this taking the bait thing that happens at one shots, con games and sometimes in home games. Everyone knows it a setup but you take the bait anyway because that’s the adventure and you’re here for a good time. That seems out of place here. The odds are weighed against the party and playing this in a Take The Bait fashion seems unfair, because of the lopsided nature. But without taking the bait then the DM must rely on under describing … which again feels a bit … unfair? I just don’t see how to use this.

Once it gets going there’s another problem: why do they stay? Why not just run away? The obvious answer is because half the party is drugged/captured, etc from the meal served … which is also the official version of events. I’m not sure about this. Splitting the party, or asking half the group (or more) to sit out the game is not a recipe for success in the fun department. The only way I can see working is to have the party (or the undrugged character(s)) find the prisoners pretty quickly after the inciting events. This provides a motivation, beyond the party proper, to stick around.

It’s good at what it does. Twisted family. A ghost that could be friendly. Tunnels under the land with hidden entrances. Twisted science experiment creatures. Things from another realm. Scarecrows. Creepy dolls. The dumb brute family member. The knife family member. Pa. Ma. Little girl. Everything you want in a Texas Chainsaw adventure is here. It should be fairly easy to run (if they hook in and stick around.) You could use this in CoC, modern, 1920’s, D&D/Fantasy, and probably even Sci-Fi. The text is long, but you need almost none of it at the table once you do a single quick read-through, especially is you annotate the maps.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/160424/Come-to-Daddy-SW-version?1892600

Posted in Level 4, No Regerts, Reviews | 7 Comments

Dungeon Magazine #86

Posted on June 11, 2016 by Bryce Lynch

d86
Anvil of Time
By Tracy Hickman
3e
Level 5

This Dragonlance adventure is a thirty or so room dungeon that is repeated three times, during three different ages. You get kidnapped in, muck about meeting famous people and collecting time travel gems/coordinates in the various ages, and then exit. I am … intrigued by the concept but loathe some of the choices made. The kidnapping/hook, in which the players are just teleported in, is just fucking lazy. “You’re in room 1 of the tomb of horrors and need to get to the end to get out. Go!” There’s also a good bit of “famous people in history” running about. Huma and a dragonlance and orb of dragonkind, Lord Soth, Fistandant … it seems like a weak excuse to name drop rather than something to advance the adventure. There is some lengthy read-aloud and in places even lengthier DM notes, usually describing some contraption in meticulous detail. There’s also some “The bowl is normal and the archway is not harmful” text, which is just bad editing, as is “the room is burned. There was a fire here in the past.”We don’t need to know about the past, even in the time travel adventure. The map could have been better, perhaps with some different colored notations, to note different creatures in different times. Some of the read-aloud and room descriptions make notes of sounds heard or have things in the room impacted by things the next room. These are nice touches that make the rooms seems more alive and help the DM run the adventure. I just can’t get over my distaste for the name dropping and teleport kidnapping hook.

Rana Mor
By Richard Baker
3e
Level 6

Meh. This is supposed to be a ruined temple in a jungle. It feels like a normal dungeon. There’s a journey up river with several forced combats and a couple of encounters that are trying to decent: an old hermit and a faux war party. The temple proper is about forty rooms. It’s got some undead priests, some living cannibal priests, and a couple of animal types that have wandered in. The room descriptions can be quite lengthy, as can the read-aloud, making it difficult to find things during play. Further, they are not very interesting. It just doesn’t feel very much like a jungle temple. The language is stilted and … remote? Cannibals, priests, undead priests a ruined jungle temple, that should be great. Instead it feels like just another dungeon.

Stormdancers
By Ole Munch
3e
Level 3

This is a short adventure through the woods, across a bridge, through a five room cave, up to the top of a mountain. All in a storm. The various encounters are not terrible, although there’s a bit of trap-weariness in the caves. A glass brigde, in a storm, with a couple of mephits harrying the party. A stone circle with air elementals dancing and then, of course, the monster/trap zoo in the wizard caves. The rooms descriptions are VERY lengthy, with every trap getting a long paragraph, explaining too much, and everything seemingly getting a description and background that is not needed. This could have been as a 1-pager or 1 sheet adventure. As a longer adventure it’s torturous to use.

Mysterious Ways
By Thomas Harlan
3e
Level 7

A D&D adventure in the Holy Land during the crusades, for level 7 characters. Did I miss a source book? This seems more than a little idiosyncratic. The long monologue says that a part of the true cross has been stolen. Tracking the hospitaliers to Masada leads to saracen lands, and then to Petra to face the final enemy. Long read-alouds in monologues form at the start of the two halves of the adventure. A lot of DM text telling you the historical significance of an area and/or what happened there in the past. Really nothing more than a couple of fights, with little text to support the DM run an evocative/living environment. 🙁

Posted in Dungeon Magazine, Reviews | 2 Comments

The Fungus Forest

Posted on June 8, 2016 by Bryce Lynch

fungfor
By Carl Nash & Lee Reynoldson
Self Published
OSR
Levels … 3-4?

This adventure details a cave system of eighty or so rooms stuffed full of mushrooms and fungus. There are at least seven major factions running around inside, with several other random individuals and scattered unaligned monsters. There’s no motivation for initial exploration, but several possibilities, although once in there are several things can be done for the various factions. It’s got a decent layout, above average, to be sure, for a pay what you want product.

I am convinced that a good dungeon (an exploratory one, anyway) lives and dies by its social content. Without a social element the dungeon can be one-dimensional, combat after combat, and therefore boring. The set-piece design, spicing up combat, is not a solution, nor are traps or puzzles. A strong mix with a STRONG social element is the solution. Variety. The cave system here has seven major factions in the caves. Most, but not all, will talk to the party in one way or another. Most would like to see at least one of the other factions wiped out. They are varied enough to provide some variety in how they play and how the party interacts with them. In addition to the factions, and the mini-quests they can hand out, there are several unaligned individuals, each with their own goals. The friendly merman, the crazy old mage, the sad ghost, the witch. Most of the factions would like to see at least one of them wiped out. Most of the individuals are harmless or at least not as odious as the people wanted them killed. Moral quandaries! Yeah! In short, there are a lot of folks to interact with, get into trouble with, ally with, and have fun with. Good Time, good times.

The encounters tend toward two types: someone lives here or magic mushrooms. Someone lives here is pretty obvious, and it’s usually tied to one of the factions. Mushroom farming, guard rooms, defences and so forth. Magic Mushroom caves usually have a mushroom of sort in them, with some magical effect. In spite of many of the rooms being stuffed full of magic mushrooms, the rooms tend to the mundane side of the spectrum. Upside down waterfalls and other weird unexplained things (other than the shrooms) are pretty rare occurrences. In essence, take a normal cave room in a simple dungeon, shove it full of mushrooms, and call it a day. This is a little harsh but I would contend that the encounters tend more toward that side of the spectrum than they do The Fantastic. Most of the encounters have a couple of longish paragraphs that describe them, generally an appearance paragraph and then an effects paragraph. Here’s one of the better ones: “Dotted around this cave are seven large globular Fly Puffball Mushrooms. They wobble and shake and a faint humming noise can be heard coming from within them.” That’s not terrible. I would call it great, either, but there is an effort. There is some … misplaced? information in places that doesn’t do the DM any favors when hunting the wumpus for information during play. For example, you can parlay with the goblin tribe. They meet you at the entrance to their complex and escort you to meet the king. In the descriptions of the kings throne room you’re told that the king does NOT meet with parlay folks in that room, instead he meets with them in a different room. That room has no mention of the parlay at all, it’s just a pretty non-descript room. I understand, I think, the logic. The king is the one that parlays and the king is normally in his throne room so the parlay is described under the king description in the throne room. But that’s not what the ‘usual’ occurrence for the parlay, I would assert. This being D&D, the fucking players will probably end up parlaying with him on the other side of the map entirely, but, still, it seems off to me. I could cite other example of this organization logic as well.

The map is pretty, but I think may be a bit linear. It is, essentially, a ring road with passage off of it. There’s a river running through things, and some teleport circles that can add some variety. Once in a “section”, though, it’s essentially just side passages. It’s colorful, with some features on it like a few slopes and ledges. It could have been improved with, perhaps, some notations of which rooms have enemies in them (a small red dot or something?) Given the faction play, and the way some areas may mobilize (which is usually well detailed and not verbose) it would have perhaps been useful to have that data to help run the game a bit smoother without either having to do it yourself or hunt through the book during play to find out who can hear/see/notice nearby. That’s really just nit picking though, the map is serviceable.

Treasure seems a bit light to me. Gold required to level becomes a bit high at levels 3-4 (which I think this area is targeted at.) There are a couple of rooms with hoard-like treasures but I think the entirety could be doubled or tripled to get to some decent loot for Gold=XP games. I’m pretty sure this is targeted at those sorts of games, so the lightness seems weird. Likewise the magic seems a bit … off. The potions and scrolls are just potions and scrolls. The shields are +2, maybe with a logo of St Gygax on them. Not exactly exciting content there. There’s a unique magic item or three which are much more interesting. Better descriptions, more unique instead of book, scrolls on fey skin, wings embedded, or potions with eyes in them or dead dark fey … that’s the way I want in my magic items. There is some REALLY great mundane treasure though, including some dark fey/pixies rapped in amber jewelry and so on. Nice!

There’s an ok wandering table, with most of them doing something, and an ok but not great rumor table. I like my rumors a little more … conversational. A tidbit overheard, and so on. While there’s no hook there is enough in the dungeon to give the players one … although I would have liked to see it better integrated into the rumors table. The treasure hoards of the fey, the immortality mushroom, and so on. More not-pickings.

I’m keeping this, but I think it’s on the edge of what I usually keep. I may be unduly influenced by fey, caves, and mushrooms being present.Large social environments are not the most common thing to encounter, though, and the writing is probably evocative enough to kickstart the DM. This is pay what you want at DriveThu, etc.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/178717/The-Fungus-Forest?1892600

Posted in Level 3, No Regerts, Reviews | 1 Comment

Incursion of the Chained Devils

Posted on June 6, 2016 by Bryce Lynch

chaind
By Jeremy Raedan
Self-Published
1e
Levels 5-7

Three nights ago, strange lights and screams were heard from the local temple of Ishtar (or equivalent in your game, perhaps Loviatar, Xochiquetzal, or even Dionysus.). Most of the lower level priestesses fled. Can the PCs save the temple of Ishtar from the incursion of the chain devils?

This is a mostly-hacking adventure in a 20 room temple to the goddess of love that has been overrun with (mostly) chain devils. It is, essentially, rooms full of half-naked priestesses being tortured (in a pg-13 manner) with a full other encounters tossed in as well.A few of the monster encounters (the non chain-devil ones) are interesting, but the writing, while terse, is a bit bland for my tastes. Not terrible, but a little flat. Combined with the rather one-note design of “rooms with monsters” then this one is hard to swallow.

First off, the thing, while ““erotic”” this is not exactly prurient. “Chained to the wall is the temple librarian.” or “Except for a number of piercings she is completely nude and being whipped by muscular humanoids, similarly devoid of clothing.” “A nearly nude woman on a divan.” Ok, I’ think I covered all of the middleclass morality. The middle one might be worse thing, by far. Also, there’s one sex toy, a +2 dildo.

The writing in this is a bit flat for my tastes. Here’s an example, from the room with the librarian chained to the wall, above: “Tormenting her is an inquisitor kyton, a horrible monstrosity in a bishop’s outfit with tongs for arms. He clicks the pincers of one arm while heating the other pair red hot in a brazier” The good part here is that something is going on in the room. A captive and a menacing monster, replete with a bishop’s outfit and pincer arms. The good news is that most of the rooms have the creatures actually doing something. This gives the encounters a little more … relatability? The writing, though, is just a little flat.

There’s a ncie pool of blood that congeals into a blood golum, that’s nice. There’s also a pool of water with a devil in it that can drown characters though creating water in the lungs. Again, a nice little touch. But they don’t really have much life or color beyond that. There’s a encounter with devils munching away on bodies and even that doesn’t really communicate the horror of such an encounter.

Also: the treasure seems light for fifth to seventh level characters. There’s some reward for rescuing priestesses, and the goddess give you a random bonus as well, but the gold=xp thing looms in the background.

There’s a nice one page summary of the NPC’s in the back, with each of their personalities present. One of the hooks also has a nice idea: characters want a cleric hench? Rescuing one from a devil-filled temple is a great way to get a hench!

The creatures doing things in the rooms are good. There’s an effort made to give it an evocative description. It’s a little one-dimensional for my tastes (which the designer fully admits in the overview at the online store.) Rescuing a bunch of priestesses, and getting them out, is a nice little touch, as, perhaps, the traitor one. I’m not often fond of “traitor” NCP’s, they tend to be used too much and thus the players never trust anyone in the dungeon. IN this adventure though the traitor is mixed in with quite a few other captives to be rescued, which leaves less of a bad taste in the mouth.

I’ve talked myself into this being an ok adventure. Not necessarily one I would run, but an ok adventure for what it is. Maybe a 70% ‘C’.

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Dungeon Magazine #85

Posted on June 4, 2016 by Bryce Lynch

d85
Ever-Changing Fortunes
By Peter Zollers
3e
Level 2

This monster circus (bandits, kobolds, trogs, drow) has several nice little bits going for it. It’s got the usual issues with a lack of focus in the DM text bloating it with useless trivia and making it hard to pull out the nice bits. A kobold comes to town begging for help, which leads to bandits in the woods and a nice- (but linear) cave system followed by a boring mine housing the drow. In principle the kobold hook is quite nice, I think, but it is marred by the read-aloud, lengthy DM nonsense, and then a “roll to continue the adventure” diplomacy check with the kobold. Fail, and you don’t get to go on the adventure. The bandit ambush takes up a full page (stupid 3e stat blocks!) but the associated bandit content (they spy at a wilderness inn and hit you on the way out of the caves if you’ve loose lips! The spies also have some personality to help run them) is pretty nice and gives a nice continuity to the adventure and (at least a couple) of the encounters. The cave system gives way to the mine and it’s mostly a linear affair. If that were ignored then I could point to the varied terrain and obstacles in the cave, elevation, boulders, water levels, etc, as being nice elements which provide both variety and tactical opportunities for both sides. The kobolds, also, can be bargained with, which is always nice to see. The mine is mostly boring content, presented quite verbose, and has one of the charm of the caves. The cave and/or bandits might be worth lifting for something else, at least as concepts, but the linear nature makes this one too hard to save.

Lord of the Scarlet Tide
By James Jacobs
3e
Level 9

Wow. Suck. A long/large adventure through 24 or so underdark caves and passages trying to find the source of an infection. It’s just room after room of either a boring monster or an overly-long description of an empty room. You meet a mind flayer to talk to! Who turns on you. 🙁 A little ruined city, full of boring monsters, leads to a ruined temple, full of ghosts, and a magic item to cure the disease. It all seems pretty monotonous to me, with little, except maybe a behir, to mix things up. L>A>M>E It’s as if you created a large random dungeon map and did a 50/50 chance: stuff the room with 2d6 orcs or write two paragraphs describing how the room is empty. That’s not an adventure, or at least a good one, in my book.

Flesh to Stone
By Anthony Talanay
3e
Level 7

Side-Trek! A couple of stone giants keep some cockatrice as pets, in a pen.

Natural Selection
By Matthew G. Adkins
3e
Level 5

Druids used to be popular bad guys in 1980’s D&D. They return! There’s some bullshit/vomit-in-the-mouth “natures balance” stuff in this adventure, thankfully mostly in the background so it can be ignored. A ranger keep is overrun by monsters and you get to investigate, kill the monsters, and recover the bodies. It’s just an excuse to put a bunch of monsters in close proximity to each other. Theoretically there might be some chances to parley with at least one group and/or get the creatures to fight each other. It ends, probably, with fighting the asshole druids, which can be a tough fight since the leader is L8. There’s some nice imagery here and there regarding the monsters feeding on the dead rangers bodies, but the map is boring and it’s just a monsters circus.

Posted in Dungeon Magazine, Reviews | 2 Comments

Things to NOT check out …

Posted on June 1, 2016 by Bryce Lynch

Sometimes I buy things and they are not what what I expect and/or don’t warrant their own separate review. I’d been shelving this stuff, but just now ran in to two in a row. Better to jot down a note so others will now what to expect.

The Sacrilegious Sage
Frugal GM

The RPGNOW page notes that this is an “adventure.” It is not. The actual text, once purchased, notes it’s an adventure seed. That’s closer to the truth. Six randomly generated cave levels look like a fractal tool made them, and then six VERY generic ideas for the levels. “This level has gemstones.” This level has tribes of warring orcs” or “this level has dwarf miners” or “this level has a river.” My issue here is that the shop page doesn’t say “seeds” and instead references “adventure.” I know I’ve been dinged before for having too strict a taxonomy … but at least I recognize the dangers in misaligned expectations.

The Tree Maze of the Twisted Druid
by Chris Kutalik

This is one of those “found” adventures from childhood, much like Habitation of the Stone Giant Lord or Underport. These things remind me of local county museums. Every county has least one and they are all alike in their mediocrity … and every once in awhile you find something interesting in one of them. (A map of the 1820 wilderness Indiana showing the trails and “roads”!) This falls mostly in to the “usual stuff” category, with most of the adventure not living up to the first sentence: the Twisted Druid needs a punch in the nuts. It’s got a couple of charming, age-appropriate hooks. The sheriff shows up and orders you to being him the druids head or he’ll take yours! He has 4d8 hobliars in ring mail and bec de corbins! In another hook, a naked lady kisses you while you are in a tavern and then 4d6 sailors drug you and take your best stuff, hiding it in the maze. Ah, to be young and random again! The rest of the adventure though, with few exceptions, fall in to the “encounter 2d8 enemies” camp of adventure design. The author has not fallen completely in to the puberty trap yet, or been ruined by genercism, but it’s more like the end of Underport than it is the beginning.

Posted in Reviews | 2 Comments

The Witch of Tarriswoods

Posted on May 30, 2016 by Bryce Lynch

witcht
By John Fredricks
Sharp Mountain Games
OSR
Levels 3-7

Strange creatures threaten the woods just east of the peaceful town of Adela. Many fear that an evil witch has loosed a great curse upon the land. Who will venture forth and find the cause of these troubles? Who will confront the Witch of the Tarriswoods?

This is a small and mostly linear adventure with some old-fashioned charm to it. The town is threatened and, after a bit of investigatory pretext, a short two encounter wilderness section gives way to a small seven room dungeon. The adventure has some problems with communicating basic information, like how many bad guys in a room, but does a decent little job of presenting the encounters as real places, rather than forced set pieces. Look, I like weird shit that talks to you and this has that.

There is a REFRESHINGLY lack of lengthy background information and then the little town is launched into. Or, rather, the NPC’s in the little town. Four or five NPC’s are presented, each with a little paragraph and then a nice little bullet list of what they know about the current troubles. I could quibble a bit about the length of the “general” text for each NPC, but recognizing that the town is a social encounter, and providing data to the DM focused around that, their personalities and what they know, helps immensely in running an adventure. I don’t really give a shit how much stew at the inn costs, I care about the innkeepers data that he’s going to relate and how to run him. This adventure recognizes that. And it manages to ALMOST fit it all onto one page … glory be, it’s almost a DM’s reference sheet!

There’s just one problem. There’s no description of what’s going on, who the baddies are, etc. “The farmers and hunters aren’t able to work the fiends!” Ok. “Traders aren’t coming because of the attacks!” Ok. Uh … Who’s attacking? What’s attacking? Description? There’s absolutely no indication ANYWHERE in the adventure of what’s attacking the folk. What are they afraid? Who’s attacking? Who knows. The witch? Skeletons? Bandits? An atrophal?

It is this kind of … casual overlooking of information that’s so frustrating in this adventure. There’s a skeleton attack in the woods, in a nice flooded graveyard. There’s no indication of how many skeletons attack. There’s an attack, later on while in the dungeon, by ‘goppers’, but, again, there’s no indication of how many attack. This might also be the case with the Animated Vine attack, which at one point is referred to as vines, plural.

And then there’s the treasure. There is, essentially, none. Maybe, 150gp in statues, 150gp in bracelets, a couple of scrolls, and a magic marble. Oh, and a 300gp emerald! That’s ain’t gonna be enough XP to level. Not even close. I see this time and again in ‘OSR’ adventures: not enough treasure. I’m usually not very hardcore about this, but, come on, it’s gold for XP people, make a toekn effort to understand the rewards for the game you’re writing for! That said … the magic marble that sings while it is rolling is cool, as is a ring that turns you into a fish. Both non-standard and both excellent items for a party to find creative uses for.

I found the encounters rather charming. From the woodcutter running out of his cabin, to skeletons with rusty scimitars arising from a flooded graveyard, to mud monsters. There’s a couple of stone blocks that talk to each other, and you, and need to be avoided lest they warn the dungeon of the approach of a klingon warrior. Likewise, some clouds rain on the party while they go up a hill. This is a WONDERFUL encounter! Just a couple of clouds, that follow the party and rain on them. This is the perfect kind of free-form setup and I love this kind of stuff. ‘Figure out a way up the hill … made harder by the obstacle.’ The dungeon has a window! And a roof! And both can be exploited! Yeah! Hurray for thinking outside the box, and providing an environment that supports that kind of play.

The entire adventure is pretty short. It’s … incomplete? in places. It has a good, if a bit bland, summary for running the NPC’s, and some refreshing encounters in the dungeon. I’d say the designer is on a good path. A little trimming, a little more life in the writing, a little less loose in the details and you’d have a little adventure that’s not too terrible.

This is available at DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/149842/The-Witch-of-the-Tarriswoods?1892600

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Dungeon Magazine #84

Posted on May 28, 2016 by Bryce Lynch

d84
The Harrowing
By Monte Cook
D&D
Level 15

While wandering in the forest you see some dead birds. Following them leads to a cave complex, and then a gate to the demonweb. This is quite a long adventure, taking up 44 of this issues 120 pages. It is, essentially, one long hack-fest. Enter room. Fight monster. Go to next room. The maps for the two areas (the caves and demonweb) have some interesting features, with ceiling and floor entrances and exits, but probably not enough to recommend them. Fight some drow. Fight some Slaad. Fight some drow who are fighting some slaad. A special prize for Monte: I believe this is the first example, in Dungeon anyway, of the shitty linear 3e adventure. Some people really like this one. You should not play D&D with those people.

Demonclaw
By Peter R. Hopkins
D&D
Level 5

This may be the dictionary definition of Wall of Text. It goes on and on, paragraph after paragraph, with little to save the poor DM from misery. It features such classics as:

“2. Closets. These rooms are identical. Each has several hooks affixed to interior walls. Just inside the doorway sits a low shelf designed to hold boots and shoes. An everburning torch is mounted to the wall opposite the door. Both chambers are empty.”

Which is a fine description of a boring closet. It adds nothing and nor do many of the room descriptions. Fourteen rooms of a wizard’s tower. It provides stats for a dead body on the floor, that will not come back to life in any way during this boring snoozefest. There’s nothing in this wizard’s tower that feels remotely wizard like. 🙁

The Dying of the Light
By Chris Doyle
D&D
Level 10

Nice flavor to the complication/premise in this. Seven vampires live in a castle. You have from Sunup to Sundown to kill them all. At Sundown they awake and exact their revenge, for the parties raid, on the small town nearby. The parties hook arrives by a winged cat with an arrow in its ass … a nice addition. It’s got good general DM advice, a nice order of battle for how the castle reacts to incursions as well as nice overview sections to get oriented to things. A good map supports the adventure, giving the party non-linear opportunities. Good “classics” like the well having a trap door at the bottom, and so on. Also, winged owlbears and a giant undead dinosaur in the lake in front of the castle. This is a great example of an otherwise good adventure being ruined by form. The ideas are wonderful, but marred by the slavish devotion to rigor in description. Boring read-aloud unrelated to the interesting things in the room. Wordy DM text. Full creature stats and longish references to where in the DMG to find data … repeated. I like this adventure a lot, but it needs a good photocopy and highlight, or a strong rewrite to focus the DM on the important stuff. Fun.

Dungeon of the Fire Opal
By Jonathan Tweet
D&D
Level 10

Tweet is probably an ok DM. He’s not a good writer. This is the 3e example dungeon, which is also the 1e example dungeon. You know, the one with the scroll in the water skeleton and the platform secret door? Tweet is prolific with advice in this. Some advice is good. It’s general theme might be “don’t let the rules constrain you.” Being generous with clues, how to let the party find the choke point secret door, warning that a dangerous encounter is up ahead, and so on. He also gives this sort of advice in some of the rooms, and it’s here that things go a bit south; it gets tedious. It turns it into almost a n00b dungeon, for a DM that’s never played D&D before. In that respect it MIGHT be fine, but it also falls in the old trap of tedious text. Some of the rooms are QUITE long while most contain boring read-aloud and more boring DM text, especially of the “what this room used to be that now no longer has relation to the adventure” kind of description. Trivia not useful for the DM running the adventure. It’s also pretty boring. “Once this room was a well stocked larder …” Ok hooks and a pretext of rumors are appreciated, but in the end it’s just a boring dungeon with not much interesting going on.

Armistice
By Peter Vinogradov
D&D
Level 7

More of a sandbox adventure. A valley is presented along with the various enemy commanders who make up the small companies present. They are at war with each other. There are a couple of (generic) villages in the valley, non-aligned. There are some werewolves running amok, freed by a rogue commander on one side. The party comes into this mess after being hired, outside the valley, but the two lords the troops report to. They have made peace and need someone to go tell their troops. Thus the adventure involves wandering the valley to find the various troops/commanders and convincing them the war is over. And dealing with the werewolf threat making things harder. It’s got some good high-level window dressing, like the daughter of one lord being married to another to seal the peace, and women talking about looking forward to their husbands return, and so on. After a read-through to get an overview then most of the adventure boils down to just the DM’s map and a couple of reference pages, kindly provided for the DM. The adventure could have used a few more … specifics? Ideas? about werewolf tactics/flavor and maybe even soldier flavor. That would have pushed this one over the top into Strong Recommend territory. Decent premise, good reference material, some bits of flavor. An ok adventure setup that will unfold as the party wills.

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The Stink of Golanda

Posted on May 25, 2016 by Bryce Lynch

stgol
By Steve Willett
Polyhedron Games
OSRIC
Levels 9-11

Golanda, the Kingdom of Hope, devoted to the good of its people and all people. It’s knights travel Ropa looking for service in just causes. Its priests roam the continent healing the sick and injured with no regard to race, faith or morality. But something smells in Eddiston and it’s the stink of corruption.

Oh, where to start … this is a linear adventure with light content, a pure railroad from start to end. There’s not really a plot shield here, there’s not enough content for that. There might be … five combats? There’s a couple of word pages, printed as a PDF that describe some convoluted backstory with named right out of the goofball unmemorable Forgotten Realms names. Go to the damned (as in ‘Hell-Damned’) town. Question someone. Have a combat. Question someone. Have a combat. Question someone. Have a combat. Meet a dude. Have a combat. Have the finale combat with an EHP and a demon. That’s it.

The entire thing is presented in a very conversational form. It’s as if you were sitting down, having a beer with someone, and they described their last game to you. It’s not quite incoherent, but it’s also not quite all there. It’s full of anecdotal events. That’s good! They ground the detail and provide something to hang your hat on. But it’s bad in the conversational form it’s presented in.

Out of nowhere there’s a table presented on what you see if you climb up to the city walls. It’s not bad: a demon scurrying across a street, a zombie bumping into a wall, a panicked dog, people cowering in a corner. This is decent content. Maybe a little generic, but it’s trying. There are plenty of example like this in the adventure (well, at least five anyway.) A daft old woman, zombies feeding on bodies, and so on. That’s the sort of decent, specific, content that many adventures don’t bother to describe. “12 zombies” or maybe “12 zombies attacking some villagers” is the usual fair. It could be even more specific, but what’s here IS decent … when it tries. This leads into the monsters actually DOING things. They argue. They feed, and so on. Again, somehow this sort of content has been lost in many modern adventures.

Make no mistake: this is terrible. It’s linear. It’s conversational. It is, at best, just a framework. Stat blocks take up fifty percent of a page. It’s not so much organized as it is a story narrative, told linearly. It reminds me of some of the poorer Adventurers League stuff, like The Seer, but organized in a far worse fashion. Devoid of much content. What there is is linear. There are brief bright sports with the encounter descriptions, but its hard for me to even call them encounter descriptions.

If you sat down, right now, and typed up, in Word, describing the last adventure you ran, in as if you were talking to your buddy, then you’d have this adventure.

Also: the intro notes there’s corruption present. Wellllll…. as in “overrun by demons?” Yes.

This is available at DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/102124/The-Stink-in-Golanda?1892600

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