DCC #71 – The 13th Skull

Posted on October 30, 2013 by Bryce Lynch

71

by Joseph Goodman
Goodman Games
DCC RPG
Level 4

Thirteen generations ago, the ambitious first Duke of Magnussen made a fell pact with an unknown power, who asked for but one thing in return: the thirteenth daughter born to a Magnussen duke. Now, generations hence, the daughter of Duke Magnussen XIII is stolen away by a hooded executioner riding a leathery beast. As it wings back across the city walls to drop behind the Duke’s mountain-top keep, all who watch know it alights in the Magnussen family crypts, where the devilish secrets of thirteen generations have been buried and forgotten – until now… This adventure module also includes The Balance Blade, a short level 2 adventure in which a wizard’s patron makes a simple request: travel to another plane to retrieve a legendary blade of neutrality. But once the journey is in motion, the wizard finds that not all is as it seems!

This is a time-sentiive exploration of a crypt/cave under a nobles keep to find his daughter before she is sacrificed. It’s a pretty straight-forward affair but with some interesting encounters. It reminds me a bit of my favorite designers, Dave Bowman’s, work, if he were much more verbose. There’s a brief second adventure, unrelated, linear, and predictably, also included. The first would make a good one-shot for people familiar with DCC. The second has some ideas that can be stolen.

Legend abounds that a local nobleman, 12 generations back, made a pact with the devil to sacrifice 12 generations of his heirs in exchange for eternal life with a silver skull. Generation 13 is here and the local worthy is afeared for his daughter, the supposed last to be slain. During a public execution of someone calling for her death, so the prophecy can’t be fulfilled, a figure in an executions hood shows up riding a pterodactyl and swoops in to whisk her away. Guess who gets to go save her?

What follows is a not uninteresting romp through a couple of family crypt rooms and then down to cave whee a river, a hellmouth, and a couple of magic circles await. It’s a decent, but … confining/ adventure? It feels mostly linear in nature even though there are a couple of paths and the cave is mostly one big room with a couple of interesting sites in it to explore. There’s a nce crypt room where shadows linger and ‘attach’ themselves to people. Theres a cool magic circle full of body parts, and a pile of corpses to play with, and a gaping hellmouth in a river, and a silver skull sitting on top of a high pillar that just sits there and does nothing while various things shows up to kill the party. This feels like what its supposed to be: the pact chamber of someone who sold his soul. So while the encounters are limited in nature the interesting ones are quite interesting and the entire thing is set up to allow a classic moment of gaming: tossing the skull in to the hellmouth. That’s a pretty classic moment in genre media, but it feels forced here rather than the natural way that a Mighty Deed tends to come in play of DCC. So, is it bad to pul in a crumbly wall you can push over on to someone? I don’t know. You’re kind of corralling the players in to certain actions by dropping these things in. They’ll take advantage of it and they’ll have a great time doing it, so why does it really matter if it was natural or predicted if no one notices? Similar to jumping puzzles or swinging rope/chain puzzles … they are there to provide a classic moment … which works totally better if the party fires crossbow bolts with ropes in to the ceiling.

The treasure and monsters are typical DCC. That means the monsters are unique and no one is going to know what the hell they do, which I LOVE. I LOVE DCC monsters. The shadows work in a completely different way then they do in D&D and yet they do the same thing. DCC pretty consistently does this, referencing a monster and giving it powers that seem to stem from the same source as the D&D monster but then handling things is a totally different way … that is somehow the same. In the case of the shadows, they ‘attach’ themselves to players and drain strength. But the way it’s described is much more … natural? integrated? I don’t know. I wish I had the ability to look at a monster and do this. My D&D games would be MUCH better and they’d have a much different, classical, feel. Treasure is the usual toss-up. Monetary treasure is poorly described “grave offerings worth 20gp” while the magic treasure and encounters are described much more richly and vividly.

The second adventure ends with the party attacking each other, a party death, and a magic teleport at the end in avery Deus EX manner. It’s linear and generally has stupid encounters. There’s a couple of decent things worth stealing: the tomb at the end of the Last Colossus and a weird magic hallway. Otherwise it’s just “have these encounters in a row and kill each other.” Not too interesting.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/104780/Dungeon-Crawl-Classics-71-The-13th-Skull?1892600

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Tower of the Scarlet Wizard

Posted on October 28, 2013 by Bryce Lynch

sw

by James M. Ward
Eldritch Enterprises
Generic/Universal
Any level

A mysterious and magical message literally drops into your lap from the very air. Unsettled by the experience, you nevertheless open it. It seems that there is a tower at the center of a nearby town, packed with magical items and untold riches… and it seems YOU have inherited this tower! Well… almost. You are one of several cousins vying for ownership of this magnificent edifice. The task seems simple: convince the servants of the tower that you are the rightful owner. Once all of the tower’s servants have sworn fealty, the tower, and its riches, are yours. It sounds too good to be true… So it probably is.

This is a fun little romp through a weird wizards tower chock full of treasure, magic, and allies … and the tower proper could serve as a base of operations. It’s stuffed with gameable non-standard items and encounters, but could use a little more description in some of the items. One of the best Elder Ent products I can recall.

An old wizard dies and leaves a character his tower … if he can get there first and claim it before one his cousins does. Jim Ward does something amazing: he gets to the point. There’s a VERY brief introduction, about a half page of introduction, and a page handout of the wizards letter to the character. That’s it. I’m amazed. Not to sound too cynical, but I’m been slogging through A LOT of introductory text lately, a problem that plagues many publishers and adventures, and EE is not excluded from that list. Jim however dispenses with that nonsense. He provides a pretty terse introduction, in the large font I find so annoying but that my old eyes enjoy, and then get down to business. And what business!! This is an adventure firmly rooted in the weird & whimsical world of pre-standardized D&D. Ultimately the point of adventure is for the character to gain his inheritance, the tower, which can be used as a pretty spiffy base. And the designer doesn’t gimp the character AT ALL. This place is EXACTLY what the players want when they hear that they are getting a wizards tower. The whole place reeks of the fantastic, with a touch of some kind of 20’s sandlot play.

Attacking the tower from the outside creates large batches of cut flowers, which the locals gather and sell. Kids sit around in a vacant lot and laugh as the characters try to get past the front door. Inside you’ll find a trophy room with lots of monsters heads … including a medusa head in a bag that still works! The stairs scream out warnings as things tread upon them. There’s rooms full of magic spell components. One room has a wall FULL of magic wands … THAT ALL WORK! There’s a zombie parrot that knows things but drinks blood. There’s are brass bees that attack people trying to use magic. There are clockwork creatures all over the place … but almost none of them are immediately hostile. There’s a clumsy clockwork bull that follows the characters around if they activate it … for better or for worse.

The place is FULL of treasure, most of it is just generically described well described although there are hints here and there:gold dust or uncut jewels, for example. I prefer a little more description of my flatware sets. There are a decent number of creatures in the tower but most are not hostile, and that may be the most serious problem with the adventure. That’s not too serious though. In fact, I think this would be a FINE adventure for when the wizard finally gets to the level where he gets his tower. You pull this thing out and *BAM* instant wizard base that also provides some weirdness and exploration to it. It would be really cool to see similar adventures for the other classes also.

I like this. Jim does a good job mixing the classics with the fantastic. A gem on a pedestal releases poison gas. Portions of the tower may never be found, and the treasures remaining hidden for a long while. He gives just enough hints in the very terse backstory to construct the village and its life around the tower. I like that aspect a lot. He doesn’t go on and on. He just mentions something in passing and the core concept is communicated instantly with more than enough flavor to allow a DM to add the additional flavor needed to expand it.

This is worth keeping.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/108229/Tower-of-the-Scarlet-Wizard?affiliate_id=1892600

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Dungeon Magazine #9

Posted on October 26, 2013 by Bryce Lynch

d9

Dear Lord, why did I ever choose to do this?

The Lurkers in the Library
by Patricia Nead Elrod
AD&D Levels 1-3

Six pages that boil down to “a couple of orcs break in to a library.” The library is exhaustively described to a degree where all of the words run together and you don’t get a good picture of what it is. The party stumbles upon a scene In Media Res and are told a tentacle came through a wall and grabbed people. They are expected to look in to things and explore the library to eventually stumble upon the orcs. An effort is made to give the orcs and hostages personalities but its unclear if that’s ever going to come up in play. I suspect that the orcs are just gonna be hacked down. In spite of the length this is, in reality, just the barest outline of an adventure.

The Crypt of Istaris
by Richard Fichera
AD&D
Levels 3-5

Oh boy, a full page of read-aloud! Soliloquy, HO! AND a page of useless background?!! And useless fresco’s on the walls showing suffering?!?! Say it isn’t so! A symmetrical star layout?!?! Hot diggity dirt! Ok, I’m being a bit unfair; it has some bad points but it is virtually chock full of interesting rooms. There’s a nice statue trap/puzzle in room 3, a set piece with piercers in room 4, weird experimented on ogres ala Doc Frankenstein in room 6, weird nozzles and gas in room 7, and a strange ceiling in room 8 … and so on. There’s some bullshit “only 20% of the time” and the like nonsense. This is a tournament module, and so that explains a lot of the set piece type encounters, but it’s also got some nice environments, descriptions, and the like, especially for the time in question. It’s much closer to the positive aspects of C1-Hidden Shrine than it is the crapfests that usually appear in Dungeon.

The Djinni’s Ring
by Vince Garcia
D&D Solo
3rd Level

This is a Choose Your Own Adventure solo adventure with an elf in an Arabian Nights type environment.

The Golden Bowl of Ashu H’san
by Rick Swan
AD&D-OA
Levels 2-4

This is a linear wilderness adventure. You’re on a mission for a village, wander down a trail meeting people, and then end up at he adventure site where the thing finishes up. One of the things I like about the OA adventures in Dungeon, thus far, is how the spirits are much closer and integrated in to the life of the surrounding lands. This adventure is no different. A remote farming village is experiencing a drought and the old head man knows that someone has to go to their sacred site and see what’s up with their protective spirit. As usual, no one in the village s brave enough to go. The party then has ten or so encounters in the wacky & wonderful world of Dungeon OA. There’s a nice fairy tale feel here, with injured animals, old wells, haughty warriors blocking a shrine, and a forceful merchant. It’s exactly the sort of content I like to see in an adventure: whimsical and fanciflul, appealing to some of the old historical tropes. There’s a good mix of combat and role-playing. I approve.

The Ghostship Gambit
by Randy Maxwell
D&D
Levels 3-6

This isn’t really an adventure but rather an encounter with a ghost ship. A port town is having trouble with many of the ships coming in being attacked by a ghost ship. The characters get hired to do something about it. That entails hiring a ship and sailing out, having no encounters, and meeting the ghost ship. Which is actually just some pirate aquatic elves. Eight of them. Adventure over. There’s not really much here, in spite of the page count.

The Plight of Cirria
by Grant & David Boucher
AD&D
Levels 8-12

This is a tedious wilderness adventure followed by a tedious cloud castle adventure. A poly’d dragon hires you to find her mate and hands you a map. The map, a collection of symbols and directions, may be the best part of the adventure, although it’s very simple. You then get to make 80 wandering monster checks over 20 days. This takes you past a number of mundane encounters that tend toward either the environmental or normal. You also pass two monster hideouts, which at least provide a speed bump. It never amazes me how something exotic and fantastic, like a cloud castle, can be made in to something boring. The descriptions are mundane and boring. In the end you kill a couple of demons and wizards. Joy. Boring. There’s a convoluted trap room that you might be able to salvage, but not much else. It’s just a flat and boring adventure with charm, depth, and very very little interesting and gameable material.

Posted in Dungeon Magazine, Reviews | 8 Comments

L1 – Storm of Tears

Posted on October 23, 2013 by Bryce Lynch

l1

by Chris Fuller
Pacesetter Games & Simulations
AD&D
Levels 8-11

The rain will simply not stop. Crops have failed and livestock has drowned or fled. Farmers and their families have fled to the high ground, but the water is slowly building. The high priest has no answer and the king is desperate. The land is surely under a curse, but from whom and why?

This is an adventure in spooky manor home in the swamps. Demons, were-creates, and a lich haunt it, although its generally run like a lite version of Tegal or a less bizarre version of Shadowbrook. The content is not terrible, but it does suffer from a poor hook and, I believe, sub-stadard treasure. It takes a lot to of GP to make 11th level.

The rains won’t stop and the kingdom is flooded. The high priest thinks its coming from the estate of an old friend of the kingdom and the king wants you to go check it out. Seems a little lame for a 11th level character. This starts 45 wandering monster checks as you slog your way through a swamp on a shallow raft. That’s roughly seven wandering encounters on d8 table … this may be a bit excessive … especially since the wandering monster table is nothing special.

The manor home falls in to a similar category as Tegal, Shadowbrook, and Amber. It may be closest in style to Castle Amber: Both are still mostly functioning as manors but something is a little off … unlike the more bizarre Tegal or Shadowbrook. There’s a butler to open the front door and serve tea … which is actually a wood golem. There are manes in the fireplaces to keep them going, there are were-creatures in the kitchen, the baby is a demon … you get the idea. The place is sprinkled around with attempts at keeping it a bit light: weird book names in the library and funny-ish signs tacked up on the doors and the like. Things go off the fun end a bit as the party reaches the end of the adventure: there’s a huge number of rooms with iron golems in them just before reaching the big bad. The social interaction encounters are good and the adventure needs more content like those. A friendly mimc\i is hanging around as well as a couple of NPC types who can join the party and have some decent personalities. This sort of gameable content is not quite as prevalent as it could be. There are encounters that happen in media res, like demon poker game and te like, but these inevitably end up in “They Attack!” instead of much more interesting interactions and motivations.

There’s a decent amount of weird interactivity that is _just_ bordering on being close to enough. Giant transporter birdcages and things that transform and change the party. This is combined with a mix of decent treasure and boring treasure. Harvesting exotic plants? Sound great! 900 gp? Hmmm … not so great. In fact the entire adventure seems like it should be scaled down to a much lower level. A magic book that teaches you orcish is great … at a lower level. This lacks the whimsical nature os other products and that I especially like in lower-level play and it lacks the treasure and player motivation and gameable material required at higher-level play.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/263905/L1-Storm-of-Tears?1892600

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DCC #74 Blades Against Death

Posted on October 21, 2013 by Bryce Lynch

dccd

by Harley Stroh
for Goodman Games
DCC RPG
Level 4

Punjar: wide-eyed madmen stalk the streets pronouncing the end of days, mail-clad priests crush the skulls of heathens underfoot, and timorous virgins are offered up in sacrifice within sooty temples. But even the greatest of shining temples and the strangest of mystery cults don’t dare to challenge the terrifying finality of Death. Until now. In Blades Against Death, the adventurers cross between the realms of the living and the dead, and wager their souls in a desperate bid to steal a soul from Death’s hoary grasp. To win over the God of Dooms, you must be the most daring, stalwart and cunning and – when all else fails – willing to test your blades against Death! A mid-level adventure for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game, Blades against Death offers characters a once in a lifetime escapade. Those that return from the Realms of the Dead will have earned the true title of adventurer, while those that fail will spend eternity in Death’s service.

This adventure brings the Appendix N feel the way I have not seen in some time. The characters find a way in to the afterlife to save a comrade, stealing, sneaking, conniving, and fighting till they break on thru to the other side . It hits over and over again with that N feel and delivers the way few others do.

What do you do when a PC dies? Run back to town and buy a raise dead or resurrect from someone? Hey … I’ve got an idea … why not turn that task in to an adventure ala “destroying an artifact” from the 1E DMG?! That’s what this adventure delivers. There’s a lame-o hook about being hired to play Orpheus, but the adventure points out that the far better hook is to pull this puppy out when someone dies. It points out that death is harsh in DCC, but if Orpheus can go on an adventure to bring’em back alive then the players should be able to also. I LOVE this. It’s like a whole new genre has opened up in front of me: the situational adventure. Adventures aimed at specific circumstances that the party finds themselves in. Yeah yeah, I know there have always been “use this adventure while the party is looking for an place to camp/stay the night/etc” but those have been a) lame and b) not really an adventure about the action in question but surrounding the action in question, if you get my meaning. This one is TOTALLY different though. The players are really going to feel like they have done something when they finish with it.

The adventure has four different sections. The characters hear about a fortune teller who knows the secret to brinign back the dead, the characters have to deal a sword from the moon temple that can cut the chains of death, the characters have to find a gate in to the underworld, and then they have to bargain with death for their dead comrade. That’s a pretty classic set up; only a fool would fail to recognize the classic archetypes of adventure. Cutting the bonds of death and predictions, moon temples and dicing with death … the appeal here is how it takes these classic archetypes and appeal to Appendix N to bring the adventure. Stealing in to the moon temple to steal a special sword that only appears under a full moon and that can cut the chains of deaths. Facing the hordes of temple revelers and finding a way to get the blade. Negotiating the way to the gates of the afterlife only to finally have to face a wager with death itself … I can’t imagine who wouldn’t get excited over that!. It’s all augmented by the language Harley uses. “The overfed son of a merchant”, pitch torches hiss & sputter, pale ceramic masks, sheer walls, masterfully wrought, embroidered curtains: that then is the essence of what I often bitch about. But just attaching an good adjective or adverb Harley is able to IMMEDIATELY communicate the flavor of the thing. It’s imprinted on your mind and your brain fills in the rest. These are not the big words of Gygax but a perfect word that conjures a scene. Just enough detail to let me do the rest. PERFECT examples of what I mean. It gets the DM’s brain working and I’m excitedly conjuring up the scene without any effort in doing so, my mind racing. EXCELLENT job.

It’s also an interesting example of a structured adventure that is not a railroad and not so loose so as to be “scene based.” Getting a special magic sword from the temple of the moon is a good example. It’s presented more of as a place than a railroad. Here’s the temple, here’s the various ways in and out, here’s the routine, here’s who inside, and here how you might handle some of the more common PC ploys, like slaughter, sneaking, conning, etc. It’s really set up to support a more open style of play and doesn’t assume either a hack job or anything else. That’s extended to the Gates of the Underworld portion as well: the various encounters in all the sections don’t really assume combat. The encounter folks generally will talk or interact with the party, which could lead to combat or could lead to something else. This is generally supported by JUST the right amount of room depth. There’s not layers and layers but it’s not just a boring old room either. Combined with the DCC emphasis on non-standard magic items and monsters you get great things coming out of it and a VERY Appendix N feel.

Excellent job! Well worth having!

This is available at DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/108984/Dungeon-Crawl-Classics-74-Blades-Against-Death?affiliate_id=1892600

Posted in Level 4, Reviews, The Best | 3 Comments

Dungeon Magazine #8

Posted on October 19, 2013 by Bryce Lynch

d8

It’s weird; the OA entires in Dungeon seem much better than the normal content. Maybe the exotic environment appeals in a way that the mundane can not?

Mountain Sanctuary
By John Nephew
AD&D
Levels 1-3

The party trips over a dungeon entrance buried in rubble. Inside is a small thirteen room dungeon that’s criss-crossed with small mite tunnels. The dungeon is full of giant rats, mites, and pesties, with the associated “big people fighting in small spaces” rules, etc. The non-standard treasure is ok, jeweled lamps, tapestries, etc. The entire point of the adventure seems to be getting the party surrounded by the beasties who attack the party in a coordinated manner. There’s just nothing here … 6 pages for what could have been a 1-page dungeon.

For a Lady’s Honor
by Estes Hammons
AD&D
Levels 4-7

The party is sent to go get a blackmail item from a city councilor. There are ten or so city encounters for those that want to have some random fun, and then the councilors house is described. It’s meant to be a sneak job so there’s lots of “-15% to move silently this” and “-2% to hide in shadows that.” The house is not that interesting and just has the usual enchanted armor, etc in it. But if you take the councilor, and his short write up and the villain, and the city encounters then you could have some content for a city game. The councilor would make a good recurring asshole and the city encounters are not terrible. Not all that original but decent enough for plain content. Laborers, pilgrims, city guards, merchant, unaffiliated street gangs … just enough content to give you a great idea of what like if life in this city. It’s better than most content.

In Defense of the Law
by Carl Sargent
AD&D
Levels 7-10

This is a three level dungeon with forty-three or so rooms. It tries to make itself interesting by introducing an NPC party of LE and LN NPC’s who are also trying to accomplish the same goal as the (presumably) LG party. Thus the players get to see how a different sort of party operates and interact with them through the various encounters the groups may have together, if/when they meet and if/when they join up to. The chaotics are after the Lawful McGuffin and so it’s off to the dungeon the party goes. The treasure is ok but the room entries get long and the creatures are stuffed in to the rooms in a somewhat haphazard manner. While many have names they don’t really interact with others other than “Attack!” and there’s no coordinated response by the occupants. There’s a throw-away description or two but not enough to really matter in a response.

The Wounded Worm
by Thomas M. Kane
AD&D
Levels 4-8

This is a weird little adventure; a kind of cross between a wilderness area and an evil bad guy base. It reminds me of the older MERP supplements, and that’s always a compliment. The whole idea os that there’s an evil bad guy, a wounded dragon, that controls this region and he’s got a whole host of creatures under his control, one way or another, to help hi towards his ends. There’s a pretext adventure hook but I think the thing would be much better if you worked him in over the course of many adventures as the ringleader to a bunch of plots, maybe slowly introducing his minions and fleshing them out a bit more than what’s given the adventure. This would give you a great build-up to a main villain and nice climax sort of adventure for a party. The dragons got some interesting minions, most of which have some sort of personality. It’s the usual ‘nightmare to sort out’ descriptions but you’d have some nice story-arc material if you did.

The Flowers of Flame
by Jay Batista
AD&D OA
Levels 5-8

So, I apologize to everyone I silently maligned when they said “it takes me as long to absorb a prepared adventure as it does for me to make a new one!” I now understand what you mean. This adventure is THICK. The players are used as pawns in a political game, under the pretext of retrieving a a mythical burning flower. This is close to a OA hex crawl, but without as many encounters. You hire guides, meet other parties/government agents, climb the main mountain/glacier, etc. There’s a good deal of improvisation available here for a decent DM as well as a good scattering of encounter type. The adventure is thick with … adventure. More than that … uh … go on a journey to tibet and encounter weird stuff until you get the flowers at a monastery?

Posted in Dungeon Magazine, Reviews | 2 Comments

The Case of the Missing Magic

Posted on October 16, 2013 by Bryce Lynch

mm

by Frank Mentzer
Eldtritch enterprises
Generic
Any Level

Adventures are easy to play; usually, you just fight your way through. But here, there is a mystery to be solved. Eleven key people work at the Acaeum complex. One of them is a criminal. None of them can be removed by combat.

This is a mystery adventure requiring the players to figure out who’s stealing stuff from a magical research society. It is AT LEAST three times longer than it should be. It does set things up so the mystery can’t be solved by magic, which is less forced/a better pretext than many of these adventures. It’s one of the better EE adventures … It is left as an exercise to the reader to discover the weaselyness of that last sentence.

Most mystery adventures in fantasy-land don’t work. The characters have access to too many divination type spells to check alignment, question the gods, etc. This adventure has a set up which makes the mystery work and doesn’t feel TOO forced. There’s a magical research society in a city. Because of their work magic doesn’t function inside the building. It’s also impossible to sneak stuff outside of the building because of wards, etc, that are well described. And yet some items have gone missing. The mystery will be solved in 4 days time when the Security Department runs their quarterly magical investigation report. But … the admin group is jealous of all the accolades that Security gets. They want some accolades. They hire the party on the down low to find the items/culprit so THEY can get some accolades and appear to be more competent than they actually are. That’s a very human motivation and i quite relatable and therefore plausible. If you take the environment as a given then the set up and pretext work well. That’s a job well done.

It’s hard for me to get past the setting though. It’s a magical multi-ethnic society for magical research where everyone lives together in harmony and elves and faeries hire themselves out and the streetlights are continual flame spells and blah blah blah. A magical ren faire. Bleech. But, maybe you like tat shit. If you were in to a later time period of play or some spelljammer type stuff then it would probably fit in quite well. Spelljammer makes everything better. Speaking of settings: some detail on Aquaria is shared. This is the campaign world that I THINK got a limited GaryCon release a couple of years ago. Giant squids run the world and there is some kind of weird Fair Witness/Strange in a Strange Land memory/object recall stuff going on. It’s all described in many words and has absolutely no impact on the adventure at all.

It’s all just fodder for the size 14 font. The margins are generous, the fonts big, the text verbose and conversational and the extraneous detail glorious in its mundanity. Seriously guys, What the Fuck? I know we’re all getting older but, hey, get some bifocals if you need to and pay someone to do some decent layouts for you. Fullerton or Kramer maybe. The lack of focus brings the whole adventure down. It reads more like some stream of consciousness ramblings than it does a tightly edited manuscript. It makes it hard for the user to pick out details and focus in on the important things in the adventure. For example: there are only about 20 relevant pages in the adventure. This amounts to the description of the basement and a page-long description of each of the major NPC’s. The focus of the adventure is to ‘find’ and question the major NPC’s in the adventure, the subject matter sages, and work out from there the culprit. That can be augmented by a trip to the basement. Everything else is just an after-thought, and it shows. The NPC’s are well described with lengthy personalities, histories, etc, which is absolutely correct and required for an NPC driven/social adventure. page each os a bit excessive, IMHO, and I could have done with a single page summary, a kind of tear-sheet, for reference. I find it hard to believe that the EE folks are being paid by the word, so it must just be a hard habit to break. The rest of the 40 pages of content is really disappointing. The magical research society is described generically with none of the magic or wonder that one would expect to find. There’s no flavor. Let’s be clear: I believe that when I buy a D&D product that I’m paying for someones imagination. If you give me generic and boring and mundane and the like then I’m being ripped off. I was ripped off here. There needed to be tables of weird shit, or tables to create your own weird shit, or SOMETHING like that in order to fill in the actual details of what goes on in the upper three floors of the building. And No, that’s not the DM’s fucking job. I mean, yes, it is the DM’s job but you’re ignoring the fact that I just paid you for YOUR imagination. expect you to give me something interesting for my cash and “Room 148-151: Consultation Rooms for visitors.” doesn’t get anywhere CLOSE to cutting it. I know that point of the adventure is the NPC’s and the basement, but if you are going to include forcing four security guards on the party then YOU need to describe them, not explicitly leave it as an exercise to the reader. It doesn’t have to long. That’s where actual skill comes in.

In the end, solving the mystery comes down to a single clue buried deep in the 60 pages of text. Fred says “I heard Bob was missing something” and Bob says he told no one his item was missing. How did Fred know the item was missing? That’s not enough but, as they say, the fun is in the journey and not the destination.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/108959/The-Case-of-the-Missing-Magic?1892600

Posted in Reviews | 1 Comment

Attack of the Frawgs

Posted on October 14, 2013 by Bryce Lynch

fr

by Stephen Newton
Thick Skull Adventures
DCC RPG
0-Level

When strange creatures prey on the innocent, the meek must become the hunters! Panic is mounting in the isolated settlement of Sagewood! Frightened villagers speak in hushed tones of “walking frogs the size of men” peering at them from within the woods. And now, a severely wounded local trapper has barely managed to return from Dead Goblin Lake; the fate of his partner known only to the foul creatures that so savagely attacked them. In a small village without heroes, the townsfolk look desperately towards each other for salvation from this terror. Those who face the creatures will almost certainly pay with their lives… Are you brave enough to risk it all?

This is meant to be a linear outdoor adventure with fifteen or so encounters. It tries to bring some atmosphere … but falls short. It feels more like a 4e adventure in style than a DCC RPG adventure. I hate reviewing these sorts of adventures; they are uninspired even in their suckiness.

The townsfolk are all drinking in a tavern when someone bursts in reporting an attack. Everyone rushes out to pursue the attacking menace. And thus your 0-level mob is born. You rush down the trail to the west of the lake and have fifteen encounters before finishing the adventure. That’s the 4e feel. You WILL have these encounters. Suck it up and play the game the way the designer meant. It’s not even clear to me why the group rushed out of the tavern or why they are following the trail to the west. Because it’s there and that’s the adventure we’re playing tonight, I guess.

On the way around the lake … which you are circling because this is the adventure you are playing tonight fuck you very much … you to get fight giant beaver-things, get stuck in traps set by trappers that hunt giant beaver-things, and fight generic humanoids who look like bullywugs. There is a certain rustic charm in infusing the adventure with the trappings of the frontier: trappers, giant beavers and the like. But the entire thing is just so BLAND that it feels like a colossal waste of time. The final encounter is the only one with anything interesting and it feels more like a 4e set piece, with the frog-mother laying eggs in to water as the party fights her.

This is an EXTREMELY disappoint DCC adventure. It reminds me a lot of the 3e stuff that some of minor publishers then converted the monster stats to OSRIC or Labyrinth Lord and slapped an “OSR” sticker on it in order to milk the market for a few more sales. Different games have a different feel. DCC is about freaky shit, horribly things, unique monsters & magic, and those awesome moments that we tell stories about forever after they happen.That’s not this. There’s a cave behind a waterfall. I love that meme. It’s takes something wonderful and unusual, the waterfall, and then adds a secret to it that the players will surely discover. It’s the kind of whimsy and wonder that appeals to us. And it’s fucking boring as shit in this.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/103335/Attack-of-the-Frawgs?1892600

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Dungeon Magazine #7

Posted on October 12, 2013 by Bryce Lynch

d7

A couple of potentially decent setting adventures in this issue. Several offer a more open-ended play style without railroading that makes them more interesting to me.. They are also going to take A LOT of work to turn in to something playable. There’s also a circus adventure, as featured on the cover art. What is the fascination with the circus and carnival? I get the festivals are an important part of village life but no circus ever appeared in a D&D adventure that did not have something fishy going on. Smart players would just have their characters burn it down and put everyone to the sword summarily. It’s called ‘Risk Mitigation.’

Nightshade
by Nigel Findley
AD&D
Levels 1-3

This adventure has the party going to a wizards house in town to pick up a potion. It’s short by Dungeon standards, just 5 pages. You meat an NPC and he pays you to go pick up a potion. You go to the wizards house and pick it up. You get attacked by some paid thugs on the way to deliver it. Adventure over. What it does well is hint at other uses, so it’s more presenting several interesting NPCs and situations and then tacking on a pretext so as to call it an adventure. The NPC hook is a bit foppish, with plots and enemies. The wizards falls much more closely to the Reprobate side of the spectrum. That makes him, and his bizarro home, much more interesting than the vast majority of wizards TSR and WOTC ever published. There’s really nothing new or unusual in his home (bizarre wizard stuff!), the wizard (he’s a reprobate) the hook NPC (fop with plots) or the thugs (run away or get revenge.) What is unusual is that all of this useful detail was included in a Dungeon Magazine adventure; it’s quite unusual to see. I’ve giving this a solid C+/B- for content you can steal and reuse for your game. It’s not ground-breaking but it is decent. So, better than the vast majority of crap out there, old or new.

Tortles of the Purple Sage – Part 2
by Merle & Jackie Rasmussen
D&D
Levels 4-10

Part 2 of the exhaustive overview of the lands around the tortles. This is exhaustive in generic and useless detail, mostly of a trading post called Richland. I like the idea of a frontier trading post; it’s a nice change from the little usual Keep on the Borderlands type frontier land holding. The problem is that this thing is exhaustive in generic detail. “Fuller: this textile worker processes cloth by shrinking & pressing it to increase its weight.” And there are scores of examples of content like that. It add absolutely nothing to the site. No NPC’s, no colorful content, no hooks. There are priestly societies call The Lawful Brotherhood and the Neutral Faction. It tries to add some flavor with Trader Jack, the guy in charge, but it’s too little. It’s too bad; the map of outpost doesn’t suck too much (needs more surrounding/supporting lands to support all the tradesmen) and the concept of a frontier trading post is a good one. In general, trading posts and mining camps, towns, don’t get enough D&D coverage.

The Matchmakers
by Patrician Nead Elrod
AD&D
Levels 1-3

This is an open-ended city adventure in which the characters are paid to help a young lady elope. Two merchant houses, both alike in stature, in fair Povero. You get a decent description of the city, the characters involved, her routine, details on the places she hangs out, a schedule for a couple of events to frame the action, and a couple of complications. Good complications like: oops, that guy was actually a jerk, or What do you mean you’re not the chick we’re after? The party is then on their own to hatch some crazy scheme or schemes to grab her and deliver her to the meeting point. That’s the kind of adventure type I like most: a setting the party gets to run rampant in, be it city, dungeon, or wilderness. There’s some decent detail about the town: press gang action on the docks and the like. There’s too much extraneous detail in the various rooms described in the villas the party may venture in to; the penchant for Doomsday Book recording in this era is unfortunate and obfuscates the real content.With prep and notes you could salvage this in to a fairly routine adventure.

Samurai Steel
by Daniel Salas
AD&D OA
Levels 3-5

Yet another open-ended adventure, but this time the party is trapped in a village, having been warned that they will almost certainly be killed in a few days when they are sure to be accused of treason. They are supposed to investigate to gather evidence that they are being framed and that a certain someone close to the local lord is plotting against him. This is supposed to be open-ended like The Matchmakers was, a couple of events, some locations details, some NPC’s to interact with, etc. The Matchmakers was ok but this falls short. There’s just not enough extra detail about the village and the people that live thee to help the DM turn it in to some place real. There are maybe four interesting people in he village and one of them dies 10 minutes in to the adventure after warning the party they are sure to be accused in a couple of days time. The only details of the village are the two or three spots that contain clues and the only other people to be detailed are the traitors that the party has to discover. The rest of the content about the village isn’t even really generic; it just doesn’t exist. You get killed in a couple of days AND you almost certainly get killed if you try t leave the village early AND you get killed if you start stabbing NPC’s in the throat (though they are commoners AND you get killed if … you get the picture. This pretends to be open-ended but is a railroad. Do what the designer wants you to do or have your characters killed. Uncool.

The Jungling Mordo Circus
by Vic Broquard
AD&D
Levels 10+

I love seasonal activities. I run a meetup for them. I subscribe to the Indian Festival Calendar and try to hit a lot of the local corn/beet/cucumber/etc festivals in the small towns around Indiana. The year has pattern to it with seasonal activities, seasonal fruit & veg, and festivals. I get that and I love that. This yearly routine & cycle has always been a staple of life and I get the importance that festivals played, and still play, in life. BUT JESES H FUCKING CHRIST WHY THE FUCK ARE PEOPLE OBSESSED WITH PUTTING EVIL CARNIVALS IN D&D? It doesn’t work. It NEVER works. Unless you put festivals in routinely then the party will know something is up when the circus shows up. The smart thing to do is to just burn it down and kill everyone. Especially when you are level 10+, as in this adventure. Who is going to mess with your 10+ party? The local authorities? The party is probably the local law. The piece of shit adventure has a kidnapping ring run by a level 20 evil wizard. He’s got the fucking Wish spell but he kidnaps people for money. And he DOES have the Wish spell. It’s crazy .The place is thick with high-level assassins, wizards, ACs’s in the -6 to -8 range, and the like. It’s also on the up-and-up, generally, except for the kidnapping and has a hired security contingent made up of Lawful monks and good clerics. This thing is so forced as to be putrid. The ringmaster has AC -11 and is a level 15 illusionist. Why the fuck are these people here? Don’t they have towers to build and experiments to conduct so the forces of good, led by a holy paladin, can invade and win the day only to have the paladin fall and be corrupted? There’s no real adventure here, just an evil circus described so the DM can have someone kidnapped and the party can investigate. There’s no hook or adventure at all other than what I just described, which is described to the reader in just about as many words.

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CSM7 – The Darkest Pit

Posted on October 9, 2013 by Bryce Lynch

dp

by Bill Barsh
Pacesetter Games & Center Stage Miniatures
AD&D
Levels 7-9

This adventure is a tie-in with a line of demon mini’s from Center Stage. This is a simple 30 room demon prison with a hub/spoke layout. The party is sent in to kill the demons since the magical wards that hold them in place are weakening.

There are some hints: the pit fiend section has pits in it. The Type V section has a lot of sword art. The type VI section has a flaming sword. My favorite part is a large group of manes that rush out when the the party is trying to open a door. I find that amusing. There are the usual murals of good battling evil and a jumping from pillar to pillar room, and an anti-gravity pit. Generally it’s not much that hasn’t been seen before and there’s little to lift.

There’s not much to this review. That’s because there’s not much to this adventure. Let me give you an example. In one room there’s a transparent casket filled with a pink swirling gas. It does nothing. That’s both an opportunity lost and an amount of detail that is unusual for the adventure.

I need inspiration that I can riff off of during play. This isn’t it.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/263898/D5-The-Darketst-Pit?1892600

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