tenfootpole.org

This is a non-traditional adventure that focuses around the salvage of cargo from a sunken ship. It’s a very open-concept type of exploration that probably has more in common with a hex crawl than a traditional dungeoncrawl of wilderness adventure. There’s a great deal of options and freedom for the players to take advantage of.

A wizard is building a new tower and has commissioned a group of dwarves to create a massive stone statue for it, destined for stone golem-hood. The dwarves have finished it and are shipping it by sea. The ship is late and the wizard wants his statue. He hires the party to go find it. Just one catch: there’s a time limit. The more time the party spends screwing around the less they going to receive in payment. The introduction is short, which I prefer, and the time limit adds some motivation for the party to Get Things Done in an environment which could otherwise be laid-back.

The adventure will essentially center around two locations. The first is a small village by the name of Wrack. I have a special place in my heart for moronic villagers. My heart grew three sizes when reviewing the village: they are truly pitiful idiots. It’s a small fishing village with an inn, small store, and a temple. The inn smells of stale beer, old fish, smokey peat, wet wool and cooked cabbage. Whoa boy! The people are pretty universally described as poor and shiftless. I LOVED the village. The adventure probably begins in earnest with the players talking to the various people in and around it. The village is sparsely described however the people detailed are all pretty memorable. There’s a pretty nice rumor table and several of the other villagers have some interesting things to say if the party can track them down. It’s an investigation, however it’s mostly an exercise in gathering more information and trying to push the odds more in the players favor. The information, and a few specialized supplies in the village, will make success more likely.

The second part of the adventure is the search for and salvage of the wrecked ship including the raising for several statue pieces, each weight a couple of thousand pounds. This is a very open portion of the adventure. It reminds me a lot of the pearl beds in Isle of Dread. In that encounter there’s goodies on the bottom of the ocean and sea snakes that mess with the players if they try to collect them. In this adventure there is essentially only a wandering monster chart for the ocean (1 in 6 per hour) and otherwise it’s up to the players to locate and recover the massive statue parts. This is going to be an exercise in ingenuity for the players. How can they locate the wreck? How can they manage the cold water and requirement to breathe? There are several other related issues as well. A great deal of information is presented, in a clear and easy to follow format, on how the various challenges the players may encounter in exploring the shoals and in recovering the statue. Tides, sunrise, sunset, and so on. Essentially the authors have provided a framework that you can turn the party loose in, along with the specialized information the DM may need to call upon.

This sort of adventure concept is one of my favorites. You give the players an objective, have a set up, and turn them loose. We used to do this all the time in high school when we played Danger International. The adventure always ended with an assault on the Evil Bad Guy Lair. Nothing fixed by the DM, just a base with it’s various buildings, guards, NPC’s and schedules. How the players assaulted or infiltrated was up to them. That sort of player agency, along with a prepared DM, is what can truly result in a stellar adventure. Adding in the twist, an island that appears during mists, makes this an excellent little adventure. It IS a little adventure, but it’s a very nice one and should provide for an excellent evening of play.

Oh, and one more thing. These sorts of adventures typically throw in some magic items to help the players get by and survive underwater. This one doesn’t really do that. Figuring out how to deal with the water is a major part of the adventure. I like that. It also has no Sahuagin in it. I loathe Sahuagin. They are COMPLETELY overused in water adventures. I’m glad to see a water based adventure that doesn’t involve pirates or smugglers or Sahuagin. This is a refreshing little romp.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/82053/Wrack–Rune?affiliate_id=1892600

This is a solo module. It can be very tough in places. It has some editing problems. I have also played it more times than any other module I own, with the exception of Keep & Steading.

You are a lowly second level character. While traveling down the road you are ambushed by bandits! Waking up in an inn you find you have been looted. Oh the humanity! You are provided some sparse starting equipment and set off to bring justice to the bandits. The adventure is laid out in a format very similar to a Choose Your Own Adventure. The map is divided in to grids from A to GG. Each section is further divided numerically, A1, A2, A3 and so on.

The booklet has some issues with editing. Several of the paragraphs, especially in the later parts of the adventure, all refer to “paragraph X.” While normally this would be a Game Over condition for a Choose Your Own Adventure booklet, it’s not the case in this one. It’s pretty obvious form the map where the trail/path leads next so you just need to turn to that section. There was only the briefest of slight delay encountered during live play when this first popped up.

The adventure is a tough one. There’s a Shadow, encounters with multiple 1HD bandits, a double dose of killer frogs (they killed my kids, how … Moat House) a trio of zombies, and a 6th level wizard. These are going to be some very rough encounters for a 2nd level character flying solo. There are generally a nice variety of challenges presented: ranger tracking, thief sneaking and so forth. Some of the character classes and abilities will require a bit of on the fly adjudicating, none of which should be too tough. The adventure proper is a nice mix of elements. There’s a barrow mound, a crazed lizard man, ruined towers, bandit camps, mysterious fogs and so forth; just about every classic outdoor element is touched upon. I enjoyed it. My wife enjoyed it. My kids enjoyed it (although they complained about using Holmes instead of 4E. Philistines!) I eventually won, without cheating, using the mightiest character class of them all: Wizard. My 2 Hp self conquered where none others could … by Sleeping with extreme prejudice. We’ve played this AT LEAST 20 times.

And therein lies this modules special power: you can pick it up and play it. No prep work. No goofing around. Just pick it up and play it. I combined this with my Holmes “3d6 down the line, d6 weapons” rules for a <1 minute character roll-up. It takes more time to prep for Solitaire than it does this module! I would pull this out, we’d sit down and play. Just play. I don’t think I’ve been able to do that in 25 years, since high school or jr high. I’d DM and she’d play, or she’d DM and I’d play, the DM rolling for the monsters and reading the text. Same with the kids, I just doubled the number of monsters in each encounter. It was simple, it was IMMEDIATELY accessible, and therefore we’ve played the crap out of this thing.

There is a significant business opportunity being missed here. While we were hot & heavy in to this, right after GenCon, two friends came over. They game. While they were here I was struck with a thought: Why don’t we play D&D in these cases? We have 3 players and a DM, why not play? I’ll tell you why, because it’s a chore. Haul out the gear, prep/read the module, make characters, pick equipment, BLEEECH! The threshold is too high. It seems like it always easier to play something else. An adventure module like this one needs to be packaged in a small box with some pre-gens in it. Friends come over? Pull out the box and play D&D. No character prep time. No module prep time because it’s either CYOA or something very similar to that. You could toss in a very simple rules pamphlet, like MicroLite 74 or something, but that’s not the key. The key is the pre-gens and an adventure you don’t need to prep. Instant one shot fun!

Boxed text doesn’t have to be bad. This module uses it and has done more to get me playing more D&D than any other product  other than my first one ever: Holmes. I would LOVE to see more products like this. Being a solo module, this has a lot of lengthy text, however a DM version could have quite a bit less. If some serious thought went in to it then you could have a zero entry-barrier module with BRIEF but good boxed text and a couple of follow-up bullet points

“This is a moldy bedroom in disrepair.”

– Trap door under bed leads to D3.

– Green slime in pillows. AC12, HD:2 HP:4. 1d6 dam

– Locked safe behind picture on wall. Contains bag of coins. 100gp.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/263907/I1-Grave-of-the-Green-Flame?affiliate_id=1892600

This is a Castles & Crusades adventure module although it can easily be used with any pre-4E version of D&D.

This is a city adventure. Several portions of the city are briefly described. The NPC’s are all related to the hook. The city has several factions; all those presented relate to the adventure presented.

Once there was a noble paladin. There were ‘issues’ and he was turned in to a vampire. Now he has to drink blood to survive, a situation he’s not altogether happy about. He’s learned about a magic item which should suppress his need & desire to feed. He rolls in to the town where it’s at and starts a thieves guild where one previously never existed. The freelancers are not happy about this and an underground war starts between the new guild and the old freelancers. He bolsters the guild by bringing in a group of assassins. Oh, and he’s got his vampire minions as well. On the other side is … well … not much of anyone. There’s a VERY high level thief and his buddy a wizard. The wizard had the artifact the vampire wanted and he launched a raid on her tower. She escaped, but left the artifact behind. The vampires are occupying her tower, waiting for her to return so they can force out the location of the item. In the middle of this are all the folks in the city. It was already a seedy place, and now getting increasingly chaotic from the underground thieves war AND the vampires prowling about. Pretty much everyone knows there’s a thieves war going on. Some few know about the assassins. Almost no one knows the vampires are prowling about. Hey, this sounds like a great time to add a PC party!

The book is arranged in three broad parts, each describing one part of the city. The various locations are described, along with the residents at those locations and what they know of the thieves, assassins, and vampires. There are about 40 or so locations described. Some are allied with the new thieves guild however many are unaligned or just show some sympathies to a particular faction. These cover various social classes from beggars to the merchants. There’s a four page summary of events at the start of the book as well as several appendices that contain many new monsters and magic items, as well as the assassin NPC class, rumor tables, new spells, a brief background on vampires in this game world, inn prices, and so forth. The amount of support material is decent and I appreciate its inclusion.

I see a couple of problems with this one. First, city adventures live and die by the atmosphere provided in the city. That atmosphere is largely provided by the cast of colorful characters in the city. This list is a tad short in Heart of Glass. Several of the NPCs have some meat to them however they tend to be a bit one-dimensional. I would have liked to have seen quite a few more relationships, particularly as they relate to events outside of the Heart of Glass storyline. I tend to judge city adventures by how much I like the city and how it can be reused outside of the main plot lines. That means the folks need some beef behind them. The main plots in this are integrated in to the text of the various building locations and NPC descriptions found in those locations. This makes it hard to follow what needs to happen to make the plot move along. A better organization for the main plot would have been appreciated.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/64121/Castles–Crusades-Heart-of-Glass?affiliate_id=1892600

This is a Castles & Crusades adventure module, although it can easily be used with any pre-4E version of D&D.

This is a linear story-based adventure in and around the Dream Sea, an astral plane like location. The players can’t win the movie that is taking place while they are hacking four encounters.

The most beautiful woman in the world (cursed, of course) fell in love with a bad guy her curse could not impact. She was eventually carried off by an enamored good guy during the climactic final battle. The good guy died in the Dream Sea area, and now his body and the pretty girl are there. The bad guy has just found out where his girlfriend is and how to get her back. The party must stop him! Only they can’t actually do that, the module doesn’t allow that. Yes, I know, I’m the DM and I can do anything I want. It still rubs me the wrong way. The module is upfront about things. It’s purpose is to introduce the party to a future bad guy. Things have to happen a certain way.

The characters run in to a contingent of the Bad Guys troops. After killing them all they find a note describing a current rescue attempt being made to free the girlfriend. This is accompanied by a magic portal to take them to the Dream Sea (a kind of astral plane type area) and some magic items they’ll need later, like a folding boat. If they follow the well marked path (KILL ORCS. READ NOTE. LOOT MAGIC. ENTER PORTAL.) then they are at the Dream Sea. They cross it and end up on an island with a mountain and a witch.  They talk to the witch. They need to make her angry enough to attack them, so she can get killed, or be nice to her. Either will cause a path to appear to the knights tomb. Anything else leaves them here. They go up the mountain trail and get attacked by 4 sets of killer vines. In the tomb they fight the knight. Killing him lets them go to the underworld. In there they find a group of arcs and people freeing the girlfriend. As the party shows up she is freed and walks though the portal, followed by the big name NPC’s present. Meanwhile the orcs and some lesser NPCs are dying at the hands of the PC’s. The party kills the orcs and acolytes and then goes home.

Feel free to toss in ‘allegorical’ in any of the above wherever it seems to fit. There’s not much room for deviation in this adventure. It’s only purpose seems to be to introduce the bad guy and his girlfriend to the PC’s, but in name only. There are some suggestions for encounters in the Dream Sea, but they are far too Tangerine Dream for my tastes. “Make the party travel as long as you wish.” “If they seem afraid of something then introduce it” It’s too bad, the backstory of the Dream Sea, and it’s gods, is actually pretty interesting. I wish there was more to do and it was less of a railroad.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/94946/Castles–Crusades-A8-Forsaken-Mountain?affiliate_id=1892600

This is a Castles & crusades adventure module, although it can easily be used with any pre-4E version of D&D.

This is a guardian/running the gauntlet module with four set pieces. The encounters are with four different demons, being well done and interesting. It’s also quite short and rather bland overall, except for the demons. It’s too contrived for me to use it, although the demons really are well done.

When The Evil One came to rule he found one of his so called peers hanging around. This “peer” pissed him off so The Evil One tricked him and had him locked up in an extra-dimensional prison. He set four demons in the prison as guards. Each day the demons each play their magical instruments in order to keep their charge locked away. The players need to bust in and keep the demons from playing. Theoretically, this can can be done in a method other than slaughtering them, although in reality these four guys do seem unusually committed to their eternal task. Hacking them is going to be rough, they get resurrected automatically every 48 hours. Oh, and the prison is on another plane, so once the payers go in they can’t get back out again without freeing the prisoner. While I like the world, this is all a bit too much contrivance for my tastes.

The prison complex is located under a giant floating rock and has about 18 keyed locations. It’s really just a symmetrical dungeon with four creatures in it, the demons. I really don’t like these sorts of maps. Yes, I know it was purpose built to house the prisoner, but still, I don’t like it. It may make sense, however this is an environment in which people throw giant fireballs from their hands … it doesn’t HAVE to make sense. In fact, a major portion of the fun is derived from it not making sense. The place has four objectives, the demons, and each demon has a small suite of rooms. This being a running-the-gauntlet type module, all four objectives must be achieved before the players win. The map is not LITERALLY linear however it might as well be.

Those four objectives ARE interesting. The demons are unique, both in form and in personality. They live in some nicely atmospheric environments, the like of which are seldom seen. There are WAY too many words used to describe their environments, however these four guys could never be considered dull. I shall describe but one to give you all a taste. Charlie is a demon. He’s always growing these mutant apendiges: a new arm over there, a new spleen over there, and so on. He’s an oozing, gooey mess. He’s also an intellectual who likes to read. He has his imps continually making new comfy chairs for him to sit in so he can enjoy sitting around for all eternity lounging and reading his books. He’s searching for the perfect comfy chair design, unfortunately his propensity to grow new random appendages in random places makes this difficult. As soon as he gets a new chair constructed that’s nice, and can hold his bulk, a new appendage will grow and cause him to have to construct a new chair. His chambers are covered with bloody goo and the remains of his limbs which have dropped off. The other three guys are just as interesting.

This module feels more like a 4E module than any other I’ve seen. “Here are four encounters.  Kill them and move on.” The rooms do have a few features to mess around with: a drinking horn, magic dust, and vials of goo/liquid/etc. Those are nice elements however they can’t by themselves make up for the sparseness and linearity of the adventure. It’s too brief, too spartan, and at the same time too verbose, using many many words to get to the same four encounters.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/89437/Castles–Crusades-A7-Beneath-the-Despairing-Stone?affiliate_id=1892600

This is a castles & Crusades adventure module. although it can easily be used with any pre-4E version of D&D.

An interesting concept overall. A dungeon in a frozen mountain ruled by a primordial entity who doesn’t really care, much, what happens to his supporters. There can be some tough decisions and interesting problems with a strong social twist in the middle of the combat.

I think we’re all aware that the gods made a couple of things before man. Dwarves, elves, ents and the like are the usual culprits. What about those entities that precede even the gods? Strangely, most trope doesn’t tend to cover this, except maybe the Greeks. In this adventure module the characters journey to a strange and fabulous place to seek out one of those entities, an elemental lord of frost, to ask a boon.

It appears that if your birthdate falls somewhere before “time begins” then you gain a certain perspective that others lack. That whole “1000 years of rule by the evil god Unklar” that just came to an end? That’s really just a bump. When you’re a primordial entity you just seem to care about other things. When Unklar come to power he cut a deal with the Frost Lord. He’d turn the world in to a long winter in exchange for the frost lord getting rid of things for him. That’s a good deal if you’re an evil god and you’re going to do those things anyway. Why piss off someone with UNMAKING runes? The Frost Lord also picked up some servants from the evil one. Unklar, the Dark Lord, hasn’t really been keeping up his end of the bargain since his downfall and banishment from this plane, so the Frost Lord is looking to make some changes to his retinue … if only the players knew that …

There are a couple of hooks to get the party in to the adventure. The most logical are the continuation of module A5, however the Frost Lord can UNMAKE anything, so any quest to get rid of something could be appropriate. The Frost Lord has a small village around his mountain. It’s full of people who are now immortal, as long as they stay within about a mile of the mountain lair. Most of them have been there a VERY long time and they, like the frost lord, have developed a certain perspective. They just don’t care about most of anything. The path up the unnaturally cold mountain takes the party past a gatehouse and seven guard towers. Each tower leads to a different portion of the mountain lair, and they all eventually interconnect. There are probably about 60 or so rooms scattered through the various areas.

The occupants fall in to three  general categories. First there’s the goblin servants. Wimpy and weak, they do a lot of running away. Second are the ogres and minor demons. These guys are evil and were sent here by the evil god to serve the Frost Lord. They serve in the roll of ‘Murderous Denizens bent on killing the party.’ Finally there are the long-term residents. These are the closest things the frost lord has to friends and have been with him since before the 1000 year reign of the evil god Unklar. These take the form of monsters, a naga, hag, rhemoraz, and ancient white dragon, however they are not immediately hostile. The Frost Lord doesn’t care about much anymore. You can kill his servents. You can take pretty much anything you want. You can even mess up his house (which his brother, the rock lord, made for him.) But man does he get pissed off if you killed his friends. This is a bit of a test of restraint for the party. Kill the dragon the treasure pile or ignore it? Is that a yawn or is the rhemoraz about to eat us? This situation is perfectly illustrated in one particular encounter. An ogre lord and naga queen are sitting in a dining room after dinner, talking. The Frost Lord just left, noting to both of them that change was in the air. The ogre knows this means he’s on the way out and the naga knows she’s not going anywhere. And … SCENE!

This is mostly a straight up exploratory dungeon and hack in a cold environment. There are a large number of empty rooms and the enemies are pretty much all ogres, demons (of a certain type) and winter wolves.  The number of weird and unusual elements for the party to play with are quite limited … and mostly limited to figuring out that killing everyone they meet is not a good idea. The dungeon layout is unusual … think 10 or 12 towers, with one floor and 5 or some rooms each, all interconnected to a central tower with a couple more floors. It’s not very complex, but is is something I’ve not seen before. I wish there would have been some weird fantasy elements. This would have been the perfect place to showcase them since this guy has been around A LONG time.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/64081/Castles–Crusades-A6-Banishment–Blight?affiliate_id=1892600

This is a castles & Crusades adventure module. although it can easily be used with any pre-4E version of D&D.

An interesting concept overall. A dungeon in a frozen mountain ruled by a primordial entity who doesn’t really care, much, what happens to his supporters. There can be some tough decisions and interesting problems with a strong social twist in the middle of the combat.

I think we’re all aware that the gods made a couple of things before man. Dwarves, elves, ents and the like are the usual culprits. What about those entities that precede even the gods? Strangely, most trope doesn’t tend to cover this, except maybe the Greeks. In this adventure module the characters journey to a strange and fabulous place to seek out one of those entities, an elemental lord of frost, to ask a boon.

It appears that if your birthdate falls somewhere before “time begins” then you gain a certain perspective that others lack. That whole “1000 years of rule by the evil god Unklar” that just came to an end? That’s really just a bump. When you’re a primordial entity you just seem to care about other things. When Unklar come to power he cut a deal with the Frost Lord. He’d turn the world in to a long winter in exchange for the frost lord getting rid of things for him. That’s a good deal if you’re an evil god and you’re going to do those things anyway. Why piss off someone with UNMAKING runes? The Frost Lord also picked up some servants from the evil one. Unklar, the Dark Lord, hasn’t really been keeping up his end of the bargain since his downfall and banishment from this plane, so the Frost Lord is looking to make some changes to his retinue … if only the players knew that …

There are a couple of hooks to get the party in to the adventure. The most logical are the continuation of module A5, however the Frost Lord can UNMAKE anything, so any quest to get rid of something could be appropriate. The Frost Lord has a small village around his mountain. It’s full of people who are now immortal, as long as they stay within about a mile of the mountain lair. Most of them have been there a VERY long time and they, like the frost lord, have developed a certain perspective. They just don’t care about most of anything. The path up the unnaturally cold mountain takes the party past a gatehouse and seven guard towers. Each tower leads to a different portion of the mountain lair, and they all eventually interconnect. There are probably about 60 or so rooms scattered through the various areas.

The occupants fall in to three  general categories. First there’s the goblin servants. Wimpy and weak, they do a lot of running away. Second are the ogres and minor demons. These guys are evil and were sent here by the evil god to serve the Frost Lord. They serve in the roll of ‘Murderous Denizens bent on killing the party.’ Finally there are the long-term residents. These are the closest things the frost lord has to friends and have been with him since before the 1000 year reign of the evil god Unklar. These take the form of monsters, a naga, hag, rhemoraz, and ancient white dragon, however they are not immediately hostile. The Frost Lord doesn’t care about much anymore. You can kill his servents. You can take pretty much anything you want. You can even mess up his house (which his brother, the rock lord, made for him.) But man does he get pissed off if you killed his friends. This is a bit of a test of restraint for the party. Kill the dragon the treasure pile or ignore it? Is that a yawn or is the rhemoraz about to eat us? This situation is perfectly illustrated in one particular encounter. An ogre lord and naga queen are sitting in a dining room after dinner, talking. The Frost Lord just left, noting to both of them that change was in the air. The ogre knows this means he’s on the way out and the naga knows she’s not going anywhere. And … SCENE!

This is mostly a straight up exploratory dungeon and hack in a cold environment. There are a large number of empty rooms and the enemies are pretty much all ogres, demons (of a certain type) and winter wolves.  The number of weird and unusual elements for the party to play with are quite limited … and mostly limited to figuring out that killing everyone they meet is not a good idea. The dungeon layout is unusual … think 10 or 12 towers, with one floor and 5 or some rooms each, all interconnected to a central tower with a couple more floors. It’s not very complex, but is is something I’ve not seen before. I wish there would have been some weird fantasy elements. This would have been the perfect place to showcase them since this guy has been around A LONG time.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/64081/Castles–Crusades-A6-Banishment–Blight?affiliate_id=1892600