tenfootpole.org

by Dylan Hartwell
Self Published
Labyrinth Lord
Levels 3-7

Something has happened to the delicious beer of Shattenberg! None of the residents have seen the brewing monks for weeks and the tavern masters are oddly silent. Where once it was a delicious and creamy blend of mountain mushroom-based stout, it offers an oddly coppery taste and costs twice as much. For a small mining and farming town on the edge of the wilderness, this is tragedy. Now rumors have begun circulating that hideous creatures gathered to the north are somehow the cause. The players are hired to investigate, and if possible, remedy the problem.

This is a strange little adventure in an imaginative little setting. First off, this is as much a campaign setting with hooks as it is an adventure. This is a raid on the Brewery but there’s also a few other little things that can be done and hints of a nifty campaign world. The designer has loads of imagination when it comes to adventures ideas and strange things but the adventure is pretty basic. At the asking price this module is probably worth it just to raid for ideas.

The town of Shattenburg is very briefly described, in a couple of paragraphs, and has a slight WFRP feel to it: mining companies, multi-ethnic society, town institutions … this sort of reformation germany thing is totally not my style at all, but hey, whatever floats your boat. There’s a small ten entry rumor table it’s from this that the various adventures generally get their start. Something weird turned up in the dwarf silver mine … and a small eight entry description of the mine is given. The old elf sauna cave is overrun … and the three parts of the cave are described. You get the idea; small adventure seeds with a description of several attached. Unfortunately the locations, as well as the core adventure in the brewery, are all quite small; just a couple of rooms for most and about eight for the main adventure. The maps are linear and the actual encounters/room are just not that interesting.

What IS interesting though is the flavor text surrounding the various things. The nearby elves are real jerkfaces, capturing and torturing many humans. They perform weird rituals on them. Their sauna cave is full of erotic murals. It’s a nice non-traditional view of elves. The core monster for the adventure, the Burpees, looks a bit like Bullywugs but have continually churning stomachs that create large amounts of gas and are continually surrounded by a cloud of, uh … gas. When hit by a weapon there’s a 66% chance they will explode, knocking away the attackers weapon. There’s also a nice Hold Person spider in the sauna caves. There is mushroom paste beer, a Jabba the Hut halfling, and the Loknar, complete with ‘disintegrating good’ power. The whole “dragon crime lord hires Burpees to take over brewery and start another revenue stream” reminds me a lot of the Wormy comic. I LOVE this kind of Wiz-World environment.

What this amounts to is an atmospheric setting that concentrates on general guidelines rather than specific details. We are given the name of a town and several important factions but not much else. We’re given several adventure seeds with lots of surrounding fluff and atmosphere but hen few details of he adventure. In many ways it reminds me of the format of a hex-crawl but with expanded details on a couple of the hexes. The actual adventure sites, in the Burpee controlled monastery/brewery and the spider sauna/caves, don’t have that OD&D feel I’m looking for although the surrounding atmosphere certainly does. Actually, I may be wrong there. The adventures take place in recently populated areas and so the OD&D groove I’m looking for IS included, just in a different way. Pulling bricks on fireplaces, giant fossils in the wall, smells of rotting meat, etc. It’s just that the environments are too small to support a very rich experience.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/106837/The-Blasphemous-Brewery-of-Pilz–Extra-Stout-Edition?affiliate_id=1892600

by Thomas J. Scott
for Magique Productions
OSRIC
Levels 4-6

Stuck in the port city of Elisarus without a job and no adventure for six months. That is, until the characters learn of a treasure map uncovered by a mysterious pirate captain, which leads to the legendary forgotten isle.

This is supposed to be a tournament module, but there is no scoring information. It’s also non-linear in a way that tournament modules seldom are and it’s not exactly clear to me how you ‘win.’ But, what makes for a terrible tournament module can make for a decent home play module … uh … I think? The module has three parts which are loosely connected. The party will get the treasure map in the town they’re in, sail to where the island is supposed to be, and then explore a ruined city.

The first portion of the adventure involves the part obtaining the map in a port town. It’s a complete mess and also of the more raucous introductions I’ve seen. The party overhears two sailors mentioning a treasure map and the desire to find more crew for the voyage. The party is expected to go sign on and check in every day until they get told the ship is pulling out. No problem, right? Well, it turns out that the party has signed on to a PIRATE ship. This good natured bunch of guys are in ‘disguise’ in port, having changed the name of their ship and their captain. One night the party stumbles upon a group of them literally running amok and spreading mayhem on some little side street. After three days the ship pulls out, but when the characters get on board they see the crew all arming themselves for a last minute raid on the town. The local guard and citizens take up arms and stop the pirates, presumably in cooperation with the party. As a reward the party is given the ship, the map, and a magic item that works the map. A glorious hook and implemented as a complete mess. There is a small map for the town with about a dozen places identified, a small random city encounter chart, a description of the ship, several seedy hangouts near the dock, a description of the pirate crew and officers, rumors charts, legends and background information, people staying at a certain inn … and absolutely no reason on earth why the party won’t just park their asses in the inn and wait for the call from the ship. Meaning, there is no reason for the party to go explore the town, no reason to talk to the NPC’s, no reason to ‘investigate.’ The module seems to make a point that the party should be making inquiries but I can’t see why the party would ever do that. So while there’s a a terrific amount of support information there’s no reason to pul it in to play. The DM is going to have to be quick on his feet to get the party moving, otherwise they are just going to go straight to the mass pirate raid. It is absolutely non-linear though.

Part two starts with the party being given the map, ship, and secret decoder ring as their reward for stopping the big pirate raid climax in part one. They did stop it, right? My players might have joined in … Anyway, the party recruits a crew and sets sail. The sailors are all chipper and in great moods and full of esprit de corps. Then, suddenly, over the next three days, they turn on the party and mutiny. Yes, these seasoned salts of the earth mutiny in three days time because the 3000 year old treasure map has a couple of issues. Three days. Really? WTF? Didn’t Columbus sail for, like, forever on the the first voyage? Didn’t some of those circumnavigators sail for YEARS at a time? And these jack-asses mutiny after three days? There are a couple of incidents in those three days, a drunk hand, a fight between two crew, that could trigger the mutiny sooner. Eventually though the mutiny happens and the crew breaks in to the armory. If the party places a guard on the armory then the sailors overcome then. WTF?!?! I’m a6th level dwarf ass kicker guarding one door and I’m taken down by a bunch of un-armed 0-levels? Of course you are, because the plot says you must be. Because during the mutiny battle the party gets to A) Discover the real location of the island, which immediately stops the mutiny, and B) gets attacked by three evil cleric ships also looking for the island. Passing through a whirlpool causes all of the parties sailors to panic and abandon ship, conveniently getting them out of the way, while also killing everyone less than 2HD. I don’t know man, I didn’t write it. But I do know that the wizards gonna be pissed about his familiar. The party sees the isle, swims over, and finds has three encounters before a showdown with the evil clerics happens, ending part two. The sailors all get their own little write-up, as does the EHP ship. The sea battle might be interesting but the module cautions several time about letting a boarding action take place because it would interfere with the plot. The EHP at the end has a soliloquy, but it’s pretty meaningless since all the party knows is that they got attacked on the seas and none of his evil backstory. It’s like the party has has a nemesis all along that they’ve been thwarting at every turn … except they are completely unaware of the guy and had no idea he existed and the thwarting was accidental. Bizarre.

Part the Third has the party exploring a ruined city on the island in search of ancient super artifacts. This amounts to four encounters in the city ruins and 17 inside the evil kings old castle built on the side if an ancient volcano. The kings castle, while composing the bulk of the encounter areas, is a little anti-climactic. There are only a handful of skeletons, a magic sword that slays undead, and an undead to be found as creature encounters. The ruins outside have an encounter with something like 12 waves of undead, but even that seems relatively light. The ancient super artifacts that are the object of the quest get no description at all. The magic vault is described as being stuffed full of them but that’s it. I would have expected more, but then again this IS supposed to be a tournament module. There is an excellent portion of this section which has a room full of magical potions, substances, etc. Most of them have some effect associated with them and there are some kindly poltergeists present to help the party fully explore the items. 🙂 I really enjoyed that room and wished there could have been more rooms like that one; weird, idiosyncratic, and full of things to play with.

While the module has some interesting ideas, such as the pirate mix-up and the waves of undead, it doesn’t really fulfill the promise of traveling to a an island from the ancient past in search of ancient artifacts. I would expect more weird stuff, things to play with, abominations, and, ultimately, some actual ancient artifacts.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/24771/The-Forgotten-Isle?affiliate_id=1892600

by Jim Baney
for Knightvision Games
Labyrinth Lord
Levels 4-5

The mining village of Hardin’s Point is in desperate need of some help. They have been constantly harassed by strange creatures from the jungle. Several adventure and mercenary parties have journeyed into the jungle to take on the threats but have yet to return. Mining operations and trade have almost come to a standstill. Do you have what it takes to find the source of the attacks and end the threat?

Let me first describe what’s going on. Miners are getting attacked and the party goes out to stop the lizard/skunk people menace. These are the first five linear encounters. This leads the party to some orcs in the temple noted in the adventure title. The orcs are mostly dead, being killed by the temple guardians.

I’ve reviewed a couple of products that were very clearly conversions from d20/OGL products. Even if the vocabulary and editing didn’t give them away then their style did. For whatever reason, products for a certain game tend to all have a similar style. This product has a 4E style. There is exactly one good thing about that … and one other good old school thing.

Let’s cover the good first so you don’t have to read the rest of this review. 4E did one thing well and that was unique monsters. Every single monster was different from the others. Strange powers, surprising monster effects, immunities and goofy attacks. Those were all great parts of the 4E monsters. It then screwed it up by standardizing them all, but I’m willing to ignore that. This module has a lot of unique monsters in it, each with special powers. Drag Vines grab you in the jungle, pull you up, knock you unconscious and stab you with spore pods. Moss Monsters infect you and you slowly turn in to a pile of moss until cured. Skinks are lizard/skunk hybrids. Cryo Stirges breathe cold and Straw Men are full of pollen. These are all great effects and make the monster encounters unique. The party doesn’t know what the monster does. It freaks out when the effect happens. It has to deal with effects after the battle, this is all good and makes their view of the world a better place, more personalized and more real.

The second nice feature are the unique magic items. The magic items are almost all unique. They weapons all have names, brief descriptions, and lots of unusual effects. The Scholar’s Brush is a +3 spear that also allows the wielder to block melee and missile attacks and has some special rules associated with it. The short sword Kamblast is also personalized and has unique effects. This also extends to other magic items, like the Ring of Damage Absorption. It absorbs all of the damage you take … until you take it off, then you take all the damage at once … I’s also a little loose and tends to slip off a lot … and generally found near a very mutilated body …. That’s a GREAT magic item! I really can’t stress enough how impressed I am with the magic items. It adds an air of magic and mystery to the game and gives the party a sense of wonder and makes the players much more attached to items. I’ve seen people keep less powerful magic items because they were ‘cooler’ than new ones they’ve found. That’s a good item and that feeling the player gets it what magic items should be shooting for. It’s not a min/max decision/optimization decision, it’s become a player enjoyment issue.

The rest of this thing sucks, almost completely.

Encounter 7 – Hearth Room
(Maximum 525xp)

Set the Scene
Place the characters at any entrance to this room. The room will be completely dark.

Read or Paraphrase
I’m read aloud text which doesn’t take in to account any of the cool things you, the players, have done. After all you shouldn’t be able to avoid combats in 4E.

Action
The stirges will immediately release … blah blah blah … stat block.

Treasure: Treasure 1 description.
Treasure: Treasure 2 description.

Trap: Trigger failed roll – effect: chest heats up dealing 1d4 damage.

[Battle map diagram.]

I don’t need a layout that similar to the ones we’ve all seen for 30 years … I’m not complaining about the headers. I’m complaining about the scene/encounter based design with divorced mechanics. It looks like it’s scene based. The locations are little more than slaughter-fests … monsters attack immediately with no regard to player action. The mechanics are divorced from the environment, most notably in that trap description. I don’t need or want a description of how the skinks engineered a trap that heats up a treasure chest but I need a little more than an mechanic completely divorced from the rest of the adventure. Strangely enough, there are five encounters in the first area before the party goes off to a separate location with seven more encounters … this sounds a lot like 4E … The locations are all so sparten as to be irrelevant, in particular the town and miners mentioned so prominently in the cover teaser. Essentially, there’s not enough transition BETWEEN encounters. I know that sounds like a silly thing to say, however the module is boiled right down to the bare bones of scene/encounter scene/encounter scene/encounter … and I hate those scene based indie games. [More diatribes about Fiasco and why that entire genre sucks can be found in my Origins 2011 reviews.]

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/95370/ST1-Temple-of-the-Horned-Goddess?affiliate_id=1892600

by Moritz Mehlem
for Brave Halfling Publishing
Labyrinth Lord
3rd level

The Mountain King terrorized the cozy village Larm until he was driven from his hideout by a group of inexperienced adventurers. Now, nearly a year later, he’s posing a threat to a young village on the borderlands. He has settled down a few miles north of Larm and is attacking ships that travel the river, Dolm. Thus the trade between the capital of Dolmvay in the south and the Dwarven Kingdoms is in peril.

This is a pretty simple *hack* based tournament module. The players are given the mission of stopping the newly returned Mountain King. He’s set up a base near the Dolm river and is causing problems by raiding traders. The players go to his base and then go through it, room after room, hacking down all of the occupants. At the end it’s possible to find a couple of hidden treasures. The layout of the fortress is almost completely linear. Each room has two doors, the one you came in and the one that leads to the next monster to hack down. The last room has four doors. Yeah! All full of monsters. Boo! The points gained from hacking down an (unavoidable) trio of ogres are 650. The points gained form cleverly avoiding an initial encounter are 30 … clearly the goal here is to kill things. Not too surprising since that’s what the mayor told you to go do, I guess. Just not very interesting for anything other than tactical play. The magic items are standard, as are the mundane treasures, as are all of the monsters. A new monster is theoretically included however it only shows up statted as one line in a table with, evidentially, no unusual attacks or defenses. I really wish people would just take a standard orc and give him a lower AC, higher HD when they did this. The world probably doesn’t need another generic humanoid race.

One thing I do like here is … the Dolm River! Dom shows up in the Village of Larm module and in the Dolm River module. This is actually a really nice thing that ties all of the modules together. The end of all of this is that I now feel that the Dom has a real life of its own. It doesn’t do anything other than show up on the map and get mentioned in the hook in this adventure, but that doesn’t matter. Seeing the river again is like seeing an old friend again. A lot of module series try to do things like this but don’t seem to get it right. This module series, as well as the Bleak Tower in Ironwood Gorge/Sanctuary Ruin, both do a decent … but even Ironwood didn’t make me smile when I saw it. Dolm did. I dunno, go figure … I guess the designer has done a good job in his series in making the river a supporting character in some and a star player (Dolm River) in others.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/62996/Return-of-the-Mountain-King?affiliate_id=1892600

by Peter Spahn

for Small Niche Games

Labyrinth Lord/OSRIC

Levels 5-7

This should be a mostly fine & serviceable adventure, but something feels wrong about it. I’m not sure I can articulate what it is. The adventure is based around the the recovery of an ancient artifact  stolen from and of interest to dragons. It has many schedule events and a kind of flowchart of encounters and actions … all of this is great when taken individually, but I’m left with a somewhat *blah* feeling at the end. I don’t know why.

The hook here is pretty nice. The players see two dragons, a big black and an ever bigger red, fighting in the sky. The black looses to a gush a flame and raking claws and goes plunging to earth nearby, while the red flies off. No self-respecting player is going to let that one pass by, so it’s expected that the party will go try and find the blacks body. Or, maybe they continue on their way. If if you try and find the blacks body then turn to section INTO THE HILLS. If you continue on your way then turn to section TRADER VIC. Each of those sections will have some general thoughts on what can happen next. For example, you find the body but it’s covered in stirge for the next 12 hours. Or, you meet a trader who offers you a job slaughtering the carcass. These are all written in such a way that the party is not railroaded. If the party attacks the red at the temple then it will do X, otherwise the dragon will leave after Y turns and then Z will happen. Not happen TO the party, but rather what changes in the environment if the party takes a certain action. This is a great way to run things in an event based module. The creatures are reacting to the presence, or lack thereof, of the the party rather than the party being forced to go a certain way or have a certain encounter. It changes things from a railroad to an almost social environment where the creatures have their own motivations and goals and are working towards their own ends. This is turn adds a real authenticity to the game, a sense that the parties actions, or inactions, are having a real impact on the local environment and/or situation. And that is a very good thing indeed.

There’s a dungeon, the old black dragons lair. It’s small, 15 rooms, mostly symmetrical, which I hate, and themed around the four elements, which I loathe. It’s actually pretty decent though. There are a lot of encounters that are well put together. Smart players will notice the signs of the traps and smarter players will not have to fight too many creatures at all. The core mechanic of the dungeon is that the red is bullying a group of frogmen in to exploring it for him, and the hapless guys bodies are common in rooms where danger lurks. Combined with elementals who want to go home, the party could have a pretty unusual time inside.

This is combined with a great wandering monster table for the swamps which includes a whole lot of great encounters. Not just the usual ‘you get attacked by xx fugoogoogods” but rather more interesting encounters that include environment (a deep pool with leeches), unusual creatures (whoops! that interesting rubble was a giant slug), or just plain bad luck (that rotten tree stump Bob just stepped on had a nest of water moccasins in it.) The adventure has a nice climax when the party find the gem, and then a THIRD ACT when an evil NPC party shows up. Woo Hoo! I love evil NPC parties! Even better, they are in the employ of the red! It’s a nice touch. All of the individuals and many of the monster groups have a separate section in the back that descries their personalities, motivations, and goals, allowing the DM to run things better better when the party takes things of the rails.

I’m not really sure why I’m turned off of this adventure so much. It may be the symmetrical dungeon, or the four elements, or the inclusion of a gold dragon NPC as a plot hook of last resort … maybe my inner child has been so badly injured by those things that I can’t help but flinch when I see them. Anyway, this is a decent adventure that hits the major highlights of OSR play. I’mjust not … excited? about it, personally. I may be wrong.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/87147/LLA003-Pyramid-of-the-Dragon?affiliate_id=1892600

by Roderic Waibel
for Sacrosanct Games
OSRIC
Levels 1-3

For people of the border town of Aldin, danger was a part of life. Savage beasts, extreme winters – these were things the people were prepared to deal with. What they weren’t expecting to face was something so unholy that it was forbidden to speak of. Now a young group of would-be adventurers on their way to the large city of Halidor are forced to take refuge in Aldin due to a severe storm. Will they manage to escape …

Well, that uplifting feeling that I had from OD&D & Carcosa didn’t last long.

The party is journeying through a mountain pass when a blizzard comes up. As they exit the pass they awarded 250xp and then enter an insular little town at he end of the pass. Wait, What?!! Yes, you get 250xp awarded to you for starting the adventure. Ok, not quite, but close. At this point the party has had to suffer through six wandering monster checks and THEN they get the 250xp story award. This isn’t starting well …

The village doesn’t have an inn, everything costs 5 times too much, and they don’t like outsiders. But the party can’t leave because of the snow so they stay, as does a merchant and his wife trapped by the storm. One night the party sees the merchant and his wife surrounded by 12 hooded figures, who then take them off to a crypt in the graveyard. The next morning the villagers tell the party that the couple left, even though travel is still impossible. What, what?!! Seriously? The hook is that much of a railroad? Yeah, I suppose that there is a very great chance that the murder hobos in question will do nothing but it’s also quite likely that they will charge out and massacre the 12 hooded villagers. What happens then? Well… the adventure is not really written that way. There’s a dungeon under the crypt that’s the main part of the adventure and attempts to deviate are not appreciated in this type of module. The village and its villagers are barely detailed at all, even though the party could spend up to six days i hte villager before they get attacked in their sleep. These things DEPEND on a well described set of villagers with interesting backgrounds and stories behind their motivations. Not here. In addition it’s pretty imperative that some general notes exist to describe the actions of the villain if the party takes the module off the rails, as parties are wont to do. Not here. This is all too bad because the village backstory is actually kind of interesting: beset by terrible wandering monsters and humanoids, the villagers are convinced by a wandering witch to let her raise the dead in order to protect the village. And it works out! Well, except for the whole “the witch sometimes kills travelers to add to her undead ‘army'” thing. But hey, nice thinking outside the box!

This being D&D, the little shithole town has a crypt consisting of three levels with ten rooms per level. The maps are mostly linear. The first level is full of undead, skeletons and zombies. The second level is full of strange things, like a white ape chained up, and a trained(?!) carrion crawler used to ‘keep the dungeon tidy.’ COME ON! There are some goblins the party can maybe free, and an anomalous water wierd … wtf os that thing doing there, before the party reaches the 3rd level EHP/witch, who, the module announces, has been alerted to the parties presence and is expecting them. This smacks of storyteling and I don’t want that. I want interesting villains and motivations and reaction suggestions so I can can bob and weave as the party puts their silly ass plans in to place. With no new monsters, no interesting magic items (just +1 swords and potions of boring) and nothing much going on in the dungeon except room after room of monster, this module takes a decent premise and squanders it.

by Moritz Mehlem
Brave Halfling Publishing
Labyrinth Lord
Levels 1-3

Larm isn’t specifically an adventure module. It’s more of a home base village for the party to explore from with three small adventures in and around the village and numerous other small tasks. The concept is a good one but it’s poorly executed in this product. Larm comes off as a boring place full of boring people who need help with the simplest of tasks. Forward, to Boringtown!
There are about 35 locations detailed in the village. These house the 112 people who live in the village. It’s a mixed community that includes demi-humans such as dwarves, halflings, and elves. It has has a decent number of classed inhabitants up to 5th levels with quite a few third level folks. The building are described in basic detail: who works at the inn, their stats, how much things cost, etc. There is generally a single sentence like “she’s the best waitress ever seen in the world” or “he’s a bureaucrat who keeps endless lists.” These are almost all normal facts and don’t generally even fall in to the quirk category. Nothing too unusual or interesting. The best, by a long shot, is that he wife of the militia commander is publicly cuckolding him. This could degenerate in to something cool: he’s a powerful man and in charge of a lot of fighters … what if he gets tired of it and kills the mayor, or does something else stupid? Alas, this is not explored at all.

There are several little hooks given to the DM to work with and they are introduced through a nice little mechanic: notices on a board outside the mayors office. I shit you not. What’s better is the nature of them. “We’re going to all be killed by goblins. Go see the militia commander to help stop them” or “We’re all starving because of the giant rats in the mill. Go kill them.” So … over 10% of the population is in the militia … they drill daily … there are several 5th and probably 10 3rd level prominent people in the village … and they are going to starve to death because of 4 giants rats? Look, I don’t to sound like the guy who bitches because something is unrealistic, or because you called a pike a bill hook, but come on, throw me a bone here! There has to be something at least a bit plausible! Let’s take another example: the village temple. The head of the current temple feels ‘evil’ in the old temple but doesn’t want to risk his people. ‘His People’ refers to the hordes of 1st through 3rd level clerics that man the temple. So, 10% of the village is fighters in the militia and 10% are clerics … but they are still starving to death, live next to an evil temple, and are about to be invaded by 15 goblins.

The three adventures provided involve cleaning out the mill basement, cleaning out the evil temple, and cleaning out the goblins. I swear to fucking god that the next review I do that has someone cleaning out a basement/attic of vermin is going to get a 2 word review: “Sux HaRd!” The mill basement has two rooms with creatures: a couple of giants rats and a couple of centipedes. Now, there could have something cool here. You see, one of the shopkeeps had an apprentice who took a knife with him to solve th problem and was never heard of again. Finding his body, or knife, or some mutated apprentice … any of those could have added some good elements as the party then had to deal with his master, etc. Nope. The module explicitly says there are no remains/signs of him. Cleansing the temple involves LITERALLY a linear route, taking a spiral linear path, room after room, fighting undead, until you reach the of the line. The goblin camp is the most interesting because it’s the most freeform. There’s a map of the camp and a general description of the what the goblins will do and how they will react. There are a couple of interesting non-standard magic items. Candles that give you some effects, a book that gives you a point of wisdom (two, in fact!), and a sword that gives an additional bonus against undead. Those are nice and I wish that their imaginative nature were extended to the village and adventures proper.

What’s a shame here is that this is targeted for new players and DM’s. God help the people whose first D&D adventure is clearing out the millers basement of its giant rats; that’s nothing like the D&D I know and love.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/58647/Larm?affiliate_id=1892600