Dungeon of the Unknown

Posted on April 29, 2024 by Bryce Lynch 
By Geoffrey McKinney
lotFP
lotFP
Level 1

Located near the coast of hex 2214 of the Isle of the Unknown, this dungeon enshrines the mysteries of the Isle’s lost Minoan past. 

This 38 page booklet including two dungeon level maps and some random things, generated randomly, that you could populate in to them. Sometimes weird in a good way and more times just random and disconnected. Not a fucking adventure. 

“Can be used immediatly” says the marketing …. pfffft!

There are two old school style dungeon maps. In blue even! With the thin little lines for walls, so, using every square on the paper for the map, just like that famous Gygax “behind the screen” photo. The “key” for the dungeon is included on the same page as the map. The Yellow Temple. The Fiery Room. The Monolith of Dripping Fangs. The Shaking Sands. Just a room name. And each one is named just like that, like it’s the set piece room of all set piece rooms for the dungeon. Nothing is mundane and everything is grandiose. Well, the names are. All of them. There are no keys. What there is is a little notation. “W3” or “T2”. Some are entirely blank. That’s all there is. That’s all you’re getting.

The other pages of the booklet describe what W4 and T2 are. There are twelve of those special rooms, for the seventy or so rooms on the key. Things like “reroll one set of your stats”, which you can use as many times as you want. They have no relation to the room names. The monsters here are Goops. And Gloops. And Gobs. No description. Roll on a table for the random ability of each. You do get some random humans to toss in also. “These Brigands are accomplished robbers and murderers. Their leader (the individual of highest level amongst them) is called the Brigand Lord.” There are other monsters with the names of C1, C2, C3, C4 and so on, the Geofrey special of a random chimeric creature. 

That’s the “Adventure.” That’s all it is. Nothing more. I’m not being facetious. That random reroll room? “Six ever-burning wax candles float 6’ high in a 5’ diameter circle. Anyone extinguishing a candle will fall unconscious. One minute later the candle will relight and the person will awake. He must re-roll on 3d6 a randomly-determined attribute (no saving throw).”

Everything in the adventure is like this. It’s not an adventure. It’s just a fucking collection of ideas. And, I’d argue, a collection that can’t be used in the manner in which the designer intends. Nothing present really wors together. The theme is just “a bunch  of rando bizarre shit.” Random monsters. Rooms you place yourself with no hint of working together. It’s trying to out B1 the B1 adventure. But that had some theming. This doesn’t. 

And it’s all that weird abstracted language. Afraid to say anything specific. 

There’s an interesting weird thing here and there, I guess. But, seriously, just go to the Dungeon Dozen and use it. Or any of those other rando dungeon design books. These are too specific to be used as tools and not related enough to be used in the same space. 

This is $5 at DriveThru. Sucker. No preview, double sucka!

https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/114330/dungeon-of-the-unknown?1892600

Posted in Reviews | 11 Comments

Tar Pits of the Bone Toilers

Posted on April 27, 2024 by Bryce Lynch 
By Malrex
The Merciless merchants
OSR
Levels 5-8

A new trade route is being sought through the Dalgarian Canyonlands, pass the friendly Kharazan, Village of Plenty. But the last two expeditions have never returned and the merchants are getting anxious for the new route, causing bags of gold to exchange hands. Meanwhile, the ancient portal, the Maw of Ghormaug, has opened once more and invaders, ‘bone men’, are beginning to take over territory. No one is safe. Left unchecked, these lands are destined for horror and ruin, unless a brave party steps up to the challenge.

This thirty page adventure presents a small jungle canyon, full of trees and swamp, with various encounters orbiting around a cult of neanderthals with a bone/skull motif. The overall vibe of the valley is there, with things fitting together well, but the individual encounters seem off. Weaker descriptions and encounters that feel less like situations. 

We’ve got this jungle canyon. Merchant dudes want to chart a course through it to open up a new trade path. Off you go to figure out why the last expedition didn’t return. Inaside we find a host of little mythic like encounters, strong on player cultural memory. And the bone toilers. These are primitive men that like to dress in boine armor, etc. And sometimes their taller leaders ride animated skeletons of dinosaurs and shit like that. So, lots of bone monsters and bone motifs and skulls hanging around. Turns out they are from another dimension, the gate is in the bottom of their cave lair in their fort, and there’s a … bone devil inside! So, not too bad in the It All Makes Sense Now Of Course school of player thought.

Malrex does a decent job here, as I mentioned, of putting in some iconic encounters. We’ve got a mad hermit in a hut who knows just about everything. We’ve got a hooded woman living in a cave, wary at first but also having information to trade for magic items. Also, hey, don’t piss her off maybe … what are all of those statues in the nearby jungle about? And then theres the … spirit? We likes walking out of a copse of trees in his spotlessly white robe and pointing, ominously, to a better path for the party to take. A Duskwalker … enemy of the bone toilers! Also, this one is missing his heart. A village, the former inhabitants of the valley, now massacred. Undead wander, a pyramid of corpses in the center. And, of course, The Looters. Not adventurers. Not bandits. Looters. Great word choice. They are in over their heads and want to get out. And some of them are missing. And their little band is about to be torn apart by some internal strife. Really kind of iconic little things. Oracular medusa? Sign me up!

Maps are not the greatest. We’ve gt a small wilderness area map. The scale is 10 feet, but that can’t be right. That would put most of the encounters within about sixty feet of another one. That just doesn’t make sense for the vibe of the text, which implies a large canyon with jungle and swampy water. The wilderness has several small “dungeons” hanging off ot it. A ruined village, a couple of cave complexes, and the main bone-dudes fort and the caves/hellmouth underneath. This sort of wilderness with smaller dungeons is intriguing and I like the concept a lot, just not at the scale presented here. And the maps, of the dungeons, are not the greatest. A little blurry and not the most complex things ever, but still better than square rooms connected by lines.

The descriptive text can be maddening. Overall, i think it’s not great. Not, perhaps the weakest, but it tends to avoid the evocative text that some of the Malrex product produces. Things are a bit better with the dungeon entrances. Here’s “Sheeting water and mist drench everything at the bottom of the roaring waterfall. Two rivulets enter a cave mouth, making a set of eroded stairs slippery as they lead to darkness.” That’s one of the entrances and it’s not too bad as a forbidding entrance to something. But they fall off from there. 

The dungeon rooms, in particular, tend to the hack side, especially in the bone fortress caves. It’s stuffed full and a raid/stealth/assault is going to the word of the day, even for characters of this level. “1d6 bone dwellers join the fray every 1d4 rounds.” Ouch! And those dudes are 4HD. A tough fight to get out. And the designer recognizes this aspect of th adventure and provides a rough timetable of events, for the day, for the fortress, to assist the DM in players planning an assault. 

Good magic items here, and some really good descriptions, in places, as well as challenges. “Corpses cover the stairs leading up to the 6’ high platform. The corpses create a ‘ramp’ surrounding the entire temple, so characters need to climb over the corpses to reach the top” That’s a nice little thing.Or “Characters who touch the orb have their eyes roll up, showing only the whites of the eyes.” That’s a great little effect to help the DM out. 

But then, in other places, things fall flat. And that is the overall effect, I think. Not to say that it’s BAD, but just that so many opportunities are missed. In one case you’ve got a room with some beetles eating an alligator corpse. But, also, not mentioned till the end are three skeletons of a dead party lying in a heap on the north wall. THis could go two ways. Take a chance to kill the beetles .. for no reason? On the hope that there’s treasure? Or lure the party in by hinting at the bodies, giving them a reason to push their luck? I think those sorts of things are delicious so I’m readily in the second camp.

I want to also mention an art piece, of a ghast. Of a child. It’s well done and communicates the horror, I think. But the descriptions of the monsters don’t follow through, in most cases. We do get some pot-bellied ghasts at one point, but even that description falls a little flat, and it’s one of the rare examples. 

Don’t think I’m too down on this. It’s doing some nice things. But it doesn’t hit as hard as some of the other Malrex adventures. The concept is good and the overall vibe of the setting is good also. And some of the descriptions and encounters and situations. But It just doesn’t reach those heights that we all know Malrex is capable of.

This is $5 at DriveThru. The preview is fourteen pages, more than enough to get a sense of the place and the writing style and the encounter style.

https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/253868/tar-pits-of-the-bone-toilers?1892600

Posted in No Regerts, Reviews | 11 Comments

Standoff at Sandfell Sea Fort

Posted on April 24, 2024 by Bryce Lynch 
By Malrex
The Merciless Merchants
OSR/1e/2e
Levels 4-7

Eerie lights? Strange noises? Ships are sailing blind into the rough shores of the Bay of Saurvorn. Why is the light out at Lokrom’s Beacon? Will the party find clues to a murderer? Or is there something more sinister at stake.

This 24 page adventure presents a small cove/bay. About twenty miles square, with a number of things going on. It’s got a decent mix of encounter for a small regional area, and the three “dungeon” have some interesting enough things going on that mix well with the denizens of the area. A solid adventure for Shit To Go Down. 

I like an adventure with a decent number of things going on. It creates a kind of potential energy for the party to take advantage of, and fuck up, that I think creates those situations that good RPG sessions come from. And this has something going on. So, the light in the lighthouse went out a week ago. A rescue party to relight it hasn’t returned. Also, a ship went ashore, not that the lighthouse is out. Also, when you find them you’ll discover that some of them have been taken captive. Also, turns out that they’re pirates. Also, there’s some seal-people hanging out on a big kelp island, you can see the eerie green lights of their village. Also, the nearby fort has been taken over evil seahorse people. Also, a raiding party of the seal-people went missing when they raided the fort. I don’t know what the fuck else, something, I’m sure. And this all kind of leads naturally from one area to the next. It develops deeper and richer over time. 

This is all supported by some detail, some specificity, that helps the DM bring the adventure to life. A rumor telling us “Calos swears he saw the biggest crab he has ever seen along the coast to the east. He yapped at me sayin he would use the shell for a hut or some such nonsense. Hmm, funny thing, I haven’t seen him around lately.” Dude yapped. He had a dumb idea about a house. It’s in voice, or at least character, for a run down dude in a run down dive bar. You can work with that. Likewise the wanderers are all doing something, like crabs fighting over the drowned dead sailor corpse for lunch. You can immediately conjure that up in your head. And that allows you to add and twist it much more easily to bring the encounter to life, riffing on it for the players benefit. Or, even, a kind of throw away line in the Seal People village, of an old woman giving a spellcaster a robe made of lacquered shells. That’s fucking touching, man! 

And our descriptions, of the rooms and places, are pretty decent. One of the rooms has “This room smells of sea stench and dead animals. Several corpses of sea horse creatures lay flayed open and scattered about the room. A hoarse and raspy breathing, rag tag group …” That’s the missing raiding party of the seal people, taking a breather, kind of trapped in the seahorse people fort. Raspy breathing. Hoarse. Sea stench. Great use of descriptive words to help bring the are solidly in to the DM imagination. And the adventure does this more often than it does not. It’s not consistently hitting, room after room, but then again this is an earlier work by the bad king. 

I’m not sure how I would really describe the setting here. Not quite a regional setting. And the dungeons, while there is a lighthouse, a ship/cave and the fort (by far the largest at about 21 rooms) are not entirely the main focus … although they are? I mean that in a good way. What you’ve got here is a small area of wilderness with a lot going on, anchored by some people who want things (the town, the seal people, the shipwrecked survivors) and the three closer-to-traditional dungeons that are more exploration/raiding oriented. This FEELS like a little place where you back and forth between areas. I don’t actually think it is; I suspect that there is a natural order to the encounters in the area which leads to others, which leads to others. But it FEELS that way. And that’s what should ne happening in these things. You should feel like you are in control of what you are doing. You CaN do things but are not FORCED to do things. I know, amazing concept. 

In particular, I want to c all out the final dungeon, the largest one by far, at about 21 rooms. It’s supported by a grat map, with varied terrain, flooded chambers, same-level stairs and the like. It is much more complex and interesting than I think most maps of this size would be. And that’s supported by what’s going on INSIDE the caves/dungeon. It’s not just a flooded complex. It’s not just creatures to hack. You’ve got a few interesting details, and the seal people raiders, and so much more. It feels more like a traditional exploration dungeon in many places. And I think that’s an amazon accomplishment given its size.

THis is quite a solid work. It’s not gonzo, or epic, just a REALLY solid little cove region with a decent amount going on and lots of opportunities for the party to interact, with the people, with the dungeons, whatever. The town has just enough information to get it going well, as do the rumours, wanderers, and various “outdoor” encounters. Just enough, specific. It does SO much with what it has. Even if I do think the treasure situation is a little sparse … unless maybe the party is clearing out everything.

This is $5 at DriveThru.The preview is fourteen pages, more than enough to get an idea of what you are buying. Although, I’m not sure the entire impact of the adventure is made apparent. 

https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/252951/standoff-at-sandfell-sea-fort?1892600

Posted in Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, Reviews, The Best | 9 Comments

Desperation of Ivy

Posted on April 22, 2024 by Bryce Lynch 
By Lance Hawvermale
Frog God Games
S&W
Levels 3-5

They say the god of nature never forgets. This deity, known today as Oon, birthed himself from nothingness by planting his own seed among the stars. His first memory was of his roots sinking deep into the cosmos, stealing secrets from the place before Time began. Millennia later, one of his clerics would try in turn to steal from Oon, and the god punished the man by transforming him into a deathless creature, forced to live in misery for eternity. Yet in his wisdom, Oon did not permit his fallen priest to roam the countryside freely and write terror in the hearts of the undeserving peasants. Instead, the very plants were commanded to imprison the undead forever.

This 24 page adventure presents a two level manor, with smalls additional basement, with about 35 rooms in it. It’s plant themed, with the place being completely overrun by ivy, and every plant monster in the books. It is, generally, just a hack with a plant theme. If this were any other publisher I’d be unhappy, but by the standards the Frogs set? Well, they put the right cover on it and write a two sentence marketing blurb. So they are improving?

It’s a manor home overgrown with plants. There’s also a small nearby village of a half dozen or so places that also have killer plants. The yardstick for success here, at least in terms of descriptions, is how much I get an Annihilation vibe from the text. That is ,I think, one of the best visual depictions of the Overgrown By Plants trope. And, surprisingly, in this adventure, Lance, the designer, does a halfway decent job of invoking that sort of life and decay and oppressiveness. A grand veranda on the verge of collapse, the floor buckled under the weight of thick vegetation, long green runners hanging down from the dropping ceiling, bees and insects in the sunflowers and thistle growing there. As it would say, a property overgrown with rampant foliage, you must wade through knee high weeks and prickly bushes to even reach the home. There are hints, here and there, like a flowerchild growing in a sunny bedroom, or a room with birds that fly out of it, the interior covered in droppings. I think what Lance does, better than most, is capture the living nature of the area. The birds, the flowerchild and the sun, the sunflowers and bees. It’s alive. Verdant, both literally and figuratively. And capturing that is no small feat, successfully communicating the vibe is a major challenge in any adventure, and Lance kind of pulls it off. 

And, well, everything else is not quite a mess, but it’s not very well done either.

Those descriptions, for example. They tend to be LOOOONG. And read-aloud tends to be long, when it appears (which is fine, it doesn’t need to be consistent) but it does lapse in purple at times, with those bees on the porch “delighting” in those sunflowers. It never goes completely overboard, but the eyes  rolled a decent amount during this. And there’s seems to be this compulsion to mention the previous states of the rooms. Not quite in a “room backstory” way, but in a weird passive way. “Long ago, guests hung their garments here, but now the ivy has woven itself through the hooks and shelves and tied them up in knots” Or that the plants have made a once-spacious room now all but impassable. Throw offs, consistently appearing. 

And there is, I think, a kind of lack of cohesion in the entire thing. This shows up in the room descriptions, in which some sentences don’t seem to know that others exist.  “This room is full of pegs and hooks for hanging clothes”, the closet tells us, and and then it inserts that “long ago guests hung their garments” line in it, and then goes on. Like the first sentence doesn’t know the others are coming. A perfect example of a sentence that could be trimmed. 

And then this extends to the rest of the adventure, in concept. The  facts, of which there are about four, don’t really feel like factions. And don’t seem integrated in to the complex very well, hanging out in their rooms and nowhere else. 

Enter a room, it’s full of plants life and vines, kill a plant monster, move on to the next room. You’re not going to get much more in the way of interactivity than that. You can talk to some mushroom men. Yeah. But, it’s just not possible to do much more, I guess, in a house full of plants?

And formatting is non-existent. Not even much in the way of bolding. It’s just wall of massive text with even few line breaks. That’s rough. 

I want to end this review with this little section of text, describing an undead dude in one of the last rooms. It’s a good example of what’s going on here. Skip the first sentence. And don’t fucking mention it’s an undead dude, fuck man, writing 101. But the rest of the description is not too shabby! A little long, maybe, but  it’s a good description! And this is the story with this adventure, too long, needs a good editor to trim a lot, and needs a lot more interactivity, but has some decent imagery in it.

“A ghastly figure confronts you. This undead wears tattered red clothing, but that is the only vestige of its humanity that remains. Its head is a skull that crawls with worms, with red motes in eye sockets that are otherwise as black as voids. The spidery hair atop its head floats around its head. Tiny insects have picked its bones clean, and no muscle mass remains, yet still it mana”ges to stand, fists clenched, empty ribcage heaving up and down in a ghastly imitation of life.

This is $8 at DriveThru.The preview is four pages. Pretty worthless, but on the last page, in the second column, you can start to get a little of the descriptive text that I think shows a lot of promise.

https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/235127/quests-of-doom-4-desperation-of-ivy-swords-and-wizardry?1892600

Posted in Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, Reviews | 3 Comments

The Brigands of Bristleback Burrow

Posted on April 20, 2024 by Bryce Lynch 
By Brynjar Mar Palsson
Self Published
Shadowdark
Levels 1-3

No amount of coin is worth crossing paths with the Bristlebacks; they’ll rob you of more than your gold.” – Myrtle Salesbury of Salesbury & Sons Caravansary.

This eight page adventure uses three pages to describe twelve rooms. It’s trying hard, and does a decent little job of descriptions and scenes. Situations and interactivity, though, is lacking. Still, a better job than 90% of Shadowdark adventures, at a minimum!

What we’re going for here is a small dungeon with mostly goblins and their minions that has some faction play, again mostly between goblins. Most of the other things you expect from an adventure are at a bare minimum, at best. No hooks. No real marketing. It’s just a dungeon that you’re going in to for some reason. And that’s chill. You know what I like to say, concentrate on the important thing, the dungeon. Everything else is fluff. And that’s what’s going on here. There’s a short (and unremarkable) rumour table and that’s about it. Background is one paragraph of three sentences. Right on man! Then we get a half column on factions and what they do when all hell hell breaks out. Four factions. About half a column. With direction. That’s pretty good from a terseness standpoint. A craven goblin boss with a penchant for cruel punishment. Also, there’s an ambitious and patient doppleganger. Hoy boy! This is how you write an NPC description. Not a fucking paragraph. A few words that inspire and make sense in the context. 

I’m generally satisfied with all of this. Or, would be. They are, I think, a little too eager to recruit any PC they meet to their cause. Basically any goblin who sees the party is going to be all on board. And I’m not sure that’s how this should be handled. The map is small, only twelve rooms, so there’s not much room to breath here. And while the map notes creatures on it, it doesn’t necessarily note factions or numbers. So, what are we doing? Is this an exploratory adventure with subtle faction play? It’s not really large enough and everyone is eager to see you. Is it more of a mass combat/raid thing once you make contact? But the map doesn’t really support that, or the notes. 

And this is, I think, an issue with e adventure. It feels like a kind of 4e/5e mashup. The 4e aspect of combat centric with some “less tactical” 5e stuff. But it doesn’t feel interactive beyond that. And I’m not even sure I’d include NPC discussions with the monsters as an element. It seems like including Talking To The Shopkeeper would be appropriate here. It’s lacking that verve of contestation in the verbal arena, or even much in the way of interactivity beyond just stabbing shit. There are interesting things here, but they are more of an integrated backstory thing (well done) rather than things the party will be directly interacting with in a game way.

But, hey, I’m being an asshole before I’m being nice. There is some really chill stuff in this in terms of scenes and descriptions and the like. Like I said, monsters are noted on the map for reaction purposes. There’s a great monster reference sheet. And the magic? Oh man. The Pact Slate of Beherit: “A broken and chipped stone tablet with infernal writing and streaks of dried blood.” Go ahead, stamp your fingerprint in blood on it! That fucking shit is gold. FUCKING GOLD! Sign me up mom!

And, as the description for the pact-stone might imply, the descriptions in general, and the scenes that they build up, are well done. “Cramped and muddy vermin– infested hallways with the lingering stench of urine and body odor. Goblin voices echo from the gloom as flickering torchlight emanates from intermittent wall sconces.” That’s the general Always On description of the main part of the dungeon and it does a great job of communicating a vibe in a small amount of space. Or. Pillars, strung with 1-3 bodies, each with a sign stating “thief” or “trespasser”, etc. I might go a little harder there, but ok. The terse and colorful NPC description, combined with terse little scenes in the rooms help to do a lot to give the rooms a little life to them. Even if they do end up in combat. 

Formatting it pretty good also. Or, lets say, well thought out. There’s a sentence ot so describing the main thing in the room. What you might notice first. And then a few bolded section headings of other main things, and then some bullets and bolding, with indents, to note other important things. No, dickheads, it’s not the ultra-terse OSE style that you love to bitch about. It’s more verbose than that, with essentially something close to full sentences, if not full sentences. And it does a decent job. 

The rooms, however, tend to be on the more complex side of things. Four or five bolded section headings/bullets, at about a minimum. This contributes to a density of about four rooms a page or so. We’re moving toward set piece room length here, or Main Room vibes. In something something this short it’s not really going to be a problem.

But, the short size of the adventure, is, I assert, a problem. There is no room to breathe here. There’s no room for the faction play to develop in to something meaningful. There’s no room for that interactivity that is the soul of Dungeons and Dragons. Todo those things you need to get to something longer/larger, and THEN we have to look at page after page of four rooms per page. Can you do it? Absolutely. But it’s not gonna be fun. The challenge here is to take that format and really work it. How do you keep the vibrancy of the room, the scene, or situation, while also keeping each and every one of them from running to a quarter page? Errr … I guess that’s my challenge. You can also have a quarter page room. 🙂  

More seriously, the challenge here is the lack of interactivity beyond a lot of combat. Yes, there are factions, but this is a rather simplistic implementation of them. A full dungeon, but this designer, would be an interesting thing to see.

This is free at DriveThru:

https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/446454/Shadowdark-The-Brigands-of-Bristleback-Burrow?1892600

Posted in Reviews | 15 Comments

The Lost Universe

Posted on April 17, 2024 by Bryce Lynch 
By Christina Mitchell
NASA
Generic/Universal/Fantasy
Levels 7-10?

A dark mystery has settled over the city of Aldastron on the rogue planet of Exlaris. Researchers dedicated to studying the cosmos have disappeared, and the Hubble Space Telescope has vanished from Earth’s timeline. Only an ambitious crew of adventurers can uncover what was lost. Are you up to the challenge?

This 44 page free adventure from NASA details the hunt for a missing team of researchers. It rivals a Bloodymage adventure for lack of comprehension. Yes, it’s THAT bad.

I try to start reviews by saying something good about an adventure. No matter how slight, they usually have something that stands out. An encounter. A nice NPC. Something. Not this one. There is nothing here. Well, ok, there are some appendices on vacuum energy and red/blue shifts that you could  read instead of a wikipedia article. Other than that …

The framing here is that you are people at Goddard, and make D&D characters, and are then transported in to those characters in a fantasy world. “It’s the Dungeons & Dragons ride!” Once in your new fantasy world city, you find out some people are missing. And get escorted by the town guard to their boss who wants you to find them. You then do the usual things or asking around, getting in a bar fight, and going to some ruins to follow an elf .. who turns out to be a green dragon. Yeah, you found the researchers! Do you want to stay in the new world or go back home?

The issues here are tha the designers don’t know anything about designing a D&D adventure. I’m not even talking about the “design” of the adventure, the plot, and how the dungeon foreshadows and such. I think I’m pretty fucking generous in those regards You’re not gonna make it in to The Best with a generic adventure, but I’m not going to hate my fucking life. This thing, though … oh boy. The basic design mistakes, formatting an adventure and what to include and why, the lack of knowledge here is, I assert, with our dear departed mage of blood. And, even when this adventure puts critical blocking elements behind skill checks, I’m not going to bitch about that. Should you do it? No. Does it show a fundamental lack of knowledge? Yes. But the DM makes the show go on. No, we’re gonna ignore ALL of those, and every other bad design decision like that. Fuck the interactivity. Fuck the evocative text. No, we’re giving this an adventure a pass on ALL of those. Yeah, none of them are present, but let’s ignore all of that.

You know what? I’m even going to ignore the NPC descriptions. Their long backstories. The trivialities that don’t matter. Their blandness. The mountains of text used to describe them. No. Let’s instead focus on one thing and one thing only in this one: wall of text.

This thing is absolutely ABSURD when it comes to wall of text. You know even the bible, in that whole begatting section, it has breaks. Some genius in the 1500’s stuck in chapters and verse to break up the text. But this thing? Yeeesh ..

Yes, it has some paragraph breaks. And some offset boxes. But, man, a single page may have, like four paragraphs on it. And those paragraphs ARE the adventure. They are full of “if the players do this then this happens” and long sections of skill checks and combats, with little to no bolding or other ways to break up the text and draw the DMs attention to things. 

Now, you’re gonna go download this and look at it and say “Brycy boy, this doesn’t look so bad!” and you’d be right. It doesn’t LOOK bad. But I would assert that the worst formatting CoC or Vampire adventure is more comprehensible than the text in this thing. I find it hard to believe ANYONE ran this adventure from this text. Took the booklet, without having written it or worked it in layout for two weeks, and sat down to read it to try and run a game from it. And I’m not talking on the fly. Just, read it to eventually run a game from it. I can’t believe that ANYONE did that. Look man, I know the OSR is on the forefront of this shit, but this is, I don’t know, a throwback doesn’t even come in to play. It’s SOmekind of throwback formatting/wall of text combined with layout that doesn’t know what its purpose it combined with the style and substance (or lack thereof) that tends to be in the forefront of modern playstyles. 

And no maps. Oh no. Instead we get things like this “The staircase, if your players choose to descend, goes down to a tunnel below that is far more easily passable than the area they just came through. As they reach the base of the stairs there is a landing with two arches, one is covered with a wall of blue flame and the other a wall of red flame.” Obviously a red shift/blue shift puzzle. But I swear to god, no map and attempting to describe the shit in text? “If they choose to descend.” No, they sit the fuck around with their thumbs up their asses. “If the characters choose to breathe.” might as well be the text. 

I understand that certain things have to be done. I assume we’re targeting new people, and such, and thus we can allow some of that “go to section B” stuff. But the rest? Absolutely not. When people bitch that adventures are hard to run they are talking about shit like this. The purpose of an adventure is to be run and if people look at this and don’t even try then it is failing to enable its primary purpose. 

It’s free, from NASA:

https://science.nasa.gov/mission/hubble/multimedia/online-activities/the-lost-universe/

Posted in Do Not Buy Ever, Reviews | 14 Comments

Into the Sapphire Mines

Posted on April 15, 2024 by Bryce Lynch 
By reddJack
Self Published
EZd6

A complete one-shot adventure for the EZD6 system that sees players exploring an abandoned mine that uncovers a sprawling underground tunnel system filled with goblins and an ancient colony of crystalline arachnids.

This nineteen page adventure details a trip in to some “Sapphire Mines”, that contain no Sapphires. It’s an exercise in random locations and experimental layout. Neither of which ends up being as effective as was intended. Onward, to die rolling!

Page eight of this adventure is the critical one. Before this page we get a little blurb on the mine entrance, and some pages describing the goblin tribes (and factions) and the Sapphire Spiders (bestiary) and some backstory. But page eight is where the adventure comes together. You see, their’s this little four section flowchat and six entry random table for “what room do you encounter next.” Antechamber, goblin warrens, the back entrance to the goblin warrens, crystal cavern, underground oasis, or the Spider Queen room. And the little four entry flowchart tells us to roll for the room layout (three types) and then for what “danger” there is in the current tunnel, and then for a tunnel encounter, and then roll for the next main room type. IE: random AND linear. Oh, also, don’t step on the sand/loose earth or you will summon a worm/spider. Zzzz….

So, the designer is looking to set up this thing where a couple of goblin factions live in a cave/mine, that is also inhabited by these mutant spiders. The spiders have a queen and also some elf dude is who is the spider ally/leader/something like that. So you’ve got this band of goblins allied to the elf/spiders and another that is “free” goblins, currently out of power and being repressed. And you roll on the table and randomly wander around until you get bored and go home. I guess. I don’t know. There’s not much point here. Oh, look, our first room was the queens chamber. Themes the breaks of randomness. And how can you have an expressive faction play environment with six rooms? You can’t. And thus all of that text on the factions is relatively meaningless. 

The magic items get some decent description an are sufficiently unique. The room descriptions, and even the monster descriptions, are sorely lacking though. Bland, when they do exist, “Wolf-sized spider covered in crystalline carapace that shines like a moonlit pool. Agile and venomous.” Meh. Hippo sized spider that swims through soft earth. Meh. There’s not much here.

The main feature of the adventure is the layout. We’re being interesting with it, to help make all of the information readily accessible. I’m a big proponent of the formatting lending itself to those concepts. Further, I think that you must ruthlessly violate your own formatting guidelines when appropriate. Every situation you are trying to get across is different, with different goals, and thus the formatting for everything should be specific to that. This is more than just using a different format for the social town vs the room/key dungeon. Does the tavern need a different format than the general store? If so, then we don’t try to pigeonhole one in to the other. But, also … we do not want to tall in to the trap of listing lighting, door, lock, walls, ceiling, floor, sound, tase and smell in every room description at the top of them. We note things when appropriate. What I’m saying here is that there should be a general formatting style that you use throughout your adventure. Some standards. And, then, as exceptions arise, you tailor your formatting for them to those exceptions. But there should generally be some common standards. If EVERYTHING is different on every page then you face some serious cognitive dissonance, as the DM, in trying to context shift to the new formatting. What am I supposed to pay attention to on THIS page? 

And this is going to a problem here. Every page has a wildly different format. Yes, even the room pages. You’ll get to dig through all of everything fresh and new each and every time. Good luck with that. Just as with the adventures that list the lighting, door, and floor and walls and smells and noises for each room, this adventure has taken a principal to an extreme. Yeah, sure, lighting in a room is good to know. But, also, maybe we can assume most rooms are dark if in fact 90% of the rooms are dark? A format used excessively. And, with this, perhaps not EVERYTHING in the adventure requires a totally new format? Is there so much variation thats the case? (And if so … why?)

Plus, you know, no sapphires.

This is $5 at DriveThru. The preview is four pages. Which in this case is enough, if you know already that everything is going to be like that.

https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/464682/into-the-sapphire-mines-an-ezd6-one-shot-adventure?1892600

Posted in Reviews | 27 Comments

Awake in the Night Sky

Posted on April 13, 2024 by Bryce Lynch 
By Ben Gibson
Coldlight Press
Starfinder
Level 3 (ending at level 6)


> Why am I here? Where is here?

>Power core lost. They took it. They took my eyes.

>Agents to sleep. Batteries low, shutting down.

>Drifting now. Listen. Wait.

>Awake in the night sky I wait for those who will follow.

>I will be free.

This 24 page Space /SciFi adventure features the party tracking down information and then exploring a derelict ship now controlled by an emerging AI. It’s got that Ben Gibson WIDE scope, which also means it’s more of an abstracted outline than reveling in the specifics. 

We’ve got this ship that an ai has emerged on. Other ships shoot at it and abandon it, lifeless. An escape pod gets loose with a dude in it that is devoted to the AI, taken over by it. He lands on a planet. A hermit there find his pod, and him. He hides the pod, recognizing the AI threat, and turns the dude, a clone, over to his clone family that squats in a portion of a space station a couple of systems away. You’re hired to infiltrate the dock the clones are squatting in to find the location of the life pod, to track it back to the location of the derelict ship … to salvage it. Or let the AI free. Or bow up the ship. There are several people with agendas that you could get involved with. I think we can all see the three acts here: space station dock, life pod planet, and derelict ship. And it makes sense then, I guess, that you are popping from level three to level six at the end of the adventure.

SciFI is hard, I think. Everyone is running around with level 36 wizard abilities. ANything and everything could happen. And the worlds seldom feel “lived in.” Let’s add in to this the scope of a Ben Gibson adventure. He tends to write some rather sandboxy things, with general places and situations described and then the DM left to take the party through them, using the bits and pieces provided as some guidelines for the adventure. This leaves specifics in the lurch, for most parts of it other than major NPC’s/rivals and the final dungeoncrawl in the derelict ship … which gets a traditional room/key but isn’t going to win any awards for “Avoiding Abstracted & Generic SciFi Ship Descriptions.” 

The first act is the infiltration of an abandoned dicking pad section of a colossal space station. It’s controlled by The Eddies, a clone family that look and think like Eddy. Very nice detail there; scifi elements, a but of humor, a bit of advantage. Good Job. This might be similar to a typical raid mission in D&D. You try to find a way in. This is a little handwavey for me in this adventure. Several options are mentioned but I think I continue to butt up against the possibilities inherent in SciFi. Once inside you bribe people or avoid bots or fight them and the clones until you find the information you are looking for. Which could be from the compromised clone. You could also get hired by another clone to find/do something about the derelict ship. Descriptions are on the terse side and there’s some variety here. That’s going to be a theme throughout the adventure; good variety. People to talk to, competing agendas, and sometimes a green slime in a biohazard locked room or a mini black hole in the physics test lab. The third act is going to be a variation on the first one. Instead of a raid you are, possibly, exploring the derelict ship. More NPC”s inthe forms of frozen crew or androids, along with booths and hostile fungi. With a hostile AI always lurking, wanting to get back to your ship and out to the wider galaxy. A fact that you may not be aware of. Again, good variety of interactivity, with some “air gapped” ad “compromised” computers providing some puzzle-like things in order to get the ship back online, if you wish. And, again, a kind of cold scifi room description … which is less description and more “here whats going on in the room thats weird.” Note, again, how I summarized this as an outline lacking specificity? “A simple conference room, on the whiteboard was written “What is going on with them?” , erased, but still barely visible.”

The second act is full of factions, on a planet. You’re there looking for the clones life pod, hidden by a hermit. There are a couple of settlements and, like, six factions? All looking for the life pod. And some willing to gut you and some willing to be truthful with you. This is a VERY handwavey section, with the DM needing to improvise almost everything, from locations to possabilities. The factions make it fun, but, also, it’s VERY loose.

Ben does a pretty good job with writing tersely, when it comes to the actual play parts. You get some longer descriptions for things like factions, to explain motivations and how to play them. And there is almost no specifics.  A typical room descrciption might be: “Logistics Office: This tight office has a single dead man within; Jerl Knobbs, the chief bosun, was hiding from the fighting outside before the missile strikes and resultant vacuum breach. He suffocated to death, not before severing the office’s connections to the mainframe.” So, not much description and a focus on whats going on. Along with some wrong cross-references here and there, which are frustrating. 

It’s an abstracted SciFI adventure. Aren’t’ ALL scifi adventures abstracted? Is it possible to write one that is not? I shouldn’t review them until I figure out how to review them.

This is $4.60 at DriveThru. The preview is nine pages, more than enough to get a sense of the general and room writing styles.

https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/359726/awake-in-the-night-sky?1892600

Posted in Reviews | 5 Comments

Scorchfire

Posted on April 10, 2024 by Bryce Lynch 
By Malrex
The Merciless Merchants
OSR
Levels 7-9

Your party successfully emerges from whatever dark hole you were conquering (or fleeing from) to be greeted by fire-swept terrain; a burning hell! A wildfire leaves a blackened and charred landscape. Ash storms blanket the smoldering remnants of charred trees and smoke blurs vision. Is the nearby town unscathed? Any survivors? Is there safe passage through the raging inferno? The adventure isn’t over….it just begun.

This eighteen page adventure is an escort mission, a bunch of level 0 villagers, through a wildfire. And, strangely, I don’t hate it even though it’s an escort mission. It’s decent enough for what it is, with a variety of situations to bemuse the party. Where bemuse is defined as “two of the villagers just got eaten by giant gar. Do you want to continue down the river?” 

You’re on your way out of the dungeon. Oops, everything is burnt.And the sky is all hazy? The heavy smell of smoke in the air? There’s been/is a wildfire! That’s a cute little element to spring on the party when coming out of a dungeon. It has shades of Ye Olde Bandits hitting the party when they come out of the dungeon. But with some variety. I like the setup! Making your way back to the nearby town/village/settlement, you find it totally burnt. And with some refugees. Twelves, in fact, all briefly summarized in a little table for the DM’s easy reference. Like Palisa, who wis unhinged and manic and will drown herself if not watched. And while not mentioned, this easily lends itself to a bunch of dead kids. Which is what a good idea in an adventure should do: lead the DM to places to springboard to easily. So, you’ve got all these refugees … let’s think of as, perhaps, Hit Points, and you want to get them to the next settlement. There’s two main roads, which they want to take. Also, they are a pain in the ass. “We should go to the river so we don’t get burned!” “I can’t swim!” “The road is quicker…who knows what’s off the road!” “Who put these guys in charge anyways?” Perfect! The designer communicates wonderfully the chaos in any group. If it were me I’d kill off everyone expressing an opinion and only take the sheep, but, hey, that’s Captain Pragmatic speaking. O, it’s an escort mission, but, you’re kind of high level at this point and the concept is fun. The stakes are low, it’s just some human villagers lives, and the situations are kind of fun … but in more of a dark comedy way than a humorous way.

The monsters are generally either pissed off because of the fire or having a great time because of it. A fire giant couple in a great mood, but missing their pet Sparky. Or Cave bears in a creek … who have burnt paws. Fire demons and the like, or a desperate Dryad and some pixies trying to protect her tree. There’s a little wanderer table, that has a lot of environmental things on it, like the fire shifting directions, or a mudslide from the rain and so on. It’s clear that Malrex researched wildfires and the “oh, that makes sense!” nature of the associated impacts. It’s got some great little things on it to help spice things up. It’s not not entirely clear to me how the fire shifts. I think one more sentence would have addressed it, but I THINK that the areas marked “scorched” on the map (most of the map …) shift a hex when the fire moves south? But, also, not real rules about a wildfire being IN your hex. So, a couple of interesting misses from this standpoint, but overall its a great way to cover the impact of the fire without doing the whole “make a saving through every turn” (read that in a whiny voice) thing that a lot of adventures do with environmental impacts.

Magic items have good descriptions, some little follow up hooks with them in some cases and nonstandard effects in some cases. Which is exactly how i like my magic items. 

With regard to the actual encounters, along the roads for the most part, there is some decent variety to them. We meet Orias the druid who, like all druids, is an asshole. Fire replenishes the forest, and so on. Yeah yeah, he treats and burns and shit, but, if it were me I’d be having the townfolk passive-aggressive, or even aggressive with him. Which, again, is what a good encounter description should do: springboard ideas. We’ve got slavers looking for new slaves and a decent will o’wisp encounter … everything old is new again when you’re escorting those level 0’s. There’s also some decent opportunities to pick up followers. One or two of the townfolk, a pixie in the druid grove, and so on, if the party is nice to them, etc. That’s a good touch and brings in the elements of high level play that are missing from a lot of adventures. 

The writing is decent, not too long and with good enough descriptions in most places. I’m not super duper excited about it, or the encounters, but also I recognize that they are WAY above average for the vast majority of adventures. You can scan them quickly and the core of them is always pretty good. I just wish they were perhaps a little more evocative, both in the encounter and the writing of it. 

This is a hard one to rate. The situation is fun, interesting, and is something that it is uncommon. And fun IS the reason for playing D&D. So, suck it up and take a Best … because a good idea is still a good idea in Brycelandia.

This is $4.25 at DriveThru. The preview is eight pages. You get a really good idea of the encounters and tables presented as to what the adventure is about, its tone and so on. Great preview!

https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/252309/scorchfire?1892600

Also, I bought Castle Oldskull: Bears. The blurb made me think it was going to be a kind of pamphlet on the mythic underpinnings of bears. In folklore, history and the like. Thus if you want to write an adventure about bears, or have a bear appear in your adventure then you could consult it and get some ideas of the various cultural symbolisms of bears and leverage that. That’s pretty cool! But, also, that’s not what this is. It’s about bears in this particular fantasy world, some ice bear variants, dwarf berserkers and so on. I shall keep searching for my shining city on a hill!

Posted in Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, Level 8, Reviews, The Best | 13 Comments

The Folio #8 – The Patina Court

Posted on April 8, 2024 by Bryce Lynch 
By Scott Taylor
Art of the Genre
1e/5e
Levels 1-3

Valoria, jewel of the world of Mythras…  This ancient and fabled city is home to more than fifty thousand inhabitants, but little does that matter to the downtrodden who find refuge in the Patina Court.  Once a place of high magic, now little more than a forgotten slum, this neighborhood holds more adventure and mystery than one might think.  Can your players discover all its secrets?  Will they be able to face the challenges of refuse strewn cellars, newly haunted crypts, and enchanted wizard towers?  Only time, ingenuity, and dice will tell.

This 32 page adventure presents a small district in a town, a kind of home base district, and three short adventures in it. The few short building descriptions aren’t too bad, but the adventures are almost generic and lack any sort of depth or interest to them. 

We’re going for a Starting Home Base vibe here, except its in one district of a larger city. You’re advised to start the characters off almost broke, with just like 2gp each, in order to prompt them to adventure. The designer explicitly invokes the old Conan is Always Broke theme, and it’s not bad as a starting gimmick. The starting district has a few interesting quirks to it, the exact thing it should have, for a DM to use to leverage during their game. We’ve got a low-rent hostel, run by an ex-guardman, who carries around a cudgel and isn’t afraid to use it. Great! Thats the kind of flophouse I want in my game for my first levels! Lots of good ways to improve little scenes; maybe he’s a cheery guy to the paying guests but the party sees him kicking out someone who hasn’t paid, as their introduction. A juxtaposition! And there’s a tavern that serves the leftovers from a nicer place … and a popular outhouse out back where you can return their somewhat rancid fare. And, we’ve even got an nic little built in enemy, The Teller Gang, These are the local toughs, there to cause trouble, do a protection racket, and generally be foils for your beginning characters. Again, great opportunities here for inserting little scenes and interactions with the party. They are all written, relatively terse, and in such as way that they are an inspiration to a DM. And this is what you want with these kind of NPC’s and locales in town, things that inspire the DM to drop in little bits and pieces and interactions. This is one of the stronger parts of the booklet. I would say Not So Strong To Warrant A Purchase On This Alone … except … I love stealing shit for my cities and the hostel, tavern and maybe even the gang are stealable. So, sure, I might buy it just because I want to steal those parts for my game, without the district as a whole. 

We then start to fall down. A lot. The three little adventure provided are meant to be used with Dwarven Forge, which alone implies they will not be too large. And they are not, just a coupe of rooms in each, maybe seven or so at most. We get an adventure in the basement of the tavern, hunting rats, errr, giant ants. A trope so tropey as to be a meme. And really perfunctory. There’s almost not detail down there. Oh, there’s read-aloud, in the much hated and should never be used second-person format. But the rooms proper are really just an excuse, in each, to fight a giant ant or two. Nothing more. “Your light source bounces oddly off heaps and stacks Almost inch by inch, you plow, pull, tumble, and climb farther back into the monstrosity that is the Rancid Cellar.” Ok sure. 

And the treasure provided is NOT 1e. The final boss in one of them, a 6HD (!) crypt thing, has 47 silver pieces. In another place you find a single gold and pearl earring. There is almost n treasure at all in this, which begs the question: how do you level? Or, even, pay the rent in the hostel for another night. 

There are skill checks, like making four charisma checks to get some rumors to find out where to go next. Blech! I hate it when the roleplaying elements are reduced to simple die rolls. This is the heart of the game! Not cool man.

In the Crypt adventure you know that two gravediggers went missing. In one room you find two fresh zombies. But there are not details given. Just two fresh zombies and some advice to conduct a jump scare. This is a MAJOR missed opportunity. Those dudes should have names. They were the Maltese Falcon f the adventure. But, we’re not even really told it IS the two gravediggers, there’s just the implication that they are since the zombies are fresh. We really need a beter description of them, other than “fresh zombie” and something else. A family, or some mystery or something to springboard more play off of. It’s like the adventures, proper, are divorced from the town above them, as if they have no relation to them. Instead they should be integrated in to the town, and used to bolster, further, the town play.  

Obviously, I’m not a fan of the adventures, although some of the town locations are decent for stealing. (And, as always, I’m enamored with town play, so keep that in mind.) And, not really a 1e adventure but a 5e, I’d say.

This is $4 at DriveThru. The preview is six pages. That’s not much, but you do get to see the hostel and a couple of NPC’s. Check em out!

https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/188423/The-Folio-8-1E–5E-Format-DF1?1892600

Hey, yo, I also snagged Highdark Hall. It’s not an adventure, but rather a manor home/estate for a gothic roleplaying game. Think Jane Eyre the RPG … except this is just a location to use in any period RPG. It’s got a GRET floorplan, lots of people, including the servants, an estate to go with the hall, and a lot of rumours. It could be used either for more fantastic games, with some spell slinging occults, or cultists, or in a more mundane fashion as well. If you wanted a supplement that detailed a country manor for a period game then I’d give it a look. It’s pretty well done, as a resource for a a place to run adventures IN.

Posted in Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, Reviews | 1 Comment