tenfootpole.org

By Ben Burns
New Comet Games
OSR
Levels 1-2

Join us on this whirl wind epic journey, as the characters are swept up in a struggle between good and evil, law and chaos and right from wrong. Return to the glory days when you feared rolling the dice, and one misstep might be your last

This is a small double-cross and shipwreck adventure, padded out to 53 pages. Long read-aloud, overpowered opponents, and a simplistic adventure are not something I wanted to wake up to this morning.

This is from the designers home campaign, built over forty years. You can tell that they really love their home game. The artwork here is of serious adventurers doing serious things. The adventure has a section on the gods of the campaign world and an overview of it, all very serious. This is not my vibe. I’m more of a ruffians and reprobates kind of guy. I’m not sure what the market is for these “this is my campaign world” adventures; I’m usually looking for something that I can drop in easily to my existing game rather than use, whole cloth, as my new world, with a set of interconnected adventures. The inclusion of the background campaign world and, in particular, the gods, is quite peculiar since I don’t recall that information having little to do in the adventure. 

So, the party is caravan guards and they arrive in a city at the end of their journey. They see a sign advertising for adventurers, which is a trap. They get captured, and then shipwrecked. Then they get captured again and dumped in to an underground temple. You escape the seven room dungeon and the adventure ends. 

I am, perhaps, a little more forgiving of these railroad beginnings at the start of a campaign. You gotta kick the game world off somehow, yeah? But something about this one just rubs me wrong. The whole “the town has thirty buildings” and then captured in the bar well known for capturing people thing is just off. And then, of course, the food and wine is drugged in the bar. As is the incense in the air, in case you don’t eat anything. But, of course, the dude hiring has taken the antidote beforehand, so he’s not impacted. Also, there’s an illusion wall with a bunch of 7 though ten NPC”s behind it, ready to capture you. It’s just a little too much of a set up for me, and my hatred of gimping like this, where every possibility has been thought of. And then you wake up in the ship hold, the ship having already run around. 

It is at this point that the party find themselves alone on the ship and need to get to shore. While in the water they will be attacked by a sea lion. A 6HD sea lion. Ouchies! Oh, wait, TWO 6hd sea lions. It does note those that they take their meal away after they kill someone. I guess one or two people are not playing D&D tonight?

Then you’re captured by an entire tribe of kobolds, many strong. You’re not escaping this, since you have to be chucked down The Maw and in to the dungeon below. It is at this point, finally, that you get to play D&D for a bit. Seven rooms. Full of, for the second review in a row, inscriptions on walls to give clues to people. “Don’t leave the room without making a sacrifice!” or else get hit by a 6d6 lightning bolt. And other ham handed interactivity like “ When the door the adventurers entered through closes, a mouth appears on the ceiling and says, “Remember the way out is always opposite the way in.”” Well that’s fun. This is the extent of the interactivity. Well, beyond being captured the multiple times in an adventure. That’s always the least fun thing. To have absolutely no agency over your character,

Read-aloud tends to the long side, sometimes approaching column length. The DM text is full of backstory and history. Explaining why and so on. Completely useless to the game at the table and obfuscating what you need to see to run the adventure. And then there are things like “You could fire a shot from the ballista at the longboat rowing away …” with a bunch of text following. I guess I get no text in case I fire off a magic missile? The picking and choosing and over-explaining things tha the DM should be relied upon. I fully expected to read something telling me how to roll to hit. Or, in one part of the ship “The furs are from two different animals that the adventurers do not recognize, but they seem exotic.” Great. Does the DM get told what they are? No. Value? No. 

And then there’s a long fiction piece at the end.

I appreciate the history of ones game, and how it feels important. But a published adventure is different than a home game. 

This is $5 at DriveThru. The preview is six pages and shows you nothing of interest, except the first long read-aloud. It should have shown some encounters. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/472820/adventurers-wanted-osr?1892600

By Ancient Sage
Self Published
OSR
Levels 6-10

And to the undoomed living shall be revealed but a small portion of the horrid secrets the dead have hitherto so well guarded…and they shall quail… […] Now, ages later, Ordane has long lain in ruins. Recently discovered by explorers from the colonial duchy of New Herod, it has gained the attention of powerful interests. The PCs are tasked with exploring the ruins and eliminating any threats. Rumors of goblins and bugbears in the area as well as a palpable miasma – an apathetic pall within the grounds of Ordane itself – are nothing compared to the whispers that…something…lurks deep within the bowels of the undercity…

This thirty page adventure uses six pages to describe ten rooms in some ruins, half above ground and half below. It’s a Cthulhu cross-ver, with shoggoths and elder things. Because of that its a little more freaky than the usual fare, but, still, there’s nothing much here in the way of interesting encounters.

Ohs nos! The fort has been raided! Here’s a pittance for your level six through tens, please go stop the goblins/hobgoblins! The problem here, I think, should be obvious to anyone who actually plays OSR D&D. And the problem is almost certainly not relatable at all to those who do not run ongoing OSR games. This level range should have the party being pretty much badasses, or close to it. And they should have their own lands, or close to it. And whatever reward offered to them just isn’t going to cut it in terms of motivating them to do something. The pretext here is essentially out of touch with what the actual game vibe is. There are a couple of alternate hooks, class specific, that show some life to them. You owe a debt, from a failed theft, to the thieves guild. Or you got caught with a hooker and now need to prove your piety by ferreting out some heretic shit. I’m not the biggest fan of off-screen pressure on the party, but they at least have a little life to them. 

You get a few above ground encounters in some ruins that consist of goblins, hobs and bugbears. There’s a vague “ancient techno” thing going on, with them having a flame gun, before you take an elevator down to the few linear encounters underground. This isn’t really gonzo though. You’ve got to think of the underground as more of a ancient eldritch empire, in to Cthulhu stuff, with a few vaguely techno items. Maybe more like something weird shit that an Elder THing might use. The final boss is a shoggoth, there’s an elder thing trapped, and nyarlathotep is wandering around as an extra. In spite of this, we’ve also got a horde of skeletons, a generic wraith and a some generic shadows running around, as well as a few golems. 

While there is an artpiece that is quite evocative, of an elder thing on a throne, the vast majority of the adventure is quite generic in its descriptions. I’m disappointed in the generic shadows and generic wraith. I want some life here, a good description that brings the horror of the undead to life! And the shoggoth and eldritch creatures are not handled as much more than something to stab, though you could talk to the Elder Thing. This accompanies the rather generic and bland room descriptions that don’t really bring that kind of pseudo-cthulhu environment to life much at all. 

The interactivity here is quite simplistic. It mostly consist of, beyond the stabbing and the few opportunities to talk, reading some words written on something and then “solving the riddle” so to speak. “Etched upon the backrest in Ordanian script is, ‘If thou seekest knowledge, first prove thyself worthy. ” Well, great. 

And this is all conveyed through the usual WOTC template of long text paragraphs with just monster words bolded … and not even consistently at that. I fucking hate wading through these text blocks in order to run a room. Overly long and mechanistic, they hide the information you need to see to run the game. It’s not that there’s not a place for text blocks, but poorly written ones are just a pain to dig through. 

And that’s all really too bad. The concept here could have been great, with the eldritch things in a ruined city. And there are little add ons to follow up on that are quite nice. In the wilderness “As well, a trio of lusty mermaids is known to sunbathe on the nearmost sandbars, crooning lasciviously to exceptionally attractive passersby (CHA 16+), who then must successfully …” That’s a nice mermaid, a classic. And you can find a dead ghost dude inside the ruins that can point you to another wilderness location with his body. 

Those sorts of things are pretty decent. But they are not really put together in a cohesive way that makes sense and flows well. Just like the gobbos above and undead below, it’s seems also perfunctory. Their promise is lost by a combination of formatting, lack of evocative descriptions, and overall flow of the adventure. It seems like they are there just because, even though some of them have those little things to follow up on. And $120k in loot aint gonna go very far at some of the level ranges. 

A rumor tells us “A covey of vane harpies has recently made their home in the ruins. Don’t tell nobody this, but…I seen ‘em, and well, I kind of like what I see. Is that crazy?” See, that’s some good shit right there! But the promise, the wonder, is not delivered on. Instead we get all of that extra padding, all of the extra text and appendices and background and so on. The effort should have gone in to the adventure, proper, instead.

This is $6 at DriveThru. The preview is nineteen pages, enough to see every room, so, good preview.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/490059/osr-adventure-the-ruins-of-ordane?1892600

Ancient Sage
Self Published
OSR
Levels 3-4

Embark on a thrilling journey into a shadowy temple in an attempt to retrieve an ancient relic of a faith long forgotten! Explore the ruins, brave the shadows, overcome the challenges within, and discover more about the world, leading to your next adventure.

This nineteen page adventure has a small temple with four rooms in it. Four. Simplistic interactivity, Second person read-aloud. That over reveals. I can’t imagine this taking more than 20 minutes to play.

I was looking forward to a small little adventure. I got an even smaller adventure than I was expecting that looks like some conversion dreck.

Blah blah blah. Hired to go tomb raid an old temple for artifacts. Blah blah blah. Dm advice “We give plenty of opportunities for characters to shine and show off skills and abilities, but ultimately, the roll of the dice decide and help to tell the story” blah blah blah. I think everyone can see where this is going. 

“You scramble up the hill and come to what does indeed seem to be a decrepit temple.” Yeah YOU read that right. And then the read aloud generally goes on to over reveal details of the room. YOU know why, right? Because the exploratory nature of an adventure doesn’t matter. What matters is ham handed appeals to interactivity. Stabbing. A riddle “A tooth!” puzzle where you say the answer out loud. Don’t step on the discolored floor tile traps. Exploring a room, the back and forth between players and DM, engaging in the act of discovery, that doesn’t really matter. What matters is getting to the monster, or the trap, or the puzzle. So you dump all of the information at the party to “get to the good parts.” 

There’s four fucking rooms here. In nineteen pages there are four fucking rooms. Linear, of course. I can’t, for the life of me, imagine the appeal of something like this. Consumption of media for the sake of consumption? (Or, as a hypocrite, reviewing?) 

Did you write something that could win an Ennie? I don’t give a fuck what you think of them, but, did you write something that could win an award? Well, why the fuck not? Because you HAD to put something out that quarter/month/week? You don’t need to do that. Write something that you are so proud of that you think you have a realistic shot at winning an award for it. It’s 2024. Everything ever written in the history of the world is now available to every person. Why the fuck am I selecting THIS adventure over something else? Because of something written 20 years ago, for Cthulhu, that I’ve converted? Because it SHOULD be better than that. Pour yourself in to it. Don’t just go about things, rote. Think about it. Agonize over it. Put the effort in at the right places, not just in wearing your fingers to nubs typing. 

I’ve nothing to add here. Fight a couple of shadow monsters. Avoid the discolored tiles. Joy.

This is $5 at DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/475049/osr-one-shot-shadowed-temple-of-the-forgotten-goddess?1892600

by Coronal
Self Published
Generic/Universal

A far away villager tucked under a rarely traveled mountain pass, a storm, attack on the road, the player characters find themselves shivering in the night, waking up drenched in cold waters. The forests are dangerous at night, and the safest way out of here seems to be with a village of starving people. 

This five page adventure has more soul than adventures ten times its length. Which is not to say its good, but it is absolutely going down that that road that you dream of generic/universal adventures taking, giving you the vibe of a thing rather than the mechanics of a thing. I’m a big fan of the descriptions, but the lack of a more concrete adventure is going to keep me from ever using this.

I’m kind of the opinion that generic/universal adventures should not exist. Anything that is published as generic/universal could be stated for a system. and then, presumably, converted to the system of your choice. Presumably you, the DM, know how to run “My Weirdo System” and can convert the adventure to it. I mean, you have to do it anyway, right, if the adventure was published as generic/universal? Yeah yeah, I know, I know. Some systems have a unique vibe to them and Thou Are But A Warrior isn’t going to work in 4e. But, generally, I think for most of the more mainstream adventure, a B/X adventure can be converted to just about anything that it makes sense to convert it to. But, then, there’s also this sense that, in a generic/universal adventure you are getting something written with a conversion in mind. It’s giving you the building blocks to really solidify the thing. We’re just dubbing/subtitling Godfather 2 in to another language. That shouldn’t really matter, a good adventure should do all of that anyway, but someone it FEELS like a generic/universal should do it better, and I think I subconsciously think that a generic/universal adventure IS going to do it better. It’s going to give me great descriptions and a plot and so on. Maybe because I don’t think it’s going to get tied down in some nonsense like “goblins are AC11 not AC 14!” or some crap like that.

And this thing is doing a great job with some of those elements. The monsters and NPCs really get a focus on how they act and appear rather than the mechanics fo what the stats they have. And I absolutely love it when the focus of an adventure is on the impact the NPCs, monsters and scenes have rather than the garbage mechanics associated with them. This ties in to this “imagine it first, and then stat it” attitude that I wish more designers had. Forget the bullshit tropes and what has come before in movies, tv, and literature. I want you to image something, visualize it working, and then present it to me. 

The zombies in this are crawling bodies, weak, numerous, and intelligent. Best of all they screech in human voices when injured and killed. Given that these ARE the bodies of the villagers, and not just some kind of generic undead. It somehow humanizes them, and makes them so much more terrifying. That’s Gerty, crawling along the ground, pulling herself, talking to you, and screaming in her old voice. The horror of THAT bit of imagery! Or, the main monster, a murdered villager, transformed, body of bark head of a deer skull, a locket with her old portait in it on her chest. Appearing in a thick fog. ROts away villagers. by saying their names. Teleporting as a mist. Fuck yeah man! That’s a fucking monster. It is a part of the land, a part of the villager. It is tied to the thing, not just fucking pasted the fuck in. 

There are a lot of great little bits to this. The villagers, starving, have turned the church doors and pews but left the alter and its holy book in alone, out of fear. Or that “Thomas Pruce organizes hunters to defend the village the villagers call him captain for it.” Or that the main baddie, the murdered Olivia Woodmill, the Leshy, will gather the bodies of the zombies the party has killed and return them to the graveyard to be reburied. That figure with the deer skull, walking through a fog in the woods, reburied with her hands, fellow elderly murder victims, newly rekilled by the party … that’s some good shit right there. 

So the various elements of this are really great. But the adventure, proper, is almost nonexistent. You wake up at the bottom of the Million Dollar Highway, having crashed, and need to make your way to the village. A small boy scavenging your wrecked carriage and the bodies. Also, you go through the woods and presumably get attacked by the zombies. There’s nothing explicit here. Just that the party “wake up with him (the boy) searching through their stuff.” We then get four bullet points for The Monsters, that just describes how they act; all that crawling and human voice shit. But nothing that says or implies in any way you should make your way to the village or that the zombies attack you on the way or anything like that. Just “you wake up” and some zombie descriptions, but NOTHING to connect the two. Yeah, I guess it’s obvious what to do, but, our definition of an adventure here is something that supports the DM during play, and if you go too far down the “implicit” path then you’re not really supporting the DM during play.

And the adventure does this over and over again. The individual elements are great. But then the four scenes gives are almost non-existent. Like, two sentences each for three of the four scenes. Just really an idea of something that the DM could do. That’s not r4eally an adventure, yeah?

It’s so weird. Most adventures fall down on that specificity that is the soul of a description, but this adventure does a wonderful job with that. (Which, I think, I consider the hardest part of adventure writing.) But then everyone seems to get the plot part of an adventure dowwn … except this adventure. I really really like the vibe here. It’s horror thing is great. It’s appeal of a kind of realism or naturalism is great. But, then, there’s just a couple of sentences on what to actually do to tie it all together to actually have an adventure. Not cool.

(I could mention other shit. The gates to the village being the last thing described, when they should be the first. The cold water the party wakes up in not being emphasized, some references to “howard” that you can kind of follow, but just barely.)

What brought me in to this was the preview and seeing those monster descriptions right up front. So, fucking awesome from a “get Bryce to buy it” standpoint 🙂

This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru, with a suggested price of $3.21. Le Preview shows you the first three pages, which gives you a good idea of pluses, and some of the minuses.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/489104/reckoning-in-waterstill?1892600

By Every Lockhart

Melsonian Arts Council

OSR
Level ?

The snakes in her hair lie languid in sleep. She needs their warmth for her children, you see.   Swollen, ever-pregnant with memory, Metegorgos waddles about the dark, wet ruination of her ancient home. Long forgotten, she has not  been allowed to forget. Again and again, she births wretched reminders of her tragic past.  Untold ages has the cursed Queen suffered for the most cardinal of sins:  she dared to make herself powerful and better the world around her.  Such slights the awful gods do not forgive.  Still, above all else she is a mother. Still yet does Metegorgos love her torturous children, and so too do they love her.  And thus are they doubly dangerous.

This 32 page adventure has, I don’t know, five encounters? It’s got a great mythology and I though it was going to be be wonderful. It ended up being more vision than adventure, with too much, I don’t know, idea? And not enough execution.

We’ve got a kind of medusa myth here, really well done. Cursed by the gods and a kind of fertility thing going on, giving birth to monsters, living in darkness and filth. What’s the name of those little fertility statues that they find, the ancient ones? With wide hips and large saggy breasts? Whatever, that’s her form. Except she’s got a head full of snake hair. Having given birth to abominations, her first being a wyrm, sleeping curled around the outside entrance to her ruined tower. That publishers blurb does a decent job of converting her vibe. And it’s reinforced by the text in the adventure. You really get this kind of mythic cursed creature thing going on from the backstory. (See? I don’t totally ignore backstory.)I can’t emphasize enough the mythic nature that is laid down by it, for her, and her first son, the wyrm. And there are elements throughout that give it this air also, an amphora half filled with wine, with something in side of it, or a rotten gods wisdome tooth stuck in a different gods appendix, kept in a box under a bed, delicate and translucent obsidian. That’s all wonderful, yeah? It’s got that tragedy from myth mixed in with a heavy dose of the naturalistic, bringing it down in a realism, leveraging ancient cultural memories. 

Too bad it’s fucked in every other way.

There are a lot of issues I have with it, but mainly it doesn’t have any room to breathe. All of that backstory and all of the shit embedded in this is just garbage filler because there’s no chance to get it out in the open. You’re just dumped in to a forest and then the lair. And a lair with only a couple of rooms in it. There’s no build up. There’s no foreshadowing. It’s just another place to go and stab something. At 32 pages I would have expected a little bit of a lead in, and little more room in the lair, perhaps, or region, to build things up. To get the party shitting their pants and expose some of that mythology to the players to help get them in the mood. But there’s none of that here. So you end up just stabbing a fertility medusa and a wyrm and a few other things. I don’t really get it at all.

You’re dumped in to a forest that takes either 30 minutes or an hour to explore to find her lair, depending on your rolls. Every five minutes, real time, you fight some sad zombies. (No turning! Curse of the divine and all that jazz.) Once you kill 30 or so, on a tracker, they are all gone and you can continue. There’s this whole thing about how she turns people to stone and then birth stillborn replicas of them, the sad zombies who love her and are repulsed by affirmations of false love. That’s a great little bit! Too bad it’s all just explaining the whys and hows of the thing and has no impact on the game otherwise, because there’s no room for it to expand. There’s no slow burn here and no thrill of discovery.

Then we get her wyrm baby thing wrapped around her house. (tower? Cave? It’s not clear to me.) Kill it and move on, and forget about all that jazz about its mothers love and suckling its teats and all that shit. Inside you’ve got a sun demon standing just inside the doorway. Then some shit demons and some gnome things, some hags, and the medusa. All linear. All with very little description of the rooms.

This thing is trying to communicate a vibe. But it comes off all all vision. I really can’t emphasize enough how disorganized this thing is. How nonsensical. There’s no map, of course. At one point were told there might be something in the rubble. That’s right after the first room. Is it part of the first room? Is it a second room? We get section headings like “Is that a stairway heading deeper within, halfway back and to the right?” With the descriptions “Totes.” Ok, sure, I get it. But this is what passes for design now? 

I’m all for having a vision. I think you MUST have one, in fact. But then you have to bring that thing to life for the DM so they can bring it to life for the players. And this thing fails so utterly at that. The vision is expanded upon, but never brought down to earth. The text is confusing, the layout, the words. What am I reading? What relation does it have to everything else? I think the room descriptions, from what I can discern, are almost purple more than they are descriptions, but I’m not even sure purple is correct. Most of the time I’m not even sure you ARE reading a room description. And, recall, I LUV a room that uses vibes instead of descriptions. But this thing is so p in it’s own vision that it doesn’t really get anywhere.

This is a great myth here. But, ultimately, the encounters end up as just stabbing things, in various ways. There’s no exploration, no discovery, no mysteries to uncover. Enter room. Freaky monster. Kill it. Next room. The mythology, that clearly soooo much work went in to, is a failure because it doesn’t lead to anything in the game. 

An actual ruinous palace would have been a better setting.

This is $5 at DriveThru. The preview is the entire thing. I’d read it, at least the start, to get a great idea of that mythology, and then move on with your life and riff it to something more gameable. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/489257/the-ruinous-palace-of-the-metegorgos?1892600

by The Danger Forge
Self Published
Swords & Wizardry 
Levels 5-7

Khaliassa. The ancient Serpent Queen of lost Samarra. While her empire crumbled long ago, stories of her malice and cruelty have survived the passage of time Now hushed whispers are heard in the Free Cities of Thendar. They speak of the return of the Serpent Queen and the rise of her dark temple in the Forest of Jilan. Tales are told around campfires that her followers roam the land, capturing the innocent to offer as sacrifices at her altar The Prince of Belkan-Tir calls for the aid of a brave party of adventurers to travel to the village of Ilkuz and determine the cause of the local unrest Has Khaliassa truly returned? Or is some other agency operating under the shadow of her ancient legend Who knows what perils await in the dark temple of the Serpent Queen.

This sixty page adventure uses about thirty pages for an verland journey and raid on a serpant man temple. Small fonts, triple columns, long italic read-aloud and mostly just fighting. And, worse, no crumbling serpant man temple vibes. 

You travel to a village, getting attacked at a waystation along the way. Making it to the village, they are having trouble! You travel to a bandit camp and fight them. You travel through a forest to serpent man temple and fight them, across a couple of levels. Along the way you will do nothing other than stab things. 

I guess we can start with the most glaring obvious things: the presentation layer. It’s triple column. With a tiny font. There are few other formatting options selected, just an occasional bolded word in what is otherwise an unrelenting sea of text. You have to wade through it, drowning in it. Wall of text in an almost extreme way. I’m looking at s ection right now and I thought it was a full column of information without a break. I was wrong. There IS a slight indent for new paragraphs, but it’s hard to see. You just can’t pick anything out of it. And then there’s the read-aloud. In italics, of course, so it’s hard on the eyes to read. And it, also, tends to the long side more often than not, sometimes multiple paragraphs. Which means that the players lose interest in the monologue and pull out their phones and start  swiping left. Terse, evocative, punchy. Everything in the adventure contributes to the whole. 

Let’s pop on over to design. You start on a road to a village. It’s a kinbd of hex crawl journey, along the road. There’s only one populated hex along the way so the other hexes are just wanderer rolls. Each hex is two miles long and you make a wanderer check in each hex. That’s fifty wanderer checks. And you just start in the middle of the road. You’re not specifically coming FROM somewhere or something. Which means tha the designer specifically selected starting the party fifty wanderer checks away from the village they are heading to. I just don’t get this. It was obviously not run this way; there’s no way that makes it past playtesting, even by the designer. Worry not though, if youhave no positive checks for wanderers the designer advises just tossing some encounters at the party anyway in order to keep things interesting. There is clearly a disconnect here between modern gaming and OSR gaming, where you are specifically trying to avoid most fights and rolling dice because you are so squishy and take so long to heal. But, whatever. Oh, I’ll tell you whatever, it’s also a Race Against Time adventure! You get eight days to find the temple and then four more till the serpent queen makes it to full power. Get to hacking you fucks! Healbot gonna healbot, I guess …

Let’s look at the writing in the adventure. “In this 30′ x 15′ chamber, the priests of Sass’Ra conducted cleansing rituals prior to engaging in ceremonial activities. It also served as a storage space for potions and sacred fluids central to their practices.” Isn’t that fun! You learned about the history of the room! And the room dimension, already found on the map! The fucking adventure is FULL of backstory. EVERYTHING gets a backstory. It’s all in that tiny three column font shit and you never know what is relevent and what isn’t. I fucking hate it. I want to play the fucking game not learn history. The focus on the text should be on information that is gameable. Not on tangential information. Sure, you can drop some shit in here and there, especially if the DM can riff on it. But we’re not making a historical study of the fucking ruin. 

Worry nt though, the read-aloud text also over-reveals information. Why engage in the trivial back and forth between the DM and players that is the heart of the game when you can now get all of the details in the read-aloud and just concentrate on rolling the dice in order to kill whoever is in the room, that WILL attack immediatly. But, also, there’s no order of battle, so everyone is just standing in place and dying with no reactions to nearby rooms, etc. I guess that famous snake/yaun-ti hearing is fucked. All you’re doing here is killing shit. Walk in to a room and kill shit. Walk in to another room and kill shit. I understand that one of my favs, G1, was essentially the same, but somehow there was some variety there. The whip thing. The orc rebellion. The giant intrigue. This has noe of that. There’s no real crumbling jungle temple vibe. No real snake man vibe. Just enter a room and kill something. 

“shadows seem to push against your flickering light” I think not.

This is $9 at DriveThru. The preview is twelve pages. More than enough to get a sense of the challenges you face as a DM.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/484979/the-temple-of-the-serpent-queen-swords-wizardry?1892600

by Mark Kerruish
Self Published
BECMI
Level 1

Murder! There’s been a murder in the graveyard! And who is digging up graves in the Old Section? The vicar needs your help.

This 21 page adventure has the party fighting some bandits and then some skeletons. It’s got a hint of Miss Marple in it, which I enjoy, but the elemnts outside of that are pretty weak. 

Ok, so, hear me out. I like it when people actlike people in an adventure. When they are more than just generic cardboard cutouts and instead remeble something that you can relate to. I also like MURDER. Well, british murder mysteries, especially in the pre-70’s period. I used to watch one every sunday while reviewieng a new Chinese restaurants General Tso chicken on my insta. And, thusly, this thing has a c oupe of points that appeal to me. 

Aristo apprentice chick “The Lady” is sent to a village by her Necromancer master to get a book. It’s buried in a crypt that can only be opened by the hand of a loyal servant. Last servant is dead. She’s hired some bandits to dig up graves until she finds one their old servants, at which point she will animate him and get him to open the crypt, allowing her to snatch the book. I have no idea why but that appeals to me. Tropy, maybe. Convoluted, but in a way that makes sense to me, I guess. The graverobbers eventually get heard by the odl gravedigger and they murder him and leave a note saying something like “Paychback for looting ma’s body you old coot!” The village vicar has a matron lady who keeps house, cooks meals and the like. She’ll be familiar to anyone who watches english village murder mysteries. She is brining the gravedigger his breakfast, finds the body, and thus comes the vicar and constable and the party gets involved. The party tracks the graverobbers back, kills/captures them, and then sets upin the graveyard on night to in cse there are more. Casper gives them a warning and they go tothe vicerage only to find the door open, the vicar missing, and the old matrons throat cut! In to the church they go, to find the lady, some bodyugards, and some skeleton minions, trying to get the vicar to open a crypt. Final battle. 

The vicar and matron are pretty well done examples of those tropes and I think it helps give the adventure that air of realism that I like. The plot plot here is quite simple; two combats and a pit trap. And the DM is activly advised to keep the party in the graveyard and away from the vicarage so the murder and kidnapping can occur. Bleech! Anyway. Very simple adventure, but with some above average village parts.

There’s weirdness in the read-aloud. One section reads “Mrs Calmly explains that she took Everig the groundskeeper his breakfast at the cottage as usual. She found his body in the cottage and raced to tell the vicar. Both then went to get Constable Bier and the three of them returned to the groundskeeper’s cottage. They found a strange note – Mrs Calmly doesn’t reveal details of the note – and decided to walk together to do a further inspection of the Graveyard” That almost seems like it’s supposed to be DM notes instead of read-aloud. And there is a decent amount of read-aloud. A column and a half to kick things off, with more to come after that. Longish NPC descriptions full of stat blocks and possessions and backstory, although it does generally have a sentence in it to hang your hat on. That sentence is really the only important thing in any of the NPC descriptions and is all that was really needed.

As mentioned, there are some great realism moments here, like an acolyte putting a body in a bag/sack to sew them into, and pausing for the party to check it out. Sometimes the cart gets before the horse, with a description of something like that and then “Another acolyte (same stats) called Parsim waits outside with a coffin – he has vomited and looks queasy.” I note that you walked right by this dude before going in to the hut. It’s a great little vignette and detail, but it should have come BEFORE the inside of the hut was described. Just little things like that, over and over again, that shows a pretty basic lack of overly through editing. And, I’m not sure skill checks ever made it in to BECMI? Maybe in the Cyclopedia? That makes me think this WAS a conversion. I like a back and forth with the party instead of a “make an int check to find the blood trail going over the low wall.” Dice rolls to figure things out are a travesty in a game. The back and forth between the party and the DM is the should of the game.

This is $2 at DriveThru. The preview kind of gets you in to the swing of things, you can get the vibe and the “this is gonna be text heavy” nature of the thing.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/469218/a-grave-matter?1892600

By Mark Meredith
Dice Monkey
OSE 
Level ... 1?

The villagers of Ethan’s Vale seek out a group of heroes to find the whereabouts of the strange Drengr raiders that have been causing harm to the area. As the heroes track the Drengr higher and higher into the mountains, they realize that the premature winter that has struck the land may be connected to the Drengrs’ actions. The heroes must stop the Blackwinter Court from awakening Winter’s Heart, an immense frost elemental, and prevent the ancient magics of a renegade unseelie fey from consuming the land. With bravery and cunning, the heroes must brave the icy dangers of the Fey lands and save the land from the doom of Blackwinter.

This 64 page adventure is a linear railroad conversion from 5e, presenting 21 encounters in about forty pages. It is exactly what one would expect from a 5e adventure. 

Some D&D ads have popped on TikTok for me, for the next edition/version of the books. There were, like, six comments on the ad. I found the few comments to be weird; there should have been more? And, they were all VERY negative. And, thusly, this cycle of “D&D’s Renaissance” completes, with the brand sleeping now for fifteen or so years until it reemerges again in to the pop culture spotlight, parked by WoTC while a succession of VP’s get hired and fired by Ha$bro for lack of monetization. And this is all relevant to this review because this may be the poster-child for a 5e adventure. And we all know that’s not a compliment.

Orcs are attacking villages. The party tracks them down to find that they made a deal with the Fey. The party tracks the fey to a dwarf city, abandoned, and through a frost gate to the Feywild. There they kill some fey and fight a giant ice elemental. 

This takes place over 21 encounters that are all going to happen in a row. A railroad, so to speak. Now, I HATE railroad adventures, but, also, I’m willing to admit that there may be a place for them in certain game types. Like 5e plot ‘adventures.’ I find them worthless dice rolling exercises without merit, but, some people are looking for an activity with friends instead of a game. I note, however, the lack of agency in this adventure, in particular. Even within the encounters/scenes the party has little to no agency. This extends to their deaths. If you attack the orc village and they kill you then the orcs heal you up, bringing you back. Not even in death can you escape the railroad! Too extreme? When talking to the orcs chief (where you are brought for questioning after they bring you back to life) then you need to be completely truthful with him. No deception allowed! Because “Unless the players are completely truthful, he will be dissatisfied.” There’s no fucking reason for this. God forbid the party do ONE LITTLE THING that is not in alignment with what the designer wants to have happen.

The usual issues with formatting. Long sections of read-aloud. In italics. Long DM text with little to no formatting to help the DM wade through things. Abstracted textual descriptions that do little to help bring an environment to life. In spite of sections of purple prose. “They find a Drengr Seidmadur, or spellcaster, casting a ritual over the rocks …” You mean an orc shaman? Got it. Did I mention the skill checks? Yes, abstracted skill checks. [Insert tired story of  Knowledge:Religion to sneak past gate guards … with appropriate dirty looks from DM]

The tropes are heavy in this one. I guess the modern trend of religion being bad is over and has moved on to the Fey being the faceless bad guys now. Every other adventure seems to have them evil and plotting and angry at [something in history] and the bitter about the encroachment of the mortal races. In contract, of course, to the noble orcs found in this adventure. While in league with the fey, they are the goodies. When raiding farms they burn down bard, but only after releasing all of the farm animals first, and, of course, don’t kill people. The orc wolfmaster cares deeply for his pack and will try to speak to the party once one of this pack has fallen. If you are winning against the orc village then the leader calls down an avalanche to bury you until they all escape. He has a resigned look on his face. He’s sad. All that’s missing is a single tear as he looks at the litter. Meanwhile the fey are just faceless stat blocks to kill. There is no nuance here. There is no complexity. It’s just a ham handed sledgehammer of a tale. Why not make everyone an asshole? Or, at least, lean in that direction. Villagers, orcs, fey, dwarves. Insular and self-interested, the lot of them. You know, giving the party a choice. Ahh, and there is the rub.

The adventure ends when the party meets Lareth the Beautiful and his ice elemental. “Temintariel Elenvaul, the enigmatic leader of the Court, stands in silent vigil before the massive, glowing heart of Winter” Ah yes, he is behind the entire thing and we don’t hear anything about him until the final encounter. Literally Lareth.

Pathetic earthlings, hurling your bodies out in to the void, without the slightest inkling of who or what is out here. If you had known anything about the true nature of the adventures, anything at all, you would’ve hidden from it in terror. But, sure, why not just throw some words on a page and charge $20 for it instead. Dude obviously put some effort in to this. But, also, he focused on the wrong things and made some of the most common mistakes in adventure writing. Meaning this is blunt force effort rather understanding the purpose of the design. And, thusly, just more conversion trash.

Oh, I forgot that this “lower level adventure for parties just getting started in the world” has you fighting a band of frost giants. Uh huh.

This is $20 at DriveThru. The preview is ten pages. You get to see four or so encounters at the end of the preview, and those are quite representative of the adventure.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/482815/the-doom-of-blackwinter-old-school-essentials-edition?1892600