Tales from the Laughing Dragon

Posted on August 10, 2015 by Bryce Lynch

tld
by David Gerard & Contributors
Basic Fantasy
Levels 1-3

Fonkin the beloved gnome sage is missing. The town guard is busy fighting off brigands and doesn’t have time to look for him. A group of aspiring adventurers must take on the task and follow a clue that leads them to an old ruin and footsteps down into the darkness below …

This is a mostly mediocre set of three adventures, with some nicer touches in the second half of the last adventure. It looks like it may been a group effort project. It abstracts the narrative to a degree that makes me uncomfortable, providing exposition instead of gameplay. Most of the product feels more than a little bland and could use some punching up. COmbined with atrocious read-aloud, this is just Yet Another Adventure.

There are three adventures here. The first has the party searching some ruins (Dungeon Level 1) for a missing gnome sage. The second has the party searching Dungeon Level 2 for some items the gnome lost. The third has the party exploring the ground floor and catacombs of a keep, looking for the last item the gnome lost. It is the catacombs level in which things improve, and I’ll cover that separately.

The abstracted narrative is all in the beginning. The read aloud has five paragraphs of text. WAY more than the 2-3 sentences it should have. The second to last paragraph tells you that you spend the evening questioning the villagers and determine that the gnome must be in some nearby ruins. The last paragraph of the read-aloud puts you in front of some stairs in the ruins leading down into the darkness. This is a little too much for me. Someone has made a decision that all that matters is the crawl. The perfunctory hook is ham-handed, by being presented as soliloquy, and the ‘splaining was lame the first time it was used 30 years ago “the guards are busy.” I guess, if I squint very hard, this is all a valid style of play. That’s my liberal “ Do what you will the whole of the law” thing kicking in. But lordy lordy, I would not want to ever be involved in that style of play nor would I ever hope it was someone’s introduction to the hobby.

What it does is Cardinal Sin #1: Fail to inspire the DM to greatness. This trend continues throughout most of the three adventures. Boring guardrooms with boring and mundane descriptions. Describing what “used as a living quarters” looks like, and noting that there is nothing of interest in the room. Why describe it? Do people not know what a bedroom looks like? Do people not know what “being used as living quarters” means? “There is also a small statue of little value in the northwest corner.” Uh … thanks?

Here’s a good one “There is large crudely made mug sitting on the table, It is empty but still contains the dregs of cheap wine at the bottom.” That’s part of the initial room read-aloud. What’s the point? Oh, oh, I’ve got a better one! Room five is the patrol barracks. The read-aloud is six or so sentences long. It tells us that the room has an empty jar that smells faintly of wine. Note also that the DM text says there are two hobgoblins in the room. It’s like the read-aloud has no relation to what’s going on in the room. Overly descriptive and uninspiring at the same time. IE: the usual. Also, it’s a monster party! Orcs, goblins, bandits, hobgoblins, Trogs, bugbears! Never the same monster used twice in twelve rooms. I’m not a hard core ecology guy but stuff like that sticks out even for me. Better to just make them all brigands. The treasure is generally badly described generic stuff “a small statue of bone” and generic. Vampire SPawn stats are noted as being provided in the rear of the adventure … except they are not.

Let’s shift to the good, which is pretty much self-contained in the last adventure and almost all in the second half of the last of the three adventures. A small boy is in the catacombs under the keep you’ve assaulted. His parents have begged you to find him. This has a couple of interesting things going on and points out some missed opportunities.

There’s a nice undead horror aspect alluded to in the catacombs. A message on a tomb wall scrawled in blood. That’s not uncommon, but although the description is not altogether great, it works here. I think it does because of the continuing thread that it runs with. The undead in the catacombs are the boys relatives and they are protecting him. “Protect the boy” in dripping blood and (the implied) viscera works so much better when that theme is continued in several of the rooms and worked into the adventure. The horror aspect is continued with feeding undead, notably some zombies. D&D adventures need more ravenous zombies feeding. Ghouls get all the fun, and the incorporeal get some nice life-force stuff, but they should ALL feed. It allows the DM to invoke all of the “undead feeding” media they’ve ever seen. There’s also a nice bit of treasure of two here, like a gold comb in the shape of a dragonfly. It doesn’t take much, just a bit more, to add a lot of depth.

Let me mention two more things. There’s a necklace the party is given and, hopefully, the party learns that the undead fear/respect it. It marks you as a part of the family The undead attacks stop completely when the boy gets it. Up until that point it’s handled as a Turn Under modifier. I like the concept but not the mechanics. Tacking on the TUrn Undead ability just destroys the wonder of it. ALmost an attempt to describe WHY the undead cower. How about “it’s a family heirloom and they cower from it.” Done! The appeal to mechanics over flavor destroys the wonder of D&D.

Finally, I think there’s a missed opportunity of two in this last section. It’s implied that the undead haunt the bandits in the upper keep. This is in letters, and in finding an undead feeding on a goblin outside of the keep. This could have been beefed up quite a bit with REALLY paranoid brigands, or the keep actively under siege, undead at the last door, etc. That would have really continued and sold the horror theme that this last bit has. FInally, the entracte the catacombs is, I think, a trapdoor under a rug. (I looked several times and either missed it or it’s not there. Tying the levels together was NOT this adventures strong point.) THIS could have used some read-aloud flavor. A gust of cold dark wind, ominous stench, dust blowing out, a moan, something. This is the party ‘crossing over’ to the land of the dead in a horror adventure. They should wet themselves at the door.

So, the last little bit if better than the beginning and beings to provide some of what I’m looking for in an adventure supplement. The rest is forgettable.

Posted in Reviews | Comments Off on Tales from the Laughing Dragon

Dungeon Magazine #51

Posted on August 8, 2015 by Bryce Lynch

d51
Nbod’s Room
by Jeff Crook
AD&D
Levels 1-2

This adventures does what few can: marry a location to events to make it seem “like a living place. Well Done! A haunted room in an inn has teleporters to several other locations. This noted as a solo/5th level adventure or a group adventure for levels 1-2. It’s also an interesting idea that could use expansion. The concept is that there’s this room that weird stuff happens in, which turns out ot be haunted, have a variety of teleportation portal devices in it, and has at least one other thing going to. You “discover” it your first night at the inn, but you could just as easily slip in into a haunted hut, tower, etc, as an adventure locale. I think that’s what this one interesting: you can use it as locale and insert your own McGuffin. The premise is nice, it’s got a nicely described magic item, the command words to the various objects make sense and discoverable with a little work in town, it’s got some nicely developed NPC’s and at least one very good “scene” that’s not a railroad. It’s also wordy and presents information awkwardly sometimes, like when it’s describing the various rumors and NPC’s you can meet. But the core here is good. Teleportation from a normal room is a nice fantastic trope (Lion, Witches, and Wardrobes anyone?) and it’s done well here, like one inside a sea chest with a rope ladder in the inside top. Why’s there’ a rope ladder in the inside top? Well …. There’s also a very nice scene with some classic headhunters doing a ritual, and giant octopus rsing holding them in tentacles, etc. A little buff on the baddies and/or quantity changes could make this useable all the way to levels 3-4 or 4-5, I’d guess. The rumors & NPC’s are in paragraph form, which makes it awkward during play and in picking out information. I’d also like a little more “salty flavor” in my Sailor Jerry’s inn rumors, but at least you get some nice NPC’s to go along with them. Also, a very nice scene in an evil temple, complete with supplicating worshippers, etc, captured in media res. All Dungeon adventures seem to need work. With work this one could be VERY high on the top tier..

Journey to the Center-of-the-World
by Chris Hind
AD&D
Levels 8-10

This side-trek to a dragon graveyard is generic and lame but for two details. Someone in Fort Thunder tells you about an elephant graveyard that is three days away. (Seriously? The region is THAT unexplored?) The journey is not provided, but the graveyard/volcano caldera is guarded by a stone golem at the entrance rift. What’s interesting is the footprints the golem “stands at rest” in will perform a stone to flesh if you stand in them. That’s a nice detail. The actual dragon graveyard is boring and no well described or imaginative at all. There IS, however, a dying white dragon desperate for more life that is willing to bargain with the party. I love adventures where you can talk to monsters and make bargains. The dragon here is presented as dying in a day, or maybe just a few hours, and the bar for healing it is quite high. Lowering the bar or somehow buying more time would be a nice adventure hook. Also the adventure notes that he dragon might keep its side of the deal. This is a momentous day folks: this is the first time I can recall Dungeon magazine allowing an evil monster to not just be a total dick and renege. This location/dragon could serve as a nice sage location: you need some info the dragon has, it bargains for more life, etc. You now have everything you need for that; the DUngeon adventure will provide no more useful information or ideas.

Ailamere’s Lair
by Steve Fetsch
AD&D
Levels 6-9

This is a dragon hunt sandbox that reminds me more than a little of 100 Bushels of Rye, and excellent Harn adventure. As these go, it’s not terrible. The hook is probably the worst part: a bard hires you to track down and study a new type of Dragon “Guerrillas in the Mist” style. There are some villages to start in, villagers/farmers/refugees to question, and an outdoor expanse to explore, with a halfway decent events/wandering table. There’s a strong “Don’t kill the dragon” thing going on, and a magic item that allows you to reset time for that video game “checkpoint” vibe. The magic item is very nicely described and themed, if a bit powerful and gimmicky for the adventure. The wandering table has a nice mix of rumors from people, helpful ranger allies that are not TOO helpful, and random dragon stuff, like sightings, scales, claw marks, etc. The dragon gets some “you can talk to it” treatment, as well as some options for it living in “harmony” with the locals … or at least as close as you can get with a greedy evil dragon. There are some nice complications thrown in with an asshole guide, crooked guides, a vengeful villager, and a few other things like that. Nice sandbox layout with good supporting complications. The usual wordiness, and the “mining camp” needs some more life to it. It could also use some more … interactions? The dragon “actions” table is a little light, as is the wandering table, for the amount of time the party may spend wandering. If you can make the hook more interesting/plausible then this would be a decent adventure to steal.

The Witch of Windcrag
by Steven Smith
D&D
Levels 2-3

There are rumors of a witch living in a mountain cave, but it’s actually a three room harpy lair. There are two invisible traps, one of which provides a warning: “you hear the faint sounds of tinkling” that can be used by smart players to investigate safely. I like traps with this sort of warning mechanism. The second is just an invisible spiderweb. Webs are classic, but the invisible part feels like a gimp. The harpy also has just exactly the magic items she needs, from a sleep spell protection amulet to a couple of rings of animal friendship and the like. This smacks of “providing explanations why there is an invisible spiderweb in the lair” … which is lame. Just. Do. It. The mundane treasure is well described, which I greatly appreciate; for example a thick gold chain with a dragon head pendant and with pearl eyes. Not a lot of extra words but it does wonders for enhancing play. The rumor table tries hard but suffer from META. “A witch who uses air spells lives up there” or “a bard from a far away land.” This should instead be things like “A witch who throws tornadoes at you and whose gaze causes the wind to gust!” or “Princes Arda from the Lands of Musfta.” Must more interesting. Still, the core of “witch on a mountain”,” rumors”, and “windchime & spiderweb trap” are classics, and I LUV the classics.

The Bandits of Bunglewood
by Christopher Perkins
AD&D
Levels 1-3

A “Tuckers Kobolds” adventure. AKA: Killer Kobolds. Something is attacking caravans in the woods and there are conflicting descriptions of what it is … because no one wants to admit they were defeated by kobolds. The party encounters an ambush by the killer kobolds, tracks them through a trap-filled forest, and then enters their lair for a pitched battle. I’m torn on this. I like using the kobolds to maximum effect but the entire adventure smacks of rules-lawyering. “They get a -2 because of close combat” or “+4 because of the dark” or “-2 because of the cave height.” IE: the kobolds are given some fighter levels and “feats” and then every modifier in 2E is used to give the kobolds the advantage. It takes a page and a quarter to describe the 7 kobolds … with quote a lot of repetition of their abilities, all fully described. “Usability” may have been misunderstood … The kobolds are given personalities, which is interesting and a waste because they are just going to be hacked down and/or run away. There’s an optional NPC in the forest which does have a personality that comes in to play. A potential guide with several anger control issues. It does the “attack for one round and then stop” thing, which I can’t stand, but the concept of the NPC is a good one: a troubled creature with anger management issues who flies off recklessly at times. It’s written quite effectively: terse & evocative. There’s also a nice “Warning” in a description … a bird cawing right before the ambush is actually a kobold warning. Hidden things, like traps and ambushes, should get a warning thrown in with the flavor text. Inquisitive PC’s are then rewarded when they follow up with “What kind of bird?” or “What killed the guy by the door?” There are a couple of PC gimps in the adventure, the worst being a portcullis. “Hold Portal won’t keep it from dropping.” That’s lame; it discourages creative play. There’s some throw-away line in a LotFP adventure about how a body will stay dead if “Bless’ is cast. That’s in addition to the mechanical bonus. As the DM, never let the text of the rules inhibit creative and imaginative play. Finally, the rumors are presented as a little read-aloud scene. I like where they are going but dislike the monologue scene. Rather than large chunks of read-aloud for each rumor it would have been better to have a short bullet-list with a sentence or two of flavor. “Ol, Marty, that dwarf cobbler, sez they ‘er trolls. Smelt them they did since it was dark so’s he couldn’t see them.” Done. Next!

The Last Oasis
by Peter Aberg
AD&D
Levels 1-4

Utter and complete piece of shit. This, gentle readers, is the adventure that signals the End Times. This is it. 1995. The year RPG’s died. Previously Dungeon adventures had just been wordy and poorly written attempts at translating the designer’s vision to the purchaser. This one though … this one represents The Beginning Of The End. This is a fourteen page movie.

The characters, guarding a caravan, are caught in a sandstorm. Unknown to them, they are trapped beneath the sands and are slowly suffocating. Their spirits have entered The Borderlands between life and death. Travelling through the desert (they still don’t know they are dead) they encounter several strange things. They then find an oasis. The Last Oasis between life and death. There they meet the guardians and then five events happen on their way “back” to the crossover point between life and death, to return to their bodies. There is no meaningful choice. It assumes you kill the ghul you meet. It assumes you can’t keep up with people you meet. (It’s D&D. the players ALWAYS do something else.) It’s just a movie. No choice before the Oasis. In the Oasis the events start. No choice after the Oasis. The encounters after the oasis are represented as Events but they are actually Scenes. Events imply you have a choice. Scenes imply you do not. You. Do. Not. The movie keeps moving as planned.Do whatever. It doesn’t matter.

Posted in Dungeon Magazine, Reviews, The Worst EVAR? | 6 Comments

The Tomb of the Sea Kings

Posted on August 5, 2015 by Bryce Lynch

tsk

by Lawson Bennett & Jimm Johnson
Scribes of Sparn
D&D
Levels 5+

After a successful plunder of the Urchinn Isles, a well deserved night of drinking is in order, during such you trade stories with a local “antique dealer” who tells of a well-financed acquaintance who is organizing an archeological dig. The “antique dealer” goes on to explain that his friend has unearthed a forgotten portal which accesses the island tomb of the ancient Sea Kings (guarded by legendary beasts, of course). The treasures are said to be plentiful and there is rumor that a peculiar magic sword was swept up from the depths to find its resting place in the halls of Blackstone Island.

Oh, where to begin? Vampire Queen? Tegal? T&T adventures? This adventure harkens back to the early days when the dungeon was challenge to be overcome by the players using their characters. Juvenile. Amateurish. And packing more imagination than a thousand modern products. Content is king and I’ll take a dozen Sea Kings before I resort to a lame trope-based generic fantasy suck-fest that passes for mainstream adventures. The encounters are held together on tenuously, things show up for no discernable reason (other than ‘it would be fun to have …’?) and you have to stretch to make it work. IE: It’s a funhouse. And it’s GLORIOUS.

It starts with a lame “archeologist has a mission for you” nonsense. The barest and thinnest of hooks. You are taken to the dungeon via teleportation, a common theme in these early-style dungeons. It then vaults itself into funhouse majesty. Trapps doors shoot black seagulls at you, cursing with a Deck of Many Thing-type table. The traps, some of them anyway, have warnings. People with holes burned in their chests in front of doors mean “Look Out!” I LOVE this type of stuff. “Never give the suckers an even break” is NOT a tenant of the old school. Instead you show them what will happen. You telegraph it. If the players are even casually interested they will notice the clue. And then they’ll trip it anyway. It’s WONDERFUL in actual play. Not enough adventures tempt the players. The players are where its at. It’s where the action is. it’s where the zany plans are.

There’s this weird mix of the sublime and the amateurish in this. Black seagulll curses? Great! But then there are plaques that if you remove from the walls they summon ghosts. Throwing in a couple of words about “howling Indiana Jones style winds as the plaques are removed” would have added so much more to what is otherwise a pretty bland description of the encounter room/area. This sort of thing is present in almost all of the rooms. There’s some terrifically wonderful content. If it’s rooted in anything then it’s closer to the ‘classics’ than it is modern fantasy trope. But they fall a little flat in the … evocative? category. Just a few extra choice adjectives/adverbs would have really brought the environment to life. Still, the content is fresh enough … The tricks and traps are strong in this one, with almost every room a puzzle if you take quite the broad definition of the phrase.

The treasure is a mixed bag. The magic items are nice and non-standard. A candle that burns for 1,000 years. Sweet! A gypsy locket that protects (to some random extent) against life draining. Nice! Magic swords with extra effects. This is all in line with the magic items from the earliest versions of the game, before they became codified, lame, and boring. There’s a lack of mundane treasure, or rather perhaps interesting mundane treasure. There’s a lot of “roll for treasure type H” or “roll for type A” present. I’m a pretty big opponent to that type of thing. It’s supposed to be aplay aid. How about aiding play then?

How about it. The center page it a pull out. It has the map and a listing of all of the monster stats for the two levels. Wonder of wonders! A fucking product that helps the DM run the adventure at the table! A map for your screen? Quick reference for monster stats? Holy Cow! The designer may have actually ran a game at the table before! Now, they do refer you external wandering monster tables … which could have easily been included on the map/stat list …

This is one of the best funhouse adventures I’ve seen. It’s also one of the more imaginative products that I’ve seen. I’m sure the two go hand in hand. This older style is wonderfully imaginative and I’m in love with it. It requires a suspension of disbelief that seems to be frowned upon in today’s environment. I don’t know why. Why is your pointy-eared elf shooting fireballs “better” than a red velvet “Do Not Enter” rope in a dungeon corridor? Somehow we lost the fun. Not the silly, but the fun. It got turned into drama and seriousness, all the while forgetting that the entire base was mud.

A challenge for the PLAYERS awaits! Enter The Tomb of the Sea Kings if you dare!

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/209026/UR1-The-Tomb-of-the-Sea-Kings?affiliate_id=1892600

Posted in Level 5, Reviews, The Best | 8 Comments

Cave of the Cybersteed

Posted on August 3, 2015 by Bryce Lynch

cs
by Raul De La Garza III
Metamorphosis Alpha / Mutant Future

In the quiet and unsuspecting village of Ek-Wyne, the residents go about their daily and mundane tasks not realizing that a terror from above has come to call. One by one the frightened mutant inhabitants disappear in a flash of light. Will those who remain pick up the pieces and carry on or will they seek out and discover who or what is behind this sinister act?

First: Gorgeous Cybersteed art on the cover!

Vaguely generic and maddeningly short on detail, this is more of an adventure outline. The party are all mutated horses. One night, in lightning and thunder, villagers start disappearing in bright flashes of light. This is followed up by some wolf-people on motorcycles raiding the village and stealing away villagers in their cargo trucks. Following the motorcycle tracks back leads to a small 30-room cave complex. This is the home to the wolf-people raiders and a processing center to turn the horsies in to cybersteeds.

You now have almost all the information that the adventure provides, in a far shorter form than the sixteen-ish pages that this module takes. The adventure mashes up new-school “scene based” play with a location-based “old school” wolf base. The first scene is the night horsie abduction. This is a typical example of the epidemic of bad scene-based modern events. Bright lights, horsies disappearing, and no chance for doing anything that could impact events. The purpose of this scene is to give the characters something to do: they need to rescue some of their horsie friends. The railroad aspect of this first scene ensures that at least SOME of their friends will be captured. “Allow the PC’s to attempt to prevent their own or another horsies disappearance” is about the extent of the guidance provided. Not much scenery, not much flavor.

Scene The Second is about a wolfoid raid on the village. They ride motorcycles and have a horsie wagon to carry away captives. Again, not much flavor provided, but at least now the party has motorcycle tracks to use to find the base and, perhaps, their missing friends. I really can’t emphasize enough how little there is to these first two scenes. The description is little more than “some wolves on motorcycle, armed with stun lances, show up and raid the village for horsies. Maybe there’s a running battle on the road if the party capture some motorcycles.” It’s presented as a part of the larger railroad, so, naughty on the designer, but it’s also refreshing, in a madding sort of manner. It’s entirely open in implementation … mostly because there’s no detail. I like an encounter to have some flavor, which is really not present here, but also to have this sort of open-ended nature. “Hey, this is what he wolfoids want to do and here’s a couple of ideas.” I’m not sure what’s wrong here, if it’s the lack of flavor or what, but it’s almost like the whole thing is coming from an oblique angle. Maybe it’s that it’s a brief idea, but presented over two paragraphs? When those two paragraphs could have been used to provide additional flavor?

The wolfoid base has 30 rooms, with some pigoids present as well as a couple of robots. One of the robots operates on captured horsies and converts them to cybersteeds, before they are teleported away. You now know everything interesting the 30 room descriptions provided.

The main problem is that the rooms are mundanely described. Instead of concentrating on what’s new, unique, interesting, or gameable, it insteads concentrates on the mundane and boring. `Things are so loose that the wolfoid leader, while mentioned, I think twice, is never given a location.

Metamorphosis Alpha adventures are few and far between. Someone needs to do a good one one day.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/139369/Cave-of-the-Cybersteed?1892600

Posted in Reviews | 1 Comment

Dungeon Magazine #50

Posted on July 31, 2015 by Bryce Lynch

d50
The Vaka’s Curse
by Ted James & Thomas Zuvich
AD&D
Levels 2-4

An evil guy is cursed to remain in a ship’s figurehead, and becomes a shadow slowly draining those on the ship, year after year. This is a nice little concept, It could be shortened A LOT without losing anything and in that form could serve as a nice Side Trek or maybe an “Adventure Complication.” I like my adventures best when hook after hook after complication after complication is piled up to create a nice living environment. This little thing could easily be tacked on to any existing sea voyage Going to the Isle of Dread, are you? Or maybe one of those viking adventures? Why not add Yet Another Complication to the (usually miserably inadequate and uninteresting) sea voyage that’s presented in the adventure? Just take the core of this and drop it right in to the NEXT shipboard voyage or shipboard adventure. Having a whole lot going on is a great way to build a realistic environment.

Back to the Beach
by Willie Walsh
AD&D
Levels 1-2

The party is recruited to rid the beach of some giant crabs. The twist, if the party discovers it, is that the crabs are intelligent. You can meet a few interesting NPC’s along the way, and the various crab-men have individual personalities, which is a nice bit of extra detail for the DM to run with. I like this one. The brief portion of the town hook/recruitment could use a bit more in the way of interesting content, and the crab men could have an interesting item or two for the party, but, in the end, it’s a nice little adventure. The monsters don’t attack on sight, which means the adventure immediately has more possibilities. Long-term allies? More hooks in the future? This would make a nice little hex-crawl adventure or a hanger-on to a home base that the PC’s have nearby.

Hmmm, 2 decent ones in a row? What’s issue #50 coming to!

The Object of Desire
by Gary O’Connell & Lucya Szachnowski
D&D
Levels 5-8

An epic adventure … with a very rare thing: a third act! A silly premise, transporting a princess to her wedding, turns in to the inevitable rescue mission to save the princess from a beholder. This then segs into the third act: defeating the evil wizard who has cursed a sulten, transforming him into the beholder. It’s the third act here that saves this adventure. The beginning is the usual hackney’d Princess Escort mission, complete with an asshole Vizier tagalong. The princess is, of course, kidnapped. There’s a nice little beggar encounter in the beginning with a cryptic admonishment/prophecy (depending on the parties actions.) What I found interesting was that the same phrase is used regardless of the parties actions, only the delivery tone is different. I’m a sucker for the classics and rather than a quantum railroad this seems more like clever writing. The kidnapping proper is stupid and sets up one of those “doing everything possible in the rules/fiat to keep the PC’s from knowing what happened” instead of just writing it better. You see, the beholder comes on to the transport ship, but there’s a blinding light, etc, that keeps everyone from knowing they face they beholder. It would be much simpler to have the princess TK’d through a portal or something. I hate it when the DM/adventure gimps the party. The beholder lair is nothing special and is full of bad encounters. No challenge, bad writing and advice (why give advice on turning ghouls reactions if the cleric will D the ghoul on anything but a minimal result?) There’s also a puzzle with a “correct” solution instead of leaving the thing open ended. “Blow chalk on the ink to read the indentations!” Uh huh. That’s kind of a stretch. Nice solution, but a stretch. There is a section that COULD have been nice. The party meets some “Desert Ghosts” … but they are not actually undead. Never encountering them before, or knowing their name, they are unlikely to be treated as undead. But if they had heard rumors of “Desert Ghosts” and descriptions and THEN encountered them? A lost opportunity for misdirection.

The third act has a much different style. Here the adventure enters the realm of true fantasy. Magic flames of immortality, effreet, horribly wounded NPC who is still alive and functioning without pause, a magic peach tree … The elements of this are quite nice and the location, or at least the events, FEEL like an endgame location. I would only have two complaints. First, the efreet doesn’t grant a wish. That’s lame. For some reason writers are stingy with wishes and they shouldn’t be. Giving them to the party allows the DM to fudge without remorse … after all the party now has wishes to undue things. Finally, and most importantly, the party is most likely undercut in the end. The boss is an M19. If he defeats the party then the beholder sultan shows us in some deus ex and anti-magics everything, accidentally, and saves the party, defeating the MU, etc. LAME. Better to ding the MU a bit in levels and make this a tough, but honest, fight. Then the parties victory is their own instead of the DM’s magic NPC pet showing up. It’s that kind of shit that makes me HATE NPC’s when I’m a player.

A much nicer adventure than most. I’d have no problem putting an hour or two in to this and fix it up for play … a rarity for Dungeon.

Felkovic’s Cat
by Paul F. Culotta
AD&D
Levels 6-9

Transported to Ravenloft, kill the evil vampire Baron. Heard that one before? Ravenloft adventures are a one-trick pony: one is all you get before the party kills all Barons, Mayors, etc, on sight. The only difference is that this time you get to keep the domain and rule it as it is transported back to the “normal” world, once you defeat the evil vampire Baron. This starts with opening fiction, always a bad sign. The villagers are ruled over from Castle Pantara, which is in the shape of a cat, and whose guards are called the Black leopards, and their currency is called Pantherheads and Catseyes. Comic Book much? Two pages of backstory, forced & railroaded into picking up a status at the start so you can go on the adventure, “moralistic” approaches to killing villagers attacking you … (You can’t kill the people the trying to kill you? Seriously?) There’s not enough to do in the village/town, which probably doesn’t matter because anyone with half a brain will go to Caster Panther and kill everyone in sight. So, it’s a hackfest with a bunch of … Werepanthers! Bet ya didn’t see that one coming, eh? Hack the werepanthers. Hack four vampires. Done. Lazy, lazy writing, relying on lazy tropes presented in comic book complexity and no charm or depth or detail. On the plus side it does have a Bag of Cats (kind of like a bag of beans) and it does tell you what everyone in the castle is/goes when under attack. That’s something not nearly enough adventures have.

Posted in Dungeon Magazine, Reviews | Comments Off on Dungeon Magazine #50

Gleams of the Livid Plaque

Posted on July 29, 2015 by Bryce Lynch

gleams
by Paul Keigh
Psychedelic Fantasies
D&D

The third installment of Paul Keigh’s “Procedurally generated weird place” feels just that: procedurally generated.

Go read the review of the first adventure in this series:

Dreams of the Lurid Sac

Then go read the review of the second in this line:

Streams of the Lucid Crack

Before even cracking this open I knew what to expect: weird environment with 100 rooms, procedurally generated content, and a host of alien creates inside including some explorers from another dimension. And sure enough, that’s what was inside.

So, pretty much exactly the same as the other adventures, from a high-level standpoint. I like these alien environments, and in particular the treasure/object lists that are included. In addition, the greater location of this one is a nice touch. The dungeon is a collection of plaque bubbles and they hang off the side of … something. This is kind of an interesting concept and harkens back to the Bottle City. In particular I like the concept that th eliving plaque bubbles hand down the side of a pit that leads to the base of the world/bottomless world pit. There are some more munadne options as well, a creatures gullet, a cliff, sinkhole, lava tube, etc, but I really like THE FANTASTIC that “the bottomless pit to the base of the world” represents. D&D should have fantastic locales, beyond the norm.

Feel ripped off by the review? Well … I’m keeping this adventure, because of it’s role as a curiosity. Things are getting a little too generic in their weirdness for me to recommend this to others. I still think the second in the series, Lucid, is the more approachable for most DM’s.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/126921/Gleams-of-the-Livid-Plaque-Psychedelic-Fantasies-7?1892600

Posted in Reviews | 2 Comments

Proteus Sinking

Posted on July 27, 2015 by Bryce Lynch

psj

by Bjorn Warmedal
Psychedelic Fantasies
D&D
Levels 1-3

Recall: I like gonzo and spaceships full of slime people is certainly gonzo.

Of the eight Psychedelic Fantasies adventures this may be the weakest. It’s still better than most of the dreck published. It reminds me of Tegal, Vampire Queen, and perhaps most closely: Dungeon of the Bear. Random-ish things in rooms with a paragraph or so for each, that work out to be puzzles … if you have a broad definition of the word puzzle.

The adventure details the goings-on in a spaceship crashed in a swamp. The encounters fall into three broad categories. First, there are the inhabitants of the ship. There’s not really much direction given here, and most of them are in one room having a disco party. Secondly there are the weird levels, buttons, boxes, and pipes of the ship that fill most of the rooms. Finally there are several rooms that have things from outside the ship in them, tentacles from the swamp and the like. Most of the rooms fall into the second category: weird ship stuff.

Like Dungeon of the Bear, this adventure lacks evocative descriptions. The room descriptions are focused and not full of extraneous information (Yeah!) but they are not exactly powerfully written either. I’m not sure what the issue is. Passive descriptive text or some other problem. The imagery around the rooms is not very evocative though and that’s an issue for something that you need to fill to run well. I’m looking for a description to cement itself in my mind and be a springboard to further description that my own brain can fill in. The description needs to plant a seed that I can expand on. I just don’t get that here. It’s all slightly … bland. The core of the room encounters are fine, I guess. But they don’t come across as interesting, exciting, and something you want to run and experience.

I’m sure many folks will latch on to the Disco Room. It’s a room full of slime people drinking, dancing, and looking slightly depressed. As if they are trying desperately to fight off the melancholy by going through the motions. This room is desperate for MORE. Examples, a random table, 12 personalities that are a shade of “melancholy.” Alas, nothing of the like will be found.

PF has committed itself to bare bones presentation. I would suggest that may be a mistake in certain situations. In this adventure we get a map of ship that’s clearly been done in some line-drawing application. Boring, bland, and communicating nothing except where the walls are, it’s crying out for more. A little tentacle drawn in. A water notation. SOMETHING.

Maps is maps, and the DM still does need to bring all adventures to life, but the purpose of the product is to help the DM do that. This one doesn’t do as good a job of that as I’d like. It’s right on the edge of my “keep it or burn it” threshold.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/138783/Proteus-Sinking-Psychedelic-Fantasies-8?1892600

Posted in Level 1, No Regerts, Reviews | Comments Off on Proteus Sinking

Dungeon Magazine #49

Posted on July 25, 2015 by Bryce Lynch

d49
A cover painting of a poisoned flute? Oh, this should be gooooood …

The Dark Place
by Lee Sheppard
AD&D
Levels 5-7

A Predator-clone so clone-like that it suggests you watch the movie! I kind of enjoyed the backstory, for once. It could have been cut WAY down, but a demon that stops fearing the townfolk and attacks day & night, picking them off, paints a nice image. It is,of course, completely irrelevant to any actual play, but any port in a storm. Anyway … while reprovirioning a ship there’s an abandoned town run across and a demon playing Predator with hit & run attacks. The party finds a missing sailor, who, while a COMPLETE coward, tried to convince the party to be brave and save the first mate or the ship’s captain will be mad at them. The juxtaposition between the sailors words and actions seem lost on the man. The hit and run attacks then start. In another stunning example of middle-class morality, you get more XP for letting an undead possess you and less-than-book-value if you kill it. Lovely. Finally, the backstory is told through a found journal entry. Here’s a tip: if you have to tell your story through a journal/diary/etc, then you haven’t done a good job with the adventure and need to edit it again.

I really want to bitch about one thing though: the purpose of the adventure vs the content provided. THINK. What is the purpose of your adventure? Your content should match that. In both this adventure and in another recent Dungeon one (the middle-eastern one with the guy coming out of the paint and killing people) this problem is quite noticeable. In both the room descriptions are presented as “normal.” IE: too much text telling you irrelevant things; aka the style of the time. Instead the text should be used to … support the adventure! Stunning thought, I know. In this adventure the demon is supposed to be doing hit & runs on the party. The text for the rooms should be supporting that. Instead of giving us a long paragraphs on describing a well in the parade grounds it should instead be loading us up with ideas. It hides in the well, ready to yank someone in looking over the edge, and things like that. This one tip would save a billion trees and immeasurably improve almost every adventure ever published. Figure out what your adventure is supposed to be doing and use the text to support it. Really THINK.

Two for the Road
by Tony Quirk
AD&D
Levels 2-5

DM torture porn. The party buys a wagon that has two gremlins hiding in it that the DM can use to torment the party. The DM is encouraged to make the wagon buying seem normal, ignoring the fact that ANYTHING the DM says in D&D is immediately taken as significant.

Lenny O’Brien’s Pot O’Gold
by J. Lee Cunningham
AD&D
Levels 3-6

Jesus Fuck, two and half pages of backstory for four pages of adventure! That must be a new Dungeon record. Leprechaun steals from party to lure them to a locale and trick them into killing some mudmen that have his pot of gold. Annoying fey (“Oh boy! Kender!” has never been uttered, ever, in the history of RPG’s) and DM fiat combine to provide a frustrating experience for the players. I love fey. The backstory here is not bad, especially if shortened to two paragraphs. This isn’t a fey adventure though; it’s more DM torture porn. Adversarial with none of the heart and soul of a fey adventure.

North of Narborel
by Christopher Perkins & Bob Waldbauer
AD&D
Levels 4-7

Two full columns of read-aloud start us off on the right foot. The party is hired to investigate some missing ships/suspected pirates. It leads to a battle on a ship at dock, a brief sea journey, and a small eight-ish room cave complex; the pirate HQ. The port town descriptions are a bit above average, but don’t really impact the adventure very much. Generic port town or the port town this adventure takes place in? Decision time, authors! The town portion does have a bit of a sandbox feel, and it quite open ended in the solutions available to solve the town portion. That’s very nice. Perhaps frustrating for less creative parties, and thus some DM advice could have sprinkled in. Town leads to caves adventure in the pirate base, and most likely a big battle and some chasing through the caves. The cave maps are above average, and can provide a good non-linear environment for this sort of thing. Overall, not bad. It lacks colour, but most things do.

Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow
by Bradley Schell
AD&D
Levels 1-2 (One PC)

This is one of those “you are the subject of a monster summoning spell” adventures. One PC keeps getting sucked back in by a certain wizard, compelled to obey. A little of this goes a long way, and it’s hard to work the rest of the party in. As a running gag it could be good, with the PC trying to ferret out where/who the wizard is so they can encourage them to stop. But again, a little goes a long way in the “compelled/annoyed” category. See Also: Leprechaun adventure.

Castle of the Blind Sun
by Todd Baughman, Paul D. Culotta, Shari Culotta
AD&D
Levels 10-15

Some people love this one but I don’t get it. The party is forced into helping an elf maiden, finds a wizards tower, hits a town, goes up a mountain, and then explores a small castle. There is nothing remarkable about this adventure. Well, ok, no. It does recommend some musical pieces to accompany some of the scenes. Evidently, it was an experiment. Some artist was complaining that words came first and then the art. Why not the other way around? Art, then the adventure text!

Layers and layers of text pound you into submission. The setup/hook is a total railroad job where a group of 15th level adventurers are expected to be caught with their pants down. You’re forced to trust the NPC … it goes on and on. One of the worst hooks I’ve ever seen. At least “caravan guard” doesn’t insult our intelligence. The main villain is a 15th level bard … who defrauds people 50gp at a time. Uh … The castle was magically built for a different bard, a blind one. It features intelligent flesh golem butlers who lie down to rest, magic kitchens, and gelatinous cube garbage disposals. Reams of text. No charm. Nothing interesting. I suspect not even a challenge for four 15th level party members. Gee, hmmm, a sucky high-level adventure. That’s a new one.

There’s a Demotivator that goes “Mistakes – Perhaps the purpose of your life is to serve as a warning to others.”

Posted in Dungeon Magazine, Reviews | 2 Comments

Streams of the Lucid Crack

Posted on July 22, 2015 by Bryce Lynch

pf6

by Paul Keigh
Psychedelic Fantasies
D&D
Mid-levels?

Uh … so …

Go read the review of Dreams of the Lurid Sac. https://tenfootpole.org/ironspike/?p=2633

Got it? Ok. This is a less procedural and more accessible version of Lurid Sac. IE: Paul Keigh has sold out. No, no no. Just kidding. He has, perhaps, slowed down his opiate use just a tad, and as a result this adventure is more approachable than Lurid. It presents the same kind of alien environment that Lurid did, albeit in a different form. Both are populated with a host of strange creatures and have large random portions to them. Lucid Crack is less procedural/randomly generated than Lurid Crack is. This is Spire of Iron & Crystal turned up to 12. Just as with the other PF adventures, this could be dropped into almost any type of RPG or campaign and would fit well. Strange, isn’t it? You have to go back to the roots of D&D and by throwing away all convention you finally get to true Universal RPG Supplement products that don’t suck.

There’s this underground complex. The rooms are all made up of 3-d diamond-like “cells”, with an exit on each of the 3 walls. The floor is the same depth below the door as the ceiling is above each. IE: the “doors” are way above the floor. All of the surfaces are covered in cryptic writing. There’s a scree slopes that leads down into the complex. There’s a huge gaping wound of ruined earth running through it. Uh … there’s a great, and growing, deep deep pit in the middle of the complex. Most rooms have some magma wells in the bottom and those have steam in them. THe various rooms have “gardens” in some of them. There are a dozen types of weird-ass creatures roaming about, doing various things. I’m sure I’ve left out about two dozen other things. Summary: It’s a weird ass place that’s been impacted by by several events which are probably not related to each other. I’d like to note that this fact (several events/history) is one of the defining features of several great adventures. From Many Gates of the Gann, to Spawning Grounds of the Crab-men, and maybe even Barrier Peaks, the Bowman map/adventure creation tutorial, and How to Host a Dungeon, the history of place and the impacts of time are some of the defining characteristics of these great adventure locales.

Remember that Lurid Sac review I made you read? For our purposes today you can consider everything in it as also applying to this adventure. Yeah, it’s a cop-out for me to say that. But it also allows me to touch on the differences without having to go explain Lurid Sac all over again. I was barely able to do that the first time. In short: this is a hardcore location-based adventure, ala those awesome MERP supplements from long-ago, but describing an alien environment. The players, through their exploration add the adventure.

Lucid Crack is quite a bit more approachable than Lurid Sac. The transition from a biological environment to a cave-like environment somehow make the comprehension of the product easier. Perhaps because the biological component is removed or because we’re used to dealing with caves & dungeons. Don’t get me wrong, this is a VERY non-traditional cave/dungeon and has more in common with the biological Lurid Sac than it ever would any cave/dungeon, but the cementing of the ideas through a more traditional environment translates into something a little easier to comprehend.

Two other things also contribute to this more approachable nature. There’s a little more purpose in this adventure, it seems. There are some creatures hanging out inside that have a direction relationship to the environment, the purpose behind it. This adds something to the adventure, but describing what is hard. A purpose perhaps? While Lurid Sac simply felt like it existed, this place feels a little more … purpose-driven. That extra little bit, like the non-organic walls, allows you something to hang your hat on and ground you in what’s to come. It’s a bit like someone pushing you at the top of the sledding hill: just a bit goes a long way. Similarly, the side-effect of the environment gives you a good hook. The rooms contains knowledge. By remaining in them you can learn things. (Knowledge skills! Yeah!) But they also learn from the occupants. They encode the knowledge of those that visit. I’m sure you can see how this leads to adventure. Voldemort visits to learn some hidden knowledge and then the party shows up to learn things leaked from Voldie’s head … and then you have to interact with the “owners” to figure out where (and even more to figure out there ARE owners!) and then you need to go do other things for them before they reveal the secrets, etc. It fits in almost any campaign. Again, just a little bit more to get the DM started leads to endless possibilities. These are the little bits of data that I’m always talking about wanting in an adventure. Just some throwaway comments, a couple of sentences, about the knowledge thing, leads you, the DM, to build and build and build on it. It’s a jump-start. It’s what every adventure should provide, time and time again, in it’s pages.

I’ve got one suggestion for improvement, and it’s related to the creatures. The various creatures in both Lucid and Lurid have names that are … almost random? When combined with the hard-core new creatures things can get a bit confusing. I’m pretty sure Psychadelic is committed to now/low art, to keep costs down, so relieving the issue with some line drawings seems out. Somehow clarifying the creature names and their relation to who they are and what they do needs to happen. What’s a Waarfa? Or A Drevod? Or any of the other 10 or so similar random assortments of letters? How do you ties those letters back to what they do and what they look like? I think 1 creature type sticks out to me, and I’m still not sure I can describe it in any way other than its purpose. This is a problem.

Paul’s adventures (Lurid & Lucid) are not the usual 0-work things. You need to read, think about, and plan and note-take a bit. I’m usually not very happy about that in an adventure. These are SO out there that they get a pass. Also, they cost $3. You won’t invest $3 in some of the most unusual D&D content ever published? Really?

Churl.

(Is “Philistine” still acceptable to use?)

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/124917/Streams-of-the-Lucid-Crack-Psychedelic-Fantasies-6?1892600

Posted in Reviews | 13 Comments

The Harvester From Outer Space

Posted on July 20, 2015 by Bryce Lynch

pf5
by Yves Geens
Psychedelic Fantasies
D&D
Fuck it if I know the level. 4-ish?

From the introduction …
As the PCs are camped out one night during their travels, they are caught in a bright tractor beam and with the deafening noise of blaring horns steadily pulled up into the ship …

She’s sweet brown sugar with a touch of spice!

Uh, I mean; this is a couple of levels of an overrun alien space, ala Metamorphosis Alpha. I’m totally in love with that genre, so I’m predisposed to liking this. It could be a drop in for almost any game system, but MA & Gamma World are both lacking a lot of content. It’s the usual Psychedelic Fantasies fare, meaning it focuses on the new & imaginative. Geoff’s PF line is really one of the best lines being actively published.

The adventure is a little ham-handed: you get tractored-beamed up to the ship and need to find the escape. After that, though, the goodness begins. Even if you’re not into Sci Fi in your D&D, this adventure presents itself well.

There’s a type of adventure writing, exemplified in some of the earlier TSR D&D modules, in which the adventure is explained through the room keys. In other words, as you travel through the keys it becomes more and more apparent what the deal is the dungeon. The summary is kind of built in to the descriptions by using the text. It’s nothing overt; you just learn more as more of the “picture” is revealed. This allowed those adventures to have, generally, quite short introductions/backgrounds. This adventure does that as well. The entire front-end is only a half page, and then the keys start. The party appears in room 1 and room 2 tells us that guards, “cronies of new boss Borzum, make money on the side by robbing new arrivals.” We now know that there’s some kind of boss/dictator thing going on, power just changed hands, and things are a bit rough and chaotic. From one short sentence a picture emerges and we view every other room from now on through the light cast by this second room. This is excellent design! No preaching, or monologues, or endless exposition. Just a short little sentence that communicates more to the DM than a page of backstory could. It empowers the DM’s imagination rather than forcing it to conform. This continues throughout the adventure, setting up several situations.

The rooms are imaginative and there are many memorable characters for the party to interact with. “Glorp’s Pad” houses a blob-like thing that loves to have his photo taken with visitors; photos of Glorp with other aliens cover the walls. He sells people jars of his own slime. How can you not love that? Imagine the difference if this were one of the endless number of schlock “standard” adventures. “The slime attacks!” Oh, that’s original. Slime that attacks. *YAWN* You know what’s more fun than a, ogre wearing a 10,000gp crown attacking the party? An ogre with a 10,000 gp crown NOT attacking the party. Every time the party meets this potential friend they are going to be thinking “man, if we had that crown we could pop a level, for sure!” THAT’S fun. The monsters and treasures are unique and wonderful, as they are in all Psychedelic Fantasies adventures. I’d go on about them but it feels like a broken record. It’s one of the core design principals of PF and it’s one of the reasons that the line is better than almost everything else. It brings the mystery and wonder that is missing from the book-standard stuff. The wanderers do things, and the room descriptions are tight enough to use during play while being vivid enough to spur the DM’s imagination: eight or nine keyed encounters per page, including monster stats.

My criticisms may be two small ones. First, it’s 2015. It’s time that the maps were better. I don’t give a crap about art, I want data. Put more data on the maps. I guarantee you I am printing out the map and putting it on my screen. What else can you put on it? Wanderers? Monster tear sheet? Second, there are factions here, at least implicitly. A little more work could have gone in to this aspect. It’s pretty clear that the minor godling and the crime lord/boss may be on different sides, as well as others. A few extra words, at the beginning or in the text, would have done a lot more to build up the real “living town” aspect of the adventure. After all, that’s kind of what this place is akin to. It’s an abandoned ruin that some folks have set up a town in. That’s means it’s a social adventure, and social adventures require a little more in the way of interaction.

Those are not anything other than minor nits compared to the content you get for $3 From the odious potion maker to the gregarious alien who wants to take selfies with you, this thing is a joy. A bit haphazard, but still a joy. Content is king.

I think PF has something like six or seven adventures in the line now. You could buy them all for about $20. It will be one of the best $20 you’ve ever spent on RPG material.

Posted in Level 4, Reviews, The Best | 1 Comment