tenfootpole.org

by Todd Hughes
Freely distributed by Dragonsfoot
AD&D
Levels 2-4

This follow-up adventure to “The Disappearance of Harold the Hedge Mage” sees the PCs return to the village of Rashtan.

Hang on here, let me copy/paste most of my (poorly done) review of Harold the Hedge Mage … Ok, not as much reuse as I had hoped.

This is a short little adventure that feels a lot like a quest you’d get in a D&D video game. A PS2 video game. It also brings a decent little bit of flavor and color. Those bits keep it from being a complete waste of time but there are better things floating around. Skip to the end for the good parts.

The party, in a small village, somehow takes it upon themselves to go find the missing asshole Ishtan. It’s totally not clear why the party give a shit, but they do. The sheriff, who the guy escaped from, certainly doesn’t seem to care. A diary (yes, a fucking diary. Talk about overuse of a trope that was crappy to begin with) in Ishtans shop directs the party where to go. On the way they they visit a Company Town, take sides in an Eagle Claw dispute, and kill a patrol. They then clear out a very simple hack-n-slash dungeon. The best parts are on the road to the dungeon.

The adventure is super simple. The wilderness wandering monster table could have come straight out of the book and is therefore probably unnecessary. There’s a rumor table; can’t have an OSR adventure without a rumor table. It struck me today that, while the rymor table was nothing special, you could use rumor tables to kind of flesh out villages. A false rumor about the priest being in league with Orcus? Then something must be going on; somebody hates the priest for some reason, legitimate or otherwise, or hte priest is doing something strange. That kind of thing. In which case I’ve been giving most villages, at least those with rumor tables, a bad rap. The whole adventure is rife with read-aloud text, but it’s REALLY quaint read-aloud text. All of the shops have a little bit and they all end with the shopkeep saying “How can I help you?”And it’s still read-aloud text and it still sucks. Ich liebes du nicht Du liebes me nicht. Da Da Da.

The mine map is super simple also. The mines have a simple branching layout with most of the rooms just having some humanoids in them waiting to attack and/or get slaughtered. A LOT of humanoids. We’re talking Caves of Chaos orc caves here, at least. It reminds me a lot of the orcs caves in B2 … if there was read-aloud in every room and no orc babies to kill. IE: boring. Just a straight up hack in rooms that have nothing else going on. Boring. VERY boring. At least most of the read-aloud is very short. In fact, it’s almost written like younger players were GM’ing and playing.

There are some good parts here. There’s an enemy encampment in which the party can collapse a cliffside on to most of them. That’s some nice terrain involvement. There’s also a good encounter with two giant eagles attacking a hill giant and ogre who were trying to have their eggs for breakfast. The giant is yelling for HELP, which is what brings their attention to the party. The encounter is written to assume that the party helps the eagles, but the eagles give no boon if the party does so. It would be MUCH cooler if the party helped the giant/ogre! That would be AWESOME! You might even get a hill giant or ogre ally, which is going to be more useful in a dungeon and a lot more fun overall then a couple of eagles who telepathically say “thank you” and fly off. That’s fucking lame. The least they could do is let the party ride them. Gwaihir is supposed to be cool, not a jerk.

Finally there is the Company Town the party comes to in their first day of travel. It’s a quarry town with everyone essentially in debt to the quarry owner. He sets the party up to get killed by ogres and it’s assumed the party comes back to deal with him. The owner ends up groveling before the party and as the group leaves they see a mob of villagers/workers rioting in the village, looting the company tavern and beating its barkeep. Then they come up the hill to the owners manse in full on mob/torches/pitchfork mode. It’s the best village mob scene I’ve ever seen. The writing is tight and evocative and feels right. This sort of actions/consequences thing is also something tat rarely gets covered in modules. There was something similar in my recent review of Har’s Point: the party solves the immediate problem but probably not the larger issue and then the village suffers for it. In that case it’s offered as an off-stage epilogue and in this case the party is witness to what is about to happen as they are leaving. This is VERY good stuff.
After all is said and done it was right for you to run.

The hamlet of Rashtan is missing it’s Hedge Mage. Can the PC’s track him down?

This is a short little adventure in a house and mine that feels a lot like a quest you’d get in a D&D video game. A PS2 video game. It also brings a decent little bit of flavor and color. Those bits keep it from being a complete waste of time but there are better things floating around.

Bob Herzog and I have something in common. In my Monday ‘Uh … are we sure this is a zombie apocalypse?’ game my 42 year old overweight lazy suburban housewife has executed 2 cops with shots to the head for mouthing off to her. Susan don’t take no shit from NPC’s.

The players come in to a town and the 1/2 orc barkeep tells them about his buddy, Harold the Hedge Mage, who he hasn’t seen in awhile. He, and Harolds niece, ask the party to go check on him. He lives a day away. He’ll give you 50gp each. The barkeep can’t be bothered to check on his buddy personally though because … I don’t know, maybe this is like Brewsters Millions and he has to get rid of all his money or something. The sheriff was informed but he can’t check on Harold either. You see there’s this magic line outside the village that the sheriff can’t cross or he turns in to  pile of poo. No, wait, tat’s not it. Oh, right: the sheriff can’t go BECAUSE. Why even put a sheriff in? Why raise the issue? Who knows. Anyway the group goes to Harolds house which is some kind of mansion out in the woods even though it’s a day outside of town and monsters prowl the woods. Inside they party finds .. monsters! Killing them leads the party to an old mine where they find more monsters. After killing a bunch of orcs and hobgoblins the party finds out that someone sold out Harold, a rival, but there’s no sign of Harold. Going back to the village the group finds Harold in the tavern talking to the barkeep and his niece. It turns out he went off to town for a few weeks. Then Susan knifed him in the throat and used his wand to shove it through the barkeeps ocular window and grabbed the niece by the hair and slapped her repeatedly while shouting “WHO THE FUCK IS MISSING NOW BITCH!” … Susan don’t take no shit from NPC’s.

The adventure is super simple. The wandering monster table could have come straight out of the book and is therefore probably unnecessary. There’s a rumor table; can’t have an OSR adventure without a rumor table. The whole adventure is rife with read-aloud text, but it’s REALLY quaint read-aloud text. All of the shops have a little bit and they all end with the shopkeep saying “How can I help you?”And it’s still read-aloud text and it still sucks. Ich liebes du nicht Du liebes me nicht. Da Da Da. There’s a really nice little bit in the village about a rival potion maker and the names he gives his potions and what they look and taste like. It’s PERFECT for what it’s describing. It adds that touch of flavor that should really make it stand out in the players minds.

The house and mine maps are super simple also. They house is just a bunch of looted rooms with some orcs in the basement waiting in ambush while the mines have a simple branching layout with most of the rooms just having some humanoids in them waiting to attack and/or get slaughtered. A LOT of humanoids. We’re talking Caves of Chaos orc caves here, at least. Two of the encounters stand out. One is an encounter with a next of stirges. In their room is the dried out and desiccated body of an orc. Yes, that qualifies as ‘Standing Out’ in this adventure. The second is  hole in the wall of a rom that leads to large cave with a 9-headed hydra in it. WHAT?!?!?! Oh yeah! Now the adventures getting interesting! Come on! Gimme more More MORE! Alas, there is no more. The hydra doesn’t even have anything cool, just some coins. Still, I like the imagery of a hole broken through a wall that you crawl through to find a large cave … with a hydra in it! THAT’S a classic D&D moment. The adventure needs more like it. It reminds me a lot of the orcs caves in B2 … if there was read-aloud in every room and no orc babies to kill. IE: boring. Just a straight up hack in rooms that have nothing else going on.

There are a couple of decent magic items. A ring that lets you hit monsters that can only be hit by +1 weapons and some homebrew healing potions. Again, I REALLY like the whole potion thing that’s going on in this adventure. “Ishta’s Wondrous Elixer tastes like dirt, because it has dirt in it, and you have to make a con check or retch and vomit. It heals 1hp. 🙂

After all is said and done it was right for you to run.

These super-short Dragonsfoot adventurers are starting to get to me.

by R.N. Bailey
Distributed freely by Dragonsfoot
AD&D
Levels 2-4

A few weeks ago a ship was wrecked off the hamlet of Har’s Point. Rumours abound that the ships was carrying wealth, and the unhappy spirits of the dead sailors walk the nearby beaches.

This short adventure reminds me more of a Harn adventure than D&D. It has monsters in it to slay, unlike Harn, but it focuses on setting an environment in which an adventure takes place rather than just providing a set of keyed encounters. The adventure has a generic feel to it but the designer is in the right state.

There’s been a shipwreck off the coast of Har’s Point and the locales are abuzz with rumors of the treasure they think it contained. This draws the Murder Hobos in and they soon learn that some folk have seen the dead sailors walking on the beach at night, burying their treasure. The group will poke around the village, beach, and wreck long enough that some Sahuagin will show and it’s likely they’ll be contacted for help by a Selkie. There is a nice little section at the end suggesting various consequences as a result of the players actions. It’s pretty good and most of what the players do will ultimately just solve the short-term problem and eventually lead to the destruction of the village. I don’t mean to suggest that this is a rail-road at all, but rather the side-effects of Murder Hobos: they fix a symptom and don’t cure the illness, in general.

What the adventure provides is a bare bones description of a cliffside fishing village. A small map of the village, very brief descriptions of the mayor, general store, church, and tavern. This all takes up about a page, if the map is ignored, and is completely generic. The most interesting part is that the mayor is a fisherman, works six days a week, and hangs out in the tavern on the seventh to do his mayor’ing. A short timeline is provided to help with action taking over over the few days the group will be in the village. This isn’t a railroad set of events but rather it describes what the Sahuagin will be doing during their evening activities. The bad guys are out searching for something they lost so they spend a lot of time wandering around and searching at night. Sometimes they run in to villagers. The events have a number of disappearances and culminate with a full on assault on the village as the Sahuagins desperation finally wins out. The event list is very nice and plays well of the coastal region, as does the 12-entry rumors list.

The rest of the adventure is a description of the areas in and around the village. The looks like a typical encounters key but in reality it is describing each area much more like, say, a regional setting would. The shipwreck area is described. The wreck is described. How to get on to it, how to not fall out, what the players find, what happens if they fall in the water, what’s different at night vs. the day. Chances that the Sahuagin will be there when the party is, and so on. The total effect of the five or 6 locations described this way is that you get a decent region that you can run in a very free-from manner; very nonlinear. I very much like having the adventure laid out this way. It gives me the ability to run the adventure on-the-fly, rolling with the punches the party throws at me. I can improvise what’s going on and deduce what should happen and fill in the extras. It’s a good way to lay things out and is what I’m referring to when I talk about it being Harn-like.

Of course the content is almost all completely generic and uninteresting. Sahuagun near a coast village. They have sharks. They attack people. And eat them. Woah! That’s new! Usually the fish-men are just described as being depraved and evil but nothing more is said. In this module they are all about eating people. They eat fellow Sahuagin. They eat villagers. I’m sure they would eat the Selkie if they could. That extra little bit of flavor text stands out and helps bring the Sahuagin to life. Nice. There’s also a nice little encounter on the beach with a couple of fishermen/beach bums looking for treasure. They are wary of party, since they want the treasure for themselves, but may eventually warm up. The whole thing does a good job of painting these two guys, though rather broadly, and again gives me enough to build them up and add to the encounter.

The sites descriptions do suffer from the problem of being overly long. There’s a lot of detail in each one. Mini-rules for getting a boat close to the ship, for experienced and non-experiences sailors. Mini-rules for getting from the groups boat to the rock/reef the ship is run-around on. Mini-rules for getting from the rock to the ship. Mini-rules for falling of the ship. Mini-rules for what happens if you fall in the water. Mini-rules for the appearance of Sahuagin on the ship. Rolls for finding hidden objects in the wreck. It adds up quickly and turns in to just a mass of text. The encounters are also pretty tough. 15 2HD Sahuagin, 2 5HD sharks, a 5HD giant eel … all while suffering through the water environment and the penalties it imposes. 2nd level characters are dead men swimming. The magic items and mundane treasures are nothing special. +1 ring of protections, +2 daggers, oil of sharpness (actually, I like that book item …) and small gemstones/pearls/coral worth money. The one exception is the item the Sahuagin are looking for, the Crown of the Briny Deep, and it can only be used by Sahuagin. Phooey! The magic & mundane treasure needs to be spiced up so the players will actually get excited about them and want to keep/use them.

Short adventure. Nice try but way too generic.

by R.N. Bailey
Distributed freely by Dragonsfoot
AD&D
Levels 2-4

A few weeks ago a ship was wrecked off the hamlet of Har’s Point. Rumours abound that the ships was carrying wealth, and the unhappy spirits of the dead sailors walk the nearby beaches.

This short adventure reminds me more of a Harn adventure than D&D. It has monsters in it to slay, unlike Harn, but it focuses on setting an environment in which an adventure takes place rather than just providing a set of keyed encounters. The adventure has a generic feel to it but the designer is in the right state.

There’s been a shipwreck off the coast of Har’s Point and the locales are abuzz with rumors of the treasure they think it contained. This draws the Murder Hobos in and they soon learn that some folk have seen the dead sailors walking on the beach at night, burying their treasure. The group will poke around the village, beach, and wreck long enough that some Sahuagin will show and it’s likely they’ll be contacted for help by a Selkie. There is a nice little section at the end suggesting various consequences as a result of the players actions. It’s pretty good and most of what the players do will ultimately just solve the short-term problem and eventually lead to the destruction of the village. I don’t mean to suggest that this is a rail-road at all, but rather the side-effects of Murder Hobos: they fix a symptom and don’t cure the illness, in general.

What the adventure provides is a bare bones description of a cliffside fishing village. A small map of the village, very brief descriptions of the mayor, general store, church, and tavern. This all takes up about a page, if the map is ignored, and is completely generic. The most interesting part is that the mayor is a fisherman, works six days a week, and hangs out in the tavern on the seventh to do his mayor’ing. A short timeline is provided to help with action taking over over the few days the group will be in the village. This isn’t a railroad set of events but rather it describes what the Sahuagin will be doing during their evening activities. The bad guys are out searching for something they lost so they spend a lot of time wandering around and searching at night. Sometimes they run in to villagers. The events have a number of disappearances and culminate with a full on assault on the village as the Sahuagins desperation finally wins out. The event list is very nice and plays well of the coastal region, as does the 12-entry rumors list.

The rest of the adventure is a description of the areas in and around the village. The looks like a typical encounters key but in reality it is describing each area much more like, say, a regional setting would. The shipwreck area is described. The wreck is described. How to get on to it, how to not fall out, what the players find, what happens if they fall in the water, what’s different at night vs. the day. Chances that the Sahuagin will be there when the party is, and so on. The total effect of the five or 6 locations described this way is that you get a decent region that you can run in a very free-from manner; very nonlinear. I very much like having the adventure laid out this way. It gives me the ability to run the adventure on-the-fly, rolling with the punches the party throws at me. I can improvise what’s going on and deduce what should happen and fill in the extras. It’s a good way to lay things out and is what I’m referring to when I talk about it being Harn-like.

Of course the content is almost all completely generic and uninteresting. Sahuagun near a coast village. They have sharks. They attack people. And eat them. Woah! That’s new! Usually the fish-men are just described as being depraved and evil but nothing more is said. In this module they are all about eating people. They eat fellow Sahuagin. They eat villagers. I’m sure they would eat the Selkie if they could. That extra little bit of flavor text stands out and helps bring the Sahuagin to life. Nice. There’s also a nice little encounter on the beach with a couple of fishermen/beach bums looking for treasure. They are wary of party, since they want the treasure for themselves, but may eventually warm up. The whole thing does a good job of painting these two guys, though rather broadly, and again gives me enough to build them up and add to the encounter.

The sites descriptions do suffer from the problem of being overly long. There’s a lot of detail in each one. Mini-rules for getting a boat close to the ship, for experienced and non-experiences sailors. Mini-rules for getting from the groups boat to the rock/reef the ship is run-around on. Mini-rules for getting from the rock to the ship. Mini-rules for falling of the ship. Mini-rules for what happens if you fall in the water. Mini-rules for the appearance of Sahuagin on the ship. Rolls for finding hidden objects in the wreck. It adds up quickly and turns in to just a mass of text. The encounters are also pretty tough. 15 2HD Sahuagin, 2 5HD sharks, a 5HD giant eel … all while suffering through the water environment and the penalties it imposes. 2nd level characters are dead men swimming. The magic items and mundane treasures are nothing special. +1 ring of protections, +2 daggers, oil of sharpness (actually, I like that book item …) and small gemstones/pearls/coral worth money. The one exception is the item the Sahuagin are looking for, the Crown of the Briny Deep, and it can only be used by Sahuagin. Phooey! The magic & mundane treasure needs to be spiced up so the players will actually get excited about them and want to keep/use them.

Short adventure. Nice try but way too generic.

by Lorne Marshall
Freely distributed by Dragonsfoot
AD&D
Levels 1-3

I like some things a lot. Megadungeons. Barrows. Fey. Gonzo. Weird. I dislike some things a lot. ‘The 2E Style’ may be at the top of that list.

This is a railroad tavern murder mystery that ends the way these things usually do: with the villain hiding out in the dungeon. This time it’s a doppleganger behind things. There’s tons and tons and tons of backstory and read-aloud. There’s very little monetary wealth and therefore XP. It does a couple of things right, so I’m going to cover that first so you don’t have to read the rest.

First, there’s a magic sword in the adventure that the players can find. It’s a good item. Multiple bonuses, speaks, has extra powers, gets a decent physical description (albeit in a different location), has some local mythology surrounding it, nice flavor text ability on the sword (it’s a goblin-slayer and ‘salivates’ when used against goblins, shedding droplets of water that fizzle loudly in to stem. Cool!) It’s a REALLY good write up of magic sword and is EXACTLY the kind of shit that drives players wild when they find it. Power Fantasy, Ho! I’d prefer it if it also had some kind of drawback, but I’m not going to bitch too much. It’s one of the best magic items I’ve ever seen written up. This is the kind of thing that excites players and makes them giddy.

Second nice thing: The sword is hidden in the dungeon WITH A CLUE TO WHERE IT IS. It’s hidden somewhere that is pretty obvious, once the players figure it out. That’s kind of cool. “Oh! THAT’S why that thing is special. Duh!” The clue is the good part though. Not the exact clue used but rather the fact that there IS a clue. Something the players find gives a hint that there is something hidden in a part of the dungeon the players have already hidden. That’s the kind of stuff I like. The place is not just a collection of rooms but has a kind of … mechanic? to it. One room impacts another. You have to backtrack. THings in one area lead to the discovery of things in a a different one. It only happens once in this adventure but it IS a nice impact.

Third nice thing: There’s a brief couple of bullet paragraphs on conducting a barroom brawl. Mugs of ale, punching, benches, buckets of scum, and mutton legs are all covered. All of the classics. Nice!

That’s it for the parts I liked. This thing is, otherwise, a 2E abomination.

Two pages of DM backstory that explains the emotional state and background of the doppleganger. Half a page of read-aloud to describe a tavern brawl starting. Half a page of text that describes the need for the DM to railroad the party and presents a variety of solutions to that age-old demon of all plot bullcrappery: the pesky ‘Party Free Will’ problem. The brawl is a pretext to get two NPC’s to appear to hate each other and have them both get out of the tavern so one can die in a field a few moments later. This sets the second one up as the murderer, since he’s got no alibi. The doppleganger is counting on the patsy to get hanged for the crime so he can woo the barmaid that he thinks he’s in love with. Of course, he could have just killed the other suitor outright but then there would be no plot.

So dude 1 that snuck out turns up dead and witnesses saw dude 2 kill him. They go through a whole ‘verified by magically lie detection’ shit THAT I ABHORE. This is the ‘magical society’ 2E view of D&D village life and I hate it. I hate the way it tries to explain things. I hate the way it tries to set things up. I hate it when magic is commonplace in society. It devalues magic. That should be the realm of the party and vile sorcerers. The magical lie detection reveals everyone is telling the truth: the witnesses did see dude 2 and dude 2 is telling the truth when he says he didn’t kill the guy. Oops. Sherlock Holmes time for the party; they get to question everyone. Too many pages later the DM is just encouraged to tell the party “No one has mentioned Myathas. That’s unusual. Maybe you should go investigate his home.” That has to be in there because the whole thing is so convoluted that even Poirot couldn’t follow it. They go to the guys house. Ohs Nos! It’s guarded by the town guard! And they won’t let the party in! The party goes back to town to complain to the Reeve, only to see most of the guard come back for the night. Yeah! They can now to back to the house! Only to find 2 militia guys there guarding, who defer totally to the PCs. IE: there had to be a way to telegraph that the guard captain was evil/obstructing, even though that is completely meaningless to the adventure.

Hey, you know how a bunch of older editions had henchmen & hirelings in them? And you know how it was pretty much a staple of survival to hire a bunch and take them with you to the dungeon/adventure? Well, the designer thinks that sucks. He thinks you should be a hero. Heroes don’t treat the two henchmen the party just received like the henchmen they are. Heroes don’t make them accompany the party. Heroes don’t send them in to the home first. Oh, and if the party does then the DM is directed to have the monsters inside NOT attack the guardsmen but rather direct the kobold attacks on the party. WHAT. THE. FUCK.

Inside the party finds a DIARY! Yes, that old staple of crappy design makes an appearance here. And while fucking around the house the doppleganger has kidnapped the bar maid and taken her to his dungeon lair. A dungeon lair with such a bad reputation that none of the guardsmen, militia, or baronial guard in town will pursue. What evs. The room descriptions for the farm range from half a page to a page each. More lengthy read aloud. A wilderness travel adventure to the dungeon in which the DM is encouraged to go easy on the party so they arrive at the dungeon at nearly full strength, etc. The dungeon is full of read-aloud and lengthy DM description, maybe 3 rooms to the page on average. They don’t really have anything interesting going on. The second level has some ‘Tuckers Kobolds’ action before the battle with the doppleganger.

The party receives a grand total of about 300cp from completing this adventure. Good luck leveling.

by Charley Phipps
Freely distributed by Dragonsfoot
AD&D
Level 10-14

Far to the North, in the upper reaches of the land of dread Iuz, lies one of the possible resting places of the ancient evil sorcerer, Acererak. Rumored to lie inside are deadly traps and terrific treasures, but all pales in comparison to the awesome power of the Demi-Lich.

This is a short 11-page module that channels the Tomb of Horrors. It is just about as close to the Tomb as you can get. Sequel. Preqel. Whatever … it’s another Tomb and it’s related to the first since it Acererak designed it to be a false tomb. 21 rooms, linear layout. Demons summoned if you go astral/ethereal, false doors, mosaics on the floors, ceilings, two false entrances and a real one. It’s all here. If you want to play the Tomb of Horrors 2 then this is the module for you. I hate Tomb of Horrors. I recognize it for what it is and the role it plays but FAR too many people think that the thing is the ‘right’ way to design and run an adventure.

Given a page of maps, an intro page, a new monsters page and 1.5 pages of background, this thing is pretty terse even though all of the rooms are essentially complicated set pieces, just as with the original. The journey to the tomb and background are about as detailed as the Gygax version. What is different, or perhaps what I don’t remember, is the wandering monster table for encounters on the way to the tomb location. This chat is NOT messing around. 30-120 orcs. 1-10 hill giants. 20-80 gnolls. Patrols of 150 soldiers. That’s some bad ass encounter tables right there. Several of the encounters are expanded upon briefly, which is I prefer to just a single line entry on a table. The context helps me run it better.

The map is linear, just like the Tomb. There are some dead-end corridors, just like the Tomb. There’s a whole lot of text to describe each the set pieces in each room. (Although that’s relative, I guess. It’s still a short module.)

I’m not sure what else to say about this. It’s the Tomb of Horrors. There are some mechanisms I don’t agree with. Pits with a 100% chance you fall in. One monster, undead, has an amulet that does the whole “-6 levels to turning” thing. I hate that. Just bump his level or make him a Vampyr or Vampire Lord, or Demon Lord or something. But don’t just throw in a stupid gimp for the players. Likewise, perhaps the tomb should be extra-dimensional instead of just declaring you can’t tunnel in to it with spells? I don’t know, that seems lame also. Otherwise the encounters and layout and rooms channel the spirit of the Tomb perfectly. “A light mist of acid dissolves your gear” but you don’t notice it until it’s too late. A page long backstory of an NPC that leads to some other hook for further adventure.

It’s the Tomb. Do you like the Tomb? Do you want an adventure like the Tomb? Would you like to expand on the Tomb? Then this is for you. Just please, dear lord, do the D&D world a favor and never tell anyone you think the Tomb is good. It has a purpose but that purpose is limited.

by Michael Martin
Freely distributed by Dragonsfoot
AD&D
Levels 5-7

Can you unravel the mysteries of the island of Trident Rock?

Must I?

This module gave me a headache. This review is not going have the pretense of being objective.

An Investigation? A social adventure? A dungeon crawl? A mess of a module. It’s laid out ok but the various sections don’t tie together well. Nor does the introduction tie in with the rest of the module. It tries to do too much and ends up not doing very well at any of it.

There is this noble family that lives in some ruins on an island. They are cursed to live on the island forever, dying once they leave it. Most of them are super duper evil, according to their descriptions, and full of plots and schemes. Each of the eight named NPC’s get a paragraph of explanation in the front of the book and some stats in the back. The DM is warned time and again that these are complex people and that they should be very familiar with them in order to run the complex set of interactions that the module has.

Wait, let’s back up. Why is the party on the island in the first place? No reason. No pretext. Nothing. It’s an island out in the ocean and the party is there. It’s implied a couple of times that the party is there to investigate/break the rumored curse. WTF? So I’m sitting at home one day having some beluga and six dudes with guns show up and say they want to hang out and investigate the Bryce Lynch “Bad Module” curse. Can I put them up for a few days? Huh? And I say Yes?!?! Oh yeah, and I’m super rich and live in a burned out shell of a house. Come on man … Oh, and the party is randomly attacked by gnolls and ghouls while in the lands around the ruins on their way to the ruined castle. That’s background information. “You’re randomly attacked by an increasing number of ghoul and gnoll groups on your way to the castle.” You know why I fucking hate read-aloud text? Go ahead take a guess. Did you guess “Because it has this kind of stupid background railroad shit in it Bryce?” If that WAS your answer then you’ve read too many reviews. So, no reason why the party is on the island or at best a silly one, an implausible reaction from the “complex” NPC family and a bullshit off-stage background journey. Joy.

Back to the family and NPC’s. They live in the remains of a ruined keep. “Ruined” as in “less than half of the buildings have not collapsed in to rubble”. Noble family … Right. Anyway, the family members each get a short paragraph of description that does almost nothing to help the DM. Bob is evil. Ok. Dan is scheming, gruff and grim. Frank like to plot and scheme. Betty is tricky. That’s the extent of it. No details on what their evil plans are. No schemes or plots for a DM to work with. Just a simple notation that they are Super Not-Nice people. “Dan will work against anyone who attempts to sabotage his plans.”” WHAT FUCKING PLANS?!

Up till this point you might be thinking this was a social adventure with lots of NPC interaction, etc. Well, no. The module says it is but does nothing to help the DM. One short paragraph per NPC, not plots or schemes, no details anywhere else in what the family is up to or how they react. Tra la la. … you see, this is actually just a slaughter fest. Pure. And. Simple. Hack. It terrible. It’s like I presented stats and maps for the people in a one-block radius of your house and said “Go kill them!” WHAT?!!? Oh, and the ruins? There are bugbears, ghouls, and a demon in them. In some cases LITERALLY right next to a building people live in. It’s insane. So, ok, after the NPC’s we start to get location descriptions in the module. Some for the Keep, some for the Goal, some for the Tombs, some for the Dungeon. Location descriptions involve something like 2-3 LONG paragraphs of read-aloud text followed by 3-4 paragraphs of DM only text, two or maybe three rooms to page. Seriously? People still do that? Oh, Oh, and the guards in the first two watch towers the party encounters have “magic gongs” that when rung alert everyone in the keep/ruins. And do they all have magic amulets that prevent ESP type shit also?? Oh, no. They all have magic amulets that prevent them from being attacked by the undead on the island. I SINCERELY feel sorry for people who A) Learned to play D&D this way B) Still play D&D this way.

Gaol is under the ruins. 29 rooms, most of which are empty cells. Demons, bugbears, ogres, jailer with Iron Bands of Bilarro, neo-otyugh, roper, minotaurs in a maze, rust monster & disenchanter room, water weird. Not even an attempt to put something together here. Just a seemingly random assortment of monsters that show up in the dungeon with some bullshit explanation. “Evil Bob brought the rust monster and disenchanter here to get rid of adventurer equipment.” DON’T TRY TO EXPLAIN THINGS! The statue talks BECAUSE. Fire envelops you BECAUSE. The sorcerer shoots red beams from his eyes BECAUSE. Don’t tie a spell to it. Don’t try to explain why magic happens. Fucking Victorians.

Tomb. Symmetrical layout. 14 rooms. Every room has undead. Wights, wraiths, shadows, zombies, coffer corpse, ghouls, ghasts, skeletons, mummies, Sons of Kyuss, Heucuva. I think every undead EVAR appears in this thing. “Blah blah blah read-aloud” THEY ATTACK!!!!!!!!

A dungeon? Yes, 24 rooms! What’s in it? Sahuagin. Margoyles. About a dozen other monster types. The map kind of looks like a tourney map, with a few sections to it. It’s the most interesting part because there are a couple of environmental features. A hallway alongside a chasm. Flooded areas, a decent classic trap or two. I love a classic trap. It’s like a big red button. “The rooms has holes on the floor and ceiling, you say? Please, Mr. DM, give me some pretext so that I may enter.” There’s a devil down in the dungeon, the last member of the family. And nothing about the family curse that I can see. Since the family gets pissed when you mess with any of them it’s pretty much going to be a total hack fest. Oh, and while labeled a tourny module there is no scoring information.

This thing is all over the place. Social? Dungeon? Tourny? Seemingly random monster assortments … It needs some SERIOUS tightening up in order to become playable.