ONS2 – Death in the Painted Canyon

Posted on November 13, 2013 by Bryce Lynch

ons2

by Ken Spencer
Frog God Games
Swords & Wizardry
Levels 5-6

A band of gnolls has been attacking caravans passing from the caravanserai at Salt Springs through the Painted Canyons and on towards the oasis town of Beni-Hadith. The Satrap of Salt Springs has offered a bounty on their heads. Can the PCs stop the attacks once and for all?

This is a relatively straightforward desert adventure with a decent amount of flavor and a nice open-ended lair assault at the end. Some treasure improvements could be made, as well as some nit-picky things regarding monster organization during the big end-game fight, but it’s generally got enough flavor to inspire and dig A LOT of content from. I found it good enough that now I want to run a Arabian Nights Scum type-game.

The local autocrat at an oasis needs mercenary scum to solve his gnoll problem. Not the most promising of starts, I know, but the rest of the adventure is so full of flavor that it makes up the lackluster hook. What we have here is really a kind of adventure locale that has an adventure running through it. You get a description of the local oasis, a description of the lair, and a little adventure sprinkled around with a mystery behind it all. It’s nice and it leaves a strong impression in ones mind. There’s local descriptions of the small oasis, the surrounding region, and a few of the major NPC’s in the place. It’s not necessary organized like a locale; the adventure is integrated in quite tightly with the locale. But it doesn’t matter, the place rocks and screams for reuse.

It is at this point that my own crappy writing skills show up. I seldom feel like I can communicate the richness of flavor that some products bring. In this instance there’s just enough foreign words and customs sprinkled in to give it an exotic flair. That’s combined with a excellent description of the town/building that makes up the oasis. It’s a kind of Kowloon type place except with a vaguely desert air about it. The potentate in charge gets a personality that is both fair and generous as well as dangerous, ruthless, and even somewhat capricious. This all combines to bring this little watering hole to life in a way that few places are. To be sure, there’s not much more too it. Shops, NPC personalities, and the like are missing and it would have been to see this expanded upon a bit,especially given that the place IS intended for reuse. But, overall, its very strongly described in a modicum of words and dances vividly in the imagination.

The adventure has a couple of events in town and a couple on the caravan trail and then a big monster lair. The lair is a nice affair. It’s laid out very … non-linearlly? and full of flavor. What you end up with is this kind of place that the party can approach in many different manners. I LOVE that sort of design. Lot’s of ways in, lot’s of open-ended play options. The descriptions of the various locations are pretty well-done also. You get some good descriptions, light but which allude to more. It does a good job of communicating the non-human and brutal nature of the creatures without going overboard in the gore/salaciousness department. I really like the open-ended way the place is laid out as well as the focus on some of the activities going on in the camp/lair. I think it really makes the place come alive. The treasures could be better described though. We get vague mentions of trade goods and “the best worth 10,000 dinars” and the like, but I’d really prefer to have some additional detail here. I’m paying for you to use your thesaurus. 🙂

I feel a little bad in writing such a s short review but I don’t know how to make it longer. I REALLY like the locations in this and because of that the encounters that tie them together. The whole things comes together very well and my mind immediately ran away with things like long or pairs of raiders seen up high in bluffs, and other vaguely desert/arid imagery. That, plus the excitement this generated in me o run a desert/arid game, should speak volumes as to a recommendation.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/93869/One-Night-Stands–Death-in-the-Painted-Canyons–Swords-and-Wizardry-Edition?1892600

Posted in Level 5, No Regerts, Reviews | Leave a comment

Strange Allies

Posted on November 11, 2013 by Bryce Lynch

sa

by Chris Clark
Eldritch Enterprises
Generic
Levels 3-5

A forlorn wagon lies abandoned at the side of the road. Curious, you decide to investigate. Suddenly goblin arrows fill the sky, and a burning sensation assaults your forehead. Goblins within the trees shout spiteful imprecations and it is all over almost as quickly as it began…except that your fellow adventurers have rags over their noses, and everyone seems to be moving away from you. The reason for this behavior becomes abundantly clear when one of them shouts at you,”Dude! You stink!”

This is a little wilderness adventure, mystery, and lair raid that is either a railroad or a Wander Around Until Something Happens adventure, depending on how the DM chooses to run it. It notably features the chance to pick up some allies for a HUGE assault on a goblin lair. And by “Huge” I mean 200 goblins in an 80×80 room HUGE. The generic nature gives it an interesting feel, as the creatures, spells, and magic items seem fresher than a book-standard AD&D adventure. It’s not complex, but the basics are generally done ok. The devotion of the EE guys to their generic format and LARGE layouts is admirable, especially in light of how much their generic format and large layouts suck.

Oh’s No’s! A wagon on the side of the road with a dead merchant! And with the ensuing ambush starts another lame adventure derived from a lame hook. But wait! What’s this?!!? An adventure based on that hook that’s not lame?!?! Say it’s not so! My cold and icy heart has thawed, just a little! From a humble goblin ambush at a wagon attack comes a decent adventure from Chris Clark. Clues at the wagon scene lead one to believe there is a captive. A trail leads in to the forest. The party spots someone watching them who takes off. The group is cursed with a stinky disease. There are at least six different motivations there for a party to pursue the hook. Each one is slightly different and probably leads to the the wilderness encounters being hit in a different order. That may be one of the more interesting parts of the adventure: depending on the parties motivations after the attack the DM can use the encounters to enforce that viewpoint without necessarily railroading the group down a certain path. This isn’t exactly explicit in the adventure but that’s how things look like they could turn out, which is fine with me.

The group is going to wander around the forest having some animal encounters and some bizarre animal encounters before running in to one of the pre-programmed encounter areas. That wandering will lead to the party (maybe) picking up some allies and having at least one little side-quest: freeing a druid from madness. Eventually the road probably leads to a goblin lair stuffed FULL of goblins and well defended due to natural terrain. It’s not clear to me why anyone would assault the goblin lair. That seems like do-gooder work and unproductive. It IS stuffed full of treasure though, so …. The allies are an interesting assortment with their own goals and motivations. The writing is a little long/large but the personalities generally come across strong enough that you don’t ned to refer to them again after the first casual read, and that’s generally a sign of good writing. [In fact, i bitch about terse descriptions all the time. I went back and reread one of my favorite terse descriptions: the description of Old Bay’s cave from the Crab-Men/Bowman issue of Fight On! magazine. It turns out the description was a little longish. Not excessively so but certainly longer than I remembered. The value in it though is immediately apparent: it was so full of flavor that to this day I can recall the flavor of that encounter and how to run it off the top my head.] Certainly while the NPC’s are strong the encounter areas kind of all merge together and are much weaker with not much really standing out. Except for some of the wandering table entries. “A doe scrambles in to the clearing and then explodes for 1d6 for no apparent reason.” Wow! Now THAT’S the kind of shit I want to spend my money on! There are a couple of others like this as well, two more in fact, and they are just as good. I wish there was more like this. I do want to emphasize the NPC’s. I think they get a bit of a gloss-over but it’s clear to me that at least one of them should be a major player in the game and probably the other two as well. They are going to add A LOT to the adventure, but the DM needs to work them in.

Ultimately the group may be faced with an assault on a well defended goblin lair with LARGE numbers of goblins inside. This is a kind of tactical assault/kooky plan stuff that I think D&D thrives on. There are something like 200 goblins inside and the entrance is VERY well defended because of its location. It should be a fine challenge for a higher level party. I love these sorts of things (large combats, difficult places with no real set path forward, etc.) This one could be a little better with perhaps a surrounding area map and maybe a slightly more complex cave to allow for some more options once the party reaches it.

The monsters and treasure get an uplift here because of the generic nature of the adventure module. They seem a lot more OD&D like because of the weird ad-hoc nature of their abilities. The druid has a power, not a spell, and the cleric does weird magic and not Cleric Stuff. Likewise the magic items seem more unique, simpler (in a folklore kind of way), and somehow more magical than just showing something from the 1E DMG in to the treasure list. I heartily approve. Magic should seem magical and wondrous and creatures should be full of weird powers. The feel this imbues is one of wonder and mystery and I think D&D thrives on that. At least the kid of D&D I like anyway.

Yeah, the formatting sucks and there’s lots of repetition and the initial set up appears lame and one NPC has a gimp magic item and the entire things needs a HARD edit to shorten the verbosity, but it’s a decent little adventure. I give it a C or C+, which means it’s better than at least 90% of the crap published.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/113374/Strange-Allies?1892600

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Dungeon Magazine #11

Posted on November 9, 2013 by Bryce Lynch

d11

The Dark Conventicle
by Richard W. Emerich
AD&D
Levels 8-12

This is a raid on a major underground cult complex in order to save a kidnapped victim. If we ignore the do-gooder aspect and craptasic “save the merchants daughter” hook then you have a small infiltration/crawl that almost certainly ends in a very large scale mass combat, maybe similar to the mass combats that were possible in D2 & D3. In fact, the adventure might be summarized as a raid on the D2 temple while they were mostly gathered for a sacrifice … and you want to save the sacrifice victim. The map here is nice, with cave tunnels, worked stone, elevation changes, multiple passages/loops, same-level stairs, portcullis, statues, chasms, and tunnels blocks off by rubble that can be dug through. It sprawls over three levels. This is combined with a wandering monster table, and rules/guidelines, for the entire underground temple complex going on alert because the noise the party makes in combat and/or escaped guards. The encounters make a decent attempt, with traps, levitation holes, and guard rooms sprinkled throughout, but in general they are an overwrought and boring affair. The end of the adventure culminates with a mass combat in an underground chapel with over 200 people. There are guidelines for human wave 0-level mass combat, as well as the bajillion evil clerics in attendance. The whole things takes place in a 2-level room with a balcony, a chasm, and a lot of pews. There are no great monster/treasure items here, just the standard stuff. There are references to sewers, and the crappy hook is crappy. The encounters are generally lame. With a little work though you could turn this in to a decent high-level adventure that tests the parties ability in a non-standard way … through a HELL of a big fight at the end.

The Wooden Mouse
by Roger Smith
AD&D
Levels 5-8

This is a one-on-one thief adventure that involve … SURPRISE! infiltrating a house. And it’s actually a test! Woo Hoo! Let the suckatude begin! The problem with this type of adventure is that thief skills suck and once they flub a roll its hard to make the case that the entire house doesn’t show up to kill your ass. This is supposed to be a caper, but many of the encounters involve forced combats, which defeat the purpose of the adventure. It’s yet another piss poor attempt to force a certain play style. I’m sure someone could a decent one of these, but this is not the one.

The Black Heart of Ulom
by Mark Keavney
AD&D
Levels 5-8

There’s an evil forest nearby and you’re hired by an archdruid to go fix it. You need to pour a potion on the magic tree in the center to cure the corruption. The major differentiator in this adventure is the evil wood ‘waking up.’ The more the players screw with the forest then the more awake the forest is, eventually leading to a VERY bad outcome as all of the trees animate and annihilate the party. There’s a pretty giant wandering list that’s influenced by how awake the forest is, as well as a short series of programmed encounters if the party takes the direct route up the river to the heart of the place. The basic format is: you have to get out of the boat because of some obstacle, something in the forest attacks. A wise party avoids the combat and moves on. The final encounter is with a couple of treants, and then the adventure is over. The Awakening part is cute, but I’m not sure the forest is large enough to get full use out of it. There is a Monster Statistics table at the end that serves as a kind of reference for the adventure. I wish every adventure did this.

Wards of Witching Ways
by Christopher Perkins
AD&D
Levels 3-5

This is a tournament module, with scoring. It resolves around a four-level keep/castle with about fifty rooms in it. The party has to make their through it to the end. The two major occupants are betting on the parties outcome and if they’ll make it, with the adventure eventually ending with the party fighting both of them. It’s not terrible for a tournament adventure: it’s self-contained and there’s a decent amount of variety in the encounters as well as options available to the players in navigating the keep. There are some pre-planned/programmed/event encounters in addition to the usual location-based encounters. It’s a tournament module so the forced ‘bet’ hook can be ignored. Otherwise, it’s a decent tournament adventure. There’s no railroad and the thing needs a serious edit to cut it down to size so groups of DM’s can run it, but that’s generally the case with ALL Dungeon adventures. If that kind of work were put in to this then you’d have a decent adventure for a con that you can score.

Posted in Dungeon Magazine, Reviews | 2 Comments

Bryce’s Adventure Design Contest

Posted on November 6, 2013 by Bryce Lynch

Hey kids, spread the word: I’m running an adventure design contest! Write an adventure. Submit it. Get eviscerated! Or, maybe, win a box of cardboard paper towel tubes! Woo Hoo!

Details are over at RPGGEEK, where I’m running the contest. This is where I archive my reviews because I believe that site has the best chance, long term, of not disappearing in to the Internet ether.

http://rpggeek.com/thread/1063645/bryces-2013-adventure-design-contest

 

Now go get your ass in gear for the coveted title of: I Sucked Less in 2013!

Posted in Uncategorized | 7 Comments

NS4 – Blood on the Snow

Posted on November 6, 2013 by Bryce Lynch

ns4

by Kenneth Spencer
Frog God Games
Swords & Wizardry
Levels 8-10

The country of Estenfird is in flames. Wild men and beasts have descended in hordes from the mountains bringing fire and destruction into the forested lands below. The hirths of the North have been called forth to defense, but with the heavy snows of winter delaying travel will their arrival be in time to save this frontier realm? Even the heroic Protector of Estenfird, Hengrid Donarsdottir, is hard pressed and has called upon all heroes to come to their aid. It is time to don arms and armor and brave the winter’s wrath to come to the defense of Estenfird in its hour of need.

This is a great high-level adventure in the frozen north, heavily themed for vikings. It mostly avoids the high-level traps that many high-level adventures fall in to and provides some great text that can really help you get in to the mood. It’s not the most original adventure ever made but by integrating the viking theme it comes off as a good attempt to take old ideas and change the window dressing to make them fresh again.

I don’t know why but I really get off on frontier adventures. No the usual “Keep on the Boringlands” stuff but rather a kind of “Settlers in the Pacific Northwest” or “Viking homesteaders” type of adventure. I liked the Death in the Treklant/I series from the Trolls and I like this one also. They invariably involve viking-type people, LARGE combats, and a free form type of play. Two out of those three points also work well in high-level adventures. This particular adventure has a very 13th Warrior feel to it. The local Beast Cult is raiding outlying villages, burning towns, etc … a big mass uprising. The players set forth to gather and rally the Hirthmenn as they make their way to the main town. There they find besieged, get in, participate in the defense, and then infiltrate an enemy camp and rescue someone. Like I said, generally pretty standard stuff. The lower-tech/frontier feel to this adventure feels lot more ‘right’ for this type of adventure though and ‘Thing’ meetings, the Hirthmenn, and even the beast cult all seem to work much better in this then analogous elements do in Generic Fantasy/Boringlands type adventures.

There’s a decent mix of encounters scattered throughout the adventure. These range from some good wandering encounters with nice descriptions that fit the theme to a couple of pre-programmed encounters. For example, the party can encounter The White Stag in a herd, who can lead them past an ambush point. That ambush involves a mixed group of enemies rolling a big log down a hill at the party and then attacking. There’s a big part when the party tries to sneak in to the beseiged town through scattered enemy camps and then a bunch of little mini-vignettes where the party faces various situations during the siege. It ends up with the an attack/raid on an enemy “temple” where they are getting ready to do a sacrifice. All of these encounters have a decent Flavor to Text ratio. Things tend to be described briefly and with a lot of flavor to them. It really gets across a kind of norse/frontier vibe and gives me enough to work with to expand on it, given my cursory background of norse knowledge. The town encounters have things like women guarding children, with the women getting slaughtered when the party rolls up, or the siege of an alehouse, or what happens in the various homes that are sieged. They are very nice.

The problems with the adventure are interesting. It points out in advance that the characters can probably teleport, fly, or do something else to get the town fast. What this does is cut off one portion of the adventure: gathering the Hirthmenn. It makes defending the town all the harder, but you can do it. See, that’s the way to write a nice high-level adventure. The stakes are higher (town under siege) and the while you can use magic to blast your way through the adventure, the outcomes of such may make things harder for you than you’d otherwise find. It ignores the fact of why the name-level pc’s are willing to go do the job in the first place. It also has a forced kidnapping during the siege to set up the adventure endgame. That’s lame. The siege of the town is a little bit of a let-down also, or at least he consequences are. The battles in the town are modified by the number of Hirthmenn the party brings with them. It you brought a lot of dudes then the party faces fewer foes and those foes have been weakened by having fewer HP. It doesn’t really feel though like the Hirthmenn make that big of a difference to the town proper, or that the parties actions make that big of a difference to the towns outcome. They’ll save a group of orphans here or there, but in general there’s no guidelines on outcomes based on the quantity of Hirthmenn and the parties actions. That makes it feel A LOT like window dressing. Nice window dressing, but still window dressing.

I did like the ADVENTURE outcome though. If the PC’s fail then things get REALLY bad in the north. Thor dies and all hell breaks loose in heaven and earth. The description is more than enough to give a decent DM ideas for AGES of follow-ups. If the PC’s save the victim at the end then one night they get to party in Thors longhouse with the man himself, and get some nice mead, venison, and magic to go along with it. That’s a pretty sweet little flavor-text portion for a party! I’m serious man; I would totally dig that outcome if I were playing this adventure. It acknowledges that the treasure int he adventure is light and gives an alternate reward. Nicely Done!

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/112802/The-Northland-Saga-Part-4–Bood-on-the-Snow-Sword-and-Wizardry-Edition?affiliate_id=1892600

Posted in Level 8, Reviews, The Best | Leave a comment

GG5 – Dread Crypt of Srihoz

Posted on November 4, 2013 by Bryce Lynch

gg5

by Jeremy Simmons
Goodman Games
Castles & Crusades
Levels 9-11

For leagues uncounted, a path has followed the tortured contours of a cliff which hangs over the storm-battered shore of the icy northern seas. The eternally damp rock is covered in places by a sickly film of grey mosses and lichens, which is the sum total of all the life forms able to scratch out an existence in this gods-forsaken hell. For atop the cliff stands the entrance to the dread crypt of Srihoz, a vampire of ancient name and deadly reputation. Only the bravest adventurers dare enter this place…

This is a Tomb of Horrors knock off, attempt number 1,3452,984,836,345.

I submit to you, gentle reader, that no other adventure has done more to harm the RPG hobby than the 1975 classic Tomb of Horrors. It seems like this is the only model upon which every high level adventure is based. From its shores a thousand thousand thousand crappy deathtrap dungeons have been launched … and far too many of them in jr high.

This time an evil dude has spread rumors throughout the land in order to lure high level morons to his tomb. You see, he only wants to feed on the most powerful of individuals … after, of course, they have navigated his tomb of deadly traps and creatures so that he can ensure he is only feeding on the strongest and most powerful … uh to ensure that they are sufficiently weakened. Uh .. .and the tomb hasn’t been entered in hundreds of years, even though Evil Dude has lots of minions on the outside subtly spreading his rumors. What that really means is that the designer is too lazy to come up with a real hook for his adventure and that he’s too lazy to come up with an original adventure idea, instead just cloning the Tomb format and pasting on the same tired old ‘Proving Ground’ theme that has been pasted on time and time again by people looking for an easy way to throw whatever they want at a party. Look man, I know it’s a land where elves fart fireballs, but can you try just a little to add a pretext of realism to the adventure? I swear to fucking Hastur, if I see a stasis cage in this adventure …

The map here, just as in Tomb, is not half bad. There’s a lot of variety on it, lots of different sized hallways, lots of same level stairs, secrets, and small tunnels. I like this sort of variety on a map. It lends an air of mystery to the map. The players don’t know how big it is or if they are on the same level or where the hallways lead to. That sort of mystery does a great job of keeping the PLAYERS on their toes and instilling the proper apprehension on them. There are, of course, no wandering monsters. It’s a tomb trap with one master.

Let’s see here … room one is a pit trap. Room two is the usual deadly garden. Room three is a freezy trap. Room four is a storage room full of diseased food. Stasis field trap. Mimic bed. Another storage room. A fire trap. A demon summoning room .. with demons. The problem with all of this is that it’s nothing special. It’s all stuff seen a zillion times before and it’s presented in a manner that adds nothing interesting. Oh, a plant room. Hostile plants. The read-alound does nothing to enhance the imagery of room and is instead just a massive block of text. The best encounter may be one with an undead aboleth, but it takes two whole pages to describe. The treasure is hit or miss, with things like pearl-studded boxes containing gold ceremonial daggers being at least half good.

I’m half convinced that the format uses by Goodman for these C&C products is half the problem with the “Wall of Text” and the inevitably “pay per word” being the other problem.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/57079/Castles–Crusades-Dread-Crypt-of-Srihoz?1892600

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Dungeon Magazine #10

Posted on November 2, 2013 by Bryce Lynch

d10
The Shrine of Ilsidahur
by John Nephew
AD&D
Levels 3-6

This is a short expedition to a forgotten shrine of twelve rooms. You’re looking at about 24 wandering monster checks to get to the shrine, with the wandering monsters being straight out of the book. The shrine proper is mostly nothing special; just one more of a large number of throw-away adventures. Almost. While it has its fair share of overwrought text, mundane descriptions, and “a xorn just happens to be swimming underneath the room and is attracted by tremors”, it also has at least two interesting things in it. The first is the protector of the tomb. Some poor native idiot keeps the temple up … or at least keeps up the exterior of the temple. He’s far enough away that the party may not suspect him and close enough that the party is sure to encounter him. He bides his time, clears away the jungle growth from the temple, and reset the first trap. I think that’s pretty nice and shows a decent way to integrate some realism and flavor in to an adventure without things bogging down. There’s also a platinum handled gold knife: a magic sacrificial knife with the whole ego/personality thing going on. That’s pretty cool and something I haven’t seen before. (IE: doing it to a sacrificial knife.) Otherwise … the adventure is nothing special. Boring magic items, boring rooms. Yawn. No flavor to speak of.
The Artisan’s Tomb
by Matthew Maaske
ADD-OA
Levels 3-5

Finally, an OA adventure in Dungeon that sucks! But even then it has a different flair. The party meets a ghost who wants you to break in to his tomb and smash a vase so his soul can pass on. He’d do it, but there’s a spirit guardian and he can’t get by it. The whole adventure is only three encounters, so it’s suckatude comes from its short nature and the lame hook of meeting him while camped out one night. It IS a nicely adventure pretext though.

 

They Also Serve
by Robert Kelk
AD&D
Levels 5-7

Ug! An All thief adventure! All signs point to SUCK, Captain! The party travel to a nearby town and raid a thieves guildhall, trying to recover the McGuffin. The wandering monster table for the wilderness isn’t bad; it includes little notes about what the wanderers are doing, which I always appreciate. There are a few too many “they rush by” sorts of descriptions, but overall the wandering table is a decent effort. The guildhall is just another building stuffed full of boring encounters. Mundane rooms, training rooms, quarters, etc. The whole thing is more than a little mundane and boring. There’s not many notes at all about routines, schedules, and the like, which would be better for a caper adventure. There are a decent magic item or two: a bookmark of continual light and a pair of “penetrate disguise” glasses, for example. The whole thing is just too normal and not enough gameable material.
Monsterquest
by Vince Garcia
AD&D
Levels 1-3

You get some pre-gens for monsters who need to sneak in to a fortress to recover the orc chiefs McGuffin. Sewers! Oh yeah! The party then travel to a temple to get the chiefs drinking horn. There’s a decent encounter or two in the temple: jumping biting skulls and the like. This may be good for a one-shot but not much more. The fortress needs to be much more overwhelming to encourage the monsters to not just kill everything, and that means guard schedules, etc, in order to pull off the caper. 🙁
Secrets of the Towers
by Larry Church
AD&D
Levels 1+

This is a large set of towers that are scattered all over the land and are all linked in a certain way. You could put this in the start of a campaign and drop some hints and have a good set of plot devices that reappear again and again in the game. As such this is much more of a campaign resource and because of that one of the most useful things in Dungeon. The towers have a bunch of teleporters in them that link to other towers, twelves in all, for adventure from first level all the way to “name level.” They each have something going on and s such provide a good baseline for sprinkling through a campaign, especially if you spice things up a bit, both in and around the towers that the party travel to.

d10
Threshold of Evil
by Scott Bennie
AD&D
Levels 14-18

Ug, another high level adventure. You get the climb a mountain, using the absurd Wilderness Survival rules, and not use your magic items to get in to the wizards base. That’s because he’s cast about a zillion wishes to keep people out, so you have to slog on foot. Once there you get to fight clones of the wizard and his minions over and over again, as well as a few Slaad that are conveniently hanging about. There’s nothing fantastic or interesting here, just room after room stuffed full of people for you to kill.

Posted in Dungeon Magazine, Reviews | 3 Comments

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.

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